Somatic Movement
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Somatic Movement
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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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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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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Gerda Alexander
Gerda Alexander (February 15, 1908 – February 21, 1994) was a German / Danish teacher who developed a "bodymind technique" or "somatic practice" known as Eutony. As a young woman, Gerda was in contact with the vanguards of the arts, education, and movement culture in the early 20th century. From the 30's on, she started to develop her innovative method through her studies between movement and musicality, new pedagogies and neurosciences. Through Eutony, she collaborated with many medical centers, pedagogical institutions, and artistic training in Europe, North and South America and the Middle East. Gerda Alexander was a pioneer among the creators of somatic education practices in the world. Her school in Copenhagen trained professionals for 45 years. Life and work Gerda Alexander was born in Wuppertal, Germany and her parents were enthusiasts of Dalcroze Eurhythmics, passing on to her a similar interest in arts and movement. Gerda was born under the influence of Émile-J ...
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Mabel Elsworth Todd
Mabel Elsworth Todd (1880 – 1956) is known as the founder of what came to be known as 'Ideokinesis', a form of somatic education that became popular in the 1930s amongst dancers and health professionals. Todd's ideas involved using anatomically based, creative visual imagery and consciously relaxed volition to create and refine neuromuscular coordination. Lulu Sweigard, who coined the term Ideokinesis, and Barbara Clark furthered Todd's work. Todd's work was published in her book 'The Thinking Body' (1937), which is now considered by modern dance schools to be a classic study of physiology and the psychology of movement. Her work influenced many somatic awareness professionals of her day, and is often cited along with the Feldenkrais method and Body-Mind Centering for its focus on the subtle influence of unconscious intention Intentions are mental states in which the agent commits themselves to a course of action. Having the plan to visit the zoo tomorrow is an example o ...
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Moshe Feldenkrais
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 nickna ...
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Frederick Matthias Alexander
Frederick Matthias Alexander (20 January 1869 – 10 October 1955) was an Australian actor and author who developed the Alexander Technique, an educational process that recognizes and overcomes reactive, habitual limitations in movement and thinking. Early life Alexander was born on 20 January 1869, in Australia on the northern bank of the Inglis River, near the present-day town of Wynyard, Tasmania. He was the eldest of ten children born to John Alexander, a blacksmith, and Betsy Brown. His parents were the offspring of convicts transported to what was then called Van Diemen's Land for offences such as theft and destroying agricultural machinery as part of the 1830 Swing Riots in England. Throughout his life Alexander was evasive about his ancestry, claiming Scottish descent and upgrading the status of his forebears. The Alexander family had, in fact, for generations prior to the Swing Riots, lived at Ramsbury in Wiltshire. In Tudor and Stuart times they were agricultural ...
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Margaret H'Doubler
Margaret Newell H'Doubler (April 26, 1889, Beloit, Kansas – March 26, 1982, Springfield, Missouri) was a dance instructor who created the first dance major at the University of Wisconsin. Her dance pedagogy was a blend of expressing emotions and scientific description. She used her knowledge about the body to help create movement to express what the dancers were feeling. She wrote five books about her pedagogy and about the importance of dance in education. Among H'Doubler's students was Anna Halprin, a post-modern dance pioneer. Early life Margaret Newell H'Doubler was born April 26, 1889, in Beloit, Kansas, to Charles and Sarah H'Doubler. In 1903 the family moved to Madison, Wisconsin, because Margaret's older brother had been accepted to the University of Wisconsin to study math and biology. She looked up to her brother because she also had an interest in biology. She graduated from Madison High School in 1906, where she participated in basketball and baseball. She attended th ...
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Rudolf Von Laban
Rudolf von Laban, also known as Rudolf Laban (German; also ''Rudolph von Laban'', hu, Lábán Rezső János Attila, Lábán Rudolf; 15 December 1879 – 1 July 1958), was an Austro-Hungarian, German and British dance artist, choreographer and dance theorist. He is considered a "founding father of expressionist dance", and a pioneer of modern dance. His theoretical innovations included Laban movement analysis (a way of documenting human movement) and Labanotation (a movement notation system), which paved the way for further developments in dance notation and movement analysis. He initiated one of the main approaches to dance therapy. His work on theatrical movement has also been influential. He attempted to apply his ideas to several other fields, including architecture, education, industry, and management. Following a rehearsal of choreography he had prepared for the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Laban was targeted by the Nazi party. He eventually found refuge in England ...
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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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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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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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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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