Crystallized gestures

Bring your hands under your arm pits and hold them there. Right hand under the left arm pit and the left under the right. Let your shoulders sink and relax. After staying here for couple of breaths bring the right hand on your left shoulder. Let it hang there.

Open your palms so that they face you. Fingers are slightly below the eye level and the distance between your face and your hands is about one stretched finger. Your palms are shaped as if holding a small ball. Fingers are lightly touching each other. Elbows rest in a place comfortable for you. Shoulders relax. Eyes are rolled introverted and maybe your eyelids are half closed. Breath in and breath out. Relax your chest.

How does it feel to make those positions?

Did you get any familiar feeling while doing these gestures?

Somatic practices developed in the 19th century have integrated more embodied knowledge and approaches into our modern life. Practices stressing body-mind connection aim to help individuals to access information and experiences stored in their bodies and to learn how to listen to signals bodies send.

In different religious practices similar gestures of creating “closed circuits” that I propose here can be traced. Those from the perspective of religions are meant to establish a feeling of becoming one with the “creator”, with the universe, with the self. I see those gestures as forms of somatic practices.

Sometimes I feel somatic approaches are reduced to individual bodies. It is interesting to me to acknowledge multiply bodily process (physiological, psychological, sociological and political ones) that are not only seen through the individual lens but also perceived as group forming practices.