Somatics
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Somatics
Somatics is a field within bodywork and movement studies which emphasizes internal physical perception and experience. The term is used in movement therapy to signify approaches based on the soma, or "the body as perceived from within", including Skinner Releasing Technique, Alexander technique, the Feldenkrais Method, and Rolfing Structural Integration. In dance, the term refers to techniques based on the dancer's internal sensation, in contrast with "performative techniques", such as ballet or modern dance, which emphasize the external observation of movement by an audience. Somatic techniques may be used in bodywork, psychotherapy, dance, or spiritual practices. History An early precursor of the somatic movement in Western culture was the 19th-century physical culture movement. This movement sought to integrate movement practices, or "gymnastics", related to military and athletic training; medical treatment; and dance. Many physical culture practices were brought to the US ...
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Genevieve Stebbins
Genevieve Stebbins (March 7, 1857 – September 21, 1934) was an American author, teacher of her system of Harmonic Gymnastics and performer of the Delsarte system of expression. She published four books and was the founder of the New York School of Expression. Early years Genevieve Stebbins was born on March 7, 1857, in San Francisco, California, to James Cole Stebbins and Henrietta Smith. Her mother died when she was two years old. As a young child she always loved to dance and perform. Career Theatre Stebbins first came to New York City from San Francisco to study for the stage, under a leading actress of Albert Marshman Palmer's Union Square Theatre. After a Winter's course of instruction, she made her debut on the stage as leading juvenile of Palmer's Company, in ''Rose Michel''. The following year, she accepted an engagement under Dion Boucicault, and later, was playing the leading part in ''Our Boys'' at Daly's Theatre, when she met Steele MacKaye, the disciple and suc ...
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Skinner Releasing Technique
Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT) created by Joan Skinner (USA) is practised and taught worldwide. Emslie, M.A. (2021) describes it as "a somatic movement, dance and creative practice with a core underlying principle of releasing blocked energy, held tension, and habitual patterns of body mind. It enables us to move with greater freedom and ease whilst awakening creativity and spontaneity". "By focusing on personal, kinaesthetic experience of essential principles of movement, SRT may enhance any movement style whilst fostering artistic sensibility and creative unfoldment" SRT is unusual in that technical aspects of moving and dancing, such as posture and alignment are experienced as creative explorations that take form as spontaneous movement. Technical and creative aspects of practice are indistinguishable. Joan Skinner created an Introductory Level of SRT, as well as an Ongoing Level and there is a children's pedagogy in existence. The introductory Level consists of 15 classe ...
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Elsa Gindler
Elsa Gindler (19 June 1885 – 8 January 1961) was a somatic bodywork pioneer in Germany. Born in Berlin, teacher of gymnastik, student of Hedwig Kallmeyer (who, in turn, had been a student of Genevieve Stebbins). From her personal experience of recovering from tuberculosis (it is said by concentrating on breathing only with her healthy lung and resting the diseased lung), Gindler originated a school of movement education, in close collaboration with Heinrich Jacoby. What Gindler had called ''Arbeit am Menschen'' (work on the human being) emphasised self-observation and growing understanding of one's individual physically related condition. Simple actions such as sitting, standing, and walking were explored, as well as other everyday movements. This became one of the bases of body psychotherapy since many of the most influential body psychotherapists studied with her or "Sensory Awareness" with Charlotte Selver at the Esalen Institute around 1962. During the Nazi-period of Germ ...
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Modern Dance
Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance which included dance styles such as ballet, folk, ethnic, religious, and social dancing; and primarily arose out of Europe and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was considered to have been developed as a rejection of, or rebellion against, classical ballet, and also a way to express social concerns like socioeconomic and cultural factors. In the late 19th century, modern dance artists such as Isadora Duncan, Maud Allan, and Loie Fuller were pioneering new forms and practices in what is now called aesthetic or free dance. These dancers disregarded ballet's strict movement vocabulary (the particular, limited set of movements that were considered proper to ballet) and stopped wearing corsets and pointe shoes in the search for greater freedom of movement. Throughout the 20th century, sociopolitical concerns, major historical events, and the development of other art forms contributed to ...
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Bodywork (alternative Medicine)
In alternative medicine, bodywork is any therapeutic or personal development technique that involves working with the human body in a form involving manipulative therapy, breath work, or energy medicine. Bodywork techniques also aim to assess or improve posture, promote awareness of the " bodymind connection" which is an approach that sees the human body and mind as a single integrated unit, or to manipulate the electromagnetic field alleged to surround the human body and affect health. Forms Some of the best known forms of non-touch bodywork methods include: reiki, yoga, pranayama, as well as other non-touch methods: breathwork respiration techniques, therapeutic touch, the Bates method for sight training, qigong, and t'ai chi. The better known forms of manipulative bodywork include the Bowen technique, chiropractic, reflexology, Rolfing, postural integration, shiatsu, and the Trager approach. There are also some methods that use light touch (not tissue work) to retrain mov ...
