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PART 1

EXPLORATION PERIOD: MAY 2023 - 27 JULY 2023

Focusing on micro-turns, microturning, re-turning

PART 2

EXPLORATION DATE: 27.07.2023

FOCUS/PRACTICE: Conversation-as-Material (I) as a shared practice. The focus of this conversation practice was the preceding period of exploration (MAY 2023 - 27 July 2023).

STRUCTURE OF PRACTICE

Speaker is not visible (masks camera with tape), listener has back turned, active listening.

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

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

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

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

4. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [5 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.

transcript from 27.07.2023

I have been, the microturning I have been turning around for quite a while because it feels that we have had the intention to look at microturning for a while. So it is quite nice that it has had lots of spaciousness to come and go. But this morning I was thinking about this microturn and the relationship between this very slight, the micro even before, how small that needs to be. And how that can change so much. So there is the physical thing of the turning but I was thinking also for me this last week it has resonated in a psychological way or an emotional way in being involved in collaborative work. Being involved in big shifts as well in moving house again. And this collaboration that has certain expectations and how a small shift, a turning, like a turning of the mind or even this ability to turn creates a very different way of seeing things, and then opens a huge possibility for change and new entry points. And there is something that, there is a particular thing about the micro. It is only a very tiny, only needs to be a tiny shift or a tiny turn to instigate a new possibility of looking and seeing the situation. And that felt very resonant for me this week in being able to not get stuck in an expectation and feeling the frustration and the confusion, and kind of powerlessness in something that I couldn’t quite understand because it wasn’t quite working how I thought it might or I didn’t quite have enough space to manoeuvre or be able to contribute. And then somehow being able to shift or understand the limits and the parameters of the situation, and accept those. That little shift suddenly opened up this whole area of possibility. And I was thinking about that relationship between the body and the mind, the same thing – when I am stuck my shoulders also get stuck or my back gets stuck. Yes, that relationship with the turning of the spine and the turning of the body, also the turning of the mind and the emotions, and maybe even a softening of the idea, or the muscle. Yes, and I have this image of something that, I don’t know – somehow the body being held up but somehow the turn needs to keep happening. Otherwise we are some kind of rigid bulk trying to move forwards – and it pulls me back to David Wills and that shifting from the left to the right. And that it is always out of balance and things are unstable, so the microturn reminds me, reminds us of not being stable and how important that is, how vital it is. It creates a sense of vitality and possibility in the body, and vitality in ideas forming. Yes I can feel, I feel excited somehow by this idea of the micro and the microturn, and turning in general, but the micro particularly. Yes I found it very moving listening to what you were saying because so much of it really resonated with how I have been thinking and feeling, not just the provocation of microturning, but generally at the moment. And the sense of how the microturn, of the capacity for microturning or for all these micromovements, yes, is the place where, yes, the place where aliveness happens, and just that sense in my own experience of having this rigidity – how did you call it, this rigid bulk, and this sense of stuckness. And yes, I guess one of the things that I have been thinking about is this relationship between physical movement and attitude, or even awareness and attitude and physical movement and how they are so bound together in a way. Yes, maybe this sense of acceleration and busyness and grasping, and this feeling of grasping in my experience, almost like trying to get through. Yes, maybe this is the feeling that I have at the moment – a ‘trying to just get through it’ momentum. And how immovable that is as a momentum, it is so forceful. I think my sense of embodiment in that ‘get through-ness’ is highly frontal and there is very little micromovement or microturning within it. It is like the physical bulk of experience trying to pressure through time in a way, to just get through it. And when I have been thinking about, or bringing to mind, this sense of micromovement, I think some of what has been there is this quality of flexibility, like a positive flexibility. And somehow there is that also with the body in a way. And where I have been noticing it this last month or two, is in the upper body which feels quite unusual because often when I focus on the turn, and the act of walking, a lot of my energy is in the lower body and around the hips. But there is something about the shoulder girdle and the ribs – this capacity for the upper body to have this kind of lightness. I am not sure where I am going with this – maybe I am also bringing the David Wills reference to mind. I remember you talking about this act of movement, of walking, and something about the shoulder going backwards, this taking of the body backwards. And when I am walking, every so often, I am just trying to notice that very small movement of, yes, like a give in a way, like a softness in the shoulder, softness in the ribs. Just feeling that, and I guess this relationship between physical flexibility – no, not even flexibility because that perhaps feels too forceful, but the capacity for feeling this micromovements and allowing these micromovements in the body and how that translates into an attitude of doing or of being. It just seems so strong – they seem so reciprocal. And if I can loosen my attitude my body loosens, and if I loosen my body my attitude loosens. And it feels like a real ‘chicken and egg’ scenario. It is not that the one comes first and the other follows – they both really shape one another. Well yes, they are not separate, I am talking about mind and body in a way and how continuous that experience is. Maybe the micro is interesting because sometimes something can look like something but actually not be it at all. The microturn and the place of the micro is the place where it is actually happening. It is not what it looks like but it is actually where resistant is happening but also yes, resistance and tension and also loosenings at this level of the micro. I was struck by you talking about if you think of the turn you often go to the hips or the pelvic girdle. It is interesting, I think I come more directly to the upper spine. And I think that this is to do with swimming. So my first association when I think about turning or microturning is actually swimming, and then I try to move away from swimming to other ways of microturning. It made me think of the dorsal and this week working in the studio – something about the back of the neck. It is also since I have had my hair cut – I really love the neck being free. The image of the little hairs at the back of the neck and feeling the breeze on the back of the neck. And the neck is so fragile in the way that it can really, really microturn and micro bend and fold. So I can really feel the micro in the body just by turning and softening the neck it travels all the way through the spine and releases, helps me release the shoulders and drop the breath and soften the chest. Perhaps because it is the back of the neck it really brings me to this dorsal space and this sense of behindness. And even as I am speaking now I am doing these small movements of the whole body and the arms are kind of turning. It is almost an expanding spaciousness that brings us back to the thing where we were talking about aroundness, so behindness also being around. And this tiny small micro movement of the neck – what is it called, the occipital bone there. There is something very fragile, tender, intimate around the back of the neck. I was working in Amsterdam and we did this – slip a hand around the back of the neck. Feeling a hand on the back of the neck or someone’s neck – especially if there is a possibility to converse with that small light touch. There is something very intimate – it is also a micro gesture but it is perhaps a place we don’t touch, or maybe we are touching it all the time, I am not sure. Yes, for