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PART 2

EXPLORATION DATE: 19.03.2021

FOCUS/PRACTICE: Conversation-as-Material (I) as a shared practice. The focus of this conversation practice was to come together to share in response to the preceding period of live exploration (between 01.03.2021 - 19.03.2021) where we had both been investigating 'back-ness in rotation' through individual enquiry. The session was structured through a series of timed activities, where we took turns to speak and listen.

STRUCTURE OF PRACTICE

0. Tuning in/Arrival - Lying-on-the-back, reconnecting with the body and the sense of practice [20 mins]

1. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [5 mins each]

2. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [10 mins each]

3. Speaking/listening: back-to-back [3 mins each]

4. Speaking/listening: Back-to-back [10 mins each]

'SCORE' FOR CONVERSATION PRACTICE

- Take a moment to tune into the chosen object/focus of exploration – this could involve a period of recollection, or looking back at notes, sketches, wordings that relate to the object/focus of exploration, or by noting/drawing/diagramming.

- Connect and try to stay connected with your direct experience.

- Feel free to speak before knowing what it is that you want to say – thinking through speaking.

- Feel free to speak in single words, partial phrases, half sentences, and thought fragments.

- Allow for vulnerability and embarrassment – for wrestling with, stumbling and falling over one’s words.

- Consider different speeds and rhythms. Allow for silence.

- Approach listening to the other as an aesthetic practice.

4a.

3b.

3a.

4b.

PART 3

INTERIM PERIOD

FOCUS/PRACTICE: Transcription and distillation of resulting text through marking/highlighting, undertaken separately.

EXERCISES/SCORES

Actually what interesting in lying down then and some of the reflections that were coming out of it was - Am I operating in a frontal mode either whilst exploring the back? I am wondering that in terms of the notes that I have made, I have all these notes written down – I wonder how much to refer to them in a way. Or whether to trust that they are there and to lean back a bit and not be so in my note-book. But I find this hard actually. Let me think – some of the things that have been interesting, interesting explorations, one of them was to do with the eyes and like whatI realized was that my kind of taken for granted mode for lying on my back would be to have my eyes closed. So as soon as I go to my back I shut my eyes. And this was interesting because it feels as if I have to almost, very actively, de-privilege that frontal-facing way of being in order to somehow become more aware of the back, but I felt that this was an interesting area. I was wondering whether in closing my eyes, I was just shutting off the relationship between the front and the back in some senses. So I had my eyes open but still trying to keep the awareness in the back, so the eyes could just get used to being in a more back-oriented way of being if that makes sense. And actually, there was a lot in these explorations about the relationship between the front and the back. I think that last time the emphasis was much more on relaxing the back, releasing the back, releasing into the back, all about the back – and I think that this time the relationship between the front and the back has been much more pronounced. I suppose realising that there is a lot of release that has to happen in the front, there is a lot of relaxation that has to happen in the front in order to really drop into this experience of backness. And I think that – a willingness, just working with the front as a way of releasing. I go to a lot of yoga classes that are more to do with somatics – trying to release the hip flexes, that hold a tremendous amount of tension actually. So in order to soften the back, the hip flexes have to relax. My eyes need to relax somehow – to take the attention back. Yes, and, I think, I was aware of, maybe of the eyes a lot, or the sense that my awareness is so determined by what my eyes are seeing.And that even my peripheral range of vision is probably quite limited, it feels like a third of awareness of three-dimensionality. This is such a reduced field of awareness. So I was thinking a lot about how the experience of the back expands that range of awareness to a much more, not so much three-dimensionality, but more like 360 degrees. There is all of this unknown terrain that is just here – it is so much not my field of awareness, so much of the time actually. My habit would be to think in a dualistic way – that there is a front and a back, and I think that a lot of this is to do with expanding the sense of frontality to include, or shifting the emphasis on the back more. I realize that it is different because I have heard you. But now when I lie down I realize that my mind was racing. So I had to slightly more, a kind of seaweed creature with my arms and legs up. I had to move – to stimulate the body in order to understand, oh, that is where my body is. It is interesting – there is also something around the eyes, open/closed. I have a sense of – the eyes are so fascinating because of what they do, but also the materiality of them. The sense that when they are opening, when they are open,they don’t have to feel that they have to see or understand. Because in a way, I love this idea that light it just falling in and it can stay soft and blurred. Sort of scanning, blurring, which is also what happens when they drop back or when some attention drops away from this orientation, a thinking. As soon as I put attention into … it has to go from outside here, through the body and the eyes go in as well. But this idea thatthey don’t have to go in like this, they can also somehow just stay.As you say, it is interesting about the front and the back, not having to close off one. Something was triggered by something that you said last week. This idea that is deadens, it becomes just a weight. Even lying on the ground – a three dimensional body.For me the front, there is something about the front and the back which does create a binary, but also that the front somehow when lying on the back, becomes exposed to the air. So there is a sort of voluminous feeling to it – with breath and light and air. A relationship somehow with releasing – maybe releasing the weight falls into the back, and creates lightness around the ribs and the top surfaces, and softens all these exposed areas – the mouth, the skin, the eyes. So that as well. I realize this sense of flatness. It is not that I feel like a piece of paper flat, but there is a sense, a sensation of flatness that is coming from the contact with the floor. I realize that if I lie on my front that does not happen – I am not sure if this is an image that I have somehow put in my mind. That I can somehow sense that I have things that curve and come out, whereas if I am on my back, although I know that some things are strongly against the ground and others have holes – soI understand the curves, that it is not flat but I still have a sense of joining the floor, I have a sense of a horizontal plane. Which is different to having the contact areas on the front. So maybe there is something about the front that I am understanding very differently, linked with the eyes being at the front. Flipping the body, reveals something. This plane, the plane of contact was also in my mind a little. No, I go on a tangent there, it wasn’t in my mind actually, it was in my body. Or in my mind-body. This week has been interesting around practice, whereI realize I am thinking about things, rather than necessarily experiencing it. So I am now wondering, was it in my experience, or was it in my thought of my experience, of what was happening?This is an interesting space of investigation for me – am I really experiencing the sense of the back or am I just thinking about the experience of the back. It is quite hard to tell for me actually – is this a direct experience, or a thought I am having about experience, which might not be in the experience at all. And yes, I am going on a tangent – there is something to do with this thinking about something, which feels as if it is very much in the front mode of being, in a way. This about-ness, whereas dropping into the back feels as if there is something much closer to the experience somehow. I mean, I was thinking and exploring this relationship between doing and being, and it feels as if the back is more a mode of being, and the front a zone of doing. But again, there is a risk here that there are these binaries being perpetuated. But yes, this plane of contact. There is this yoga practice, a very nice meditation – which is to dowith being aware of the plane of contact between the body and the floor.It is kind of a yoga nidra, word meditation. So it is not the body, and it is not the floor, it is the plane of contact between the body and the floor. And I just love this, because there is this sense of what is that? It is not the body and it is not the floor; it is the plane of contact. It is so paper-like, so fragile – it is touching, there is a touch to it.  Ah, yes, the touch took me on a thought– I think that in my earlier experiments during the week, I had been getting up and starting to walk around the room backwards really. And noticing how I wanted to look and then sort of needing to feel with my hands. And I was thinking in some senses how the emphasis on the back takes it more into the plane of contact and the notion of touch … but then actually this felt rather dissatisfying, because it felt that touch was somehow almost compensating in some ways for my de-privileging of the eyes. And so I was thinking more about proprioception in a broad sense. That actually, what seems to happen in my experience, is that attention on the back activates a sense of proprioception much more strongly - is not usually strong for me. It is not a strong capacity – I do not practice this enough. And I was very interested in this, the way that the back might be a sort of gateway into that proprioceptive capacity, a way of practicing that capacity, or nurturing that capacity more. Yes, I got excited about this – there is something to do with really trying to nurture a proprioceptive capacity, and what kind of being and thinking and observing comes from that as a ground.Perhaps rather than thinking about the discrete sense of touch or sight, to think more about I suppose a kinaesthetic roundedness as a basis for experience, which again seemed to connect to this being mode, rather than the frontal doing,which I can often do. When we were lying down now, I was moving around a lot actually. I started off lying still and it struck me, that I have a lot of preconceptions about engaging the back, which are to do with stillness. So I was thinking, is this supine position always about stillness – so I was wriggling around a bit and moving and thinking about, no, not thinking about, exploring and thinking about  the quality of being on the back when it is much more dynamic. Rolling from side to side. Yes, what is my preconception, and why is it to do with inertia or stasis or maybe it is to do with associations of sleep or death actually? I am not sure. But the active dimension of the back is very interesting. I have been reading a bit of … I have been reading the writing of Simone Weil, a book called Gravity and Grace, and she writes about this tension … one of the things she writes about is a sense of active passivity. I was trying to think about that really, rather than it being purely this passive state that I experience when I am lying down, how might that passivity be active and dynamic and alive and vibrant and full of feeling, rather than a bit numb, or dead or over-calm. Yes, the main thing is this sense ofnot so much thinking about relaxing the back but relaxing the front and keeping the front present in some kind of way. So not to do with shutting it off from the experience. I think that the main things are to do withthis 360 circular awareness. Maybe sort of integrating the front and the back, or collapsing the sense, no, not collapsing the sense of the front and back … letting go but keeping it still there.And also something to do with, maybesomething to do with this plane of contact– there was a point when I was lying on my back, when I took my attention into the back of the body,it felt like the back of my body was underneath the level of the ground, which was interesting. So somehow the front of my body felt more at floor level and then it was almost like in this negative space, below theground. And the sort of, one of the things I have not explored so far is this movement into standing, and moving. And this felt a completely different orientation, as you move into uprightness and continue to explore the back. Then there was something to do with moving around the space with my energy and awareness in the back and standing with my back against the wall. Sometimes standing with my back to the wall felt that it was protective, almost a bit defensive. Whereas walking around with my attention in the back felt vulnerable, exposed. So there is something to do with protection and exposure.

