through a translator, I hear the ideas of the text in another language and notice the way words shape experience. At Middlebury College in the U.S. where I regularly teach, a Japanese dance student says, “In my country, there are so many words for ‘sensation,’ I don’t know which you mean.” A Norwegian student asks, “What is this word ‘sensation?’” As my understanding of the body deepens, I acknowledge the distance between experience and the words used to convey it.
In the seven years since BodyStories was published, I have remained fascinated by the body attitudes expressed in my classes and workshops. Ambivalence about our physical home remains disturbingly pervasive. Students creating body tracings in an art education course filled their life-sized outlines with expressive symbols of injury, abuse, and fear: scars for surgeries, a black ribbon around the throat, words such as “don’t touch.” One student summed up her experience this way: “It is odd to focus on my body, I’ve been abusing it all of my life.”
There are also cultural shifts affecting changes in our bodies. BodyStories was written before computers were commonplace. The increased stress generated by the speed and information-overload of these machines designed to help us save time, paper, and energy needs to be examined. Fatigued students, already feeling depleted of energy and constricted in their bodies, speak of fearing the aging process. Another area of concern is the commonplace usage of prescription drugs to get students through the rigors of academic life, beginning in grade school, high school, or college. The number of students who miss my classes “to get their medications adjusted” is startling. How do we respond? Of the forty participants in one Anatomy course, eight have mothers who have died of or are being treated for breast cancer. Some students write of parents who are anorexic or bulimic. Acknowledging these complex trends, I realize that the information in BodyStories is still timely; its function is to return us to ourselves.
On a positive note, the past decade has brought an increased awareness of bodywork techniques. When I arrived to teach massage at a birthday party, the first question from the thirteen-year-old girls assembled was, “What kind of massage? Shiatsu or Swedish or deep tissue?” Experiential anatomy is now offered in the curriculum of several colleges, and the number of pre-med students and health professionals in my courses and workshops increases annually. The popularity of contemplative practice techniques including meditation, yoga, and T’ai Chi stimulates scientific research about the integrity of body and mind. Interdisciplinary coursework in environmental studies acknowledges the interconnectedness of body and earth.
This dialogue between body and environment is a new theme in my own writings. After focusing intensely on the body for over twenty years, I now look around me and am curious about the context in which I live. Our intricate relationship with the environment should be obvious, but most of us ignore our fundamental connection to the air, water, soil, animals, plants, and solar system of which we are a part. Body awareness is a key component in developing a new relationship to our environment. It helps us to address the primary concern of our time, how best to live on this earth.
My colleagues originally involved in BodyStories also reflect this shift in interest. Caryn McHose now focuses on the early evolutionary forms, the origins of human experience in a much broader context. Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen speaks of identifying fluid at the moment that it is transitioning or flowing into or out of the cell. John Wilson explores connections to anthropology and world cultures in his new role as professor of Dance and International Studies. Gordon and Anne Thorne extend their studio in the heart of community to include farmlands through the Open Field Foundation – inviting connections between art, education and environment. Susan Borg teaches “inclusive attention,” the simultaneous awareness of self and surroundings. And Janet Adler directs her incisive intellect towards mystical experience. For each of us, engagement with the personal, interior landscape has led us to a broader view. As we continue listening to the stories of our bodies, we recognize both body and earth as home.
– Andrea Olsen, May 1998
I would like to acknowledge the work of the following individuals and their influence on my life:
Janet Adler, whose work in Authentic Movement brings an understanding of the body and the psyche.
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, whose experiential teachings of the body systems and human developmental and reflex patterns integrate the mind and the body.
Caryn McHose, whose intuitive methods and progression for teaching human anatomy form the core of this text.
Gordon Thorne, whose belief in the value of empty space provides time and place for creative work.
John M. Wilson, whose articulate concern for training theatre performers combines arthrometric analysis with humane philosophy.
Andrea Olsen and Caryn McHose
“IMPECCABLE IN THE BEGINNING”
When Janet Adler would begin a workshop on Authentic Movement, she would call the group together and speak about the importance of beginnings. She reminded us to ask our questions and prepare ourselves, so that we could be fully present in the work. The expression she used was to be “impeccable in the beginning;” to acknowledge what we need to do in order to begin. For me, beginning this text necessitated writing about my origins.
INTRODUCTION
THE TEXT: Origins
My first course related to anatomy was high school Zoology where we learned the interrelatedness of the species and experienced the unveiling, through dissection, of evolutionary history. College brought Introduction to Biology, where the cell and fantasies of life under the microscope took prominence. Two years later, I had my first course about the human body. I was an undergraduate majoring in art, and was teaching dance at Millikin University, a liberal arts school in the Midwest. The course was taught in the Physical Education Department and the football team and I learned about the muscles. I remember staring at the pictures, memorizing the names, and wondering how they all worked together. My next course was Anatomy and Kinesiology for Dance, taught in graduate school at the U. of Utah by Dr. John M. Wilson. This brilliant course demonstrated in content and teaching style that every science is a philosophy. Dr. Wilson incorporated the principles of Margaret H’Doubler, pioneer in combining anatomy and dance in an educational setting, and spoke of the multidimensionality of the human species. I was captivated by every word and repeated the course twice more in my years of association with Dr. Wilson.
After graduate school I toured with a modern dance company and applied what I had learned to the experience of performing. I taught Anatomy for Dance in workshop settings and developed an approach to dance technique based on anatomical principles. During this time, I became Director of Dance at Mount Holyoke College and taught my first anatomy course. I had bright students, eager with questions, who were obviously as inspired as I had been by learning about the body. I invited Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, founder of the School for Body-Mind Centering, to speak to the class as a guest lecturer. Bonnie had trained as an occupational therapist; she had also studied dance with Eric Hawkins. She had notable success working with patients, affecting change through her hands, but she couldn’t articulate how or why the rehabilitation occurred. Dissatisfied with the constraints of that field, she traveled to England to study with Dr. Karl and Berta Bobath and work with brain disabled children. She also studied Katsugen undu, life-force movement, in Japan with Haruchi Noguchi. This is a method of allowing internal movement to be expressed outwardly, by allowing automatic movement to emerge. Then she and her husband Len, a chiropractor and student of aikido, returned to New York to co-found
