A prolific artist from a very young age, Cathy Josefowitz gained renown for an art practice revolving around inquiry into the nature of self and of the other, pursued via painting, drawing, performance, and choreography. Born in 1956 in New York, this Swiss artist never ceased to explore incarnation, at times to the point of obsession, in relation to her own physicality as well as that of others; in part in semantic terms, in her representation of the ideal, dysfunctional, invalid, effervescent, ecstatic or, quite simply, inert body; and conceptually, too, through a number of projects that denounced the violence inflicted on the bodies of marginalized members of society, particularly the women among them, and on those of animals. Cathy Josefowitz studied set design at the Théâtre National de Strasbourg before moving to Paris at the tender age of seventeen, to take a degree in visual arts at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts. In the late 1970s, in the United States, she discovered dance, then primal theater, and later, while studying in the UK at the Dartington College of Arts, the contact improvisation and anatomical release dance techniques pioneered by her avant-garde peers Steve Paxton and Mary Fulkerson, respectively. Her own research into the interrelation of the choreography of movement and the painterly gesture attained ultimate polish at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, where she took a course in choreography from 1987 on.
This study explored the efficacy of a mindfulness-based intervention for problematic eating behavior. A non-clinical sample of 26 women with disordered eating behavior was randomly assigned to an 8-week MBCT-based eating intervention or a waiting list control group. Data were collected at baseline and after 8 weeks. Compared to controls, participants in the mindfulness intervention showed significantly greater decreases in food cravings, dichotomous thinking, body image concern, emotional eating and external eating. These findings suggest that mindfulness practice can be an effective way to reduce factors that are associated with problematic eating behaviour.
The Thinking Body
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Alexei Penzin teaches at the University of Wolverhampton (UK), and is also a Research Associate at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. Penzin is a member of the collective Chto Delat (What is to be done?). His research has been published in the journals Rethinking Marxism, Crisis and Critique, Mediations, South Atlantic Quarterly, and e-flux, among others. He co-edited the English translation of the book Art and Production (Pluto Press, 2017) by Boris Arvatov, one of the key theorists of the Soviet avant-garde. Currently, he is preparing his book Against the Continuum: Sleep and Subjectivity in Capitalist Modernity for Bloomsbury Academic.
Catherine belongs to an elite group of yoga teachers who are at the top of their practice. Her understanding of the body & the language she uses to describe movements & poses is vivid and sophisticated.
While scientists might apply reductionist theory and predict that thoughts are simply physical entities that can be explained by chemical changes in the brain, philosophers or other theorists might argue a more dualistic theory that your mind is separate from your body and your thoughts are not physical parts of your brain.
Climbers develop the intrinsically linked aspects of strength, skill, and movement efficiency through practice and training. This climbing-specific strength is more nuanced than simply the ability to complete a deadlift or pull-up. It involves controlling the body through almost limitless positions, from high stepping and stemming to heel hooking and fully-spanned reaches. Often many of these positions occur simultaneously. With intentional practice, a climber can train their body to become stronger in these complex positions. They can effectively transfer force better, and using creative skill, move into the most efficient position to solve the climb. The increase in strength, within a broad range of motion expands the ability to solve a move or sequence.
In the past decade, Alex Honnold has been at the pinnacle of big wall free climbing, completing enormous link-ups of multiple El Capitan routes in a day. Interestingly, many top sport climbers and boulders have stronger fingers, pull strength, and body tension than Honnold. So how does Honnold survive the physical stress of the great volumes of climbing and hiking better than everyone else?
Develop a slab circuit at your local climbing area. Whether at the gym or on the rock, repeat these problems multiple times a session to find more balance, better body control, and greater movement efficiency. Each day, during your warmup, try to climb the circuit with increased flow and less physical effort.
I then attended a workshop run by the marvellous Tom Myers an anatomist and author of Anatomy Trains. His work focused on the manual manipulation of fascia of the body. I was so impressed with his work I immediately signed up and completed his training and qualified as a Structural Integrator.
Our yoga practice is conceptual. Depending on how the mind works, one can weave a yoga practice from an idea, an image, a pranayama, a part or system of the body, one of the senses, or a traditional posture or series of postures. The genesis or inspiration, warp and woof can be almost anything. We plant a seed idea, then grow a practice or lesson whose roots are deep, healthy, and centered, and that expresses energy and beauty, because it is dependant on internal process, the laws of nature, not perfection or performance. The result is profoundly individuated.
The notion of setting objectives, searching for appropriate processes to achieve them is not new. What is significant here though is the inflection to be always conscious of thinking about new and or more appropriate ways of creating and delivering objectives so that the product finds its market and the two are matched via a considered process of making - a process that is constantly scrutinised.
This acknowledgement of a context driven plurality works well in The Changing Room forum because of the way in which the three different components have their own specific 'languages', processes and modes of operation. The participant-choreographer at various points in the day had to negotiate between seminars and workshop classes looking at and practising how we communicate, developing models for effective communication, exploring ways of setting outcomes which result in action, working in the dance studio spaces on choreographic explorations playing with ideas relating to the body as geography, composing with social actions and abstractions, then moving back into seminars, taking part in formal and informal seminar groups debating the relationships between
The principal outcome of the forum was to enable the choreographic artists to become more articulate and flexible in their thinking and interactions with themselves and other people and to see how this translated experientially into their artistic practice and other life situations. The participants were asked to take time to review the effectiveness of their own current operational systems working at their own pace in a responsible and responsive environment. This was done as group work but with individual diagnostic and development activity being undertaken as well. As such the choreographers were challenged to be more aware of a whole range of concerns, some examples being what preparation for going into the studio might mean as well as taking time to check that the working methods being initiated in the studio were appropriate to the desired outcomes for that particular session in relation to making a choreographic work. Being more aware of how external behaviour (words and actions), internal emotions (emotions and values) and internal processes (thoughts and beliefs) inform and affect our being and movement through the world, and our openness to the notion that all these elements can be worked with and changed to produce remarkable and achievable outcomes is challenging and rewarding in equal measure. As Victoria Marks, who was responsible for delivering the choreographic classes in The Changing Room states: "The piece that I find utterly brilliant is to have some information about learning and communication along side of the process of learning about choreography and of looking at choreographic work as a means of communication." Siobhan O'Neill, Associate Director of the Taking Risks Festival and former Artistic Director of Chisenhale Dance Space agrees: "This is the environment in which I've experienced dance artists being most articulate ..."
Kaizen came into being as an organisation to consider and challenge the thinking behind much contemporary arts practice and training, to challenge the individual's conceptual frame that informs that practice. A 'hothouse' as an environment could just as easily be thought of as a mind-set, a way of seeing rather than another building, event, funding policy or organisation. Informing the thinking can lead to changing the thinking can lead to the creation of physical environments where that thinking is turned into actual making - the creation of spaces, performers, companies, organisations and funding structures that will work from the inside out, not the other way round. This might lead us to reconsider the relationship between the idea of risk houses and safe houses in light of concerns for multiplying and diversifying arts audiences. The risk house ought to be the place where new ideas are played out and open for debate amongst an invited informed audience. The work should proceed to safe house status when the problems have been resolved and clarified for the audience and appropriate strategies are in place to allow audience access to the complexity of much contemporary performance. This means that artist and spectator might begin to share and debate visions of the world as represented in an array of artistic works. This outcome can be achieved by providing training models that put the artist in the position of informed, articulate, skilful, flexible creator capable of formulating and creating massive action. The 'thoughtful body' is worth dreaming about. 2ff7e9595c
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