I have to respond a little first,it cannot help but trigger thoughts. This sense of exposure– if I am lying on the ground on my back I recognize this experience of sinking. And really it feels a good thing – I cannot quite, I mean I sometimes feel that I am on top of the ground … so I can’t quite join, and then this sense of sinking. And the relationship with the front. In a way I am kidding myself – this front, exposure. I suppose this word exposure -the sense of the light and the air. So when I am walking around, not with, with very little contact, just with the feet. Not so much support, or feedback, the pressure – it has a very exposed, I suppose I am more unstable. I have to kind of navigate how much effort or how much ease I can work with – it feels quite complicated just standing up and walking. And especially standing still – I something that this is really hard, complicated, difficult – troubling. And other times it feels so simple. But today because I was doing more this in between – thinking I am not giving it time here. I was picking up the idea of axis and twist and turn, and also something you said last time, about transition from up to down. So I was kind of working with this moving up and down a number of times – I suppose noticing many things within that, how complex it is, and all these things of bending and curving and dropping and lifting and turning and all these shifts of weight … and slowing that process down. Not slow motion because that is actually quite hard work, but enough to somehow follow the sort of monologue of – oh, my elbows are dropping, now my knees have gone, and then the choices within that, because how much am I following, allowing myself to follow gravity I suppose. And then all the other choices – am I going to let my arm drop first, or am I going to let the head drop first, or go this way this time. A sort of playfulness. Working with the forces of gravity and the possibility of rotating the spine, bending the spine, twisting at the waist, or leading or letting another thing lead. So yes it is interesting – somehow it is a very three dimensional thing. Maybe it is something about the being and the doing – somehow being in the experience of going down. This is happening and how am I going to manoeuvre my way up again and some experiments, can I come back up exactly in the same way. In one way I still can but it is not the same processes – as bending, lifting. I can sometimes get the simple pattern. It is quite interesting to repeat. But I think gathering … oh yes, the back, so then the back is not so much the back-behind but it is more working with the spine. And I suppose it is back but it is inside the body – so it is an experiential sense of the spine, and then there is something around the image of the anatomical. And then, I remember something that Julian Hamilton said, he is a teacher of improvisation, he says that the joints, they are up for anything, they want to just go. It is the muscles – when you said the hip flexes I recognized – and I suppose the psyche of maybe just tensions and fears and all sorts of things. The muscles that sort of resist or won’t soften or won’t allow. And I can feel this with the moving and twisting. I can feel, oh yes, there is the mechanics to this skeleton, and it is built in a way that can turn, and it feels like then … I am making this up because of the words but it helps me. There is the mechanical and there is the manifestation of that – the muscles that sort of. So I sense the twist, the resistance.Twisting feels more like what happens; turning is a possibility. I am thinking about twisting and sometimes you see a fold on the skin. I was wondering if there is something about what is possible and the mechanics of it and the observation of it, what appears on the skin or in the folds and surfaces. Not just the surfaces outside, but also inside surfaces, all the organs. And within that then, I am curious about the symmetry – I really enjoy asymmetry.Maybe it is about activation but if things are too symmetrical they can become or feel more passive. Almost sometimes this sense of simplicity is very … often comes after. Asymmetry feeds back into the body – stimulates to understand. It keeps working the mind’s interest, it intrigues. Maybe it triggers some self-generation, the moving that self-generates the body or reminds the body it is a body or something like that. Yes, there is something around the movement, the tension and the back – not a closing off, something moving up and down and what does it mean if I keep my attention in the back while doing that. So something about working with gravity rather than this … the pulling of the gravity, even when coming up a sense of moving up through. It takes a moment to settle in facing this way. It is interesting – I can feel my eyes grasping at the reflection in the photographs, as a way of bringing a frontality. Actually this is an interesting, I am feeling an urge to turn around, to turn back to the front, so in a way it feels like there is a call for rotation. But this feels like a very different rotation to the rotation on the ground. So, yes, I was struck in exploring some of these rotations lying down about the way thatthe skeletal system was activated but also very much around the organs. It is this turning of the body and even the way that the weight feels more compressedI suppose.As you move to one side the sense of the body pressuring on one lung or the sense of the digestive organs being moved in some kind of way. So I guess when I was talking about this sense of 360 awareness, I was thinking about it very much before in terms of an external aspect, looking outwards from the body. So my looking outwards from the body maybe feels like 120 degrees or something normally, maximum. And this sense of the back bringing an awareness in a more three dimensional sense. But actually it was interesting in that my approach in thinking like that was very much to do with external awareness, awareness beyond the body..But this rotation also brings the awareness much more into the sense of the three dimensionality of the interior. I was thinking also when you were talking about the spine as perhaps different from the back, just the kind of density and the depth of the body in a way. And whether the back is this plane of the back, the exterior aspect of the back of the body or whether there is a, whether there is a depth to it. Like where does the back begin in terms of the interior of the body? And if I think of this in terms of the frontal and dorsal dimension, it feels like all of the below the skin feels back. And so maybe I am drawing too strong a connection thatthe back feels what is most hidden, or unavailable or out of my range of awarenesssomehow. So I do a short cut there. I am thinking of something, this idea of the back not necessarily as it … it slips between the physical understanding and kind of slippery, abstract sense of the unseen surfaces of the body. Internal. And because of this, I have been thinking, this listening, to these other surfaces of the body, of the eyes, the ears. I have been thinking of the voice also in a way, that my voice can drop and I am curious to develop other voices that are projecting or at the top of the … yes, voice as a kind of listening.And maybe there is a kind of voice that can drop, something to do with a more thinking, drifting, experiential voice. I am wondering as I now talking,if I can relax into a sense of listening to myself which I realize some people do that naturally. Oh look, I have gone so much into it that my words are disappearing. There is something, there is something really interesting in how I might bring voicing into this, opening up spaces, also taking this – my body here sitting, my awareness of you behind me, these things that are on my wall. And my breath. How voicing, a dorsal voice, creates sort of spaces or is part of listening, so active, this activation around the neck. It is sort of frontal this voice – I often think of the dorsal as something that can relieve the eyes but maybe it is something that can relieve the voice. Yes, sort of softening. Perhaps it is to do with how the spine, the organs, actually I don’t know very much about vocal chords. It would be interesting to explore a sense of unseen, or unknown in relationship to the voice. There is also the connection if I am voicing without seeing someone, this situation, the space actually to release pressure that I should be making sense. And I have to say this always makes my smile when we are talking back to back, there is something very joyful about it. The thing that you were saying, the things that you were saying about the voice is very interesting. Actually, I am aware that I am projecting a bit – maybe it is because I feel that you might not be able to hear what I am saying. Shifting to, shifting from the pressure of projecting to, a kind of voicing like speaking to oneself. I think that … or even listening, listening to yourself really. It is interesting – with the speaking it feels like there is also that sense of being in a frontal mode, almost like grasping, grasping towards the thing that I want to say, or … and what would it be like to really drop in and let it come a bit more. Can I actually do that? Sometimes with voicing it feels like the voice almost comes from the front of the vocal chords, so, I mean I am struggling with my voice, this pressure of projection. And then dropping into the body, the voicing feels like it has the lungs behind it somehow, or the organs behind it. The diaphragm behind it. I think that sometimes the voice is high in the body and shallow in the body. Yes, this sense of a dorsal voicing is very interesting. Or also this mode of dorsal listening, I realize then that I have my eyes closed again. And I am thinking, when did that happen? I think it happens sometimes because it takes … it is the wrong way of doing it …but it takes some effort to move into this more … it actually feels like it takes effort to move into this more relaxed mode of being which is kind of, kind of going about it in the wrong way. I was thinking before about this sense of trying. And, what is it to let go of the trying which feels so connected to the frontal mode of being. So just letting go of the effort in it and really relaxing.So yes, I feel as if my eyes close to help me to concentrate or something, and I wonder whether that actually makes me even contract a bit more. Maybe there is a sense of the soft eyes that you were describing earlier, that can activate this dorsal listening to myself in a way, letting the thoughts just come rather than feeling the pressure to speak. I think that this pressure to speak, whatever the pressure actually, is something to do with a preoccupation with what is coming next and the future, so kind of an orientation to what is going to come, what is going to come, and I think that there is something about tense.Actually in both senses – like being tense and the temporal sense of tense, that I was connecting with somehow. Like the back feels as if, it somehow makes a connection, creates a sense of continuity with thinking, it is not always so much about pushing or leaning into what is coming next. But more a sitting back or leaning back or spending or a kind of residing in thinking, or even memory. Maybe there is something about falling back into the memory of things or bringing the memory of things into more vivid awareness. Recollection – something about recollection, there feels like there is leaning back. I think that there is a confidence actually in recollection, or some relaxation in the sense of recollection, where you realize that there is this ground of experience to rest upon. So yes, this leaning back and resting upon, or recollecting rather than sort of pushing forward. Like somehow I am thinking now about the collecting of one’s thoughts – it is interesting I am doing a hand gesture where my left hand is angled back towards me and my right hand is sort of moving around in a circle, kind of gathering. But actually, it maybe should be the other way around? Something about feeling able to rest in the situation, or be able to reside in the situation. To lean back. Taking time actually, there is something about taking time. Like the frontal mode perhaps always feels a bit urgent or a bit hurried or maybe even a bit uncertain. It is interesting … about time. I have about five thoughts running around my head - they are all links. I remember last week you hadthis term future leaning.And I have been carrying that around with me all week because this idea of this sort of, one of the ideas is this non-Western idea of time where the future lies behind. It is the past actually that lies before us. But it is interesting because as soon as I say future leaning I can’t help but move, have a sense that I should lean forwards. Somehow the researching is putting the future behind us, means leaning back. But it is interesting that culturally,I really love this idea of future behind, but realising that culturally my body is future leaning. If someone says future leaning I feel my imagination move, tilt, forwards, which I find really fascinating. I love this phrase – future leaning, but actually, my understanding it is actually opposite to what my actual body thinks – perhaps through cultural conditioning of the future in front, of desire and possibilities. The doing, the rush of desire.Then another thought … something we said, something around being not sure if you are really experiencing something or if you are thinking you are experiencing something … it is hard to grasp that, because there are these traces of memories of previous ways of going down and I am aware that when I moving I have all those previous experiences and I also have lots of images as well. So I am working between … memories and imagination, projecting, bringing the previous into what is happening now. That is how we, how we lean into some part of what we have experiences, or what we know or what we think we know or get retriggered or reconnected with something that has happened before. I often wonder whether those previous experience inform what is happening now – sometimes they can be so strong that they can block the experience or replace it or muddle it. It is impossible to untangle – this idea of futures, pasts, forwards, behind, projecting and leaning back into the projection. It can really sort of disrupt, even this talking back to back. Disrupting the usual mode or understanding. Our orientation to our own bodies and to each other. Orientate to seeing and listening. There is a kind of void here as well.I feel like, because I am not facing you, but I am aware that you are receiving, therefore it is … the sense that I am talking to you is less dominant, obviously it is still there. Butthere is also a sense that I am just talking into a kind of void, a thinking-aloud. This way of back to back creates a thinking, a kind of thinking space. I like this idea of sitting back into thoughts or leaning back into thinking, listening to one’s own thinking, that emerges through the voicing. This listening-thinking-voicing. Interesting. I suddenly remembers those funny sounds on the radio and thinking that they were from Mars, and they might just be the equipment or … and I enjoyed you telling me what you, describing what kind of gesture you were making at that put, collecting. The triggers of the imagination through this way of describing. It makes me want to describe the things I have on my wall – to take a moment, this lovely faded blue close up … swift, damaged wall, lots of damage to this wall, Blutak marks after having peeled off paper. And the voice, being behind. The sense of connection with breath the voicing the air the breath.

