Changing Climates

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As part of my residency at Ponderosa I shared an ongoing research around embodied practices that can be considered rituals or independent practices depending on their life integration.

 

The Changing Climate program was an invitation to enter conversations around Climate Change and for me to offer some of my movement research to support the conversation and sense making. Because Climate Change is a subject that is traumatic, the traumatic implications however are often not seen as we keep reiterating the content or go into hiding mode.  Or complain about each others hiding mode because we do not see and therefore address its traumatic implications. With Changing Climate, Ponderosa, Katja Weber and Exit Map collaborated to create an event where the information on climate change could be shared in digestible ways - therefore opening up an inquiry how embodied approaches  may support fact sharing that is otherwise very hard to take in. 

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The ambition for me was to create a climate of trust and joy, a reset of our nervous system, a moment of hope and collective power to meet and support the otherwise heavy and lengthy conversations and exchanges. 

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With Changing Climates we aligned a conversation around Climate Change with questions what it is we need to move away from the freeze effect it has on us. We ask, what practices allow us to connect and communicate differently? How do they bring us back together, how does the environment feature and also, how do we remember ourselves as nature?

 

There are many ways ranging from intricate and more ritualistic integrations that require time to form bonds and a certain commitment whereas other formats are easily offered and enjoyed by all yet go a long way to alleviate tension and doom.

 

For instance you may move while you talk and pause to listen. Brining in mobility according to attention and meeting emotional responses, allowing shifts in the body to alleviate pressures.

 

It asks how our attention moves, when does stillness serve us, when does mobility empower a regulation of participation?  During the weekend I shared how folk dances, in this instance a cèilidh (Irish, Scottish) can be both a kind of ritual or throughline in our lives by creating a culutre around it but it can also be a single event that we connect with to bring us joy and laughter regardless what we believe in, what colour or gender because the format makes us all jump laughing uncontrollably while passing every single person in the room with joy.

A welcomed relief that can bring balance back into body and mind to be able to deal with the necessary conversations.