Everyone needs to breathe

Abstract

This article is written with an eye towards the future and a foot in the past. It is partly autobiographical, and in each of four parts offers reflective somatic practices. The author is sheltering at home, so her thoughts centre on the meaning of home, family and pets. At the same time, she articulates somatic skills to cultivate embodied presence, insightful verbal interactions and healing touch. Her writing invites readers into somatic movement explorations and somatic communication practices through poetry. Life and death, love and war, ground her article. The section on Simbi involves global shadow work through butoh and the healing essence of water. Golden shadows appear as elemental and ecosomatic in Morphic Curiosity, a butoh invitation to site-specific dance. Video links and photographs further embody the work. The final section, Dance back the world, presents somatic witnessing as an extraordinary process of intimate notice and care. Becoming friends with the whole world is an exhortation of Mahatma Gandhi, and the life work of this author. Her article was written before the brutal murder of George Floyd and the international protests that began in America as cries for social and racial justice. Now we have a new imperative for Gandhi’s call, because everyone has a right to breathe.