me, it keeps coming back these last few months – the neck, it creates … I am not sure what it is. It is very tender and intimate and really softens, softens my body but also softens … you called it attitude, or my demeanor. Softens my eyes. Yes, just softens somehow the way I feel – that I am sitting or standing or in the world somehow. There is a kind of softening into the environment. I haven’t quite got the words for it, but it is something about the back of the neck that I want to explore, that has a lot to do with the micro turn. I think it is with the skeletal sophistication at that point as well, but also the skin and the hairs on the back of the neck and these tiny turns. Yes, this was very beautiful, this reflection on the neck. Yes, I was talking before about this kind of pressure, and at times there is this feeling of pressure also with the exercises, that I feel them somehow to be something different from what they can be in a way. Maybe there is something about how I might bring a microturning attitude to microturning somehow. And I think that sometimes my preconception is that it is like turning the whole body and looking right at it you know, in a full on microturn focus. And listening again is good reminder that it is present in a much more subtle sense within the enquiry that I am not always giving credit for. Actually one of the things I have been thinking is wanting to come back to making notes, which I haven’t been doing very much. And how note-making has as returning or microturning dimension to it – this facing towards or turning towards or turning of attention through the act of noting. There is something about this turning of attention if only very gently, or very slight that I want to explore a little more. So rather than this full frontal looking on, something about keeping in the mind’s eye. Keeping in the mind’s eye as having a quality of the microturn, a very gentle, soft, continual bringing to mind, and what might support that. But yes, as you were talking I was thinking about, I am doing practice at the moment which is about trying to release tension and one of the things is just trying to release the tension of the head. And lying on the floor, and even just rotating the head on its axis, very gently, very small manoeuvres, just to try to really let go the weight of the head, and let the head be supported. To really give the weight of the head to the floor in a way and how hard that is for me. It is almost like I cannot let go, or there are so many levels of holding that are there. So as you were talking I was thinking about the sensation of the back of the head in contact with the floor and just how heavy the head is really and what a lot of effort is needed to hold it. And all of the ways in which that holding of the head has repercussions through the body. But of course the head doesn’t need to be held – that is the thing, it is self-supporting. Yes, maybe there is something in this dorsal dimension that is letting, falling into the sense of self-supporting that is within the body. Or letting the body be in its self-supporting nature, rather than feeling that there is this extra held-ness or support or force that is somehow required. Just trusting that the body has this self-supporting dimension. Or even, not trusting … in allowing the body to be self-supporting in that way is where the real fluidity or movement comes.. I was also thinking as you were talking, it brought to mind the experience of cranio-sacral work that I have done a little bit of. I have had some therapy with this, but it was bringing to mind the experience of a workshop within ImPulsTanz a few years ago, and just that sense … not so much of the neck, but holding someone’s head in the hand and allowing the weight of the head to drop into the hand. Or the same, doing it with someone, allowing one’s own weight of the head to drop into someone’s hand. And how that perhaps feels similar to or different from letting the weight drop into the floor. But something also about this very profound sense of ease actually. Like I think with cranio-sacral therapy – there is something about how many of us might have been held as babies and that complete vulnerability, yes, being totally supported. And soft, there is softness there. Hearing you speak of holding someone’s head in the hands, or my head being held, I have a really wistful feeling. I realise I have not done that for a long time and oh that’s what I am going to do with my students. There is a big sense of ah yes I need to return to that, because I haven’t done that, or experienced that for a long time and it is such, always such a surprising and incredible experience. And then you do feel the weight of the head, that the head is a heavy thing. It is incredible really because as I was hearing you say that and then putting that together with the sensation of how I was feeling in the neck – that is quite remarkable. I don’t feel the weight of the head when I am sensing that tender micromovement of the neck – which is interesting. It makes me think … and then you were saying about the self-supporting capacity of the body. It is strange that what I can feel in a certain situation – like having someone’s head in my hands and feeling the physical, literal weight and feeling the sensation of moving through the space and not feeling the weight of my own head at all. So there is something about the self-supporting capacity of the body even though there are aches and pains and flaws and things that are not quite perfect. It is incredible, it is remarkable that system of how we can hold ourselves up, and feel light in fact. And maybe a sense of the physical physics of the body – and the weight of the body, the weight of the bones, the weight and then a sensation of lightness. That is actually quite interesting how in certain ways of being warm, that the body is able to connect within itself and move in a way that feels light, or as you say, there is a sense of ease. I suppose thinking about the spine again and the microturn, there is a relationship between something that can feel very simple, and then perhaps a small turn of the neck or the small turn of the shoulder moving back, sets up quite a complex system of turning. Different parts of the spine perhaps turning in the same way as that initial turn, and other parts turning the other way. There is a lot of turning with and turning contra. Or different angles of turn. There is something about that complexity - as an image almost. The image of these different kinds and scales and degrees of turning that happen throughout, throughout the spine. Some of the vertebrae being more rigid, some more flexible. I know I have this place between the shoulder blades that I find really hard somehow to … it always feels quite stuck and I can feel it when I am swimming. And yes, this area of the back - how to get to it, I cannot touch it. So can I come to it from another way, from inside out. I find it quite a hard place to reach or to touch. It is almost like having to find different strategies, different ways in, in order to reach that. In fact, you talking about the cranio-sacral – I have also had that a few times as a treatment. And, for me that would be a way of describing it – these very micro handlings and micro touchings, which I find for myself it works, it has a huge, deep impact. It kind of takes me a whole day to recover, it seems to go straight into my core, right through all the muscles, straight through the skeletal and the nervous system. Oh, I have lost my thread. Oh yes, so yes, coming at it from that way for example would help me to touch or reach or help something move through that stuck area between my shoulder blades. The attention has to come somewhere else – which I guess is also a kind of turn. A little bit what you were saying – not to come at it straight on, that is the problem. That I have to go there and sort it out, that I have to go there straight away and sort it. How to come to, certainly for that, for what I see as a problem or a stuckness that I want to address. Yes, to come, to be reminded to turn away and to come to it at a different angle, and a different place. To actually take my attention away from something is also a kind of turn, a turning away from something. So, I am thinking this idea of turning to and turning away – they go together but maybe there is an initial attention, where to turn away means you turn towards something that reveals itself or appears in the turning, because you have turned away. Or this idea – ah, I am getting a bit confused. I have been thinking I am turning towards something but maybe it is more turning away, to find these different entry points. And even today, where I started to talk about that situation I had with the collaboration, I think I was