Actually what interesting in lying down then and some of the reflections that were coming out of it was - Am I operating in a frontal mode either whilst exploring the back? I am wondering that in terms of the notes that I have made, I have all these notes written down – I wonder how much to refer to them in a way. Or whether to trust that they are there and to lean back a bit and not be so in my note-book. But I find this hard actually. Let me think – some of the things that have been interesting, interesting explorations, one of them was to do with the eyes and like what I realized was thatmy kind of taken for granted mode for lying on my back would be to have my eyes closed. So as soon as I go to my back I shut my eyes.And this was interesting becauseit feels as if I have to almost, very actively, de-privilege that frontal-facing way of being in order to somehow become more aware of the back, but I felt that this was an interesting area. I was wondering whether in closing my eyes, I was just shutting off the relationship between the front and the back in some senses. So I had my eyes open but still trying to keep the awareness in the back, so the eyes could just get used to being in a more back-oriented way of being if that makes sense. And actually, there was a lot in these explorations about the relationship between the front and the back. I think that last time the emphasis was much more on relaxing the back, releasing the back, releasing into the back, all about the back – and I think that this time the relationship between the front and the back has been much more pronounced. I suppose realising thatthere is a lot of release that has to happen in the front, there is a lot of relaxation that has to happen in the front in order to really drop into this experience of backness. And I think that – a willingness, just working with the front as a way of releasing. I go to a lot of yoga classes that are more to do with somatics – trying to release the hip flexes, that hold a tremendous amount of tension actually. So in order to soften the back, the hip flexes have to relax. My eyes need to relax somehow – to take the attention back. Yes, and, I think, I was aware of, maybe of the eyes a lot, or the sense that my awareness is so determined by what my eyes are seeing.And that even my peripheral range of vision is probably quite limited, it feels like a third of awareness of three-dimensionality. This is such a reduced field of awareness. So I was thinking a lot about how the experience of the back expands that range of awareness to a much more, not so much three-dimensionality, but more like 360 degrees. There is all of this unknown terrain that is just here – it is so much not my field of awareness, so much of the time actually. My habit would be to think in a dualistic way – that there is a front and a back, and I think that a lot of this is to do with expanding the sense of frontality to include, or shifting the emphasis on the back more. I realize that it is different because I have heard you. But now when I lie down I realize that my mind was racing. So I had to slightly more, a kind of seaweed creature with my arms and legs up.I had to move – to stimulate the body in order to understand, oh, that is where my body is.It is interesting –there is also something around the eyes, open/closed. I have a sense of – the eyes are so fascinating because of what they do, but also the materiality of them. The sense that when they are opening, when they are open,they don’t have to feel that they have to see or understand.Because in a way, I love this idea thatlight it just falling inand it can stay soft and blurred. Sort of scanning, blurring,which is alsowhat happens when they drop back or when some attention drops away from this orientation, a thinking. As soon as I put attention into … it has to go from outside here, through the body and the eyes go in as well. But this idea that they don’t have to go in like this, they can also somehow just stay. As you say, it is interesting about the front and the back, not having to close off one. Something was triggered by something that you said last week. This idea that is deadens, it becomes just a weight. Even lying on the ground – a three dimensional body. For me the front, there is something about the front and the back which does create a binary, but also that the front somehow when lying on the back, becomes exposed to the air. So there is a sort of voluminous feeling to it – with breath and light and air. A relationship somehow with releasing – maybe releasing the weight falls into the back, and creates lightness around the ribs and the top surfaces, and softens all these exposed areas – the mouth, the skin, the eyes.So that as well. I realizethis sense of flatness. It isnot that I feel like a piece of paper flat, but there is a sense, a sensation of flatness that is coming from the contact with the floor. I realize that if I lie on my front that does not happen – I am not sure if this is an image that I have somehow put in my mind. That I can somehow sense that I have things that curve and come out, whereas if I am on my back, although I know that some things are strongly against the ground and others have holes – so I understand the curves, that it is not flat but I still have a sense of joining the floor, I have a sense of a horizontal plane. Which is different to having the contact areas on the front. So maybe there is something about the front that I am understanding very differently, linked with the eyes being at the front. Flipping the body, reveals something. This plane, the plane of contact was also in my mind a little. No, I go on a tangent there, it wasn’t in my mind actually, it was in my body. Or in my mind-body. This week has been interesting around practice, where I realize I am thinking about things, rather than necessarily experiencing it. So I am now wondering, was it in my experience, or was it in my thought of my experience, of what was happening? This is an interesting space of investigation for me – am I really experiencing the sense of the back or am I just thinking about the experience of the back. It is quite hard to tell for me actually – is this a direct experience, or a thought I am having about experience, which might not be in the experience at all.And yes, I am going on a tangent –there is something to do with this thinking about something, which feels as if it is very much in the front mode of being, in a way.This about-ness, whereas dropping into the back feels as if there is something much closer to the experience somehow. I mean, I was thinking and exploring this relationship between doing and being, and it feels as if the back is more a mode of being, and the front a zone of doing. But again, there is a risk here that there are these binaries being perpetuated. But yes, this plane of contact. There is this yoga practice, a very nice meditation – which is to dowith being aware of the plane of contact between the body and the floor. It is kind of a yoga nidra, word meditation. So it is not the body, and it is not the floor, it is the plane of contact between the body and the floor.And I just love this, because there is this sense ofwhat is that? It is not the body and it is not the floor; it is the plane of contact. It is so paper-like, so fragile – it is touching, there is a touch to it.  Ah, yes, the touch took me on a thought – I think that in my earlier experiments during the week, I had been getting up and starting to walk around the room backwards really. And noticing how I wanted to look and then sort of needing to feel with my hands. And I was thinking in some senses how the emphasis on the back takes it more into the plane of contact and the notion of touch … but then actually this felt rather dissatisfying, because it felt that touch was somehow almost compensating in some ways for my de-privileging of the eyes.And so I was thinking more about proprioception in a broad sense. That actually,what seems to happen in my experience, is that attention on the back activates a sense of proprioception much more strongly - is not usually strong for me. It is not a strong capacity – I do not practice this enough. And I was very interested in this, the way that the back might be a sort of gateway into that proprioceptive capacity, a way of practicing that capacity, or nurturing that capacity more. Yes, I got excited about this –there is something to do with really trying to nurture a proprioceptive capacity, and what kind of being and thinking and observing comes from that as a ground.Perhaps rather than thinking about the discrete sense of touch or sight, to think more about I suppose a kinaesthetic roundedness as a basis for experience, which again seemed to connect to this being mode, rather than the frontal doing,which I can often do. When we were lying down now, I was moving around a lot actually. I started off lying still and it struck me, that I have a lot ofpreconceptions about engaging the back, which are to do with stillness. So I was thinking, is this supine position always about stillness – so I was wriggling around a bit and moving and thinking about, no, not thinking about,exploring and thinking about  the quality of being on the back when it is much more dynamic. Rolling from side to side. Yes, what is my preconception, and why is it to do with inertia or stasis or maybe it is to do with associations of sleep or death actually? I am not sure. But the active dimension of the back is very interesting. I have been reading a bit of … I have been reading the writing of Simone Weil, a book called Gravity and Grace, and she writes about this tension … one of the things she writes about is a sense of active passivity. I was trying to think about that really, rather than it being purely this passive state that I experience when I am lying down,how might that passivity be active and dynamic and alive and vibrant and full of feeling, rather than a bit numb, or dead or over-calm. Yes, the main thing is this sense of not so much thinking about relaxing the back but relaxing the front and keeping the front present in some kind of way. So not to do with shutting it off from the experience. I think that the main things are to do with this 360 circular awareness. Maybe sort of integrating the front and the back, or collapsing the sense, no, not collapsing the sense of the front and back … letting go but keeping it still there. And also something to do with, maybe something to do with this plane of contact – there was a point when I was lying on my back, when I took my attention into the back of the body,it felt like the back of my body was underneath the level of the ground, which was interesting. So somehow the front of my body felt more at floor level and then it was almost like in this negative space, below theground. And the sort of, one of the things I have not explored so far is this movement into standing, and moving. And this felt a completely different orientation, as you move into uprightness and continue to explore the back. Then there was something to do with moving around the space with my energy and awareness in the back and standing with my back against the wall. Sometimes standing with my back to the wall felt that it was protective, almost a bit defensive. Whereas walking around with my attention in the back felt vulnerable, exposed. So there is something to do with protection and exposure.

