“How Would You ‘Blue’ At Me?"
- artoverapathy
- Jul 8
- 3 min read
This blog post contains my multi-modal Assignment for 'Embodied Awareness', my Second Unit of Masters of Therapeutic Studies at The MIECAT Institute, written in August 2024.
Unit 2; EMBODIED AWARENESS : Multi-modal Assignment 2- “How Would You ‘Blue’ At Me?” What you have come to know about Embodied Awareness, how you have come to know this, and what you would like to do with what you have come to know.
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The MIECAT approach to Arts Therapy is about walking a path of inquiry with the inquirer and thier inquiries- we are being equipped with navigational tools to co-explore their experiential unknown. Embodied awareness is one complex part of the whole lived experience. Simply it is being aware of our bodies as organs of communication and understanding and the many ways they percieve and respond to and within thier environments.
Although we are taught to default to the verbal-linguistic mode of communication (McKnight, 2016, pg. 10) the body itself can communicate in a wide variety of ways; externally through gesture, posture, behaviour, movement, tone/volume of voice (figure 1), or internally through emotions, feelings/sensations, memories,or mental imagery. (MIECAT Institute, 2023, pg. 4)
Most of us are brought up to believe the logical brain is ‘superior’ to the animalistic body. Even before Darwinism, the human body was considered superior to all life, yet still inferior to the rational mind. Abrahm writes “In Descarte’s hands… ‘the Great Chain of Being’ was polarized into a thorough dichotomy between mechanical, unthinking matter (including all minerals, plants, and animals, as well as the human body) and pure, thinking mind (the exclusive province of humans and God).” (1996, pg.48). Over time, this Cartesian Dualism encouraged generations become intellectually separated from their physical selves in service of ‘a disciplined mind’, leading to widespread loss of bodily understanding. (Caldwell, C. 2018, pg. 33)
We now find ourselves in a modern position of ‘the body’ seen as a pathologized site of majority-biased capitalistic oppression that carries more psychosocial implications the more cultural intersections you reside within (Caldwell, C. 2018, pg. 36-37). This leads to repressed body<- ->mind resolution which can lead to mental health issues such as depression and C-PTSD, social issues such as isolation and domestic violence, and physical issues such as autoimmune disorders, cancers etc (Caldwell, C. 2018 pg. 42).
We are learning, however, that there are options.
To start we consider “Emotional responses have a substantial influence on the cognitive processes... The connection between an emotional response and abstract thinking is strengthened through an individual’s creativity and imaginative capabilities.” (McKnight, 2016, pg 12), and that “Ahmed writes that, ‘all actions are reaction, in the sense that what we do is shaped by the contact we have with others’ (2004: 4)” (Fullagar, S. et al, 2021, pg. 4).
Caldwell reminds us "Resisting and restructuring this oppression involves changing our relationship to pain and pleasure... It begins by developing body listening practices... Body identity development matures when we... are able to be comfortable with listening to both verbal and non-verbal language systems, both as we listen to our own bodies and as we relate to the bodies of others." (Caldwell, C. 2018 pg. 42-43). She continues; “Conscious work to develop one's body identity... may lower the cost of self-reflection and social involvement.” (Caldwell, C. 2018 pg. 46). Cameron adds; “Sensory regulation as a heightened form of health and wellbeing requires synchronizing self to the natural world to feel the natural rhythms that influence our emotional moods.” (2020 pg.7). These authors helped me realise there are many different forms of knowing, many ways of interpreting knowing, and many ways of expressing knowing.
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You can find the rest of this assignment as a .PDF below.
You can find the videos of my final artwork here; SONG; https://youtu.be/x9nYY29lotY?si=CWFtMg6EaKWxzW2y
VIDEO CLIP; https://youtu.be/t4cws6_ZCwA?si=YjfkDtEnCqEsyGGs
You can find the video of my U2 Multimodal Journal here;
Let me know what you think!
Xx
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