Marinating in the after-glow of a sustained sensorially-stimulated experience of safety, trust, physical and socio-emotional bonding, I hope you'll enjoy these musings in response to Joeg Hassman's Contact Improvisation at Cooran Hall and Hillers Retreat here on the Sunny East- Coast of Australia.
Lovers of dance, journey with me via one of the sexiest languages on the planet (if you don't believe me, see if you aren't just a little turned on by David Buss's Evolution of Desire).
Lovers of science, open your mind with the curiosity that drew you to the unanswered questions in the first place. An invitation to let sensation itself bring your thinking-mind home to your body.
I'm Alexis Dennehy, post-grad educated in Trauma & Women's Health and over 25 years clinical experience in integrative- & somatically-focused health care. My life's purpose is bridge the collective body & mind through the disciplines of somatics & science. I'm a bit of a wanker and a bit of a hippy, so I hope you'll excuse the annoyingness of this predicament.
Based on the findings of Steve Paxton and fellow dancers, including Mary Fulkerson (Release Technique), and Nancy Stark Smith (The Confluence of Contact Improvisation), Contact Improvisation (CI) is a form cultured through close physical, mindful and emotional listening and spontaneous play within Scores (minutes-long Performances) and Jams (hours-long Improvisations).
“Contact”: the continuous rolling point of pressure between two or more bodies.
“Improvisation”: the flow state in which the momentum becomes the “third entity”
(for Juicy reference, listen in on Paxton here).
Beyond the dance, however, the relational experience of CI invites us to explore a collective kind of social intelligence. I imagine, this is something like the Finnish approach to punishment where criminals are anti-doted of the shame of "not belonging" by being rehabilitated back into community. Or the "eusociality" of bees, who specialise in dharma ("this is my job, and I'll bloody well finish it") which some researchers call "an accelerated evolution". In CI, the field becomes a moving constellation in which to act out our relational patterns. How am I in a group when I feel different? How am I when I feel trust and sensitivity?
Through the very invitation to make contact, we notice our sense of "belonging" vs "not-belonging", "softening" vs "protecting", "propping" vs "yielding" and the associated mental-emotional states across the spectrum from dis-ease, back to ease.
In such a safe agenda-free field, archetypal relationships emerge spontaneously. Mother-and-child, friends-in-a-field, witches brewing, an elephant ride, strong circus-women, lovers melting and kitchen surgery are just a few of my most "lush green" experiences.
Carl Jung would have had a field day in a CI workshop. Like the dolls house to a child re-enacting her relationships with her mother, father, sisters and brothers, the field of CI becomes a space to comprehend our relational reality. With opportunity to reflect in circle, the CI field supports a short-circuit of childhood re-enactment, as we literally stretch open our adult responsiveness.
Movement toward or away? Rewiring epigentic imprinting
Fundamental to the definition of a living being, second only to the most basic function of respiration, is our ability to position and reposition in space by moving. As the leaf rotates in response to the inherent need for sunlight, the human being moves toward or away in response to biologically inherent needs.
The biological need for touch has received interesting wrap in recent years. The fear enculturated during the pandemic has left a far-reaching epigenetic imprint. If we are to reverse this, largely unconscious, residue, it will be through re-wiring our nervous systems to reach for each other with such Saddhana & Sangha as is found in Contact Improvisation.
Like the sensitive sea anenome, this will require a kind of gentleness and softness. The kind of sensitivity known only to the tribal self. The repair of this collective rupture will be through the recognition that touch, closeness, physical bonding and intimacy are biologically inherent to the self-hood of the human being.
Contact Improvisation offers a trauma-informed approach, via consent, collaboration and the ensuing repair of unconscious bias, to darn the delicate social linen, and alter the future of our epigenetic imprinting.
The Psycho-Phyisiological Benefits of Contact Improvisation
Bowlby and Ainsworth's Attachment Theory proposes that we are all, in essence, grown babies seeking to meet our base-level needs for being seen, heard, to know we matter, in order to experience safety and ease.
As babies, this mechanism drove our care-givers to respond in a way which ensured survival of the species. As adults, we have the capacity to move toward or away ie to meet our own needs.