I have to respond a little first, it cannot help but trigger thoughts. This sense of exposure – if I am lying on the ground on my back I recognize this experience of sinking.And really it feels a good thing – I cannot quite, I meanI sometimes feel that I am on top of the ground … so I can’t quite join, and then this sense of sinking. And the relationship with the front. In a way I am kidding myself – this front, exposure. I suppose this word exposure - the sense of the light and the air. So when I am walking around, not with, with very little contact, just with the feet. Not so much support, or feedback, the pressure – it has a very exposed, I suppose I am more unstable.I have to kind of navigate how much effort or how much ease I can work with – it feels quite complicated just standing up and walking. And especially standing still – I something that this is really hard, complicated, difficult – troubling. And other times it feels so simple. But today because I was doing more this in between – thinking I am not giving it time here. I was picking up the idea of axis and twist and turn, and also something you said last time, about transition from up to down. So I was kind ofworking with this moving up and down a number of times – I suppose noticing many things within that, how complex it is, and all these things of bending and curving and dropping and lifting and turning and all these shifts of weight … and slowing that process down. Not slow motion because that is actually quite hard work, but enough to somehow follow the sort of monologue of – oh, my elbows are dropping, now my knees have gone, and then the choices within that, because how much am I following, allowing myself to follow gravityI suppose.And then all the other choices – am I going to let my arm drop first, or am I going to let the head drop first, or go this way this time. A sort of playfulness. Working with the forces of gravity and the possibility of rotating the spine, bending the spine, twisting at the waist, or leading or letting another thing lead.So yes it is interesting – somehowit is a very three dimensional thing. Maybe it is something about the being and the doing – somehow being in the experience of going down. This is happening and how am I going to manoeuvre my way up again and some experiments, can I come back up exactly in the same way. In one way I still can but it is not the same processes – as bending, lifting. I can sometimes get the simple pattern. It is quite interesting to repeat. But I think gathering … oh yes, the back, so then the back is not so much the back-behind but it is more working with the spine. And I suppose it is back but it is inside the body – so it is an experiential sense of the spine, and then there is something around the image of the anatomical. And then, I remember something that Julian Hamilton said, he is a teacher of improvisation, he says that the joints, they are up for anything, they want to just go. It is the muscles – when you said the hip flexes I recognized – and I suppose the psyche of maybe just tensions and fears and all sorts of things. The muscles that sort of resist or won’t soften or won’t allow. And I can feel this with the moving and twisting. I can feel, oh yes, there is the mechanics to this skeleton, and it is built in a way that can turn, and it feels like then … I am making this up because of the words but it helps me. There is the mechanical and there is the manifestation of that – the muscles that sort of. So I sensethe twist, the resistance.Twisting feels more like what happens; turning is a possibility.I am thinking about twisting andsometimes you see a fold on the skin. I was wondering if there is something about what is possible and the mechanics of it and the observation of it, what appears on the skin or in the folds and surfaces. Not just the surfaces outside, but also inside surfaces, all the organs.And within that then, I am curious aboutthe symmetry– I really enjoyasymmetry.Maybe it is about activation but if things are too symmetrical they can become or feel more passive.Almost sometimes this sense of simplicity is very … often comes after. Asymmetry feeds back into the body – stimulates to understand. It keeps working the mind’s interest, it intrigues. Maybe it triggers some self-generation, the moving that self-generates the body or reminds the body it is a bodyor something like that.Yes, there is something around the movement, the tension and the back – not a closing off, something moving up and down and what does it mean if I keep my attention in the back while doing that. So something about working with gravity rather than this … the pulling of the gravity, even when coming up a sense of moving up through. It takes a moment to settle in facing this way. It is interesting – I can feel my eyes grasping at the reflection in the photographs, as a way of bringing a frontality. Actually this is an interesting, I am feeling an urge to turn around, to turn back to the front, so in a way it feels like there is a call for rotation. But this feels like a very different rotation to the rotation on the ground. So, yes, I was struck in exploring some of these rotations lying down about the way that the skeletal system was activated but also very much around the organs. It is this turning of the body and even the way that the weight feels more compressed I suppose.As you move to one side the sense of the body pressuring on one lung or the sense of the digestive organs being movedin some kind of way. So I guess when I was talking about this sense of 360 awareness,I wasthinking about it very much before in terms of an external aspect, looking outwards from the body. So my looking outwards from the body maybe feels like 120 degrees or something normally, maximum.And this sense of the back bringing an awareness in a more three dimensional sense. But actually it was interesting in that my approach in thinking like that was very much to do with external awareness, awareness beyond the body..But this rotation also brings the awareness much more into the sense of the three dimensionality of the interior.I was thinking also when you were talking aboutthe spine as perhaps different from the back, just the kind of density and the depth of the bodyin a way. And whether the back is this plane of the back, the exterior aspect of the back of the body or whether there is a, whether there is a depth to it. Like where does the back begin in terms of the interior of the body? And if I think of this in terms of the frontal and dorsal dimension, it feels like all of the below the skin feels back. And so maybe I am drawing too strong a connection thatthe back feels what is most hidden, or unavailable or out of my range of awareness somehow. So I do a short cut there. I am thinking of something, this idea of the back not necessarily as it … it slips between the physical understanding and kind of slippery, abstract sense of the unseen surfaces of the body. Internal. And because of this, I have been thinking,this listening, to these other surfaces of the body, of the eyes, the ears. I have been thinking of the voice also in a way, that my voice can drop and I am curious to develop other voices that are projecting or at the top of the … yes, voice as a kind of listening.And maybe there is a kind of voice that can drop, something to do with a more thinking, drifting, experiential voice. I am wondering as I now talking,if I can relax into a sense of listening to myself which I realize some people do that naturally. Oh look, I have gone so much into it that my words are disappearing. There is something,there is something really interesting in how I might bring voicing into this, opening up spaces, also taking this – my body here sitting, my awareness of you behind me, these things that are on my wall. And my breath. How voicing, a dorsal voice, creates sort of spaces or is part of listening, so active, this activation around the neck. It is sort of frontal this voice – I often think of the dorsal as something that can relieve the eyes but maybe it is something that can relieve the voice. Yes, sort of softening. Perhaps it is to do with how the spine, the organs, actually I don’t know very much about vocal chords. It would be interestingto explore a sense of unseen, or unknown in relationship to the voice.There is also the connection if I am voicing without seeing someone, this situation, the space actually to release pressure that I should be making sense. And I have to say this always makes my smilewhen we are talking back to back, there is something very joyful about it. The thing that you were saying, the things that you were saying about the voice is very interesting. Actually, I am aware that I am projecting a bit – maybe it is because I feel that you might not be able to hear what I am saying. Shifting to, shifting from the pressure of projecting to, a kind of voicing like speaking to oneself. I think that … or even listening, listening to yourself really. It is interesting –with the speaking it feels like there is also that sense of being in a frontal mode, almost like grasping, grasping towards the thing that I want to say, or … and what would it be like to really drop in and let it come a bit more. Can I actually do that? Sometimes with voicing it feels like the voice almost comes from the front of the vocal chords, so, I mean I am struggling with my voice, this pressure of projection. And then dropping into the body, the voicing feels like it has the lungs behind it somehow, or the organs behind it. The diaphragm behind it. I think that sometimes the voice is high in the body and shallow in the body. Yes, this sense of a dorsal voicing is very interesting. Or also this mode of dorsal listening, I realize then that I have my eyes closed again. And I am thinking, when did that happen? I think it happens sometimes because it takes … it is the wrong way of doing it … but it takes some effort to move into this more … it actually feels like it takes effort to move into this more relaxed mode of being which is kind of, kind of going about it in the wrong way. I was thinking before about this sense of trying. And, what is it to let go of the trying which feels so connected to the frontal mode of being. So just letting go of the effort in it and really relaxing. So yes, I feel as if my eyes close to help me to concentrate or something, and I wonder whether that actually makes me even contract a bit more.Maybe there is a sense of the soft eyes that you were describing earlier, that can activate this dorsal listening to myself in a way, letting the thoughts just come rather than feeling the pressure to speak. I think that this pressure to speak, whatever the pressure actually, is something to do with a preoccupation with what is coming next and the future, so kind of an orientation to what is going to come, what is going to come, and I think that there is something about tense.Actually in both senses – like being tense and the temporal sense of tense, that I was connecting with somehow.Like the back feels as if, it somehow makes a connection, creates a sense of continuity with thinking, it is not always so much about pushing or leaning into what is coming next. But more a sitting back or leaning back or spending or a kind of residing in thinking, or even memory. Maybe there is something about falling back into the memory of things or bringing the memory of things into more vivid awareness. Recollection – something about recollection, there feels like there is leaning back. I think that there is a confidence actually in recollection, or some relaxation in the sense of recollection, where you realize that there is this ground of experience to rest upon. So yes, this leaning back and resting upon, or recollecting rather than sort of pushing forward. Like somehow I am thinking now aboutthe collecting of one’s thoughts– it is interesting I amdoing a hand gesture where my left hand is angled back towards me and my right hand is sort of moving around in a circle, kind of gathering. But actually, it maybe should be the other way around? Something about feeling able to rest in the situation, or be able to reside in the situation. To lean back. Taking time actually, there is something about taking time. Like the frontal mode perhaps always feels a bit urgent or a bit hurried or maybe even a bit uncertain. It is interesting … about time. I have about five thoughts running around my head - they are all links. I remember last week you had this term future leaning. And I have been carrying that around with me all week because this idea of this sort of, one of the ideas is this non-Western idea of time where the future lies behind. It is the past actually that lies before us. But it is interesting because as soon as I say future leaning I can’t help but move, have a sense that I should lean forwards. Somehow the researching is putting the future behind us, means leaning back. But it is interesting that culturally, I really love this idea of future behind, but realising that culturally my body is future leaning. If someone says future leaning I feel my imagination move, tilt, forwards, which I find really fascinating. I love this phrase – future leaning, but actually, my understanding it is actually opposite to what my actual body thinks – perhaps through cultural conditioning of the future in front, of desire and possibilities. The doing, the rush of desire.Then another thought … something we said, something around being not sure if you are really experiencing something or if you are thinking you are experiencing something … it is hard to grasp that, because there are these traces of memories of previous ways of going down and I am aware that when I moving I have all those previous experiences and I also have lots of images as well. So I am working between … memories and imagination, projecting, bringing the previous into what is happening now. That is how we, how we lean into some part of what we have experiences, or what we know or what we think we know or get retriggered or reconnected with something that has happened before. I often wonder whether those previous experience inform what is happening now – sometimes they can be so strong that they can block the experience or replace it or muddle it. It is impossible to untangle – this idea of futures, pasts, forwards, behind, projecting and leaning back into the projection. It can really sort of disrupt, even this talking back to back. Disrupting the usual mode or understanding. Our orientation to our own bodies and to each other. Orientate to seeing and listening. There is a kind of void here as well.I feel like, because I am not facing you, but I am aware that you are receiving, therefore it is … the sense that I am talking to you is less dominant, obviously it is still there. Butthere is also a sense that I am just talking into a kind of void, a thinking-aloud. This way of back to back creates a thinking, a kind of thinking space. I like this idea of sitting back into thoughts or leaning back into thinking, listening to one’s own thinking, that emerges through the voicing. This listening-thinking-voicing.Interesting. I suddenly remembers those funny sounds on the radio and thinking that they were from Mars, and they might just be the equipment or … and I enjoyed you telling me what you, describing what kind of gesture you were making at that put, collecting. The triggers of the imagination through this way of describing. It makes me want to describe the things I have on my wall –to take a moment, this lovely faded blue close up … swift, damaged wall, lots of damage to this wall, Blutak marks after having peeled off paper. And the voice, being behind. The sense of connection with breath the voicing the air the breath.