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Feldenkrais Method
The Feldenkrais Method is a type of exercise therapy devised by Israeli Moshé Feldenkrais (1904–1984) during the mid-20th century. Participants are led through varied patterns of body movement, either hands-on or verbally guided, with the aim of improving motor performance. There is no reliable medical evidence that the Feldenkrais method improves medical outcomes.There is limited evidence that the Feldenkrais method improves some quality-of-life related measures and performance on some motor coordination tests. It is not known if it is safe or cost-effective, but researchers do not believe it poses serious risks. Description The Feldenkrais Method is a method of exercise or physical therapy that aims to improve human movement performance by engaging in varied patterns of movement. According to David Gorski, the Feldenkrais Guild of North America claims that the Feldenkrais method allows people to "rediscover heirinnate capacity for graceful, efficient movement" and that ...
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Rolfing
Rolfing () is a form of alternative medicine originally developed by Ida Rolf (1896–1979) as Structural Integration. Rolfing is marketed with unproven claims of various health benefits. It is based on Rolf's ideas about how the human body's " energy field" can benefit when aligned with the Earth's gravitational field. Rolfing is typically delivered as a series of ten hands-on physical manipulation sessions sometimes called "the recipe". Practitioners combine superficial and deep manual therapy with movement prompts. The process is sometimes painful. The safety of Rolfing has not been confirmed. The principles of Rolfing contradict established medical knowledge, and there is no good evidence Rolfing is effective for the treatment of any health condition. It is recognized as a pseudoscience: "The idea of vital energy... does not correspond to known facts of how the human body operates. Similarly, there is absolutely no support in psychological literature for the idea of traumat ...
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John Dewey
John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century. The overriding theme of Dewey's works was his profound belief in democracy, be it in politics, education, or communication and journalism. As Dewey himself stated in 1888, while still at the University of Michigan, "Democracy and the one, ultimate, ethical ideal of humanity are to my mind synonymous." Dewey considered two fundamental elements—schools and civil society—to be major topics needing attention and reconstruction to encourage experimental intelligence and plurality. He asserted that complete democracy was to be obtained not just by extending voting rights but also by ensuring that there exists a fully formed public opinion, accomplished by communication among citizens, experts and politici ...
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Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (27 or 25 February 1861 – 30 March 1925) was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published works including ''The Philosophy of Freedom''. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. Many of his ideas are pseudoscientific. He was also prone to pseudohistory. In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality. His philosophical work of these years, which he termed "spiritual science", sought to apply what he saw as the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions, differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second pha ...
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Experiential Learning
Experiential learning (ExL) is the process of learning through experience, and is more narrowly defined as "learning through reflection on doing". Hands-on learning can be a form of experiential learning, but does not necessarily involve students reflecting on their product. Experiential learning is distinct from rote or didactic learning, in which the learner plays a comparatively passive role. It is related to, but not synonymous with, other forms of active learning such as action learning, adventure learning, free-choice learning, cooperative learning, service-learning, and situated learning.Itin, C. M. (1999). Reasserting the Philosophy of Experiential Education as a Vehicle for Change in the 21st Century. ''The Journal of Physical Education'' 22(2), p. 91-98. Experiential learning is often used synonymously with the term "experiential education", but while experiential education is a broader philosophy of education, experiential learning considers the individual learning pr ...
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Isadora Duncan
Angela Isadora Duncan (May 26, 1877 or May 27, 1878 – September 14, 1927) was an American dancer and choreographer, who was a pioneer of modern contemporary dance, who performed to great acclaim throughout Europe and the US. Born and raised in California, she lived and danced in Western Europe, the US and the Soviet Union from the age of 22 until her death at age 50 when her scarf became entangled in the wheel and axle of the car in which she was travelling in Nice, France. Early life Isadora Duncan was born in San Francisco, the youngest of the four children of Joseph Charles Duncan (1819–1898), a banker, mining engineer and connoisseur of the arts, and Mary Isadora Gray (1849–1922). Her brothers were Augustin Duncan and Raymond Duncan; her sister, Elizabeth Duncan, was also a dancer. Soon after Isadora's birth, her father was found to have been using funds from two banks he had helped set up to finance his private stock speculations. Although he avoided prison time, I ...
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Moshe Feldenkrais Demonstrates Functional Integration
Moses ( el, Μωϋσῆς),from Latin and Greek Moishe ( yi, משה),from Yiddish Moshe ( he, מֹשֶׁה),from Modern Hebrew or Movses (Armenian: Մովսես) from Armenian is a male given name, after the biblical figure Moses. According to the Torah, the name "Moses" comes from the Hebrew verb, meaning "to pull out/draw out" f water and the infant Moses was given this name by Pharaoh's daughter after she rescued him from the Nile (Exodus 2:10) Since the rise of Egyptology and decipherment of hieroglyphs, it was postulated that the name of Moses, with a similar pronunciation as the Hebrew Moshe, is the Egyptian word for Son, with Pharaoh names such as Thutmose and Ramesses roughly translating to "son of Thoth" and "son of Ra," respectively. There are various ways of pronouncing the Hebrew name of Moses, for example in Ashkenazi western European it would be pronounced Mausheh, in Eastern Europe Moysheh, in northern Islamic countries Moussa, and in Yemen Mesha. The nicknames a ...
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