turning away in order to find a new way in. So taking, or withdrawing attention from something. Withdrawing attention, turning away – it is almost like dropping the eyes, or releasing the focus from it. I suppose, I am getting into this strange space now, blurring the vision, trying not to focus so hard to see it clearly. To blur, to soften the focus on something, does bring this more peripheral sideways looking – so it is not even necessarily an active turn away, more of a softening. I find it interesting looking at the turn in ways which are not even physically necessarily a turn – which could be a withdrawing, or a softening, or a slight retreat or a moving away from. As soon as you move away, you turn. I have a feeling I am stuck in a kind of turning around, that things are circling here. I feel like a sense of sadness or sense of regret that over the last months I have not had the enquiry so central in my awareness somehow. That it feels as if it is on the edges. Yet I wonder how true this is – I think that there is some truth in it but actually it reveals again this attitude, this preconception about what it means to engage with something. Yes, again, that sense of mentally turning fully towards something, or fully committing or all of this fullness of experience. Yet I like this sense of what is coming up about the necessity of some kind of turning away or easing off in a way. This easing off, or I imagine it like my shoulder moving in and out, actually it is the movement of walking, the movement of walking, where there is a turning in and a turning away and a turning in and a turning away. And this rhythm which is also like the sea now I am thinking about it – this ebb and flow of attention: bringing of attention and then softening in some kind of way. Very delicate actually - finding this sweet spot between enough turning in and turning away, where is the sweet spot it not being a turning away into complete withdrawal but it not being forceful in the turning towards. Maybe that might be an interesting space for me for investigation of this microturning or micromovement – this sweet spot of creative attention in some ways. And I was thinking this around the self-supporting body – also something about self-supporting thought in a way and how there is a quality of creative thinking that feels self-supporting, that I wouldn’t say happens by itself, but in the right conditions there is an openness or spaciousness of thinking which very much has the quality of the dorsal. And again it is striking this balance between somehow turning towards and leaving space. And yes maybe recognising a pattern of over-forcefulness in my own … Like the weight of thought has to be held like the weight of my head in a way. Or like reading and referencing and thinking can have a heaviness that feels as if it needs to be held, and what might it be like to just let go of that and trust that this is a self-supporting system – that creative thinking does not need to be held like that. It self-supports in the same way that the head and the body self-supports. Just trusting – maybe there is also something about trust in that, to really give over wholeheartedly to that, to this possibility. So yes, something about this relationship between the body and thinking in some kind of way, the microturn of the body and the microturn of thought. And I think that the other microturn maybe that has also been in my mind has been to do with breathing, and to bringing attention to the turning of the breath and noticing that. Yes, and then as I am saying then there is also something about oh yes in the microturn of the breath there is also this stillness in some kind of way. They start showing up as little micro investigations. But I kind of … I wouldn’t say that they are things that I have been investigating – they sort of show up as possibilities now in the act of talking somehow. This is interesting – what is it that I need, might need, in order to become alert to the possibilities of investigation. Yes, what is it? What is it that creates the conditions for a subtle kind of investigation and maybe this kind of verbal bringing of awareness, through a certain kind of thinking, it is like ah. Rather than reflecting on what I have been doing, I sort of need this to see the possibilities of what could be in a way. So all of these micro enquiries showing up and thinking about the parallels between them – this turning of the breath, and this turning of the axis of the neck, and the turning of thought. Yes, this very delicate threshold between turning towards and turning away, or breathing in and breathing out. And, what is made possible at that very delicate hinge between the one and the other, and how to really stay with it and be alert to what is happening there. And how much I miss it – maybe it is something that is missed over and over and over again. But maybe I am also thinking about frameworks and forms of enquiry. It is very interesting to hear you talking about you know working with colleagues or working in a workshop situation. I think that this sense of training is also in my mind a little bit – also in some of Buddhist contexts, we were talking about training last night. And about daily practice and how for some of us (myself in particular) making a commitment to these micro practices is quite challenging in a way. Yes, making a commitment to daily practice, to these moment by moment turnings towards something in one’s awareness or one’s experience can slip by the wayside sometimes. So what does training look like, or what kinds of frameworks or forms or structures might be needed for a sustained kind of attention, or even sustained perhaps has all of those associations of frontality – like full on attention. So what kinds, how to set up the conditions. What kinds of ingredients are needed as the conditions – this is something I am keen to think about more. Also in moving forward with things – what do I need to put in place. It is like what do I need to put in place not to have to focus, yes, what do I need to put in place so that things can have this delicacy of attention. At the moment, it feels like without this, the attention feels too forceful, has to be much more directed. Maybe there is also something here about trying to integrate something more into life practices, so that they become more part of the fabric of living rather than something that is done in a more intentional kind of way. Yes, maybe there is something about habits and rhythms, rhythms of awareness. This is kind of funny – at the end you made me laugh and I remembered that you made me laugh at the beginning. But I cannot remember what that was – I cannot remember whether it was at the beginning of this 10 minutes or at the beginning of the 5. It is strange – I just remember you making me laugh. I love this phrase – micro enquiry, micro enquiries … and what else did you say – delicate attention, bringing delicate attention to something really resonates. I think sometimes the last couple of years my attention keeps coming back to something – but I cannot quite put my finger on it, it is very light or slight or very loose. Maybe there are two or three things that keep circulating around me. It made me think – this idea of delicate attention. And also a sense of when I have had this unpaid leave in the Autumn – I couldn’t make anything. I just had to keep allowing things to come back and go and circulate and reconnect. And it was very exciting but I couldn’t push it into any form or grab it or hold it down which was to begin with was very frustrating and I was feeling very inadequate. But then it became very … or maybe that was a slight turning, of oh I actually don’t need to make anything, and it opened up a kind of spaciousness … but again there isn’t anything there. So this is interesting – there is something about there is nothing there, these things appear and they disappear and my attention has gone to it and I am picking things up like little threads. Yes, it feels like this daily practice is not something that is concrete and can be held. Of course, I do have notes and I do have drawings – that kind of anchor it down, but mostly, and especially working with the body and not wanting to document with video or anything, it feels like a sort of, almost like spider threads, yes threads which are very much there but are tenuous and fragile and waving around a little bit in the wind and maybe catching up with another thread or onto the wall. It feels a bit like that. The delicacy of attention in that practice which is very exciting in a way even if it is … or maybe it is touching on something, I have begun to think more about trusting that process of things not really taking form until a situation arrives and they then can take form, because there is