Published in the European Journal of Ecological Psychology, this essay brings somatic movement scores and ecological exploration into dialogue. It articulates the inner adventures of movement through wandering, lying, grounding and shaping as practice pathways for engaging with the more-than-human. Through improvisational encounters with trees, it explores how embodied perception can shift towards ecological reciprocity, where we are not only dancing with trees but also being danced by them.
Article published the European Journal of Ecological Psychology, vol. 8, pp. 88-113, Special Issue on ‘Embodiment and Ecopsychology’, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7939092.
Abstract: This essay takes the reader into a synesthetic landscape to explore the possibility of relating with trees as intimate companions of movement and becoming. David Abram's ecophenomenology of perception is brought into dialogue with Kimerer LaMothe's philosophy of dance and with other voices in the growing interdisciplinary field of ecosomatics. Based on the author's inquiries as dancer-researcher, encounters with trees are staged as slow improvisational rituals of listening and attunement. In opening the senses and the imagination to the presence of trees, ecosomatic practice exposes the porosity and permeability of bodily boundaries and reveals the possibility of a perceptual shift into a heightened experience of embodiment. We are not only touching, witnessing, and dancing with trees, we are also being touched, witnessed, and danced by them. In these in-between spaces the soma is reached sensorially by ecological wounds and dance is reclaimed as a healing force.
