Description
A workshop co-taught by Sarah Gray and Rosalyn Maynard exploring our relationship to self, other, and place through direct experience in the body. In a world of information, can we embody and grow our felt knowledge of the environment? Through somatic movement education, we will take time to slow down and come to a gentle internal receptivity. We will particularly give time to meeting aspects of our nervous system from an embodied perspective and notice how this system informs, guides, and patterns our experience of self, other, and world. The workshop will open with movement, hands-on touch, breath, and sound leading into a gentle, quiet group walk, closing with time for sharing & reflection. “A ‘waie’ is an Olde English word for a ‘route’, more commonly spelled, ‘way’ in modern English. It was often given to routes and paths denoting a journey of significance; either one of commerce – a packhorse route, and/or a spiritual journey such as a pilgrim waie. The waie of walking cultivates a waie of knowing. After all, our senses developed to function at foot speeds and at SOEL we often begin our movement explorations returning to this quiet, contemplative pace of perception, giving time to a quality of attention engaged in movement from place to place, moment to moment. We incorporate this definition into all aspects or ‘waies’ of working in SOEL programme.” Rosalyn Maynard. No previous experience of Body-Mind Centering (BMC) is necessary to participate in the workshop. Weather permitting, the workshop will take place outside with an indoor, clean, quiet studio space available as a wet weather option. We will provide any props or equipment needed for the workshops.
About the artists
Rosalyn Maynard and Sarah Gray have been working together for nearly ten years and regularly teach together at SOEL, the School Of Experiential Learning.
Rosalyn has been teaching and researching through workshop and creative art labs our relationship to self, other, and place through direct experience in the body for over 20 years. Projects have led to collaborations with artists, farmers, teachers, therapists, ponies, sheep, river, moorland, bird, tree & plant. All her work as a facilitator, performance artist, shepherd, and organic Biodynamic grower is informed by a somatics movement education. She is a certified Practitioner and Somatic Movement Education in Body-Mind Centering and founder of SOEL. She has an invisible disability and has dedicated her work to WoK and practice-based inquiry whilst honouring the intellect and the mind. Her most recent research was presented at the French school for BMC: “Are we intelligent enough to know how intelligent animals really are?”.
Sarah is an artist, producer, and teacher founding Sound Site Somatics in 2016 as a vehicle to explore movement training, site-based performance making, and sound art practices grounded in somatic awareness. Sarah supports holistic, embodied learning and uses somatics to facilitate others to connect with the more than human world. Inspired by a listening, radio, and sound art practice she creates sound walks, journeys, and poems, to offer immersive, ‘in-ear’ experiences as sensory invitations for participants to relate to their environment, particularly with a focus on becoming more aware of their perception of animal and plant beings. Her research interests include the conscious experience of mind, body, and place in the context of ecological place- making, community coherence, and the wellbeing of the individual. Sarah studied Theatre and Choreographic Practices at Dartington College of Arts and has been training in Body-Mind Centering for five years and is a certified Scaravelli-inspired yoga teacher. She has taught on projects and programmes including SOEL’s Holistic Studies in Human Anatomy, Schumacher College’s MA in Movement, Mind and Ecology, and the annual international art project Sound Camp founded by Reveil with a partner organisation, Soundart Radio.