something about how they can take form within a situation, or take form within a conversation, or take form within an opportunity. I find it quite an interesting way of working – rather than thinking, ah, now I am going to make this piece. I am also rambling now but there is something there in the delicacy of practice I find fascinating and learning to value this more, or learning to give myself more permission for that. Because it feels, it does actually feel more connected with life – I am not trying to separate what is being made and created from daily living or the state of the world. It feels as if it is a long, a long enquiry. Yes, I think that sense of … in some ways I am thinking about what it is to practise, and practices as microturns, and this act of enquiry as practice, and what it means to just make a commitment to practise. And in a way, what happens through that takes care of itself. And then I am sort of, I am sort of aware of the strong pressures, maybe these are pressures I am feeling in the work context, in terms of turning something into something. What is this act of turning something into something, of turning practice into outcomes. Maybe there is something about this kind of turning and whether there is a way of staying in fidelity to, what might it mean to stay in fidelity to the practice in the way that you were describing and how the form comes rather than is turned. Like turning something into could be quite violent in a way. Maybe there is something about this microturning – I cannot quite hold onto the threads, what do I want to think. Something about what/who is doing the turning and what/who is being turned. Actually, it is all a bit mushy. Something about these microturns, I also think of them in terms of transformations, like micro-transformations. What am I trying to say? We have had a reading group around “exposition” these last days - this idea of exposing, of exposing practice as research and how to avoid representation. Oh yes, representation – re-presentation, re-presenting. There is a forceful turn in that, it is turning experience into something that is presentable in a re-presentational form. And what might it be to explore forms of, forms that do not have this re-presentational quality to them, so to keep things live. I am going on a tangent. Something about this act of returning in the research process, and coming back to materials. And what does that do, and how is that? I was listening to some of the readings before we came online and I had my eyes closed. I was listening to the reading practices from the last couple of returning conversations – and they are just really beautiful actually. It is interesting – I don’t listen again so often. So something about returning but not wanting anything from that. Like sometimes the return, or turning into, is done with a particular agenda in mind. And that act of returning, listening again in particular, listening again not to do something or for something, but just to listen again. And be transformed by that,  wanting nothing more than the possibilities that open up through something. Again, something about softening away from agenda or an ulterior motive. Just to listen again and soften to that experience, be open to that experience. Yes, something about not wanting something from something, or doing something for something feels important there. There is quite a lot there. It is interesting how towards the end, towards an hour, things start to accumulate, they start to mix as well. Things that I picked up from the first time you were talking or I was talking and what you have just said get mixed up. It is interesting what you were saying about this sense of transforming or changing and you listening to the readings. It reminds me of the affective sense of listening. So I am listening to your talking about listening, I am listening to you speaking about the experience of listening. It made me think, yes, listening has a particular effect on the body and how sound and voices. We have talked about this before – this voice, this speaking aloud. Within this situation but also within the reading practice where it has this improvisation in the sense that it isn’t linear. And how this enters the body or folds back into the body because actually it has also come out of conversation, has come out of the body. It reminds me – I had to do a small audio work. I had no time, I just grabbed something – this idea of swimming and learning to drum, and how that patterning, that neural patterning was changing me. Which is also a practice – whether a swimming practice, or a speaking practice, or a drumming practice. This sense of practice transforming the body or transforming the patterning of emotions psychologically. You sometimes say it like the habits. And the other thing I wanted to say before, because I have had to move house and I have had very few things around me, I think I have been able to, I have had to, but I have been able to turn a little more here and there interestingly enough. And moving back in, I can feel the weight of all those books, and all those clothes, and all that stuff. And if I settle back in … there is something about being unsettled that kept me closer to practice somehow. It has felt that I have had a year of practice in many forms somehow. There is something about this hinge, this is what you said, between being settled and unsettled that creates a slight uncertainty I suppose. And the capacity, the capacity not only of the body but also of the emotions. I am usually default panic but actually I feel very much, I have really discovered different layers, different layers. Yes, some of what you are talking about overlaps as I said with a process of training in a Buddhist context. In that tradition, traditionally you have monastics and laypersons, householders. And the monastic life is traditionally much more conducive to practice – in a way it is stripping out all of the noise of householder life in a sense, all that accumulation of things, so that it becomes very pure. Just about completely practising without all those distractions of life. It reminded me, these last weeks when I went to Berlin I was working with Nicole (Wendel), and being there for a few days and not committing to anything other than what we were doing – so being in the studio and then transcribing some conversations. And how that feels, how that is to be fully, to not have all those distractions. Kind of like an equivalent of a monastic life in a spiritual sense – in that it is stripped away of all of the sort of everydayness and is very focused in a way. But then at the same time, there is something about it is separate from life, or it is separate from a certain kind of life. And maybe I am interested in this middle ground between the conditions of residency and retreat, and being in all the mess of life. Maybe I am thinking about that in terms of our own project – on the one hand I really long for a deep dive that might be possible through residency and on the other hand, I think what I am ultimately interested in is how through these microturns those lessons get applied to everyday life in a way. So something about these two different ways of practising – like the kind of the separated space of the studio and life itself, and maybe something about the turning of these two kinds of domains in a way. What do I want to say – my concentration has lapsed. Maybe I am also trying to find the joy, the joy, or the inspiration in returning and I think why do I not listen to the recordings. They are so beautiful and they are so inspiring and yet it is very rare that I listen to them. Why do I not just lie on the floor and listen to one? Like other ways in which our practice might reinfuse my experience. Oh yes, like lying down, lying down and even making these micromovements and at the same time listening to these readings. I think in my own experience that would be really potent. Yes, this is something to try. And to do it not because there is something coming up. Maybe that is my tendency, there is something coming up that I have to do something for, rather than doing something on its own terms in a way. Yes, I am curious how that kind of voicing might … yes, maybe it is going back to the experience that some of our audiences (for want of a better work) have talked about when they have listened – what happens through that as a kind of transformation. Rather than being the speaker, what does it mean to listen again to that material, and be moved by that material? This coming year I am doing some training in Yoga Nidra, and there is a voice dimension to it, and how voice can also transform. There is something there – maybe it is going back to the sounding and the voicing and this coming back through reading and through speaking. 

