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Somatics as politics
Elena Grebenyuk, Moscow
4th Europe + Conference of Narrative Therapy & Community Work
Barcelona, July 2016
If… Personal is political* Psychotherapy is political…
What power relations do we practice
in regard to the body in personal life and psychotherapeutic context?
*The politics is the study or practice of the distribution of power and resources within a given community as well as the interrelationships between communities.
After Foucault and other poststructuralist ideas we are attentive to the ‘modern power’ practices in everyday relations.
How do we embody our values and principles in relation to our bodies?
Choose one of your life values or principles and share about your ways of its application in «body landscape»
What ideas and principles about the body are dominating in our culture?
Choose one of these ideas and share about your position in relation to it
Some of the ideas in Western culture
• Body/mind split
• Oppression & control over the body
• Objectification of the body
What are the effects of these ideas?
What possibilities and restrictions do they bring to psychotherapy?
What if they habituate us somehow to the normality of splitting, oppression
and objectification?
Somatics* as an alternative way to approach the body
*‘Somatics’ is a general term for a branch of approaches, committed to the principle of conscious experience of the human body.
It was proposed by Thomas Hanna as "the field which studies the soma: namely, the body as perceived from within by first-person perception" in 1970s.
These approaches started to appear much earlier, from the beginning of the 20-th century as a counter-cultural movement, resisting the domination of the body-mind split in Western culture.
Some of the principles in somatic practices
Experiential learningInvolves scientific
information not as a collection of facts, but as a source for the personal
exploration and awareness
Dialogical learning Attention to the relationship
in the dyads and groups
The learning process involves perception, movement, sensation, imagination, sensing, cognition, interaction
Looking for efficient, intelligent postures
and ways of movementThe idea of re-patterning
The creative usage of different mediums: art techniques, scientific
information, verbal leading, touch, sound, images and metaphors
What ideas and principles about the body are dominating in somatic field?
Choose one of these ideas and share about your position in relation to it
Somatics as politics?
• Experience of conscious unpacking of how our bodies were constructed by environment, discourses and social practices
• It can strengthen the sensitivity to violence and oppression, ability to differentiate and respond
• Multiplicity, diversity and fluidity of experiencing the body as a form of a liberation
• Way to question our isolation, to experience the interconnectedness of inner and outer, me and another, body and planet, - finding new possibilities for being in this relationship
• Body, movement and dance as a way to respond to social issues
«This body resists then, not because it contains some essential drive, principle, or need which urges the person to challenge unfitting social demands, but by virtue of its excess and overflowing of society’s prescriptions»
Michael GuilfoyleThe person in narrative therapy.
A post-structural, Foucauldian account
«The goal, as we heighten sensual awareness of the environment and track our perceptual biases, is to expand our ability to respond, our response-ability, and ultimately recognize ourselves as active participants in the world»
Andrea Olsen Body and Earth: An Experiential Guide
Somatics meets narrative practice
Value closeness
We can treat the narrative practice and somatics as approaches, involved to the larger field of questioning the processes of social construction and power relations.
They support the values of the diversity, respect, enriching relationships and personal agency.
Somatics meets narrative practice
Mutual exchange
As well as somatics can offer some methods for involving the body, narrative practice invites some poststructuralist ideas, which can help the somatic practitioner to keep decentered position and work with meanings and social issues.
Formats of the practical work• Individual sessions
Connecting the body, personal narrative and cultural context
• Conflict resolution
Exploration of the relationships through movement and value issues
• Group work
Group explorations of body & movement grounded into preferred stories; explorations of social constructions, grounded into body& movement
• Community work
Support of communities through joint movement, inquiry and development of the interactions.
Thanks to my peer practice group, Maria Lebesheva and Anastasia
Maltseva for the photographs