My kind of taken for granted mode for lying on my back would be to have my eyes closed. So as soon as I go to my back I shut my eyes. It feels as if I have to almost, very actively, de-privilege that frontal-facing way of being in order to somehow become more aware of the back. I was wondering whether in closing my eyes, I was just shutting off the relationship between the front and the back in some senses. So I had my eyes open but still trying to keep the awareness in the back, so the eyes could just get used to being in a more back-oriented way.

The emphasis was much more on relaxing the back, releasing the back, releasing into the back, all about the back. There is a lot of release that has to happen in the front, there is a lot of relaxation that has to happen in the front in order to really drop into this experience of backness. My eyes need to relax somehow – to take the attention back. The sense that my awareness is so determined by what my eyes are seeing. And that even my peripheral range of vision is probably quite limited, it feels like a third of awareness of three-dimensionality. This is such a reduced field of awareness. So I was thinking a lot about how the experience of the back expands that range of awareness to a much more, not so much three-dimensionality, but more like 360 degrees. There is all of this unknown terrain that is just here.

I had to move – to stimulate the body in order to understand, oh, that is where my body is. There is also something around the eyes, open/closed. I have a sense of – the eyes are so fascinating because of what they do, but also the materiality of them. The sense that when they are opening, when they are open, they don’t have to feel that they have to see or understand. Light it just falling in - it can stay soft and blurred. Sort of scanning, blurring. What happens when they drop back or when some attention drops away from this orientation, a thinking.

There is something about the front and the back which does create a binary, but also that the front somehow when lying on the back, becomes exposed to the air. So there is a sort of voluminous feeling to it – with breath and light and air. A relationship somehow with releasing – maybe releasing the weight falls into the back, and creates lightness around the ribs and the top surfaces, and softens all these exposed areas – the mouth, the skin, the eyes. This sense of flatness - not that I feel like a piece of paper flat, but there is a sense, a sensation of flatness that is coming from the contact with the floor.

I have a sense of a horizontal plane. So maybe there is something about the front that I am understanding very differently, linked with the eyes being at the front. Flipping the body, reveals something. This plane, the plane of contact was also in my mind a little.

Am I really experiencing the sense of the back or am I just thinking about the experience of the back. Is this a direct experience, or a thought I am having about experience, which might not be in the experience at all. There is something to do with this thinking about something, which feels as if it is very much in the front mode of being. This about-ness, whereas dropping into the back feels as if there is something much closer to the experience somehow. I was thinking and exploring this relationship between doing and being, and it feels as if the back is more a mode of being, and the front a zone of doing. But again, there is a risk here that there are these binaries being perpetuated.

So it is not the body, and it is not the floor, it is the plane of contact between the body and the floor. What is that? It is not the body and it is not the floor; it is the plane of contact. It is so paper-like, so fragile – it is touching, there is a touch to it.

How the emphasis on the back takes it more into the plane of contact and the notion of touch … but then actually this felt rather dissatisfying, because it felt that touch was somehow almost compensating in some ways for my de-privileging of the eyes. What seems to happen in my experience, is that attention on the back activates a sense of proprioception much more strongly. The way that the back might be a sort of gateway into that proprioceptive capacity, a way of practicing that capacity, or nurturing that capacity more. There is something to do with really trying to nurture a proprioceptive capacity, and what kind of being and thinking and observing comes from that as a ground. Perhaps rather than thinking about the discrete sense of touch or sight, to think more about I suppose a kinaesthetic roundedness as a basis for experience, which again seemed to connect to this being mode, rather than the frontal doing.

Preconceptions about engaging the back, which are to do with stillness. So I was thinking, is this supine position always about stillness. Exploring and thinking about  the quality of being on the back when it is much more dynamic. Rolling from side to side. Yes, what is my preconception, and why is it to do with inertia or stasis or maybe it is to do with associations of sleep or death actually? I

A sense of active passivity. IHow might that passivity be active and dynamic and alive and vibrant and full of feeling, rather than a bit numb, or dead or over-calm. It felt like the back of my body was underneath the level of the ground, which was interesting. So somehow the front of my body felt more at floor level and then it was almost like in this negative space, below the ground.

Sometimes standing with my back to the wall felt that it was protective, almost a bit defensive. Whereas walking around with my attention in the back felt vulnerable, exposed. So there is something to do with protection and exposure.

If I am lying on the ground on my back I recognize this experience of sinking. I sometimes feel that I am on top of the ground … so I can’t quite join, and then this sense of sinking.

I have to kind of navigate how much effort or how much ease I can work with – it feels quite complicated just standing up and walking. Picking up the idea of axis and twist and turn. Working with this moving up and down a number of times – I suppose noticing many things within that, how complex it is, and all these things of bending and curving and dropping and lifting and turning and all these shifts of weight … and slowing that process down.. Not slow motion

How much am I following, allowing myself to follow gravity/And then all the other choices. Working with the forces of gravity and the possibility of rotating the spine, bending the spine, twisting at the waist, or leading or letting another thing lead. It is a very three dimensional thing. Maybe it is something about the being and the doing – somehow being in the experience of going down. I

So then the back is not so much the back-behind but it is more working with the spine. And I suppose it is back but it is inside the body – so it is an experiential sense of the spine, and then there is something around the image of the anatomical. The muscles that sort of resist or won’t soften or won’t allow. There is the mechanics to this skeleton, and it is built in a way that can turn. There is the mechanical and there is the manifestation of that –the twist, the resistance. Twisting feels more like what happens; turning is a possibility. Sometimes you see a fold on the skin. I was wondering if there is something about what is possible and the mechanics of it and the observation of it, what appears on the skin or in the folds and surfaces. Not just the surfaces outside, but also inside surfaces, all the organs.

The symmetry/asymmetry. Maybe it is about activation but if things are too symmetrical they can become or feel more passive. Sometimes this sense of simplicity is very … often comes after. Asymmetry feeds back into the body – stimulates to understand. It keeps working the mind’s interest, it intrigues. Maybe it triggers some self-generation, the moving that self-generates the body or reminds the body it is a body. Yes, there is something around the movement, the tension and the back – not a closing off, something moving up and down and what does it mean if I keep my attention in the back while doing that. So something about working with gravity rather than this … the pulling of the gravity, even when coming up a sense of moving up through. It

I can feel my eyes grasping at the reflection in the photographs, as a way of bringing a frontality. I am feeling an urge to turn around, to turn back to the front, so in a way it feels like there is a call for rotation. But this feels like a very different rotation to the rotation on the ground.

As you move to one side the sense of the body pressuring on one lung or the sense of the digestive organs being moved. This sense of 360 awareness, I was thinking about it very much before in terms of an external aspect, looking outwards from the body. And this sense of the back bringing an awareness in a more three dimensional sense. But this rotation also brings the awareness much more into the sense of the three dimensionality of the interior.