And how a small shift, a turning, like a turning of the mind or even this ability to turn creates a very different way of seeing things, and then opens a huge possibility for change and new entry points. And there is something that, there is a particular thing about the micro. It is only a very tiny, only needs to be a tiny shift or a tiny turn to instigate a new possibility of looking and seeing the situation. And that felt very resonant for me this week in being able to not get stuck in an expectation and feeling the frustration and the confusion, and kind of powerlessness in something that I couldn’t quite understand because it wasn’t quite working how I thought it might or I didn’t quite have enough space to manoeuvre or be able to contribute. And then somehow being able to shift or understand the limits and the parameters of the situation, and accept those. That little shift suddenly opened up this whole area of possibility. And I was thinking about that relationship between the body and the mind, the same thing – when I am stuck my shoulders also get stuck or my back gets stuck. Yes, that relationship with the turning of the spine and the turning of the body, also the turning of the mind and the emotions, and maybe even a softening of the idea, or the muscle. It is always out of balance and things are unstable, so the microturn reminds me, reminds us of not being stable and how important that is, how vital it is. It creates a sense of vitality and possibility in the body, and vitality in ideas forming. Yes I can feel, I feel excited somehow by this idea of the micro and the microturn, and turning in general, but the micro particularly. Yes I found it very moving listening to what you were saying because so much of it really resonated with how I have been thinking and feeling, not just the provocation of microturning, but generally at the moment. And the sense of how the microturn, of the capacity for microturning or for all these micromovements, yes, is the place where, yes, the place where aliveness happens.  I have been thinking about is this relationship between physical movement and attitude, or even awareness and attitude and physical movement and how they are so bound together in a way. Yes, maybe this sense of acceleration and busyness and grasping, and this feeling of grasping in my experience, almost like trying to get through. Yes, maybe this is the feeling that I have at the moment – a ‘trying to just get through it’ momentum. And how immovable that is as a momentum, it is so forceful. I think my sense of embodiment in that ‘get through-ness’ is highly frontal and there is very little micromovement or microturning within it. It is like the physical bulk of experience trying to pressure through time in a way, to just get through it. And when I have been thinking about, or bringing to mind, this sense of micromovement, I think some of what has been there is this quality of flexibility, like a positive flexibility. And somehow there is that also with the body in a way. And when I am walking, every so often, I am just trying to notice that very small movement of, yes, like a give in a way, like a softness in the shoulder, softness in the ribs. Just feeling that, and I guess this relationship between physical flexibility – no, not even flexibility because that perhaps feels too forceful, but the capacity for feeling this micromovements and allowing these micromovements in the body and how that translates into an attitude of doing or of being. It just seems so strong – they seem so reciprocal. And if I can loosen my attitude my body loosens, and if I loosen my body my attitude loosens. It is not that the one comes first and the other follows – they both really shape one another. They are not separate, I am talking about mind and body in a way and how continuous that experience is. The microturn and the place of the micro is the place where it is actually happening. It is not what it looks like but it is actually where resistant is happening but also yes, resistance and tension and also loosenings at this level of the micro. It is interesting, I think I come more directly to the upper spine. And I think that this is to do with swimming. So my first association when I think about turning or microturning is actually swimming, and then I try to move away from swimming to other ways of microturning. It made me think of the dorsal and this week working in the studio – something about the back of the neck. I really love the neck being free. The image of the little hairs at the back of the neck and feeling the breeze on the back of the neck. And the neck is so fragile in the way that it can really, really microturn and micro bend and fold. So I can really feel the micro in the body just by turning and softening the neck it travels all the way through the spine and releases, helps me release the shoulders and drop the breath and soften the chest. Perhaps because it is the back of the neck it really brings me to this dorsal space and this sense of behindness. And even as I am speaking now I am doing these small movements of the whole body and the arms are kind of turning. It is almost an expanding spaciousness that brings us back to the thing where we were talking about aroundness, so behindness also being around. And this tiny small micro movement of the neck – what is it called, the occipital bone there. There is something very fragile, tender, intimate around the back of the neck. Slip a hand around the back of the neck. Feeling a hand on the back of the neck or someone’s neck – especially if there is a possibility to converse with that small light touch. There is something very intimate – it is also a micro gesture but it is perhaps a place we don’t touch, or maybe we are touching it all the time, I am not sure. Yes, for me, it keeps coming back these last few months – the neck, it creates … I am not sure what it is. It is very tender and intimate and really softens, softens my body but also softens … you called it attitude, or my demeanor. Softens my eyes. Yes, just softens somehow the way I feel – that I am sitting or standing or in the world somehow. There is a kind of softening into the environment. It is something about the back of the neck that I want to explore, that has a lot to do with the micro turn. I think it is with the skeletal sophistication at that point as well, but also the skin and the hairs on the back of the neck and these tiny turns. Yes, this was very beautiful, this reflection on the neck. Yes, I was talking before about this kind of pressure, and at times there is this feeling of pressure also with the exercises, that I feel them somehow to be something different from what they can be in a way. Maybe there is something about how I might bring a microturning attitude to microturning somehow. And I think that sometimes my preconception is that it is like turning the whole body and looking right at it you know, in a full on microturn focus. And