Biofeedback, supplication, and action

I live in unsustainable indulgence paid for by the blood of others.  How can re-wilding help me transform my role as an oppressor?

Dance is an important language in my life which I intend to use for my mind-body practice of re-wilding this week.  I came up with three themes to explore through dance in response to this question:

1) The first theme is to imagine what it would be like to have biofeedback from the entire earth (including its humans) in response to my impact and consumption.  Since I don't actually have a biofeedback machine plugged into the earth, perhaps movement is an alternative way to experience the dance between myself and the earth.  Ribeiro and Fonseca (2011) discuss improvisational dance between two people: 

"The collective body intelligence can be understood as an ability to plan and to solve collective body 'problems' and to make decisions collectively during dance improvisation" (p.76). 

Another apt quote is by social choreographer Michael Klien (2007): 

"There is simply no other or better word or concept than 'choreography' to describe an active inquiry into the non-concrete reality that deals with complex relations and connections within the natural world. ... These are things we are only able to apprehend aesthetically, kinesthetically, intuitively" (p. 221).  

In my practice today, I intend to explore kinesthetic awareness of the complex human and earth systems of which I am a part.

2) Since I now recognize "nature" to be a nominal marker for the support system through which one imposes on one's environment to survive or indulge in pleasures of comfort, I have become more poignantly aware of the harm I cause to others and the benefit I gain from this harm.  I wonder if spiritual practices of confession or asking for forgiveness offer an opportunity to begin to reroute that blockage in the body.  For my second theme, I will make myself available to movement sourced in expressions of supplication.

3) Moving beyond shame and guilt, I hope to begin to explore the way embodied awareness of my role on the biosphere serves as a catalyst for action.  Here are two examples of courageous humans whose embodied interdependence with their environment has triggered their fight/flight response in order to survive attacks by the oil industry.  

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In my practice, I spent about one hour in candlelight, allowing myself to explore these themes and whatever else emerged in the process.  I utilized intuitive, spontaneous movements, similar to authentic movement for my re-wilding practice.
 

My dance

...rocking, rolling, shaking, vibrating... humming....

...each moment is hooked with innumerable tendrils to some other strand of planetary history, down to the particles in the air I'm breathing, the fabric touching my skin, the very fact that I am living in this part of the world at this time...

...fingers drifting, boundaries blurring...

(distraction, avoidance, return, distraction, avoidance, return...)

...sudden lightness and blossoming presence: this is my true identity, the infinite unknowns that spread out like an ocean of fishes or cells of constant exchange...

...

...coming into supplication, my heart feels hard like a rock.  (defensively:) This is how I live.  Yes, I know it's awful, but... (so what?)  

Beating my heart, my chest, my legs to break down the armor... 

...just feeling my own callousness brings tears to my eyes...

... allowing the suffering to seep in, knowing there are those who are hungry while I eat, those who are cold while I am warm, those who are scared while I am safe...

...the beating becomes rhythmic and smooth, like a meaty readiness of muscles and limbs, a body in motion, an ally in the fight...

...

and what a perfect transition into action... (thought: i like this progression, i should try this again sometime)

...recalling a mudra from a Kali Natha yoga video I watched today for Bhuvaneshwari, I make this mudra over my head and over my heart...

...feeling the space left open for imaginative action, for inspiration, innovation...

I feel the desire to aim high in the drainage, to find strategic leverage to accelerate change... legs wiggling, I feel my impatience, which seems understandable...

...grateful to have this time to engage my bodymind as part of my doctoral program to link all that I am learning with all that I seek to create.

(blow out candle)

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References:

Klein, M. & Valk, S. (2007)  What do you choreograph at the end of the world?  Zodiac, 212-231.

Ribeiro, M. M. & Fonseca, A. (2011). The empathy and the structure sharing modes of movement sequences in the improvisation of contemporary dance.  Research in Dance Education, 12, 2, 71-85.

Using "nature" to cloak our sins

The task of re-wilding is finally becoming clearer.  Spending time in nature in the hopes of cultivating altruistic intent to protect non-human places is not only inadequate for motivating meaningful change, but it even requires additional consumption of resources to travel to such places.  Seeking personal well-being or insight in wild places also seems to (conveniently) divert attention away from the way that nature is already penetrating every moment of human life.  Rewilding, perhaps, is attending to the mind-boggling complexity of our consumption in the world and finding ways of awakening all the dissociated threads of interconnectedness.

My practice this week was to visualize the origins of things that I touch.  I tried it many times throughout the day all week.  I imagined the origins of cement steps, my pens, paint on walls, paved roads, stone tiles and hand rails in a public bathroom, woven polyester of office furniture and classroom chairs, and the mined marble of a table top.  I concentrated on acknowledging that every liquid I drank was rerouted from rivers and rainfall.  For an extended practice for today, I decided to pick one corner of my house and commune with the objects within that area.  I chose one shelf of my spice cabinet and held each container of spices in my hand for several minutes, tracing each aspect of it to its origins in the non-human world, and visualizing the earthly sources of glass bottles, plastic and metal caps, painted surfaces, plastic and paper labels and price tags, and of course, the drying and powderization of herbs, vegetables, and minerals.

I had many different feelings during the practice.  I frequently felt frustrated that I had no clue whatsoever how or where objects were made or what they were made of.  I guessed that one jar of spices included nature and people spanning multiple continents and required the use of machinery comprised of mined metals and powered by burning coal.  It also felt overwhelming and dizzying, since it seems hard to believe that we would go through all this trouble just for a little paprika.  At times I felt uncomfortable, disgusted, and ashamed about our insistence on producing absurdly trivial things, such as a little black fuzzy sticker on the inside of the cabinet door to soften the sound/ impact of closing the cabinet. 

