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Healing though dancing -
Body & Movement workshop

Göttingen 
July 11th 2023
 

invited by Euroculture Göttingen University under the topic "Embrace Body Diversity"

München
July 15th 2023

Invited by 706Munichhippies

Introduction 

Healing though dancing

                  - Body & Movement workshop

 

In this workshop, I would love to share some body practice that I build up to heal my body and mind. These practices helped me to go through hard times in the Corona era, when the body touch, eye contact and connection with people were lessened by the regulation. I want to apply some of the methods to our „healing through dancing“ workshop: 

 

1, from lying down to standing up. 

It’s a 30 minute slow warm-up. We lie down  to relax and feel how our body is supported by the floor , then to explore how to stand up at our own tempo. Put our brain as an observer, let the body lead. 

 

2, „rose growing in blood vessels“

It’s a practice that I was inspired by an image— a rose tattoo on the wrist, the rose seems to grow endless through the blood vessels. 

We touch the blood vessels from the wrist to other parts of the body with the imagination of a rose growing inside of our body. 

 

3, eye contact and movement. 

This is a practice that I was inspired by the performance : Dora Garcia “Two planets have been colliding for thousands of years”(2017). 

Two people move in the space without losing eye contact, while playing with the distance / speed/ different level of the space/ movements. 

 

4, movements improvisation

We will do a bit of dance improvisation practice to explore what are the movements from your body. Since it’s not a dance copy of someone professional, you don’t need to worry about the standards or “Do I look good ?” Just dive inside and explore the movements. The concrete methods will be introduced  in the workshop:) 

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舞蹈与疗愈--身体工作坊 x 706 Munichhippies

 

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大家好，我会在工作坊里分享几个从个人经验中提炼的练习———一些个我反复实践用来疗愈自己身心的办法。在德国经历疫情的几年，我经历过情绪低谷的时刻，那些与他人的社会性互动，身体接触以及眼神交流都在隔离期间尤为匮乏。疫情对于做剧场艺术实践的人来说更是挑战，学校的小排练室被规定只许容纳一到两人，多人的舞蹈课要戴上厚厚的口罩并与他人保持距离。

 

于是，我开始思考“我如何跟自己的身体相处？我一个人如何跳舞？我如何通过跳舞来缓解沮丧获得疗愈？”我想把这些个人的经验方法带到这次的“舞蹈与疗愈”身体工作坊里，当然这些方法不一定在每个人身上奏效，但也许能启发你在情绪低落的时候动一动，扭一扭。

 

1，从躺着到直立

 

我们会躺下放松，感受到身体的背面被地板支撑着，通过深呼吸甚至可以进入睡眠。慢慢地，我们用自己的节奏从躺着到坐起，再到站立，感受到地面对脚底的支撑。双脚像一株植物一样扎根在土壤里，非常安全。我们将头脑放置在观察者的角色，让身体去引导。

 

2，血管玫瑰

我曾受启发于一张纹身图片——手臂上的玫瑰像从手腕上的血管延伸至全身一样，生生不息。这个练习从触摸手腕开始，手指尖沿着手臂一点点到心脏的位置，似乎有芬芳蔓延。我每次会用一整首曲子的时间，很慢的速度，用指尖去体会皮肤的肌理，骨骼的架构。再用另一首曲子的时间，将触摸身体所形成的“线”来即兴舞蹈。

 

3，凝.视的双人即兴

在疫情和平时生活里，我感觉德国的社会生活缺乏正向的眼神交流，作为外国人和少数族裔甚至有被“无视”的情况。于是我将Dora Garcia 的作品“Two planets have been colliding for thousands of years”(2017)改成一个舞蹈即兴练习：两人一组保持眼神接触不间断，身体则可以自由流动，可以改变距离，空间关系，速度，角度，甚至用眼神驱动对方的行为，等等。

 

4，身体/舞蹈即兴

 

我们来探索，观察和认识一些从你自己身体里浮现出来的动作。这不是一个“教与学”的课堂——你不需要从专业的舞者那里去学一套精致的编舞动作，所以可以大胆放下“我跳得好不好看？”的思虑，只用专注自身即可。