listening again is good reminder that it is present in a much more subtle sense within the enquiry that I am not always giving credit for. Actually one of the things I have been thinking is wanting to come back to making notes, which I haven’t been doing very much. And how note-making has as returning or microturning dimension to it – this facing towards or turning towards or turning of attention through the act of noting. There is something about this turning of attention if only very gently, or very slight that I want to explore a little more. So rather than this full frontal looking on, something about keeping in the mind’s eye. Keeping in the mind’s eye as having a quality of the microturn, a very gentle, soft, continual bringing to mind, and what might support that. I am doing practice at the moment which is about trying to release tension and one of the things is just trying to release the tension of the head. And lying on the floor, and even just rotating the head on its axis, very gently, very small manoeuvres, just to try to really let go the weight of the head, and let the head be supported. To really give the weight of the head to the floor in a way and how hard that is for me. It is almost like I cannot let go, or there are so many levels of holding that are there. So as you were talking I was thinking about the sensation of the back of the head in contact with the floor and just how heavy the head is really and what a lot of effort is needed to hold it. And all of the ways in which that holding of the head has repercussions through the body. But of course the head doesn’t need to be held – that is the thing, it is self-supporting. Yes, maybe there is something in this dorsal dimension that is letting, falling into the sense of self-supporting that is within the body. Or letting the body be in its self-supporting nature, rather than feeling that there is this extra held-ness or support or force that is somehow required. Just trusting that the body has this self-supporting dimension. Or even, not trusting … in allowing the body to be self-supporting in that way is where the real fluidity or movement comes. Holding someone’s head in the hand and allowing the weight of the head to drop into the hand. Or the same, doing it with someone, allowing one’s own weight of the head to drop into someone’s hand. And how that perhaps feels similar to or different from letting the weight drop into the floor. But something also about this very profound sense of ease actually. Like I think with cranio-sacral therapy – there is something about how many of us might have been held as babies and that complete vulnerability, yes, being totally supported. And soft, there is softness there. Hearing you speak of holding someone’s head in the hands, or my head being held, I have a really wistful feeling. There is a big sense of ah yes I need to return to that, because I haven’t done that, or experienced that for a long time and it is such, always such a surprising and incredible experience. And then you do feel the weight of the head, that the head is a heavy thing. It is incredible really because as I was hearing you say that and then putting that together with the sensation of how I was feeling in the neck – that is quite remarkable. I don’t feel the weight of the head when I am sensing that tender micromovement of the neck – which is interesting. It makes me think … and then you were saying about the self-supporting capacity of the body. It is strange that what I can feel in a certain situation – like having someone’s head in my hands and feeling the physical, literal weight and feeling the sensation of moving through the space and not feeling the weight of my own head at all. So there is something about the self-supporting capacity of the body. It is incredible, it is remarkable that system of how we can hold ourselves up, and feel light in fact. And maybe a sense of the physical physics of the body – and the weight of the body, the weight of the bones, the weight and then a sensation of lightness. I suppose thinking about the spine again and the microturn, there is a relationship between something that can feel very simple, and then perhaps a small turn of the neck or the small turn of the shoulder moving back, sets up quite a complex system of turning. Different parts of the spine perhaps turning in the same way as that initial turn, and other parts turning the other way. There is a lot of turning with and turning contra. Or different angles of turn. There is something about that complexity - as an image almost. The image of these different kinds and scales and degrees of turning that happen throughout, throughout the spine. Some of the vertebrae being more rigid, some more flexible. I know I have this place between the shoulder blades that I find really hard somehow to … it always feels quite stuck and I can feel it when I am swimming. And yes, this area of the back - how to get to it, I cannot touch it. So can I come to it from another way, from inside out. I find it quite a hard place to reach or to touch. It is almost like having to find different strategies, different ways in, in order to reach that. In fact, you talking about the cranio-sacral – I have also had that a few times as a treatment. And, for me that would be a way of describing it – these very micro handlings and micro touchings, which I find for myself it works, it has a huge, deep impact. Coming at it from that way for example would help me to touch or reach or help something move through that stuck area between my shoulder blades. The attention has to come somewhere else – which I guess is also a kind of turn. Yes, to come, to be reminded to turn away and to come to it at a different angle, and a different place. To actually take my attention away from something is also a kind of turn, a turning away from something. So, I am thinking this idea of turning to and turning away – they go together but maybe there is an initial attention, where to turn away means you turn towards something that reveals itself or appears in the turning, because you have turned away. I am getting a bit confused. I have been thinking I am turning towards something but maybe it is more turning away, to find these different entry points. I was turning away in order to find a new way in. So taking, or withdrawing attention from something. Withdrawing attention, turning away – it is almost like dropping the eyes, or releasing the focus from it. To blur, to soften the focus on something, does bring this more peripheral sideways looking – so it is not even necessarily an active turn away, more of a softening. I find it interesting looking at the turn in ways which are not even physically necessarily a turn – which could be a withdrawing, or a softening, or a slight retreat or a moving away from. As soon as you move away, you turn. I have a feeling I am stuck in a kind of turning around, that things are circling here. I feel like a sense