The spine as perhaps different from the back, just the kind of density and the depth of the body. And whether the back is this plane of the back, the exterior aspect of the back of the body or whether there is a, whether there is a depth to it. Like where does the back begin in terms of the interior of the body? And if I think of this in terms of the frontal and dorsal dimension, it feels like all of the below the skin feels back. It slips between the physical understanding and kind of slippery, abstract sense of the unseen surfaces of the body. Internal.

This listening, to these other surfaces of the body, of the eyes, the ears. I have been thinking of the voice also in a way, that my voice can drop and I am curious to develop other voices that are projecting or at the top of the … yes, voice as a kind of listening. And maybe there is a kind of voice that can drop, something to do with a more thinking, drifting, experiential voice. I am wondering as I now talking, if I can relax into a sense of listening to myself. Oh look, I have gone so much into it that my words are disappearing. There is something really interesting in how I might bring voicing into this, opening up spaces, also taking this – my body here sitting, my awareness of you behind me, these things that are on my wall. And my breath. How voicing, a dorsal voice, creates sort of spaces or is part of listening.

I often think of the dorsal as something that can relieve the eyes but maybe it is something that can relieve the voice. Yes, sort of softening. To explore a sense of unseen, or unknown in relationship to the voice. When we are talking back to back, there is something very joyful about it. Shifting to, shifting from the pressure of projecting to, a kind of voicing like speaking to oneself. I think that … or even listening, listening to yourself really. With the speaking it feels like there is also that sense of being in a frontal mode, almost like grasping, grasping towards the thing that I want to say, or … and what would it be like to really drop in and let it come a bit more. Can I actually do that? Sometimes with voicing it feels like the voice almost comes from the front of the vocal chords, so, I mean I am struggling with my voice, this pressure of projection. And then dropping into the body, the voicing feels like it has the lungs behind it somehow, or the organs behind it. The diaphragm behind it. I think that sometimes the voice is high in the body and shallow in the body. Yes, this sense of a dorsal voicing is very interesting. Or also this mode of dorsal listening, I realize then that I have my eyes closed again. And I am thinking, when did that happen?

Maybe there is a sense of the soft eyes that you were describing earlier, that can activate this dorsal listening to myself in a way, letting the thoughts just come rather than feeling the pressure to speak. I think that this pressure to speak, whatever the pressure actually, is something to do with a preoccupation with what is coming next and the future, so kind of an orientation to what is going to come, what is going to come, and I think that there is something about tense. Actually in both senses – like being tense and the temporal sense of tense.

 Like the back feels as if, it somehow makes a connection, creates a sense of continuity with thinking, it is not always so much about pushing or leaning into what is coming next. But more a sitting back or leaning back or spending or a kind of residing in thinking, or even memory. Maybe there is something about falling back into the memory of things or bringing the memory of things into more vivid awareness. Recollection – something about recollection, there feels like there is leaning back. I think that there is a confidence actually in recollection, or some relaxation in the sense of recollection, where you realize that there is this ground of experience to rest upon. So yes, this leaning back and resting upon, or recollecting rather than sort of pushing forward.

Collecting of one’s thoughts - doing a hand gesture where my left hand is angled back towards me and my right hand is sort of moving around in a circle, kind of gathering. But actually, it maybe should be the other way around? Something about feeling able to rest in the situation, or be able to reside in the situation. To lean back. Taking time actually, there is something about taking time. Like the frontal mode perhaps always feels a bit urgent or a bit hurried or maybe even a bit uncertain.

If someone says future leaning I feel my imagination move, tilt, forwards, which I find really fascinating. I love this phrase – future leaning, but actually, my understanding it is actually opposite to what my actual body thinks – perhaps through cultural conditioning of the future in front, of desire and possibilities. The doing, the rush of desire.

There are these traces of memories of previous ways of going down and I am aware that when I moving I have all those previous experiences and I also have lots of images as well. So I am working between … memories and imagination, projecting, bringing the previous into what is happening now. That is how we, how we lean into some part of what we have experiences, or what we know or what we think we know or get retriggered or reconnected with something that has happened before. I often wonder whether those previous experience inform what is happening now – sometimes they can be so strong that they can block the experience or replace it or muddle it. It is impossible to untangle – this idea of futures, pasts, forwards, behind, projecting and leaning back into the projection. It can really sort of disrupt, even this talking back to back. Disrupting the usual mode or understanding. Our orientation to our own bodies and to each other. Orientate to seeing and listening. There is a kind of void here as well.

There is also a sense that I am just talking into a kind of void, a thinking-aloud. This way of back to back creates a thinking, a kind of thinking space. I like this idea of sitting back into thoughts or leaning back into thinking, listening to one’s own thinking, that emerges through the voicing. This listening-thinking-voicing. Take a moment. And the voice, being behind. The sense of connection with breath the voicing the air the breath.

PART 4

13.09.2021

FOCUS/PRACTICE: Reading as distillation

- Reading practices using the conversational transcript from 19.03.2021 as source text.

- Take time to tune into the transcript, marking phrases and words that strike you or that resonate

(1) Reading (Noticing Attraction) (5 mins) – Have the transcript to hand, allow gaze to be soft and glide/roam the pages. Practising simultaneously. When a word draws your attention speak it outloud. Allow for overlaps and also silences.

(2) Conversation-as-material distillation (10 mins) – Have the transcript to hand.

When the time feels right read aloud some of the words and phrases that have been highlighted - these could be single words, phrases or a cluster of sentences. Or alternatively, identify words and phrases live and read them aloud.

(3) A more fluid exploration moving between (A) Noticing Attraction and (B) Conversation-as-material distillation. Decide fluidly when to move between one practice and the other and back again (and so on). (20 mins)

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1.

Intrigues. Perpetuated. Symmetry. Relaxing. Collapsing. Standing. Blurring scanning. Gravity. Touch. Pattern. Listening thinking voicing. Orientation. Falling. Frontality. Depth. De-privilege. Releasing. Drop. Mouth skin eyes. Surfaces. Surveying contact. Rotation. Twisting. Discrete. Manifestation. Roundedness. Digestive organs. Proprioceptive capacity. Slippery. Over calm. Struggling. Trying. Frontality. Gathering. Relieve. Falling. Leaning. Leaning back Shifting. Resting upon. Taking time. Joyful. Tense. Urge. Temporal sense. Twisting at the waist. Voicing. Anatomical. Thinking. Vulnerable. Happening. Seeing. Listening. Dorsal voicing. Triggers of the imagination. Dorsal listening. Fade blue. Drifting experiential. Protection and exposure. Activated. Nurture. Resistance. Lights. Orientation. A thinking flipping. Falling in. Fascinating. Soft and blurred. A willingness. A way of releasing. Perpetuating. Sensation. Between. Reveals. Rolling. Exploring. Gravity and grace. A different rotation. Active dimension. Sinking. Vulnerable exposed. Asymmetrical. Curving. Possibility. A call for rotation. Unseen. Unknown. Three dimensional. Confidence. Navigating. The future. behind. Leaning. Forwards. Infront. Disrupting. Rush of desire. Voicing the air. Thinking aloud Breath. Listening. Trigger thoughts. Voicing. Leaning. Residing. Curving. Soft eyes. Relaxing. Flipping the body. Drop. Associations of sleep. Dropping into. Full of feeling. Dorsal voicing. Quite complicated. Connected. Playfulness.

2.

The twist, the resistance. Twisting feels more like what happens, turning is a possibility. Voice as a kind of listening. And maybe there is a kind of voice that can drop, a thinking, drifting, experiential voice. Maybe there is something about falling back into the memory of things or bringing the memory of things into more vivid awareness. Recollection – something about recollection. Because in a way, I love this idea that light is just falling in, it can stay soft and blurred. Sort of scanning, blurring, which is also what happens when the eyes drop back or when some attention drops away from this orientation. There is a lot of release that has to happen in the front, there is a lot of relaxation that has to happen in order to really drop into the experience of backness. Am I really experiencing the sense of the back or am I just thinking about the experience of the back? Is this a direct experience, or a thought I am having about experience. There is something to do with this thinking about something, which feels as if it is very much in the front mode of being. Whereas dropping into the back feels as if there is something much closer to the experience somehow. Listening - to these other surfaces of the body, of the eyes, the ears. And maybe there is a kind of voice that can drop, something to do with a more thinking, drifting, experiential voice. So, it is not the body, and it is not the floor; it is the plane of contact between the body and the floor. Bringing voicing into this, opening up spaces, my body here sitting, my awareness of you behind, these things on the wall, my breath. It is so paper-like, so fragile – it is touching, there is a touch to it. Yes, the touch took me on a thought. What would it be like to really drop in and let it come a bit more. Can I actually do that? Dropping into the body, the voicing feels like it has the lungs behind it somehow, or the organs behind it, the diaphragm behind it. Twisting feels more like what happens; turning is a possibility. I am thinking about twisting and sometimes you see a fold on the skin. I was wondering if there is something about what is possible and what is the mechanics of it and the observation of it, what appears on the skin or in the folds and surfaces. Not just the surfaces outside, but also inside surfaces, all the organs. This idea of futures, pasts, forwards, behind, projecting and leaning back into the projection. It can really sort of disrupt, even this talking back to back. Disrupting the usual mode of understanding. Our orientation to our own bodies and to each other. I often think of the dorsal as something that relieve the eyes, but maybe it is something that can relieve the voice. A sort of softening. And all these things of bending and curving and dropping and lifting and turning and all these shifts of weight … and slowing that process down. Not slow motion because that  is actually quite hard work, but enough to somehow follow the sort of monologue of my elbows are dropping, now my knees have gone, and then the choices within that. All the other choices. This pressure to speak, whatever the pressure actually, is something to do with a preoccupation with what is coming next and the future, so kind of an orientation to what is going to come, what is going to come, and I think that there is something about tense. Something in both senses – like being tense and the temporal sense of tense. Shifting from the pressure of projecting, a kind of voicing like speaking to oneself. Or even listening, a listening to yourself really. I realized my kind of taken for granted mode for lying on my back would be to have my eyes closed. So as soon as I go to my back, I shut my eyes. This was interesting because it feels as if I have to almost, very actively, de-privilege that frontal-facing way of being in order to somehow become more aware of the back. There is something about what is possible and mechanics of it and the observation of it, what appears on the skin or in the folds and surfaces. Not just the surfaces outside, but also inside surfaces, all the organs. The eyes are so fascinating because of what they do, but also the materiality of them. The sense that when they are opening, when they are open, they don’t have to feel that they have to see or understand. As soon as I go back to my back I shut my eyes. The light it’s just falling in, it can stay soft and blurred. Sort of scanning, blurring, which is also what happens when they drop back or when some attention drops away from this orientation. To soften the back the hip flexors have to relax, my eyes need to relax to take the attention back. My awareness is so determined by what my eyes are seeing. This is such a reduced field of awareness. There is a sort of voluminous feeling to it – with breath and light and air. A relationship somehow with releasing – maybe releasing the weight falls into the back and creates lightness around the ribs and the top surfaces, and softens all these exposed areas – the mouth, the skin, the eyes. And maybe there is a kind of voice that can drop something to do with a more thinking, drifting, experiential voice. How I might bring voicing into this, opening up spaces, also taking this – my body here sitting, my awareness of you behind me, these things that are on my wall. And my breath. How voicing, a dorsal voice, creates sort of spaces or is part of listening, so active, this activation around the neck. A sort of softening. Yes, this leaning back and resting upon, or re-collecting rather than pushing forward. To explore a sense of unseen or unknown in relation to the voice. Talking back to back there is something very joyful about it. I am doing a hand gesture where my left hand is angled back towards me and my right hand is sort of moving around in a circle, kind of gathering. But actually, it maybe should be the other way around? It is touching, there is a touch to it and yes, the touch took me on a thought. Something about feeling able to rest in the situation or being able to reside in the situation or be able to reside in the situation. To lean back. Taking time. There is something about taking time. But it felt that touch was somehow almost compensating in some ways for my de-privileging of the eyes.

