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Blog #3D In-Bodying the Field: Fridge Field-trip & Embodied Knowing

Mar 23, 2022

Blog #3D In-Bodying the Field: Fridge Field-trip & Embodied Knowing

Axis Mundi

#3D Blog: Aspects of the archetype of artist

The Japanese movie Hokusai’s Daughter conveys how passion and commitment go beyond all social customs and interpersonal needs. Katsushika Oi, the main character in the movie is like many artists- often on the edge of societal norms. This is not just a rebellious or revolutionary reaction but instead arises as an investigative state of being at the boundaries of what is known.

Look at the life of your favorite artists to see their sacrifices. They are visionaries, not in the sense of dramatic tragedy but often in loss that is consciously negotiated. The transfer of energy with the sacred is the meaning of sacrifice.

Intimacy

Many artists have lived their lives on an extraordinary edge. Canadian artist, Emily Carr at the turn of the century, tromped through the wilderness to paint Native Americans. Because American artist Alice Neel worked in the era of Abstract Expressionism her paintings were ignored for decades, except by other painters. This year there was a retrospective of her work in New York at the Metropolitan Museum. Mexican artist Frieda Kahlo painted from her physical pain and anguish through a folk art tradition. Japanese artist Katsushika Oi went against all customs established for women as she developed her interest in color. It is interesting to note that sociologically the framing of the sacred trade of artist varies greatly in society’s discussion of different expectations of men and women. Just look to art history and museums of the world to see the percentage of women. Not being recognized or seen is in itself a tremendous loss for an artist. But there is something much more valuable that is the impetus for working.

This week in circle we marked combining disparate subjects from imaginal journeys into one piece to experience the possibility of holding dichotomies is a wider embrace. We introduced death and loss, grief and sacrifice as part of this process which we will explore more next week.

The images that follow are from participants in this six-month course. They are not depictions or illustrations but, rather, experiences of the act of doing and feeling. They are a way of resourcing and exploring, as well as, embodying the experience.

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Blog #3C In-Bodying the Field: Conjunctive Knowing

Mar 16, 2022

I have been sitting in an ice-cold stream pounding kuzu fiber on a rock with a wooden mallet for hours in a small paper-making village outside of Nagoya, Japan. Why exactly am I doing this I wonder. It feels like a traditional apprentice initiation, but it is more than that. It is about conjunctive knowing, instructions directed through the eye movements of my taciturn teacher. It is part of an apprentice systems across time and place to embody knowledge by watching, listening, smelling and tasting, learning through the body.

Apprenticeships in the seventies in Japan was very much like it had been for hundreds of years. They honored the tradition that someone who came seeking mentorship from the master would not necessarily be taken on, but they were to be fed as long as they stayed on the porch. Sometimes this was all it took so that perseverance could be demonstrated to the master and acceptance found. There was a sense of perseverance but also of discovery of self within that I developed during my time studying with various masters. My pottery teacher would say to listen to the sound of the brush touching the bisqueware to know how thick to make the iron oxide. It took me two years in calligraphy to realize myself how important breath was. Once my tea ceremony teacher stopped in her preparation for guests and listened to the wind. We went outside and she handed me the rake for the first time. She watched me rake up all the leaves in front of the tea house and then stood there with the silent message that we would stand here until I finished. I looked around madly for any missed leaves. Finally, I reached over and slightly shook the maple tree. A few red leaves fell on the path and my teacher bowed and enter the tearoom.

Awareness of knowing through the body rather than the mind, has been one of the many gifts I still carry with me from my time in Japan. Gnosis is the kind of conjunctive knowing that in the Bible refers to sexual relations, knowing a woman. It is a union, not just taking in information but a knowing through the body. This same idea is how information and skill are transferred in the cultural arts of Japan and many places in the world. Sweeping the floor and making tea is becoming attuned to not only the master but the materials, the shop and sometimes hundreds of years of experience. It is also developing a telepathy between workers.