of sadness or sense of regret that over the last months I have not had the enquiry so central in my awareness somehow. That it feels as if it is on the edges. Yet I wonder how true this is – I think that there is some truth in it but actually it reveals again this attitude, this preconception about what it means to engage with something. Yes, again, that sense of mentally turning fully towards something, or fully committing or all of this fullness of experience. Yet I like this sense of what is coming up about the necessity of some kind of turning away or easing off in a way. This easing off, or I imagine it like my shoulder moving in and out, actually it is the movement of walking, the movement of walking, where there is a turning in and a turning away and a turning in and a turning away. And this rhythm which is also like the sea now I am thinking about it – this ebb and flow of attention: bringing of attention and then softening in some kind of way. Very delicate actually - finding this sweet spot between enough turning in and turning away, where is the sweet spot it not being a turning away into complete withdrawal but it not being forceful in the turning towards. Maybe that might be an interesting space for me for investigation of this microturning or micromovement – this sweet spot of creative attention in some ways. And I was thinking this around the self-supporting body – also something about self-supporting thought in a way and how there is a quality of creative thinking that feels self-supporting, that I wouldn’t say happens by itself, but in the right conditions there is an openness or spaciousness of thinking which very much has the quality of the dorsal. And again it is striking this balance between somehow turning towards and leaving space. Like reading and referencing and thinking can have a heaviness that feels as if it needs to be held, and what might it be like to just let go of that and trust that this is a self-supporting system – that creative thinking does not need to be held like that. It self-supports in the same way that the head and the body self-supports. Yes, something about this relationship between the body and thinking in some kind of way, the microturn of the body and the microturn of thought. And I think that the other microturn maybe that has also been in my mind has been to do with breathing, and to bringing attention to the turning of the breath and noticing that. Yes, and then as I am saying then there is also something about oh yes in the microturn of the breath there is also this stillness in some kind of way. They start showing up as little micro investigations. I wouldn’t say that they are things that I have been investigating – they sort of show up as possibilities now in the act of talking somehow. This is interesting – what is it that I need, might need, in order to become alert to the possibilities of investigation. Yes, what is it? What is it that creates the conditions for a subtle kind of investigation and maybe this kind of verbal bringing of awareness, through a certain kind of thinking, it is like ah. Rather than reflecting on what I have been doing, I sort of need this to see the possibilities of what could be in a way. So all of these micro enquiries showing up and thinking about the parallels between them – this turning of the breath, and this turning of the axis of the neck, and the turning of thought. Yes, this very delicate threshold between turning towards and turning away, or breathing in and breathing out. And, what is made possible at that very delicate hinge between the one and the other, and how to really stay with it and be alert to what is happening there. Making a commitment to daily practice, to these moment by moment turnings towards something in one’s awareness or one’s experience can slip by the wayside sometimes. So what does training look like, or what kinds of frameworks or forms or structures might be needed for a sustained kind of attention, or even sustained perhaps has all of those associations of frontality – like full on attention. So what kinds, how to set up the conditions. What kinds of ingredients are needed as the conditions – this is something I am keen to think about more. Also in moving forward with things – what do I need to put in place. It is like what do I need to put in place not to have to focus, yes, what do I need to put in place so that things can have this delicacy of attention. Maybe there is also something here about trying to integrate something more into life practices, so that they become more part of the fabric of living rather than something that is done in a more intentional kind of way. Yes, maybe there is something about habits and rhythms, rhythms of awareness. Delicate attention, bringing delicate attention to something really resonates. My attention keeps coming back to something – but I cannot quite put my finger on it, it is very light or slight or very loose. Maybe there are two or three things that keep circulating around me. I couldn’t make anything. I just had to keep allowing things to come back and go and circulate and reconnect. And it was very exciting but I couldn’t push it into any form or grab it or hold it down which was to begin with was very frustrating and I was feeling very inadequate. But then it became very … or maybe that was a slight turning, of oh I actually don’t need to make anything, and it opened up a kind of spaciousness … but again there isn’t anything there. So this is interesting – there is something about there is nothing there, these things appear and they disappear and my attention has gone to it and I am picking things up like little threads. Yes, it feels like this daily practice is not something that is concrete and can be held. Of course, I do have notes and I do have drawings – that kind of anchor it down, but mostly, and especially working with the body and not wanting to document with video or anything, it feels like a sort of, almost like spider threads, yes threads which are very much there but are tenuous and fragile and waving around a little bit in the wind and maybe catching up with another thread or onto the wall. It feels a bit like that. The delicacy of attention in that practice which is very exciting in a way even if it is … or maybe it is touching on something, I have begun to think more about trusting that process of things not really taking form until a situation arrives and they then can take form, because there is something about how they can take form within a situation, or take form within a conversation, or take form within an opportunity. I find it quite an interesting way of working – rather than thinking, ah, now I am going to make this piece. There is something there in the delicacy of practice I find fascinating and learning to value this more, or learning to give myself more permission for that. Because it feels, it does actually feel more connected with life. It feels as if it is a long, a long