Dorsal Practices by Emma Cocker

Dorsal Practices is a collaboration between choreographer Katrina Brown and writer-artist Emma Cocker, for exploring the notion of dorsality in relation to how we as moving bodies orient to self, others, world. How does the cultivation of a back-oriented awareness and attitude shape and inform our experience of being-in-the-world? A dorsal orientation foregrounds an active letting go, releasing, even de-privileging, of predominant social habits of uprightness and frontality — the head-oriented, sight-oriented, forward-facing, future-leaning tendencies of a culture intent on grasping a sense of the world through naming and control. Rather than a mode of withdrawal, of turning one’s back, how might a back-leaning orientation support a more open and receptive ethics of relation? How are experiences of listening, voicing, thinking, shaped differently through this tilt of awareness and attention towards the back?

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]

'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

Lightness. Relationship. Micro. Happening. Practice. Attention. Dimension. A turning away. Strategies. Different strategies, different ways in. Concentration relapsed. This quality of flexibility. Turning and what, who is being turned. It creates a sense of vitality and possibilities in the body and vitality in ideas forming. Almost like dropping the eyes or releasing the focus from it, I suppose I’m getting into this strange space now, blurring the vision, trying not to focus so hard to see it clearly. And how that perhaps feels similar to or perhaps different from letting the weight drop into the floor. It’s very tender and intimate, and really softens, softens my body but also softens, well you called attitude, or my demeanour, softens my eyes, just softens the way I feel, how I’m sitting, or standing, or am in the world actually. And if I can loosen my attitude, my body loosens and if I can loosen my attitude my body loosens, it’s not that the one comes first and the other follows, they both really shape one another. I was thinking about the relationship between the body and the mind. When I’m stuck my shoulders also get stuck my back gets stuck the 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 the softening of the idea or the muscle. So the micro turn reminds me, reminds us of not being stable and how important that is, how vital that is. It creates a sense of vitality and possibility in the body and vitality in ideas forming. Self-supporting nature, self-supporting dimension, just trusting that the body that this self-supporting dimension or even not trusting but in allowing the body to be self-supporting in that way is where the real fluidity or movement comes. There is something very fragile tender intimate. 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’m not sure. Feeling a hand on the back

