Home › Commons › Conversations-Forums › What Art of Hosting is emerging to become? ›

Where fits embodied learning in the Art of Hosting?

Submitted by Ria Baeck on March 3, 2008 - 16:03.

From an email conversation between Bob Stilger and Bob Wing - following some shared learning from Toke and his mates in Kufunda Learning Village in Febr. '08 - grew this:

"Stepping In and Stepping Out...

sounds like a dance...

Perhaps one we are all dancing."

Bob Wing

Tip: start reading from the bottom.

Structural language

Submitted by Ria Baeck on March 3, 2008 - 16:40.

Thanks for the knowing distinctions, though they are definitely not being articulated in an “Experiential knowing” sort of way. I had to re-read these four paragraphs a number of times and still didn’t really get it until I thought to read them - looking for where good questions would occur and have life.

I have to admit that right after I wrote you I remembered that it was not called “body communication/language” but STRUCTUAL LANGUAGE. Which opens it up a lot. What this means to me is that how we present is very important. That the forms we chose to work in, the space, where people sit/stand, and our own condition (actually all the structures present)- are essential communications that can impact people more than any verbal communications. Such as; is what we are trying to communicate alive in the structure/form we choose to present it in? Is it alive in us? As an example, are we demonstrating circle technology in ourselves when we present it to others? I remember once (only once) trying to get across the value of dialogue by lecturing at a class. What was I thinking? So it occurs to me that we are all somewhat using structural language already. Some more than others, some more consciously than others.

So, a question arises: What would it be if we all were thoroughly fluent, at ease, and conscious in communicating with structural language? What would structural language poetry look like?

Thanks for the chance/excuse to clarify some ideas for myself- I do love a good dialogue. Bob Wing

Different knowings

Submitted by Ria Baeck on March 3, 2008 - 16:11.

Hi Bob, Surely, it is a dance! This is a very interesting question. Your categories triggered some memories, and I went back and pulled up something called the Participatory Inquiry Paradigm, an article from John Heron and Peter Reason from 1996. Here was the section I was remembering:

Experiential knowing means direct encounter, face-to-face meeting: feeling and imaging the presence of some energy, entity, person, place, process or thing. It is knowing through participative, empathic resonance with a being, so that as knower I feel both attuned with it and distinct from it. It is also the creative shaping of a world through the transaction of imaging it, perceptually and in other ways. Experiential knowing thus articulates reality through inner resonance with what there is, and through perceptually enacting (Varela et al, 1993) its forms of appearing.

Presentational knowing emerges from and is grounded on experiential knowing. It is evident in an intuitive grasp of the significance of our resonance with and imaging of our world, as this grasp is symbolized in graphic, plastic, musical, vocal and verbal art-forms. It clothes our experiential knowing of the world in the metaphors of aesthetic creation, in expressive spatiotemporal forms of imagery. These forms symbolize both our felt attunement with the world and the primary meaning embedded in our enactment of its appearing.

Propositional knowing is knowing in conceptual terms that something is the case; knowledge by description of some energy, entity, person, place, process or thing. It is expressed in statements and theories that come with the mastery of concepts and classes that language bestows. Propositions themselves are carried by presentational forms - the sounds or visual shapes of the spoken or written word - and are ultimately grounded in our experiential articulation of a world.

Practical knowing is knowing how to do something, demonstrated in a skill or competence. We would argue that practical knowledge is in an important sense primary (Heron, 1996). It presupposes a conceptual grasp of principles and standards of practice, presentational elegance, and experiential grounding in the situation within which the action occurs. It fulfils the three prior forms of knowing, brings them to fruition in purposive deeds, and consummates them with its autonomous celebration of excellent accomplishment.

This is too academic for me to easily put my head around, but I share it because I think it is another useful way of speaking of the distinctions you mention. And I think that what you are talking about is part of the “experiential knowing” – when we know it in our body. When it is embodied. At many levels I suspect a core in our work is helping people remember what it feels like to be courageous, curious, respectful, friendly, protective and to trust those feelings. And from what I know of your body work, it is really about connecting people back with their capacities in these realms to feel and act from these places. I’m sure that bringing our bodies back in is key.

I’m very much a novice here. So I bring clay and simple movement exercises and music and anything else I can think of in when I have an opportunity to help a group learn. AND there is much more to do here. Much more that is possible.

Looking forward to further play! Bob Stilger

Place of 'body' learning in the 'new learning forms'

Submitted by Ria Baeck on March 3, 2008 - 16:07.

I’m wondering (of course I would) where the forms of “body” learning fits in to our “new learning forms”? I remember being taught that there are three forms of human communications:

  1. Representational- this is the language modern humans communicate with all the time, where what is said represents something but is not that thing itself. Like if we say “Red”, this refers to the color but is not the color itself. This form by its very nature tends to once remove us from the present.
  2. Immediate- where what is said is what it is. Like saying “fuck” (and other good guttural words) because the sound of the word conveys our communication, not what its vocabulary meaning is.
  3. Body- this form of communication is the most basic, most immediate, most remembered, and some say the most powerful.

I mention this because I see the usual workshops depending almost entirely on representational language and not including body communication/learning at all, at least not in a conscious way.

 

I think you know that I’m most interested in this form of communication/learning, yet I think we have barely touched its possibility to be used consciously and powerfully. I know that I can often convey something in a very short time with body/movement communication that can take forever in representational language. Even so, I think there is much more to be discovered.

 

So I would like to ask again, “Where does body learning fit in with our “new learning forms”?

 

Thanks, Bob Wing