In the studio we are using somatic practice and embodying imagination as our entries into knowing through the body as we develop conjunctive learning. We trust our hand to reach out for a color or marking implement and are developing awareness of conversation, even flirting with other elements in our field so that we can play together. This way of working is bringing in many surprising elements, especially for people who have worked from personality for decades. One thing that strikes us is that we often don’t immediately relate to the marking before us. Our old ways of perceiving what works artistically is not important. The gage through the last few years of this practice is more toward authenticity, what is evoked and felt in the body and what stays with you as an afterglow or even shadow. It is because we are in a greater collaboration and it can take a while to see it.

The following images are from participants in the In-Bodying the Field Six-month Seminar, relating journeys through the refrigerator through mark-making.

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Blog #3B In-Bodying the Field: Fridge Field-trips-Soul Boat

Mar 9, 2022

Last week the In-Bodying Marking Circles we ventured through a refrigerator door for what we started calling a field-trip. It was an experience in the Imaginal Field felt and explored in the body with continued expression in marking. Each of our trips was unique, from a glass lemon-aide pitcher in grandmother’s fridge, to a trapeze artist in a circus, to the inside of a car. This week each circle had two guided field-trips initiated by participants patterned on their journeys.

Blog #3B In-Bodying the Field: Fridge Field-trips

In the Wednesday Circle, Lucy’s as guide lead me personally to the lap of the hungry ghost, that Buddhist archetype of unsatisfiable desire. This was dramatically counter-balanced in the second field-trip, led by Jess, with the delightful soul energy explored on three substrates. And so, I found myself facing the last substrate working with the energy of desperate longing and buoyant tenacity and vision of soul. Concentrating these experiences in different parts of the body is a way to hold these energies while allowing for something new to arise. This is well beyond emotional expression of playing with color and marks. The embodiment ignites a leap of insight leading into unconsidered territory. It takes time, slowing time to hold these energies in the imaginal body. This practice of seeing how the piece wants to be completed is a bit different from what we have been doing, as we have been unconcerned if a piece is finished. Considering how to complete a piece takes invites in the unknown, possibly through an acasual or synchronistic event. It is like the capping haiku line that leads to something that embraces the banal in a greater light. The third substrate resolved the contradiction with the soul being held by unsatisfied desire. The final image suggested an offfering of a nest or boat.

Images of In-Bodying the Field Participants

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Blog #3A Imaginal Field: Refrigerator an Archetypal Portal

Mar 2, 2022

Mark-marking this week continued to cultivate somatic intelligence as we access the Imaginal Field. By becoming-like other things, we expanded the felt-body response by cultivating vision into the unknown through imagination. It is an ancient portal that the age of reason has upstaged, and yet is alive in science and all the arts, music, performance, literature and every aspect of life that is carried to artistry, like architecture, landscaping, cooking, parenting or even politics.

This shape-shifting is becoming easier as we recognize how many ways we slip into each other and address other with empathy and compassion. It is an ancient way of learning, expanding perception and gaining new insights. Through Marking, we soften the demarcation of inside and outside, experiencing more and more how our defined physical body is really integral to a greater biosphere.

In the arts, an archetype creates an immediate sense of familiarity, without need to ponder why a character or event is understood. Archetype can be defined as an emotion, character type, or event that is notably recurrent across the human experience. Consider the archetypes of things around you. The chair that holds you for comfort and ease to do things like eat, work, converse or travel. It is a structure adapted to human body, a kind of a container to easily enter and leave. It has a history beyond function and culture denoting social status and even termination of life. Our inquiry is interested in the metaphor and poetics of archetypes in relation to the Imaginal Field.

Your home, a safe private place, like a nest or a shell, is what Gaston Bachelard marks as the place to dream. In the introduction to his book, The Poetics of Space. Richard Kearney says, “Poetics, for Bachelard, is not a matter of anonymous floating signifiers; it signals a relational dynamic between beings, involving vital dimensions of intimacy, secrecy, desire and repose.” And later, “Imagination is at its best when it is incarnate, elemental, opening out into time and space, even when the space is elsewhere—before being, beneath being, beyond being, more than being.”

