Talking to tremors: Somatics in dance, dialogics and silence

Abstract

Talking to tremors is a brief phenomenology – or study of experience. As an author in the field of phenomenology, I have wondered how its insights might be applied to individualized hands-on somatics practices. The following is the result. It draws upon work I did a few years ago with Alice in which she learns to talk to her tremors, making friends with them and moving past fears. She gave me permission to write about this, and is identified anonymously. I explain our work together through notes I took at the time, which I also discussed with Alice. In application of phenomenology, I contextualize our somatic process using Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogics as a recurring conceptual ground bass. In light of Bakhtin’s work, the present article explores dialogic, extralinguistic states of silence and utterance as stepping-stones towards healing – also employing the neuroscience of Antonio Damasio and Eugene Gendlin’s somatic focusing process – further delineating changes towards feeling better and becoming well. My background as a Feldenkrais and Shin Somatics practitioner aid this study, as also my studies and teaching of dance. KeywordS silence somatic experience therapy phenomenology dialogics extralinguistic 03. DMAS_5.1_Fraleigh_33-45.indd 33 7/26/18 3:26 PM