BodyStories. Andrea Olsen

       Chair: Kristina Madsen

      At this time I also met Janet Adler, a movement therapist and founder of the Mary Starks Whitehouse Institute. Her focus was Authentic Movement, a body-oriented therapy with which she had worked for many years. She gathered a group of students to study and eventually articulate the relationship between the witness and the mover in this form. She was also interested in exploring Authentic Movement as a resource for choreography, allowing the psychically charged movement she witnessed in the therapeutic setting to evolve within the context of creative work. The task was to bring the movement’s expressive nature to the stage with consciousness, without violating the timing necessary for development and integration. I have worked with these two exceptional colleagues in the study of the body – its science, psyche, and creative potential – for the past ten years.

      Many of our explorations took place in a beautiful studio provided by Gordon and Anne Thorne. I had left the college environment to tour more extensively and to explore; and both Gordon, a painter, and Anne, a teacher of creative work with children, became vital influences. We shared a focus on the creative process as our avenue for developing the whole person, and in this sense, to healing. And we collaborated on projects knowing that the images, visions, and interactions that emerged would guide us if we gave them our attention. Gordon contributed to the artistic vitality of the community, both by his painting, and by maintaining an empty space for exploration of process and presentation of work. In spite of people’s urging to install permanent fixtures and walls, Gordon’s vision was that the space be essentially empty, and that it cyclically return to neutral for new creative work to emerge. Gordon taught me to listen to space as I listen to my body – to value the natural state as equal to what we might do to it.

      Both my mind and my body were so filled with influences at this point, that I retreated to work alone. I began to choreograph and to perform as a soloist, and moved to Middlebury College to become Director of Dance and Artistic Director of the Dance Company of Middlebury. In this setting, I met Caryn McHose who was teaching Anatomy and Kinesiology in the dance program. Caryn was a self-taught anatomy teacher, trained since childhood in Dance Improvisation with Betty Jane Dittmar, and held a degree in painting. I observed her classes and watched with amazement as undergraduates from all disciplines and interests walked into the studio, lay down on the floor with eyes closed, and began to concentrate on their bodies experientially. This course was a revelation to me: students hunger for information and experience of the body. Caryn had moved to Vermont, and in her words, lay on the floor of her cabin every day for two years and taught herself anatomy, accompanied by Mabel Todd’s book The Thinking Body. Caryn’s students, in the process of a twelve week semester, did the same thing, transforming their bodies into models of efficient alignment. The effectiveness of her teaching was that she only taught what she had experienced herself. I took Caryn’s class for three semesters, and then began teaching a second section of this very popular course. My own approach integrated the analytical, philosophical work of Dr. Wilson, and the principles and touch and repatterning techniques of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, with Caryn’s direct method of presenting material so that it is immanently understandable at the body level. That course, after three years of refining, is the basis for this text. We teach what we need to learn, I am told. As I complete this phase of my own study, the text is offered as a synthesis of my learning experiences for use as is appropriate to you. The questions which arise from the reading and doing become yours to explore.

      BODY LISTENING

Storytellers of the Ashanti tribe in Africa begin by saying, “I am going to tell you a story. It is a lie. But not everything in it is false.” As I write these words and tell my stories, I am reminded that no description holds the truth. Words can point towards an experience, but they cannot replace it. This is an experiential anatomy text and various approaches to learning are included: factual information, personal stories, evocative and descriptive images, and guided movement explorations. Although each “day” or learning session is presented in a format of one-hour time spans, with time for integration before going on, the words and descriptions must be activated by you. The overview of thirty-one days can be perceived as a month of one-hour sessions, or a twelve-week course meeting three times a week, or a progression to do at your own pace. As movement pioneer Margaret H’Doubler says, in working with the body “you are your own textbook, laboratory and teacher.”* The body is our guide, all we need to do is to learn to listen.

      PREPARATION FOR USING THE TEXT

      How do you learn? Do you need to read, to write, to move, to draw, to touch, to question, to be told, to tell, to be encouraged, to compete, to be left alone or to work in dialogue with someone else? One of the intentions of this book is to let your process become clearer; then you can facilitate your learning. Find a space that you consider private where you can work alone. A wood floor is preferable, and the space should be warm and comfortable. Wear loose-fitting clothing; no shoes or socks. Have pencils and a journal for your own notes and drawings. Establish a realistic schedule for work. Consistency of space and time will be helpful in developing a dialogue with your body.

      WAYS OF WORKING: “TO DO” SECTIONS

      On your own: Read (or tape record yourself reading) the “to do” sections first, then do. As you become familiar with working in the body, it will be easy to follow the words. With a partner, or in a group: Have one person read aloud as you work; change roles. Use the margins in the book to record your experiences.

      COMMON HERITAGE

      As we move into a world culture, celebrating the differences in race, nationality, and religion, our awareness of our bodies as our common heritage is increasingly important. There is no age or place, I think, where knowledge of the body is without use. My mother taught first grade for twenty years and says that when she could teach a child to skip, she could teach them to read. Now she teaches swimnastics to her fellow senior citizens, using the principles of this book, with tremendous results in mobility (and stability). Let’s consider the text as a map, and enjoy the journey.

Colors

       A visual artist talked about her years of working with the human figure: “The body is like a painting. Every time I look, I see something new. When I started studying anatomy years ago as an art student, I wanted to know the structural details, how the parts fit together, and the names of everything. It seemed a good place to start. But then I got involved in the relationship between the mind and the body, and I wanted to explore the motivations behind the forms that I saw. Later, I was drawn to experiential work. I was ready to explore what it felt like to be inside the body rather than looking at it. Always, the body surprised me as a source for discovery. So,” she grinned, “the body is full of colors. You can look at each one individually, or step back and experience the whole.”

      BODYWORK: SOURCES AND RESOURCES

      Bodywork is a term used to refer generally to therapeutic techniques of working with the body. The twentieth century has seen a rich development of this work. In the 1930’s – 70’s individuals such as Mabel Todd, Lulu Swiegard, Ida Rolf, Nikolais Alexander, Moshe Feldenkrais, Milton Trager and others pioneered research in the field and published writings about their findings. These individuals began with their own experience of the body and explored their predilections intellectually and physically. They necessarily had to limit their point of view to an individual perspective for depth and clarity. For example, Mabel Todd in her classic book, The Thinking Body, A Study of the Balancing Forces of Dynamic Man, published in 1937, focused on the skeleton and structural alignment. Lulu Swiegard’s involvement with the effects of the nervous system on body alignment through imagery and visualization is recorded in her book, Human Movement Potential, Its Ideokinetic Facilitation, published in 1974. Ida Rolf in her text Rolfing, The Integration of Human Structures, 1977, focused on the fascia and on the integration of body and psyche. Each system was unique in itself, and a student of bodywork was required to read about each method and