Body, gesture and language acrobatics : in-betweens weaving senses and sense

 » What is in-between the apple and the plate is to be painted also. And, God knows, it seems to me as difficult to paint the in-between as the thing.”  » (Georges Braque)

In this workshop we share our clinical practice, one that sustains the subtle weavings between body, gesture and language, allowing emergence of this “in-between” of intimacy ; what, in our view, is “embodiment”.

These weavings are like as many acrobatics on a tenuous line, which, through their failures and accomplishments, enable an alternation that is breathing, living dynamics, potential energy of spreading out towards the “in-between”. We see the human as being “of con-tact” (“with tact”/“with touch”) at the boundaries with its environment.

There –-  touching/being touched -, experiences are being lived that are shaped by con-tact : “because touching is, by touching what one touches, allowing to be touched by the touch, by the “flesh” which becomes touching as much as touched” (J.Derrida).

There, gestures emerge, sustained by sensations in the lived body, and move into forms of contacting in back-and-forths between oneself and the environment.

There, experiencing is accompanied by words which, in the same way as music emerges by the touching of piano keys, enter the world without one having looked out for them. Language whose rooting-inscription through body resonance opens up to liberty and sustains an “ad-venire” of one’s being-in- the-world.

The weaving of these co-emergences leading path towards what we consider as embodiment is one of delicateness, slowing down, subtlety, persistence, discipline, setting of constraints, sustaining, awareness, presence.

The workshop’s material develops presenting aspects of our way of thinking our practice, case studies as well as experiential moments, with the wish to mutual sharing of experience and enrichment.

Workshop presented by Astrid Dusendschön @ EABP 15th European Congress, Athens October 2016.