the neck or someone’s neck especially if there is that possibility to converse with a that small light touch. This idea of turning to and turning away, they go together but maybe there is an initial attention, where to turn away means that you turn towards something that reveals itself of appears in the turning. Hearing you speak of holding someones head in the hands or my head being held a wistful feeling I realise I have not done that for a long time and that’s what I’m going to do. A big sense of I need to return to that. These very micro handlings and micro touchings it has a huge deep impact, it seems to go straight into my core, right through the muscles, right through the skeletal and the nervous system. 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 of appears in the turning because you have turned away. I have been thinking that I am turning towards something but maybe its more that I have been turning away to find these different entry points. It’s very delicate actually finding this sweet spot between enough turning in and turning away, there is the sweet spot that is not being a turning away into complete withdrawal but it is not being forceful. 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 something could be quite violent in a way. Maybe there is something about this microturning. Something about what, who is doing the turning and what, who is being turned. Maybe that might be an interesting space for investigation of this microturning or micromovement, this sweet spot of creative attention in some ways. Ah 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. Possibilities of investigation. 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. 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. 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. I was talking before about this kind of pressure, and at times there is 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 or a microtuning attitude to microturning. 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. A sense of vitality and possibility in the body and vitality in ideas forming. Things start to accumulate and they mix as well. Like a give in a way, a softness in the shoulder, or a softness in the ribs. Yes, something about not wanting something from something, or doing something for something. Something very fragile tender intimate around the back of the neck. And that act of returning, of listening again in particular, listening again not to do something or for something, but just to listen again and be transformed by that. Even just rotating the head on its axis, very gently, very small manoeuvres, just to try to really let go 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 this enters the body or folds back into the body. And how that feels perhaps similar to or different than letting the weight drop into the floor. This sense of ease actually. This sense of practice transforming the body or transforming the patterning of emotions psychologically. 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. 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. It is almost like dropping the eyes, or releasing the focus from it, blurring the vision. 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. And again it is striking this balance between somehow turning towards and leaving space. This ebb and flow of attention. And yes maybe recognising a pattern of over-forcefulness, like the weight of thought has to be held like the weight of my head in a way. It’s very delicate actually finding this sweet spot between enough turning in and turning away, there is the sweet spot that is not being a turning away into complete withdrawal but it is not being forceful in a turning towards. 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. Very light or slight or very loose. Maybe two or three things that keep circulating around me. It made me think of this idea of delicate attention and also sense of 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 but then it became, perhaps with a slight turning, a kind of spaciousness. The attention has to come from somewhere else which I guess is also a kind of turn. Not to come at it straight on, that is the problem. To come, to be reminded to turn away and to come at it at a different angle, and at a different place. Yes, there’s also something about the micro turn of the breath, there’s also the stillness. They start showing up as little micro investigations. These very micro handlings and micro touchings, they seems to go straight into my core. All 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. There is a lot of turning with and turning contra and 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. And how to really stay with it and be alert to what is h there. There is this quality of flexibility, like a positive flexibility and there is also that within the body. I remember you talking about this act of movement, of walking, and something about the shoulder going backwards, this taking of the body backwards. I think 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. Like other ways in which our practice might reinfuse my experience. I think 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 kinds of microturning. There something about the back of the neck, the neck is so fragile in the way that it can really really turn. 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. A complete vulnerability, yes of being supported and soft, there is a softness there. 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, that sense of mentally turning fully towards something, or fully committing or all of this fullness of experience. Yes, 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. I’m 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. It creates a sense of vitality and possibility in the body, and vitality in ideas forming. I feel excited somehow by this idea of the micro and the microturn, and turning in general, but the micro particularly. Coming at it from that way for example would help me to touch or reach or move through the stuck area. The attention has to come from somewhere else. Like 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. And I was thinking about this around the self supporting body and 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. 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. Micro enquiry, micro enquiries, and what else did you say, delicate attention, bringing delicate attention to something. 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. 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. To keep allowing things to come back and go and circulate and reconnect. Maybe that was a slight turning, it opened up a kind of spaciousness but again there isn’t anything there. I’m sort of aware of these strong pressures, 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. So 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. Something about this act of returning in the research process, and coming back to materials. And what does that do, and how is that? Something about the relationship between the body and thinking in some kind of way. The capacity of not only the body but also of the emotions. I’ve really discovered different layers, different layers. 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 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. What 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 kind of ingredients are needed as the conditions. The delicacy of attention is very exciting. Maybe it is touching on something. I started 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. Very light, slight, very loose. I just had to keep allowing things to come back and go and circulate and reconnect. And it was also very exciting but I couldn’t push it into any form or grab it or hold it down. 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. It feels like sort of spider threads, 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. 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. Theres quite a lot 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. 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. Listening has a particular effect on the body and sound and voices. This voice, this speaking aloud. This situation 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. This idea of turning towards and turning away, withdrawing attention, turning away, it is almost like dropping the eyes, or releasing the focus from it. Sensation of lightness. Blurring the vision, trying not to focus so hard. Taking care of itself. Being totally supported and soft, there is a softness there. Two kinds of domain in a way. There is a kind of softening. 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. Like a give in a way, a softness in the shoulders, a softness in ribs. I really love the neck being free. A microturn and the place of the micro is the place where it is happening. 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. Its not what it looks like its actually where resistant is happening but also yes, resistance and tension and also loosenings at this level of the micro. Something 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 which feels quite unusual, often when I focus on the turn in 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 a kind of lightness. A capacity for micro-turning and all these micro movements yes this is the place where aliveness happens. Completely practising without all those distractions of life. My concentration has lapsed maybe I’m also trying to find the joy, the joy or the inspiration in returning. 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. 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 again its striking this balance between somehow turning towards and leaving space. And yes maybe recognising a pattern of over-forcefulness … 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.

