Embodiment-Movement-Art and Mental Health: Archive
The Embodiment, Movement, Art and Mental Health project began in June 2024 after a successful application to Creative Steps with the Arts Council Of Wales. Creative Steps is an initiative that seeks to support creative practitioners who have faced barriers during their practice. As a mixed race, disabled, female, from a working class background: I have found difficulties at each turn of my creative career. The Creative Steps award was an important and positive experience that facilitated my ability to grow as an artist after such difficulties.
The projects aims to take my experiences of mental health and further develop my understanding of embodiment, movement, and art in relation to those experiences. By working with creative practitioners who can guide me through these aspects of my creative development, I’m able to explore and improve my art practice, and accessibility to my work.
The project began with the first meeting to create a website that would serve and improve the accessibility of my art practice.
Taking instruction to design a website that would be sustainable to manage, and would also support my art practice, helped me to see what’s possible in creating an online presence.
We looked at initial ideas about how the website would function and its purpose.
I was pleased to be working with great instruction, and to get started.
Beginning my first dance tutorial, I felt a mixture of excitement and anxiety, but I was happy to get started. I was concerned that I would struggle to follow instructions, as I normally improvise and experiment with movement based on what I feel I’m able to practically do.
My tutor was encouraging and positive, providing tuition on how to follow a structured routine, and also how to improvise movement, such as using a part of your body to lead the dance.
I felt a great sense of well being as we worked through movement exercises, and to receive guidance on how I can express my art through dance is a valuable experience, one that I’m truly grateful for.
Embodiment, Movement, Art and Mental Health -13 June 2024- First Dance Tutorial: Description
The video begins with the artist standing to the right of the space, in front of a mirror, her back turned towards the viewer. She moves her upper body from right to left is a discus throwing motion. She takes two steps to the left, then by turning to face the viewer does a star jump into the air, and turns again as she lands. She moves into a forward bend and swings her arms behind her, then returns to standing. She repeats this movement, and jumps from a forward bend position. She then crouches towards the floor, and rolls from left to right, then back from right to left and comes to her feet. She laughs as the video ends.
My first embodiment coaching session brought new questions of how we can increase positivity towards our physical form, and greater awareness of what is happening in my own body.
There was a sense of a change in perception, as I became more in tune with my body, the world around me started to shift. This has been described as moving from being ‘in our heads’ to moving ‘into our bodies,’ which changes our relationship with ourselves and the world around us.
What I found curious is that I seemed to forget that I was female, or to put it another way: I forgot that I wasn’t male. There seemed to be more neutrality in the experience, and greater expansiveness in terms of just how my body is in the world.
This was a particularly exciting experience because there was so much that was new to me, having completed a residency previously in embodiment, there’s still so much to learn about this work.
There is a temptation to think or believe that we know all that we need to know, and actually finding new experiences can be challenging. Creativity is wonderful for experimentation, to find new ways of doing things, and discover new knowledge. However, there’s an aspect of creativity which is curiosity, and curiosity has an edge to it. When something is too strange or unusual to us, it can lead to negative experiences.
This is a line of inquiry I wish to explore further.
After my first sessions of dance tuition and embodiment coaching, I took the earliest opportunity to practice what I’d learned in a local woodland, on a bright and sunny Sunday.
Bringing awareness to how I felt in my body as I danced and moved through this green space, I was able to build my confidence that I could improve my relationship with my physical form, and develop dance in my art practice.
It was fantastic, freeing, and fun to move to music under the green canopy, and I had a real sense of connection with the environment. I also gained a better understanding of my current limitations, that my body feels stiff and often uncomfortable with mild pain, and that movement can help improve this experience.
Reflecting on my first experiences of working with creative practitioners in dance and embodiment, there is a theme of how the body relates to spaces, and how ‘nature’ or the ‘natural’ can evoke ideas of how our body can become inhibited by aspects of modern life, so that we may feel inhibited to move through these spaces in the way that we wish.
I became even more aware of how beautiful woodlands are in the embodiment coaching session, and moving through the dance studio required even more energy than I had imagined it would.
I know that I felt really quite emotional at different points, perhaps a mixture of joy and frustration at discovering that there is so much potential in our lives for these experiences.
Notes exploring ethos and process behind creating a sustainable website and relationships in embodiment.
Documenting ideas and experiences is an important aspect of being an artist and writer, but it’s equally important not to lose the sense of being in the present.
Self directed dance and movement in a dance hall. Attempting to work through the movements Sarah Rogers of Ransack and I had looked at.
