Gravity

This chapter weaves an in-depth discussion of the physical function of releasing our bodies into the support of gravity with an analysis of how that experience can serve as an important stability in our daily lives. It begins by reviewing the crucial distinction between collapsing and yielding in order to demonstrate how the same force that draws us to the ground can also sponsor our action in the world, helping us find a sense of resistance and agency. In addition, gravity can provide a useful counterbalance to the ubiquitous presence of two-dimensional screens in our lives. By allowing us to experience weight, gravity is key to our sense of grounding, linking inhalation with exhalation, sky to earth, as well as the sympathetic and parasympathetic aspects of our autonomic nervous system.

Disorientation

Moments of disorientation—be they personal, communal, economic, or political—can become opportunities to rethink our habitual ways of being in the world. This chapter presents embodied practices that underscore how disorientation productively shifts our perspective from a focus on visibility and stability to a sensibility energized by proprioception and instability. In addition, it traces the implications of shifting orientations, getting lost, embracing the unforeseen, and moving in between states of knowing and unknowing. The practice of dwelling in the unforeseen requires a tolerance for ambiguity and conjures a state of being that is at once open to the world around us and grounded in our own sensory experience. Certain physical practices can train for a psychic tolerance for chaos, confusion, being off-balance or feeling uncomfortable—paving the way to respond to disorientation with curiosity rather than reacting with fear.

Afterword (7/29/2018)

This Afterword was written on the seventh anniversary of my nephew’s death. It concisely summarizes the life lessons embedded in each chapter of this book. Addressed to the memory of my nephew, this brief writing details how the practices of feeling support and connection with others can keep us engaged with living even as we vacillate between states of fall and recovery, knowing and not knowing, and the discovery of new, previously unimaginable, pathways. Although it was not written exclusively for him or about him, John Christian’s struggles wove their way through each chapter of How to Land: Finding Ground in an Unstable World.

Suspension

This is a chapter about suspensions, about the moments in our lives when we can’t move, when we don’t know which way to turn. Suspensions slow us down enough to feel space enter time. Using our breath to find spaciousness attunes us to a heightened sense of three-dimensionality, including a critical recognition of the importance of thinking backwards as well as forwards. In lives filled with screen-based, two-dimensional interactions, this sense of amplitude can make a big difference in the quality of our being present in the moment. Moving from a discussion of improvisation to a meditation on breathing through the elusive quality of air and into a final discussion of dwelling, this chapter explores how suspensions can open new ways of being in the world. Attending to the breath can lead us into the under-charted territory of largely unseen but nonetheless deeply felt situations, including those of loss, memory, and grace.

Connection

This chapter investigates the question of reciprocity in touching and being touched and takes up current debates about the effects of media use on interpersonal relationships and empathy, especially in teenagers. How do we connect with another person? What physical practices help us live in a historical moment in which regional, ethnic, religious, racial, and bodily differences have (once again) become intensely politicized? The chapter explores these questions and posits that interpersonal experiences such as Authentic Movement and the practice of witnessing are forms of a corporeal generosity that can change the terms of our social economy. Hope is a physical commitment. Our being-together in the world is a living, breathing practice that must remain grounded in our flesh and bones, even as it is increasingly conducted across virtual communities.

Resilience

Resilience calls forth stories of ingenuity and resourcefulness in the face of a greater power. This could be a force of nature (hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, drought), human-made destruction (wars, industrial accidents, terrorism, climate change), or simply meeting up with the neighborhood bully on the playground. Although it is currently used in discussions of economics and technologies, as well as in reference to people and the natural world, resilience demands an accounting with the more affective dimensions of our experience. Eventually, with time (suspension) and support (gravity), lives are reimagined, buildings are reconstructed, and we try to establish a new sense of balance. But resilience also carries the possibility of lasting transformation. Often in returning and remembering, we find that we no longer want what we had before. Natural ecologies, human communities, and complex systems can all exhibit resilience; it is necessarily a grass-roots movement.

Falling

This chapter explores the interconnected realms of the theoretical and the practical by tracing the physical experience of moving from up to down, as well as the cultural rhetoric which equates falling with failure. What can the intentional practice of falling teach us about how to survive personal and national crises in this time of social instability and political uncertainty? Instead of nervously trying to avoid falling in a world in which so many aspects of our lives are being turned upside down, we can take a lesson from the contemporary movement form of Contact Improvisation, and practice ways in which to feel more comfortable with falling, failure, the ground, and gravity. Indeed, falling can teach us a great deal about resiliency—physical as well as emotional and even financial resiliency—helping us, in turn, mitigate the effects of panic about falling behind that seems to have permeated almost everyone’s being these days.

Introduction

This introduction situates How to Land: Finding Ground in an Unstable World as an interdisciplinary book that weaves together the fields of phenomenology, cognitive studies, contemporary politics, and somatic education to demonstrate how moving is linked to thinking. It foregrounds the questions that provoked the original inquiry such as: How are our bodies affected by repeated images of falling bodies, bombed-out buildings, and displaced peoples, as well as recurring evocations of global economies in “free fall,” governments “dissolving,” health disasters “spiraling” out of control, and ice caps “melting”? and What kind of fear gets lodged in our neurological system when we live with an underlying anxiety that certain aspects of our world are in danger of falling apart? In addition to giving synopses of each chapter, the introduction introduces two important conceptual triads: the 3Rs of responsiveness, resistance, and resilience; and the 3Ps of perception, practice, and politics. The introduction presents the experience of embodiment as a critical methodology which can transform moments of personal disorientation and national crisis into opportunities to reflect on the critical relationship between individual resiliency and communal responsibility. Physical skills have metaphysical implications, and these can guide our corporeal sensibilities as well as our ethical responsibilities.