 

我一直都有做舞蹈即兴的习惯，隔三差五就会发现，有些新动作出现了！这些不是习得或者通过头脑构想出来的动作，而是当身体不再被压抑后，自然流露的一些表达。我也经历过，别人强行把一套方法施加在我身上，导致之后的半年里，我的身体是锁闭状态。所以我坚持认为，我的目标不是去复制别人从自身发掘并形成的一套成熟表达，而是要找自己的身体语汇，而且让身体表达的这个渠道保持通畅。具体的方法我会在工作坊的时候分享，也希望大家在这个环节提议一些方法，并在自己身上尝试！

Notes & Report by Yinfu

 

 

What’s needed to say before the workshop: 

 

It’s always good to give participants a reminder and check how do they feel about their body : 

 

“Please feel free to stop and take a rest whenever you want, you can come back to the practice whenever you want.”

 

“Do you feel something I need to take care of ? You can tell me, then I am aware of your body condition. If there are some movements you feel like not doing, don’t push yourself.”

 

I will remind everyone the warm-up is a bit long, because we need to take time to relax our body and land in space. That's also good  for protecting our body when we do enough warm up exercises. 

 

 

Communicate with the participants about my motivation of offering this workshop : 

 

I always give a short intro about why I want to share these practices, what are the contexts behind the practices I have chosen for the group.

 

I always add this point : My practice doesn’t work for everybody, but I would like to inspire you to think of your own way to work with your body.

 

Give different proposals and options for the participants to choose

 

For some exercise, I will introduce the level-up version and ask if participants are interested in trying, otherwise we go to the next practice.

 

For the last exercise, I always give 3 different methods and make examples of what each exercise looks like. So the participants can vote and choose the most interesting one to try out. It works out very well. 

 

Reminder to myself : Always propose more options/ possibilities, since it’s not a one-way practice.  Two examples that I encountered in the workshops : 

 

  1. For the practice of “rose growing in blood vessels” , we need to find the pulse on the wrist to feel the beat and also to feel the heartbeat. It's also nice to encourage participants to find somewhere else on our body to feel the beat, for example the carotid on the neck. Or they can touch and feel wherever they would love to. The purpose of the practice is to touch and feel the body, so participants can feel free to choose their starting point.

  2. For the practice of going back to a room in childhood/ somewhere imaginary. I need to remind / give a trigger warning : if you have negative feelings in your childhood room, don’t push yourself to enter, you can go to another safe space in your imagination. Or you can decide not to do this practice.

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Build up the exercise with clear levels, add the challenge little by little : 

 

1, warm up is very important, it builds up the base for the later exercises.

 

2, realize different people have different body-tempo, it's important to say : “Take your time to do the practice with your own body tempo, you have enough time, you don’t need to worry about other participants waiting for you to finish.”

 

3, One example about the practice “From lying down to standing up”. The key is to realize how different body parts are cooperating with each other. “Stand up” / “lay down” is not one single movement, it’s a sequence of movements. 

 

Sometimes, people get used to doing it too quickly, which might hurt the knees etc. But when they are asked to stand up/ lay down in 2 seconds, they feel it’s difficult to manage the movement. Because it’s a level-up but the body is not ready for it. From several workshops, I noticed that it’s hard for people to find an alternative way to stand up/ lay down in a short amount of time. Therefore, I changed my method : 

 

  • ask participants to lay down + stand up in their own tempo, take time. 

  • ask them to do it the same in 8 number counting (pretty slow) and also give positive feedback to them.

  • take some time and check everyone is good, ask them to do the same exercise in 4 number counting, give positive feedback to them.

  • reminding them now it’s a level up exercise to do the same movements in 2 seconds, it is a bit challenging, participants can make their own decision to do it or not. Then lead the exercise in 2 number counting, still be careful not to be too fast.  

  • play a 3 minutes-music, ask participants to walk around+lay down+stand up totally in their own body tempo. I noticed that most of the participants enjoyed this part, they took time to enjoy themselves. 

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