Assemblages and Co-emergent Corpomaterialities in Postsecondary Education: Pedagogical Lessons from Somatic Psychology and Physical Cultures

Building on a new materialist ontology, this article explores the significance of viewing the postsecondary institution and learner as assemblages co-emerging in material relationality. Bodies of thought from social cognitive neuroscience, somatic psychotherapy, and physical cultural studies inform an analysis of the evaluation culture predominant in Western postsecondary education. These disciplines are used to interrogate representational performativity and point to new possibilities for material-inclusive learning. A new materialist pedagogy holds possibilities to reconfigure learning architectures to recognise and attend to the corpomaterialities of learners while allowing for new and creative lines of flight in education, as illustrated by physical cultural practices such as sport training, dance, and capoeira.

Sexual Disembodiment: Sexual Energy, Trauma, and the Body

This article introduces the concept of sexual disembodiment as a functional term for understanding the bodily dynamics of sexual trauma and the dissociative process that may follow. Its contribution lies in bringing an understanding of sexual health and sexual trauma into the framework of somatic psychology. It is suggested that sexual disembodiment can occur when the experience of sexuality causes distress; sexuality is then coupled with fear, dissociated to varying degrees, and suppressed from embodied awareness. While recognizing the primary role that biology and neurophysiology play in the formation of sexual identity, the authors also highlight the social construction of sexual life and suggest that oppression of nonnormative sexual identities can constrain healthy sexual expression. This article takes a holistic approach to sexual experience, combining an experiential understanding of sexual energy with a neurophysiological understanding of sexual trauma to frame a perspective on sexual disembodiment that is person-centered, socially informed, and critical of reductive tendencies within biomedical models of mental health. It is suggested that healing sexual disembodiment may be a critical step in liberating authentic sexual identity.

Translation and Study of the “Tendon Transformation Classic” (Yi Jin Jing)

The article includes the first complete and annotated translation of the “Tendon Transformation Classic”, the fundamental treatise in the tradition of spiritual-somatic practice specific for China. Both by its language and contents, the Yi Jin Jing which connects medicine, spiritual self-cultivation and martial art occupies a unique place in the history of Chinese civilization, hence its interpretation encounters some special difficulties. Until now complete translation and systematic study of this scripture has not appeared in Western literature. The author analyzes the historical and cultural background of this unusual text and various legends related to it. Translation is accompanied by textual notes. The most salient feature of the “Tendon Transformation Classic” is the idea of the natural and hence innate unity of spiritual and physical dimensions of human individual. Interestingly, the proofs for this thesis were ascribed to the legendary founder of the Chan school in Chinese Buddhism Bodhidharma (in Chinese Damo). The main link between psychic and biological plans of human existence according to the authors of the Yi Jin Jing is fascia (mo). A special attention is paid to the meaning of this original concept in Chinese medicine and somatic psychology as well as its relation to the idea of nurturing “life energy” (qi) and organic unity of “inner” and “outer” strength etc. The article reveals this scripture’s importance for the evolution of the bio-spiritual practice in China and contradictions inherent in it.

Somatic Research Bibliography: A Working Tool for Somatics and Somatic Psychology

Many years ago when Somatics magazine was young, it occurred to me that it would be valuable to collect and publish research article references in Somatics magazine that were relevant to the different somatics disciplines to encourage the development of the field. There were next to no studies devoted to Somatics itself, but there were many studies devoted to the elements of somatic practices. Somatics is a multidisciplinary field. It builds on the research findings from many fields, such as anatomy, physiology, neurophysiology, psychology, dance, biomechanics, and education. The references are selected to be suggestive to the interested researcher and practitioner for their purposes and of the many possible research avenues that are yet to be explored. I have collected these research references for more than four decades. I worked originally with Psychological Abstracts, then PsychInfo, and finally, PubMed. Over that time there has been more research done on the somatic disciplines themselves. The greatest amount of research has been done on yoga (the oldest and largest of the somatic disciplines) and yoga therapy. These studies are examples of the research that can be done with the other somatics disciplines as well. We are in an era that appreciates evidence-based practice and practice-based evidence. This is evidence. These research articles are selected according to the following criteria: The article combines both body and mind either in its research design or theoretical perspective; the research design incorporates convergent measures—that is, it includes physiological, behavioral, and psychological measures; subjective and objective measures; and the research focuses on the whole organism (human) from a somatic perspective—that is, the effect of a body therapy on a psychological state. Topics addressed include biofeedback, body psychotherapy, consciousness states, electrophysiology, kinesiology, mind and body, motor processes, neural basis of motor control, neuroscience, posture and emotion, psychophysiology, and yoga/yoga therapy.

Shakespeare’s Dancing Bodies

Romeo’s well-known excuse that he cannot dance because he has soles of lead is demonstrative of the autonomous volitional quality Shakespeare ascribes to body parts, his utilization of humoral somatic psychology, and the horizontally divided body according to early modern dance practice and theory. This chapter considers the autonomy of and disagreement between the body parts and the unruliness of the humors within Shakespeare’s dramas, particularly Romeo and Juliet. An understanding of the body as a house of conflicting parts can be applied to the feet of the dancing body in early modern times, as is evinced not only by literary texts, but dance manuals as well. The visuality dominating the dance floor provided opportunity for social advancement as well as ridicule, as contemporary sources document. Dance practice is compared with early modern swordplay in their shared approaches to the training and social significance of bodily proportion and rhythm.