Considering Network
Considering Network launched their project and created a warm atmosphere in the container to open up the practice and discourse at the interface of performance art and bodywork. They approached somatic movement, shiatsu, myoreflex, craniosacral biodynamics and more. The sessions contrasted it’s slower and delicate rhythm with the rush from the streets and the busy flea market in the garden.
Considering Network started their manifesto with words “As a body is a poem” in Co-Making Matters and launched their questions:
What if this time a body is a short one?
What could you do in a peek-session that lasts 15 minutes?
Agnes answers: When connecting with the subtle and fluid body, perceptions of time change anyway. Five minutes may become endless, twenty minutes become a blink. Certain touch may elongate or shorten the experience of time, as we fall deeper into our bodies, consciousness, imagery and feelings. Or, as we also practise in the vertical time of the dreaming body, we may stretch time.
Sabrina thinks: Touching the tip of the nose through the big toe, the front through the back, and the left through the right side of the body. Considering the body as a responsive whole, we’ll define a starting point and consequently move through and with the body’ myofascial connections.
Sasha says: Not short, but condensed. Focusing on one aspect of the system, we indirectly address the rest of it: with a touch of one point we touch the whole organism – the complexity of the being. We’ll stay focused on one particular aspect and then see how it integrates.
Yuri replies: 15 min Shiatsu treatment with 5 min of pre/post-talk. Come, we listen and notice through touch.
Vera complements: Usually, coming from a social reality, one needs 20 minutes to just calm down - so as a practitioner I can start communication with the body on a corporeal, not on a personal level. But if my time is limited, I start working with the methods that switch one to interoception quickly - with breath, voice, and guiding the shifts in perception and sensations. Touch I would introduce rather carefully, depending on a request. One of my other tricks is a pack of somatic cards, that help to fall quicker into the subconscious bodily level.
And now they want to ask their fellow practitioners:
what would be your answer, if you would have a time limit on your sessions?