This week we explore universal archetypes as organizing principles, which unite physical matter with consciousness. We used opening a refrigerator door, that everyday utilitarian object, as the start for everyone to step into a unique Imaginal Field. My refrigerator contained containers, preserving sustenance and enjoyment. This container has a physical inner structure but also a metaphoric structure related for me to the psyche. I thought of how different the freezer compartment is from the shelves on the door or the vegetable bins. The archetype of refrigerator gave us a poetic fulcrum to investigate being in our marking.

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In-Bodying the Field Blog #2D: Reciprocity, Shape Shifting

Feb 27, 2022

Shape-shifting may sound like an ethnographic study where a shaman transforms into animal, while in truth it is fundamental to our everyday experience. Shape-shifting allows for the ability to change form or identity at will. It is a part of spiritual practice, parenting, the arts and just about any aspect of life that is carried to artistry. Compassion and empathy are ways of shapeshifting.

My friend, who does large scale landscape says the way she chooses the plants is to run them through her body. As she imaginally becomes like the plants she can see if they are appropriate for the overall plan- how is she (as them) through the seasons, as size, as color, as movement. Closing our eyes is actually a powerful tool we have all used, where we have felt for a moment that we are there doing it ourselves-as we watched ice figure skating or dancing, swayed to music, “run” the track or thought through a difficult problem. Einstein mentions imagining as integral to his theory of relativity where he pictured himself riding a light beam had him gain insights that he was not able to gain through logic alone.

In-bodying Marking this week focused on becoming-like-something with which we had a natural affinity. The words of David Abram, Becoming Animal, set the stage for the exploration in this Imaginal Field:

“The boundaries of a living body are open and indeterminant more like membranes than barriers they define a surface of metamorphosis and exchange. The breathing, sensing body draws its sustenance and it’s very substance from the soils, plants and elements that surround it; it continually contributes itself, in turn, to the air to the composting earth…breathing the world into itself, so that it is very difficult to discern, any moment, precisely where this living body begins and where it ends.”

Abram’s words helped participant to have a body sense of those times throughout our lives when we have changed shapes, like playing as a child, intimate moments with a loved one and being absorbed in a book. In the current ecological crisis movies like Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life and Louie Schwartzberg’s Fantastic Fungi make it much easier to access feelings of belonging to the earth as never before.

The following marking pieces are explorations of being-like something else by participants in last week’s marking sessions. Many found a new sense of making-marks that stemmed from the new perspective. The experiences were varied but there is an embodied quality in the marks that shows through as sensing.

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Blog #2C In-Bodying the Field, Reciprocity: Flirting and Animism

Feb 20, 2022

There is a way to explore animism in the practice Marking by flirting. The definition of animism we are using it is the essence of an object or entity. It is the spirit that energizes, even if at first it is beyond our sensorial recognition. Rather than a belief we are cultivating more an attitude or practice as we become comfortable and adept in the Imaginal Realm. You could also say that it is a poetic approach. Poetry of the plastic arts, music, literature and performance all seek deeper and meaningful connection through the intelligence of the imaginal realm. Through marking we explore the reciprocity of the life and essence of the field in relation to flirting.

Flirting can be subtle or blatant, social, sexual or aesthetic behavior involving spoken, written word or body language communicated in creative exchange by one person to another. We are extending it to what we usually think as objects. It suggests an interest in deeper relationship or simple unfolding amusement. In the spirit of Reciprocity notice what catches your attention, your eye, or perhaps kinesthetically, your body. Not just people or objects but how the light slants through the trees, the stance of a crow, a gesture that brings back a memory. Because flirting goes back and forth you need to give some space to whatever you are flirting with to respond. Let your imagination start an exchange. Give the encounter some leeway to play, transforming into new possibilities. Engage in the exchange for deeper relationship in the Imaginal Realm.

Some approaches in Transpersonal Psychology and Process Therapy look at physical symptoms not as pathological but invitations for creative encounters that offer important insights and information. Arnold Mindell talks about symptoms as dreamings. They have important information for guidance for assimilation and integration. Flirting is a way to engage secondary process, which at first lies outside of our immediate awareness. If our true self is nonlocal, then anything that catches your attention is you, an edge of the bigger-you. Flirting goes back and forth, so take up the baton.