Paper short abstract:

5 Rhythms and Open Floor are free-form dance practices often presented as moving meditations: they focus on bodily, sensory and emotional dimensions, while participants point out feelings of totality. The paper explores how the practice builds a paradoxical and powerful experience of the Self.

Paper long abstract:

5 Rhythms and Open Floor are amateur movement practices I labelled under the expression Free-form Mindful Dances: often presented as “moving meditation” or “mindful movement”, they are situated at the crossroad of dance therapy, personal transformation processes and contemporary spiritualities. Trying to silence excessive “thoughts”, and limiting participants’ talking to rare and short sharing moments during the dance session, they focus on bodily, sensory, and emotional dimensions, which are considered as the authentic part of the individual that must be listened to in order to transform or heal oneself. But alongside this sort of hierarchy, their discourse promotes a holistic vision of the individual (“body-heart-spirit” as they say), while participants point out feelings of an extra-ordinary totality, connection or “integration of the whole Self”. Beyond the great heterogeneity of effects described by dancers – from simple happiness and wellbeing to moments of grace and feeling of sacredness, healing effects (in the sense of care more than cure), existential “revelations” – a common ground seems to lie in an exceptional “convergence” and “unity” experience. This paper will explore how the practice builds, through danced propositions, discourse, vocal instructions and a particular sensory regime, a paradoxical – and all the more powerful – experience of the Self. The ethnographic account – grounded on the echoes between movements and interactions descriptions, instructions and structure analysis, introspective work, drawings, and qualitative interviews – is the result of a four-year intensive fieldwork, lead for a doctoral thesis in Anthropology in France.

Paper short abstract:

This ethnography of Taijiquan presents an appreciation of the new pedagogies and transformations of the sensory experience of the human mind and body. It is necessary to think about these transformations in non-essentialist, procedural, and rhythmic approaches to grasp such changes.

Paper long abstract:

Taijiquan is a Chinese martial art passed on in its various forms throughout the world. The following paper draws a map of bodies, places, and entities that compose the act of becoming a Taijiquan practitioner and aims to understand their transformations of sensuous modes of mind and body. How does the touch of Taijiquan practitioners change? In what new ways can they feel their bodies and their sparring partners/opponents? What changes are taking place in their daily rhythms? How are they connecting to their environment? To explore that, we need to think of a processual and rhythmic model for the understanding of human transformation itself. The cosmology of Deleuze and Guattari inspires the theoretical framework that allows for this discussion. Their conceptions of the arborescent and rhizomatic provide a tool to illustrate body and mind as an ever-changing map, never stabilized in a normal conserved state. It outlines how the dissolution of borders of body and mind (deterritorialization) should always be observed complementarily with their tightening (reterritorialization). Another key concept for observing changes in sensory modes is temporality - which we examine by looking at lived rhythms using the tools of rhythmanalysis of Henri Lefebvre. The text aims to provide an insight into "how" are the Taijiquan mind-body techniques learned and transmitted, and at the same time (inseparably), it goes beyond with a question of what lived forms these techniques can take: "what their bodies are capable of".

Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at breathing as a bodily process that, when becoming the object of conscious awareness, reveals the complex nature of human reflexivity, and allows for the experience of a multilayered personal identity.

Paper long abstract:

This paper looks at breathing as a bodily process that, when becoming the object of conscious awareness, can shed light on the nature of human reflexivity. Carefully observing one's breathing spontaneously generates a reflexive perception of what being a living subject might be, a perception of oneself at once from without and from within. By approaching this attentive observation of the breathing process as a ritual, one can better grasp what reflexivity entails before analytic thought gets involved. It allows us to take a step back both from the purely anatomical aspects of the breathing process and from the spiritual or religious dogmas commonly associated with it; both are important tools for understanding, yet both are overly reductive. Purposefully pursuing the observation of breathing gives rise to a perceptual experience of reflexivity as a complex multilayered process that can provide the grounds for a representation of human personal identity as being multilayered as well.

In keeping with the expectations of most contemporary spiritual movements, the practice of self-conscious breathing can be seen, then, as the application of the experimental method to what emerges as a plural self. As such, it can serve as an analytic tool for exploring the complex nature of both human reflexivity and personal identity. Is it personal identity itself that is multilayered, or is it rather the very nature of human reflexivity to be a multilayered mode of perception?

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the sensing body in an Amsterdam yoga school. Tattva Yoga classes modulate movement and / in space to produce a particular atmosphere with which students attune, revealing the sensory and affective mechanics which underpin embodied subject cultivation.

Paper long abstract:

This paper articulates the sensory and affective mechanic of classes taught in an Amsterdam yoga school. In centering posture practice as a means for ethical, therapeutic, and spiritual transformation, Tattva Yoga practices constitute self making techniques in which practitioners “use the body to go beyond the body”. While considerable work interrogates the subjectivities encouraged by particular yoga discourses, practices, and forms, relatively little considers the experiential dimension of the classes in which these practices are taught. Tattva Yoga provides an ideal case for such attention, with its reputation for classes blending rigorous physical exercise and spiritual teachings into what students refer to as a “rollercoaster” experience.

An autoethnographic account of one Tattva Yoga class traces how the teacher’s modulation of moving bodies and space produces a particular atmosphere with which students attune in through sensory labor. The result is the continuous oscillation between intensity and release that characterizes the Tattva Yoga “rollercoaster”. Attending to the sensory and affective mechanics of the class reveals that Tattva Yoga’s practices for personal transformation generate and deploy the body through the use of décor, music, temperature, light, and scent, as much as through choreography of bodily postures and incorporation of teachings on yoga philosophy. The case underscores the importance of attention to the body as a locus of not only somatic and discursive efforts but of sensations, movement, and fluctuating intensities.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the learning process to develop a sensing body through visualization and bodily attention in alternative spiritual practices held at Brittany's megaliths, located in northwest France.

Paper long abstract:

In the region of Brittany in general and in the megalithic site of Carnac in particular, New Age and contemporary Pagan-inspired practices are held on a regular basis. From an emic point of view, their aim is to access the local megaliths' "healing powers" through the intervention of non-human entities named "spirits of the place". These activities convey a framework of heterogeneous beliefs and practices based on a holistic ideology that considers the physical, spiritual, and psychological aspects of a person to regain a harmonious relationship with his or her environment. Individuals who participate in practices value human relationships with nature, embrace polytheistic and animistic cosmologies, and focus on their personal development. To establish these interactions with the place, the non-human beings thought to inhabit it, themselves, and the other human participants, actors practice visualization and learn to pay attention to their bodily sensations and those of others. Practices involve a large amount of physical contact, as in touching the trees, the megaliths, and, in some exercises, the body of other participants. Drawing on my ethnographic research regarding alternative spiritual practices held at the megaliths of Carnac, I will analyze how practitioners learn to develop their sensing body through visualization and bodily attention following four main actions: practicing visualization techniques to interact with summoned entities, learning "another" sensory language, establishing relationships between bodily techniques and somatic imagery, as well as cultivating and verbalizing bodily sensations.