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)

Micro-turning etymologies 30.08.2023

TRUST

I wanted to begin with trust, this notion of trust as a verb to trust, to make safe or to make strong - and then the noun, reliance on the veracity, integrity or the virtues of something and something. It’s got this connotation of religious faith but from the old Norse traust meaning help, confidence, support. Its interesting this relationship between trust and fidelity, this word fidelity coming up in terms of how to remain in fidelity to practice. To believe, to trust, to be firm and the PIE root deru meaning to be firm, solid or steadfast. Oh this is interesting, this deru. The proto-indian european root deru of firmness, solidity and steadfastness has connotations with wood and trees and objects made of wood. Yes something about trustworthiness, having a connection to wood trees in some kind of way, and theres all the words that are linked to that around duration. And rhodedendrum, which is int. But trust, yes faith, faithfulness, on which one relies, yes this sense of reliance actually. Yes I was thinking about this relationship between reliance and being able to rest upon. I think that sense of rest whether it can be used in the same way as to rely upon or to rest upon. To rest as in an intermission of labour, a state of quiet or repose. From the original sense it was repose, yes repose, this is interesting, this repose, leaping a bit from one to the other, but it was making me think of this re- again that’s in there or -re this reposing or returning, to put something back, to come back again, to position again. To replace. Pose. There’s all kinds of interesting words - suppose, impose, pose, repose. Pose in debating from the late Latin pausare meaning to halt, rest, cease or pause. So this relationship between posing and pausing. To cause, to pause or rest. I’m not sure where I have come to this pose or pause… oh yes it was this sense of rest, to rest upon. It’s also the sense of the remainder, that which is left after a separation, so like the rest or the remnant. To rest, repose, to cease in action. I suppose this sense of rest upon is very much upon have the support of somehow which I guess I see in this kind of connection to reliance, to rely or rest upon something.

INTIMATE. Ah yes, lets try the adjective. That came up a few times. Intimate – so, closely acquainted, very familiar. Also inmost, intrinsic, from Late Latin intimatus, or intimare - make known, announce, impress. So from the Latin intimus - inmost, innermost, deepest. Also used figuratively of affection, feelings or as a noun, an intimate is a close friend. This PIE root en. en as in in. intimate. There’s also the verb to intimate to make known formally or suggest indirectly. That’s interesting, to intimate to s indirectly.

Back formation from intimation. What does that mean? Hmm. Back formation from intimation. I’m not sure what that means. Or else from late Latin intimatus, to make known. Familiarity to make known, inmost, innermost. Yes, familiarity reminds me of the sense of familiarity or a coming home or perhaps even the idea, I’m just filling this in now, but an idea of familiarity and safety. Closeness. There’s also intimation, action of making known. Expressing by suggestion, or a hint, indirect. It’s interesting how there is this closeness and innermost and familairty and also this indirect, it says here this indirect imparting of information. It reminds me of that de-emphasing or not straight on way of doing things. To intimate perhaps even to indirectly impart something or

Give a clue to perhaps. Intimacy oh yes there’s also this sense of love relationships and intercourse. Interesting how adjectives and verbs and nouns get used in certain contexts and change meaning. I’ve been led onto familiarity, intimacy, making known and there seems to be the inter-… it can be used to mean similar things, or the same thing, so familiar, intimate, friendly, family footing, domestic, private, belonging to family or household, pertaining to one’s family or things, known for long association. It’s also meaning ordinary or usual. En. This intrinsic … the PIE root held together… although the en meaning inmost, intrinsic, inside, close to.

RELEASE. I think release. I can see the ease in release. This isn’t true. Is it true? It seems there is a re-easing in release. But to release - to withdraw, to revoke, to relinguish, let go, leave behind to abandon, relax. I suppose I was thinking, interesting here with this withdrawal and this act of turning away as a releasing, like releasing attention, from the Latin relaxare to loosen. -Re or re- meaning back and relaxare to loosen. Something about this release this loosening again or coming back to loosening. From the PIE root sleg, to be slack or be languid. Yes languid. There’s something of this releasing and letting go and loosening that I think is very interesting and I guess recuperating some sense of the positive in that. But it’s an intermingling of those meanings in this so there’s also this sense of quitting. Release as noun actually means abatement of distress. Back formation relesser, relaissier, to quit to leave behind. Release from obligation, this actually could be very nice, release of obligation, release of the obligation of frontality somehow. Then you have a re-release of a motion picture of a song. Re as in again, yes… interesting how this re- is used in so many ways. Re as in the back in the one and here, re, again. Release as verb... maybe with this sort of re component I also wanted to look up reciprocal. Ah yes, interesting that it does also keep the component of re within that. So as an adjective from re- meaning back and cus. Procus. What does it mean? re + cus as an adjective formation from pro forward and cus … existing on both sides, exclusive or interchangeable. Stem from the Latin reciprus, reciprocus meaning returning the same way, felt or shown in return, corresponding or answering to each of the mutually equivalent. In the sense of "moving backward and forward, and having an alternating