3.

Habits would be to think in a dualistic way - that there is a front and a back, and I think that a lot of this is to do with expanding the sense of frontality to include, or shifting the emphasis on the back more. There are these traces of memories of previous ways of going down and I am aware that when I moving I have all those previous experiences and I also have lots of images as well. So, I am working between … memories and imagination, projecting, bringing the previous into what is happening now. And that is how we, how we lean into some part of what we have experienced, or what we know or what we think we know or get retriggered or reconnected to. But it takes an effort to move into this, it actually feels like it takes effort to move into this more relaxed mode of being which is perhaps going about it in the wrong way. I was thinking before about this sense of trying. And, what is it to let go of the trying which feels so connected to the frontal mode of being. This listening, thinking, voicing. Not that I feel like a piece of paper, flat, but there is a sense, a sense of flatness that is coming from the contact with the floor. A sense of exposure, lying on the ground I recognise this experience of sinking. I sometimes feel like I am on top of the ground so I can’t quite join, then this sense of sinking. I can feel my eyes grasping at the reflection in the photographs as a way of bringing a frontality. I am feeling an urge to turn around, to turn back to the front, so in a way it feels as though there is a call for rotation. As you move to one side the sense of the body pressuring on one lung or the sense of the digestive organs being moved in some kind of way. My body is future leaning. If someone says future leaning, I feel my imagination move, tilt forwards, future leaning, but actually, my understanding is actually opposite to what my actual body thinks – perhaps my cultural conditioning of the future in front, of desire and possibilities. It can really sort of disrupt, even this talking back to back. Disrupting the usual mode or understanding. Our orientation to our own bodies and to each other. Orientate to seeing and listening. There is a kind of void here as well. I feel like, because I am not facing you, but I am aware that you are receiving, therefore it is … that the sense that I am talking to you is less dominant. Working between memory and imagination, projecting, bringing the previous into what is happening now. That is how we, how we lean into some part of what we have experiences, or what we know or what we think we know or get retriggered or reconnected with something that has happened before. And I often wonder whether those previous experience inform what is happening now – sometimes they can be so strong that they can block the experience or replace it or muddle it. It is impossible to untangle. Like grasping, grasping towards the things that I want to say. Actually, this felt quite dissatisfying - what seems to happen in my experience, is that attention on the back activates a sense of proprioception much more strongly - that the back might be a sort of gateway into that proprioceptive capacity, a way of practicing that capacity, or nurturing that capacity – there is something to do with really trying to nurture a proprioceptive capacity, and what kind of being and thinking and observing comes from that as a ground. Gravity and grace. Dynamic and alive and vibrant and full of feeling, front and the back, letting go but keeping it still there. The spine as perhaps different from the back, a kind of density and the depth of the body in a way. And whether the back is this plane of the back, the exterior aspect of the back of the body or whether there is a, whether there is a depth to it. Like where does the back begin in terms of the interior of the body?  Working with the forces of gravity and the possibilities of rotating the spine, bending the spine, twisting at the waist, or leading or letting another thing lead – it is a very three- dimensional thing. Maybe it is something about the being and the doing – somehow being in the experience of going down. I need to slightly move, a kind of seaweed creature with my arms and legs up. I had to move – to stimulate the body in order to understand, oh, that is where my body is. It is interesting – there is also something around the eyes, open/closed. The eyes are so fascinating because of what they do, but also the materiality of them. The sense that when they are opening, when they are open, they don’t have to feel that they have to see or understand. Light just falling in. They can stay soft and blurred. Sort of scanning, blurring. It feels like all of the below of the skin feels back. Back is not so much back behind but it is more working with the spine. And I suppose it is back but it is inside the body so it is an experiential sense of the spine and there is something around the image of the anatomical. And then dropping into the body, the voicing feels like it has the lungs behind it, the organs behind it, the diaphragm behind it. I think that sometimes the voice is high in the body and shallow in the body. A sense of a dorsal voicing. A mode of dorsal listening. I realize then that I have my eyes closed again. And I am thinking, when did that happen? Not so much about relaxing the back but relaxing the front and keeping the front present in some kind of way, not to do with shutting it off from the experience. This 360 circular awareness. Maybe some sort of integrating the front and the back, or collapsing the sense, no, not collapsing the sense of the front and back … letting go but keeping it still there. Future leaning. I feel my imagination move, tilt, forwards. Future leaning, and actually my understanding is opposite to what my actual body thinks – perhaps through cultural conditioning of the future in front, of desire and possibilities. The doing, the rush of desire. For me the front, there is something about the front and back that does create a binary but also that the front somehow when lying on the back, becomes exposed to the air. So, there is a sort of voluminous feeling to it – with breath and light and air. The pulling of gravity, even when coming up, a sense of moving up through. This relation between doing and being – and it feels as though the back is a mode of doing and the front a zone of being, but again there is a risk here that there are these binaries being perpetuated. Axis and twist and turn, also the transition from up to down. How complex it is. Not the body and not the floor. It is the plane of contact between the body and the floor. All these things of bending and curving and dropping and lifting and turning and all these shifts of weight … and slowing that process down. Not slow motion because that is actually pure effort work, but enough to somehow follow the sort of monologue - my elbows are dropping, my knees have gone, and then the choices within all of that. It slips between the physical understanding and kind of slippery, abstract sense of the unseen surfaces of the body. Internal. This listening to the other surfaces of the body, of the eyes, the ears. Voice as a kind of listening. The way that the back might be a sort of gateway into the proprioceptive capacity, a way of practicing that capacity, or nurturing that capacity – there is something to do with really trying to nurture a proprioceptive capacity. What kind of being and thinking and observing comes from that as a ground? This sense of trying and what is it to let go of the trying which feels so connected to the frontal mode of being. So, I was wriggling around a bit and moving and thinking about, no, not thinking about, exploring and thinking about the quality of being on the back when it is much more dynamic. Rolling from side to side. Yes, what is my preconception, and why is it to do with inertia and stasis – and maybe it is to do with associations of sleep and death actually? But the active dimension of the back, a sense of active passivity. A kinaesthetic groundedness as a basis for experience. Rather than it being purely this passive state I experience when I am lying down, how might that passivity be active and dynamic and alive and vibrant and full of feeling? There is all of this unknown terrain which is just here. Not a closing off, something moving up and down and what does it mean if I keep my attention in the back while doing that? Working with gravity, the pulling of the gravity, when coming up a sense of moving up through. A sense of a horizontal plane, which is different to having the contact areas on the front. So maybe there is something about the front that I am understanding very differently, linked with the eyes being at the front. Flipping the body, reveals something. This plane, this plane of contact was also in my mind a little, not in my mind actually, it was in my body, or in my mind-body. A bit uncertain. A bit defensive. This idea of future behind. Walking around with my attention in the back. My body is future leaning. Underneath the level of the ground. Like where does the back begin in terms of the interior of the body? I can sometimes get the simple pattern. This leaning back and resting upon or recollecting rather than sort of pushing forward. Dropping into the body, the voicing feels like it has the lungs behind it somehow, or the organs behind it, and the diaphragm behind it. Taking time actually, there is something about taking time. Like the back feels as if it somehow makes a connection, creates a sense of continuity with thinking. It’s not always so much about pushing or leaning into what is coming next. Disrupting the usual mode of understanding, our orientation to our own bodies and to each other. Orientate to listening and seeing. There is a kind of void here as well. Working between memories and imagination, projecting and bringing the previous into what is happening now. There is also a sense I am just talking into a kind of void ,a thinking-aloud. This way of back to back creates a thinking, a kind of thinking space. I like this idea of sitting back into thoughts or leaning back into thinking, listening to one’s own thinking, that emerges through voicing. This thinking listening voicing. Asymmetry feeds back into the body – stimulates to understand. It keeps working the mind’s interest, it intrigues. Maybe it triggers some self-generation, the moving that self-generates the body or reminds the body it is a body or something like that. The muscles that sort of resist or won’t soften or won’t allow. I can feel this with the moving and twisting. There is a mechanics to this skeleton. It is built in a way that can turn. It feels like I am making this up because of the words. There is the mechanical and there is the manifestation. There is a call for rotation, the way that the skeletal system was activated but also very much around the organs. It is this turning of the body and even the way that the weight feels more compressed as you move from one side, the sense of the body pressuring on one lung or the sense of the digestive organs being moved in some kind of way. This sense of 360 awareness. I was picking up the idea of axis and twist and turn, about the transition from up and down. So I was kind of working with this moving up and down a number of times – noticing many things within that, how complex it is, all these things of bending and curving and dropping and lifting, turning, these shifts of weight. Slowing the process down. Spaces. Something about the being and doing, somehow being in the experience. Lightness around the ribs and the top surfaces and softening all these exposed areas - the mouth, the skin, the eyes. The sense of flatness, a sensation of flatness that is coming from the contact with the floor. Sometimes standing with my back to the wall felt that it was protective, almost defensive. Whereas walking around with my attention in the back felt vulnerable, exposed. So, there is something to do with protection and exposure. Working with the forces of gravity and the possibility of rotating the spine, bending the spine, leading or letting another thing lead. I was thinking a lot about the experience of the back expanding the range of awareness to a much more, not so much three-dimensionality, but more like 360 degrees. All this unknown terrain that is just there. Shifting to a kind of voicing like speaking to oneself.  A kind of seaweed creature. This mode of dorsal listening. Light just falling in. Rolling from side to side, a sense of active passivity. So, it is not the body and it’s not the floor it is the plane of contact between the body and the floor.