During a 3-hour contact improvisation score, we have some tens or even hundreds of opportunities to lean toward meeting our needs. If I have a need for sensitivity, I can reduce the pressure, slow down and turn up the volume of my interoception. If I have a need for grounding, I can wriggle under the mass of another's body...a need for stability, I can reach for a steady presence next to me...a need for lightness and freedom, I can lift my gaze and indicate a readiness for lift. These micro-moments of choicefulness amount to a totality of empowerment and an ongoing practice of self-leadership.
The Psycho-Physiological Benefits of Self-Intimacy
Oxytocin, coupled with her partner peptide Vasopressin, initiates waves of the womb, the altered state of consciousness and the deep bonding common across childbirth, breastfeeding, foreplay and orgasm. My experience of oxytocin is the psycho-physiological purring and deep contentment of feeling wanted for every cell of my being.
Research shows those with attachment needs met from a young age have a higher density of receptors to oxytocin. It seems that after a certain developmental stage, however, the number of receptor sites remains relatively stable.
My hypothesis is that a sufficient volume of corrective experiences, such as are found across the Sanghas of Contact Improvisation and Non Violent Communication, may allow for an increased number of receptor sites. Specifically, “the methylation of the oxytocin receptor gene and its expression” in response to consistent sustained oxytocic experiences (Another super-juiceful reference: Check out The Biochemistry of Love, by Carter and Porges, 2010).
I wonder then, whether an ongoing self-responsiveness toward the felt sensations of attachment, might enable a sustained experience of our basic natures (Svarupe, the goal of Yoga, as defined by the authority text Patanjali's Yoga Sutras) otherwise described as radiance, transcendence and union.
This thinking drives my Sadhana (practice), now a series of micro love affairs in which one part of me in making sweet love to another. This idea was introduced to my by a client many years ago, who described her breath as an inner lover, the caress of life giving and receiving at the interface between external and internal.
The simple contact of one foot against my other now meets my need for security and friendship. The simple contact of my pubic bone against a cushion meets my need to know I matter. Increasingly able to meet my felt needs, this is the practice I call Self-intimacy.
This is Somatic Practice in its essential form....Sensory guidance (the inner child), met by sensory responsiveness (the inner adult). (More on this in my next post 'A Somatic Perspective on Motivation & Burnout')
Parts of ourselves responding to other parts
This consistent validation of my needs builds a secure attachment between the child part of me (that needs comfort, safety, to know she matters and to be seen) and the adult part of me (that needs contribution, growth, care and sustainability). As well as the benefit of self-security, this practice reduces expectations of my lover and friends, and the habituated “demand” energy of "you're not here for me". Furthermore, it releases me from the grasping for self-worth and what I feel has been unmet chronically.
In 2015 I wrote a piece on Oxytocic Experiences, noting that what is common across experiences of intimacy with another, with nature, with a pet, or with ourselves, are two things: Firstly, the state of attunement or subtle responsiveness, and secondly, the felt experience of deep safety and security.
Even small, but regular doses of felt community (not just dipped into, but integrated) reduces seeking of both substances and risk, a direct correlation with reduced sense of isolation, counter-dependence and social avoidance. With practice, we can internalise the responsiveness we receive from others in a secure ongoing attunement with ourselves aka Self-Intimacy.
In Summary
Through the practices of choiceful leaning, oxytocin-rich security, self-responsiveness and ultimately self-leadership, Contact Improvisation, like Non-Violent Communication, offers individual and collective means to repair even epigenetic personal and social rupturing.
Whatever your background, if you'd like to experience a felt sense of Self-Intimacy, please join me at a Saturday morning 20:20:20 or our Monthly NVC Practice Group.
If you’d like to hear more, please Follow my Podcast “In Flow & On Form; The Psycho-Physiology of Somatic Practice”
I'm Alexis Dennehy, post-grad educated in Trauma & Women's Health. I hold a Masters of Public Health from The University of Queensland and over 25 years clinical experience in Integrative- & Somatically- focused Health Care.
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