back and forth motion is actually obsolete, which is interesting, it feels like that’s a nice meaning somehow, this forwards and backwards and back and forth motion. Reciprocity, a state or condition of free interchange, mutual responsiveness. Yes, mutual responsiveness is very nice. Rise and fall, moving back and forth, to reverse the motion of. Reciprocation is a reflexive mode of expression, the act of making a return, a mutual givng and retuning, an interchange of acts, to come and go, move back and forth, alternating, giving and returning, moving back- and-forward, acting in return or response. Something of this back and forwards that I’m curious about here. Reciprocal. I can’t quite sort of understand the reciprocal part somehow. I think the other … maybe I’ll move to momentum, maybe that connects to this sense of the back and forth. Momentum – as in a movement or moving power, the force gained by movement, an impulse or impelling force, Maybe I’m thinking of the momentum of back and forth, the momentum of reciprocity. It comes from moment form the Latin momentum, see moment. Moment as in a very brief portion of time, a short instance. But both of these coming from the same PIE root I think. Momentum. Meue, which means to push away. To push away in all things that have motion in them. Commotion, emotion, moment, mobile, motility. Something in terms of the Latin movere, to move or be set in motion. Yes, maybe emotion is connected to that, that sense of the dorsal having an emotional register. A moving, stirring or agitation. Actually interesting, emotion, from the 1750s meaning a social moving, stirring, agitation and from the old French emouvoir, to stir up and the Latin emovere to move out, to remove or agitate.

ATTITUDE. Postural position, figure or statue, or disposition, posture, also aptness or promptitude. Hmm. A technical term in art, something around posturing. There’s a sense here meaning of a settled behaviour, reflecting feeling or opinion. A settled behaviour, interesting this idea of a settled behaviour. Perhaps a behaviour that is giving itself or has a clear sense of itself? Reflecting behaviour or opinion. Habitual modes of regarding, attitude of mind. Yes, habitual mode of regarding, a way of regarding something, seeing something. There are these connotations - antagonistic, uncooperative, oh 60s slang oh as in having an attitude. There’s also something around aptitude, aptitude, which is like a tendency or likelihood. Interesting that aptitude and attitude, are somehow related, oh aptitude which is its doublet, so attitude and aptitude, there’s this pairing. But it’s different from posture, kind of more, with attitude there’s more like a tendency or likelihood. Natural capacity, aptitude, a natural capacity to learn or state or quality of being, fit for purpose, which is also a doublet to attitude. Also this attitudinise, slightly going off track here, this pose affects people, to gesticulate, its more an affecting, a making up or posturing. I think what’s most interesting here is the attitude and aptitude doublet and the sense of a settled behaviour or a tendency towards something, and a habitual mode of regarding and attitude of mind. Attitude of mind. I was thinking to put – in the other text- thinking or thought. Thought, a process of thinking, compassion, to conceive of in the mind, to consider, also linked with memory, the second element in German. Gedächtenis, memory and aandacht - attention, devotion, and bedacht – consideration, deliberation. That’s quite a nice, different shifts, considering something or deliberating something also aandacht attention or devotion. Second thought. Thoughtful - contemplative, occupied with thought, full of thought. Full of thought, thoughtful. An adjective but I quite like this idea of being full of thought, full of thinking. After-thought, a later thought, reflection after an act. So thinking. Thinking, in some ways this idea of thoughtful as in bringing attention to and after-thought is more the reflection after something has happened, after an act. I wonder if I put in thinking... Think, to think, verb think. imagine, conceive in the mind; consider, meditate, remember; intend, wish, desire. Has all these slight slants, and different tendencies. Probably originally cause to appear to oneself. German denken. There’s this old English root, coming from German, pencan to seem, to appear, to think, to feel, and also the PIE root is tong, to think, feel. Which is also the root to think, and to thank. Methinks, that a rather querky, old phrase! Methinks, it seems to me. It appears to me. There’s also a noun think, act of prolonged thinking. Figurative thinking. This is interesting. Right thinking - holding sound or exceptable views. It doesn’t say anything about wrong thinking. Or makes me think we were talking about right and left hands and then there’s this right thinking.

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