I did feel awkward and clumsy, but it was great to be able to focus on what I had been taught. The joy is in the movement, and so learning new ways of doing so wasn’t going to be perfect, and didn’t need to be.
Here we explore a set sequence. This was fun and exciting. By this point I felt a bit more comfortable attempting movement in this way.
It’s a boost to self esteem to be able to feel and see your physical form embrace and grow with movement.
Sarah Rogers and I explore movement inspired by Maya Angelou’s Still I Rise poem.
Adapting words from the text to movement, we looked at different interpretations.
Embodiment Coaching Reflection
Subtitles available
Fiona Winter and I discuss aspects of embodiment and how I have related to my own body in recent years. Reflection offered the opportunity to explore what we had worked on together and what I had learned from the process. These were valuable discussions to clarify experiences and ideas.
Concluding our embodiment coaching sessions, Fiona Winter and I took in the landscape in the Autumn and the changes that had taken place since starting the sessions.
I learned a great deal from the course of embodiment coaching from Fiona: How to better understand the relationships between myself, others, and the world around me; How to embrace the present moment; I learned that there is room for improving my relationship with my physical form, but this is to be done with compassion and kindness.
Sarah Rogers and I dance a set piece after a break of several weeks due illness and other challenges.
Besides going for walks, I hadn’t done any intensive exercise for weeks. Injuring my hip, then shoulder, being ill before and after Christmas, and feeling generally blue during the winter: I relished being able to dance in the studio with Sarah’s instruction again.
Forever
The bark covers and cracks
Along our trunk with its
Secret rings of life lived,
Thick like a hard shield.
Our branches are intertwined, they
Crush upon each other like
Hands squeezing in a greeting,
Forever entangled as we grow.
Leaves shoot off and await
Their fall, savoring the summer.
Our woody arms split in
Two as perches for song.
We are rooted in earth
And when the man comes
With his axe, we become
Fire and burn to ash.
Finishing our dance tutorials, Sarah Rogers and I worker through a poem I had written called Forever. Using improvisation, we adapted words from the text and interpreted them as movement. This has been helpful in understanding how I can develop dance and movement in new ways in my art practice.
The dance tutorials have allowed me to reconnect with movement in my art practice after a number of difficulties. Working one to one has afforded me the space and time to work through my frustrations relating to dance. As a result, I sense that movement is my preferred state of being.
Challenges
There were a number of personal set backs during the project. These included physical injuries, illness, and being harassed in a venue where my gender identity was questioned.
When I applied to Creative Steps with the Art Council Of Wales, my self esteem was not at its best, and these set backs brought back up issues of confidence. However, the project itself became a source of encouragement as the creative practitioners I worked with remained positive, offering feedback and direction.
The experience has been important to changing my view of my own art practice, understanding how professional creatives work, and overcoming the difficulties of the past.
Challenges present themselves and with a restorative project such as this, I have more experience at problem solving, and greater resilience.
Practitioners
“I aim to start where someone is at, with their experience, their sensations, their
thoughts. Embodiment is all about the personal experience and bodily
expression, so as a facilitator and coach, I cannot know if someone experiences
the same things that I experience, or in the same way. I need to be curious.
From an initial verbal exploration, I can start to see how their body responds and
expresses their thoughts and feelings. Accessibility needs to be there for
everyone. Accessibility physically, emotionally, intellectually, verbally. If I start a
session too far away from where a participant is at in any of those areas, then I
have to keep adjusting to find a place they can enter into the exploration of
embodiment. This can lead to a feeling that the participant ‘can’t do’, ‘can’t
understand’ a concept or movement, so making the starting point of each session
possible and attainable is key to moving forward.
Verbal clues and observation of a person’s embodiment gives me insight into
how someone is experiencing the activities we are creating, often before they are
aware of it themselves. From there I can invite them to repeat the activity and
focus their attention to a particular part of their body. Developing a felt sense can
take some time, so creating a non judgmental, curious atmosphere for each
session is vital. My experience tells me that when a subject is ‘new’ everyone has
accessibility issues in some way.”
“Candice came into our office (and lives) with great ideas, drive and a little nervousness. We are an unconventional office and it might be a bit intimidating for some to step into our tech filled world.
We very quickly got to grips with technology, understood what Candice was trying to achieve, identified where any weaknesses were and what strengths could be brought out.
Very quickly Candice had considered the initial ideas and took a new approach. I can without doubt say that Candice has become bit of a wordpress wizard. Really jumping in, getting it, exploring and being a self starter. This is evident in the breadth and depth of the site that Candice has created.
I am honoured and proud to be part of the journey that will not doubt last a lifetime.”