PART 5

12.07.2021

FOCUS/PRACTICE: Fields of Association

Fields of Association (30 mins)

- Tuning into the transcript, marking phrases and words that strike you or that resonate

- Each selects a cluster of single words to explore through conversation and etymological exploration, live within the conversation), as a field of association.

(1) 3 mins (e.g. KBs choice of words)

(2)  8 mins (e.g. ECs choice of words)

(3) 3 mins (e.g. KBs choice of words)

(4) 8 mins (e.g. ECs choice of words)

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1.

Understand. To comprehend. To grasp the idea of. To receive from a word or words or from a sign, the idea it is intended to convey. But also, literally, this sense of standing in the midst of. From under and standan to stand. The literal sense of understanding is a standing in the midst of. Under not in the usual word meaning beneath but from the old English under from the PIE *nter meaning between or among. Closer to inter. More like inter-stand, standing between. This is nice. Inter meaning between among and during, among between betwist in the middle of. Intestines. That’s interesting. Among. Between. The Greek entera / plural meaning intestines. So, this sense of understanding from the midst of and understanding from inter from in between. Literally I stand upon. Compound means put together. So, on the one hand this grasping and taking is in comprehend and on the other hand this inter-stand, this understanding from in the midst. Comprehend is more to understand, to take into the mind, grasp by understanding. So maybe there is something of this understanding that’s not linked to comprehension, to grasping and taking and seizing but one that’s from in the midst, an inter-standing.

2.

Proprioceptive. But proprioceptor comes up as a noun. A sensory structure which receives stimuli arising within the tissues. From Latin proprius, own. See proper and reception. The act or fact of getting or receiving something. Also, in the manner of a receptor. Also coming from recepere to hold or contain. More in a formal ceremonial manner. I’ll just go back to proprioceptor. Proprio. That’s as far as I can get with this. I’ve put voice in. Voice. To be commonly said, from voice, from 1600s, to express or give utterance to, also can be in relation to a feeling or an opinion - or to utter, a letter-sound with the vocal chords. Voicing. to voice. Voice as in the noun. Sound made by the human mouth. Voice, speech, rumour, report. Voice, sound, utterance, cry, call, speech, sentence, language, word. Also, the source of Italian voce, Spanish voz, related to vocare, to call.

3.

I was also interested in proprioception. Proprioceptor. This noun. From the Latin proprius. That’s interesting - own. See proper. This relationship to proper and properness. The idea of proper-reception, I thought interesting. Adapted to, purpose, act, or fit. Also own from the French propre, particular to one’s own, or particular to itself, from the individual, one’s own as individual. So, I suppose there is something about this kind of private or personal or particular reception. A reception that is belonging or pertaining to oneself, that’s individual, intrinsic. Pertaining to a person or thing in particular, special, distinctive, characteristic. So proper, actually I’ve not known this aspect of properness which is less to do with correctness or rules and acceptability but is something that’s to do with fit for purpose and in particular one’s, of the individual, a reception of one’s own. And linked to that, to per. Indian-European root meaning forwards. Infront of. Before. I was also interested in manifestation. This sense of the privacy of proprioception, the private of one’s ownness. With manifestation it is the action of disclosing what is secret, obscure, or unseen. I got this sense of that, disclosure from the Latin manifestare, to discover, to disclose and also to betray. That’s interesting. This betrayal of what is secret, obscure, unseen. An object, action, or presence by which something is made manifest. The spiritualism, sense of phenomena by which the presence of a spirit or ghost is supposed to be rendered perceptible. Comes from the middle 1800s. Actually, if you scroll down on the same page, there is epiphany. To manifest, to display, to come suddenly into view. From epi - onto, and phainein - to show. And also, the sense of embodiment, an investment in or manifestation through a physical body, bringing into or presentation in and through a form. So, manifestation and embody have a connection. Embody, reference to a soul or spirit, meaning to invest with an animate form. But also to express, arrange or exemplify intelligently or perceptibly. From em – in and body. Going back. Manifest, adjective. Clearly revealed to the eye or the understanding, open to view or comprehension, so it’s evident, palpable, to make plainly apprehensible, clear, apparent, evident. To probe by direct evidence, also caught in the act. This is interesting. Caught in the act comes from manus hand and festus which is related to in-fest or infest. Infest. Infestare. To attack or disturb or trouble. In as in the opposite of festus. Infest meaning able to be seized. Infest meaning seizable. So maybe manifest is seizable by the hand. Caught in the hand. Grabbing grasping. To show plainly to discover to disclose, to betray. To reveal as in operation. So, there’s something about this sense of making clear to eye or to hand. So maybe there is something about understanding and manifestation. Manifesting which is … cognitive form, man. It’s a proto-indian root meaning hand. Manus. To give into one’s hand. In command. Also, in emancipate which is interesting, to set free from control. To take someone out of paternal authority. To declare someone free. So, it comes from ownership. So something about ownership in manifest and interesting also in proprioception.

4.

Pattern. Noun. Maybe it’s a verb? Pattern the noun is coming from a modern variant of patron. Pattern retaining Its other old sense of outline, plan, model, an original proposed for imitation, from Old French patron - patron, protector; model, pattern. The difference in form and sense between English patron and pattern wasn't firm before 1700s. The meaning "a design or figure corresponding in outline to an object that is to be fabricated and serving as a guide for its shape and dimensions. Extended sense of "repeated decorative design" a part showing the figure or quality of the whole." Meaning "model or design in dressmaking" recorded by 1792 Pattern-book, pattern-maker ; pattern baldness . I have a different sense of pattern, not so much as a thing, but something that is in the body. Let me see. Pattern. To make something after a pattern, to pattern after. Hmm. Sampling. Hmmm. Maybe I’ll put this word projecting in that comes up a lot. Project. Projecting parts. To project. To thrust forward. Plan or scheme. Stretch out, throw forth, hold in front, fling away, drive out. So from pro- forward, from PIE root *per- forward and the combining form of iacere, past participle iactus- to throw, from PIE root *ye- to throw, impel. And there is a notion to cast forward in the mind. To move ahead perhaps with thinking. To cast forward – in the mind. So it can be physically. Or as a notion, or in thinking. Also, project means to stick out, protrude beyond the adjacent parts, extend beyond something - in an architectural sense. I’m just thinking maybe also something that’s even in the thinking, if it protrudes or extends beyond, it has run ahead, or is ahead of the main structure or the main thing that is happening perhaps. Also, to cast an image on the screen. Psychoanalytical sense, attribute to another unconsciously. So to project. To throw the mind – ah this is nice, probable figurative use meaning to throw the mind into the objective world. Meaning convey to others through one’s manner. To throw the mind into the objective world. Projected plans. To put forth as. Projectile caused by impulse, impelling, throwing, capable of being thrust forward. Projector as one who forms a project or projects. Hmm. Or the sense of a camera with a light source for throwing an image on a screen. I quite like this idea of a thinking screen and a projecting in the mind. An idea of light source. Maybe light source as an idea. Ye proto-indian root. Ye to impel. Also forms part of abject, abjection, adjective, adjacent, aphetic … lots of things … conjecture, ease, interject, subject, trajectory. So there’s a sense of moving. Jet. Also jetty, pier, joist, jut. This root linked up with project, reject, rejection, subject, so it’s the ject. The per meaning forwards afford approach approve appropriate perfect proper reciprocal. Reciprocal. Existing on both sides. I am just thinking of us on both sides now of the screen. Returning the same way. Alternating. Also this from resus from back see re. So re back and pro forward. That’s nice. Reciprocal. Given, felt, shown in return. Reciprocal, a sense of moving backward and forward, having an alternating back and forth motion. It says here this sense is obsolete but in a way it still makes sense, an alternating back and forth motion, that which is reciprocal to another. So. there’s this per and the re.