enquiry. Yes, I think that sense of … in some ways I am thinking about what it is to practise, and practices as microturns, and this act of enquiry as practice, and what it means to just make a commitment to practise. I am aware of the strong pressures, in terms of turning something into something. What is this act of turning something into something, of turning practice into outcomes. Maybe there is something about this kind of turning and whether there is a way of staying in fidelity to, what might it mean to stay in fidelity to the practice in the way that you were describing and how the form comes rather than is turned. Like turning something into could be quite violent in a way. Maybe there is something about this microturning – I cannot quite hold onto the threads, what do I want to think. Something about what/who is doing the turning and what/who is being turned. These microturns, I also think of them in terms of transformations, like micro-transformations. There is a forceful turn in that, it is turning experience into something that is presentable in a re-presentational form. And what might it be to explore forms of, forms that do not have this re-presentational quality to them, so to keep things live. Something about this act of returning in the research process, and coming back to materials. And what does that do, and how is that? I was listening to some of the readings before we came online and I had my eyes closed. I was listening to the reading practices from the last couple of returning conversations – and they are just really beautiful actually. It is interesting – I don’t listen again so often. So something about returning but not wanting anything from that. Like sometimes the return, or turning into, is done with a particular agenda in mind. And that act of returning, listening again in particular, listening again not to do something or for something, but just to listen again. And be transformed by that,  wanting nothing more than the possibilities that open up through something. Again, something about softening away from agenda or an ulterior motive. Just to listen again and soften to that experience, be open to that experience. Yes, something about not wanting something from something, or doing something for something feels important there. There is quite a lot there. It is interesting how towards the end, towards an hour, things start to accumulate, they start to mix as well. Things that I picked up from the first time you were talking or I was talking and what you have just said get mixed up. It is interesting what you were saying about this sense of transforming or changing and you listening to the readings. It reminds me of the affective sense of listening. So I am listening to your talking about listening, I am listening to you speaking about the experience of listening. It made me think, yes, listening has a particular effect on the body and how sound and voices. We have talked about this before – this voice, this speaking aloud. Within this situation but also within the reading practice where it has this improvisation in the sense that it isn’t linear. And how this enters the body or folds back into the body because actually it has also come out of conversation, has come out of the body. It reminds me – this idea of swimming and learning to drum, and how that patterning, that neural patterning was changing me. Which is also a practice – whether a swimming practice, or a speaking practice, or a drumming practice. This sense of practice transforming the body or transforming the patterning of emotions psychologically. There is something about being unsettled that kept me closer to practice somehow. It has felt that I have had a year of practice in many forms somehow. There is something about this hinge, this is what you said, between being settled and unsettled that creates a slight uncertainty I suppose. And the capacity, the capacity not only of the body but also of the emotions. Not committing to anything other than what we were doing – and how that feels, how that is to be fully, to not have all those distractions. Kind of like an equivalent of a monastic life in a spiritual sense – in that it is stripped away of all of the sort of everydayness and is very focused in a way. But then at the same time, there is something about it is separate from life, or it is separate from a certain kind of life. And maybe I am interested in this middle ground between the conditions of residency and retreat, and being in all the mess of life. I think what I am ultimately interested in is how through these microturns those lessons get applied to everyday life in a way. So something about these two different ways of practising – like the kind of the separated space of the studio and life itself, and maybe something about the turning of these two kinds of domains in a way. Maybe I am also trying to find the joy, the joy, or the inspiration in returning and I think why do I not listen to the recordings. They are so beautiful and they are so inspiring and yet it is very rare that I listen to them. Why do I not just lie on the floor and listen to one? Like other ways in which our practice might reinfuse my experience. Oh yes, like lying down, lying down and even making these micromovements and at the same time listening to these readings. I think in my own experience that would be really potent. Yes, this is something to try. And to do it not because there is something coming up. Maybe that is my tendency, there is something coming up that I have to do something for, rather than doing something on its own terms in a way. Yes, I am curious how that kind of voicing might … yes, maybe it is going back to the experience that some of our audiences (for want of a better work) have talked about when they have listened – what happens through that as a kind of transformation. Rather than being the speaker, what does it mean to listen again to that material, and be moved by that material? This coming year I am doing some training in Yoga Nidra, and there is a voice dimension to it, and how voice can also transform. There is something there – maybe it is going back to the sounding and the voicing and this coming back through reading and through speaking. 

PART 4

30.08.2023

FOCUS/PRACTICE: Reading as distillation

- Reading practices using the conversational transcript from 22.05.2023 as source text.

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

Moving between 2 practices as desired:

Reading (Noticing Attraction)  – 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.

Conversation-as-material distillation – 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.

30 minutes duration

PART 5

30.08.2023

FOCUS/PRACTICE: Fields of Association

- 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) 5 mins (e.g. ECs choice of words)

(2)  5 mins (e.g. KBs choice of words)

(3)  8 mins (e.g. ECs choice of words)

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