I also did a modified version of Endredy's "Food Journeying" exercise in which one researches the origins of one's food.  Looking at the map I created last week, I looked into where some of my resources come from.  Here's a little photo collage of my findings...

Where my water comes from:

http://www.georgiawaterplanning.org

I had brussel sprouts today and found out that most brussel sprouts in the US come from California.  This picture appears to be cucumbers, but I was thinking of the backbreaking labor of migrant farmers and the costly transportation of vegetables from coast to coast.


Where the silicon chips in my computer come from:



Factory in China where the hands and breath of other humans contribute to my life:


Where my fuel comes from out on the ocean:



Where my electricity comes from deep in the earth:

Where my plastic comes from:
 

I also listened to a audiobook of Clarissa Pinkola Estes called the Power of the Crone in which she describes wildness as a way of being. 

I am the backwoods woman meeting the city teacup
The gyspy at the convent of the straight-lipped nuns
And the giantess at the dance of the ants
And the banshee running with the french poodles
I'm the stack of bones higher than ladies' hats
I'm the little sister, the mariposa, the butterfly maiden, who makes earthquakes
I'm the seagull at the garden party
I'm the harvest bride with greasy chin who stands with women who pretend to have no appetite whatsoever
I am backwoods, not front parlor
And I am looking for my sisters who can move sure-footed through the roots of trees
My sisters who can see most clearly in the dark.
 ~Clarissa Pinkola Estes

As I go through the doctoral program at UWG, I am inspired to draw on wildness as a guiding image to integrate embodiment and integrity in my contribution to the world through my endeavors.

Remember the earth whose skin you are. ~ Joy Harjo

Today's practice was very different and powerful, and I'm excited to articulate it here.  After many days of struggle trying to settle on an exercise, I began reading the Ecoshamanism book and realized why I had been intrigued by Endredy's work when I came across it years before.  Though he does use the term "shamanism," which I personally find abhorrent, unnecessary, and potentially manipulative, the rest of the book nearly redeems itself for this error with its unique integration of nature-based awareness with radical lifestyle changes.  For example, amidst numerous exercises involving climbing trees, chanting, and ritual, he suggests several "prerequisites" for beginning the work, including "maintaining a material standard of living that is not significantly higher or lower than that of the so-called third or fourth world" and "purchas[ing] only products that fulfill vital needs."  He describes "counterpractices" as practices that are designed to reverse our habituated entitlement, such as fasting or "food journeying" in which one researches the origins of all the food one eats.  This practical orientation to nature seems rare in the ecopsychology literature and seems to indicate a sincere investment in doing work that results in reducing harm, as opposed to inconsequential theatrics.

I had a brain flash after watching this fascinating video by a Georgetown University economics professor, Pietra Rivoli, about a book she wrote called The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade.  She describes her process of tracking a cotton t-shirt over three continents from production to disposal and the implications of a global economy through her encounters with the cotton growers in Lubbock, Texas, the factory workers in China, and the seller of used clothes in Tanzania.

I realized that the consolation that "nature" offers me is the coherence of an interconnected world where all vital activities are visible from start to finish.  When I see a bird, I know that it eats, drinks, sleeps, poops, mates, plays, and will eventually die within a (seemingly) comprehensible and contained ecological network.  If I am indeed a part of the earth's body, then the union of the mind and body of the earth can exist within me.  Perhaps there is a form of interoception that refers to the ability to sense my interactions with other earth phenomena.  Yet the global economy and industrialization have made this extremely difficult, as I can barely even imagine (let alone know) all the different places and people and animals that are involved in even the most commonplace of my activities, such as typing on the laptop I'm using now.  Derrick Jensen's analysis of the relationship between civilization and social justice underscores the futility of spiritually-oriented solutions, which resonates with my failed practice from last week:

The purpose of my mind-body practice of re-wilding is essentially to realize my enlarged identification with the world around me, not as an abstract, idealized, or nostalgic fantasy, but as an embodied awareness.  So for my practice this week, I decided to create a visual image of my undeniable embeddedness in the world.  I used the reverse side of a large piece of wrapping paper that I had saved, and after sketching a layout, I used markers to depict my home with all major appliances, my car, grocery stores, gas stations, internet and cell phone towers, banks, sewage treatment plant, power plant, waste disposal and recycling center, and laundromat.  I drew drops of blood around some of the power, gas, and water lines to include the wars, illnesses, and catastrophes that have resulted from the misuse of these resources.  After I covered the immediate ways I take space on the earth, I added many lines leading outward to represent impacts that continue far beyond my imagination and knowledge. 

I found myself taking many deep breaths at unexpected moments as I was doing the activity.  It was as though I was starting to find my footing on solid ground after swimming through the air in a free-fall.  It has been exhausting and exasperating to continually mistake nature for some other place where I don't belong.  Though the drawing seemed to be a mechanical reproduction of mundane processes, I would pause at times and notice that the activity was affecting me emotionally.  I had a sense of undoing my willful ignorance, like I was opening doors in my psyche that had somehow been hidden from view though they were under my nose this whole time.  Beneath this disarming sense of relief, I also noticed a subtle layer of confusion and anger that I had never encountered this activity before.  How is it that I have been involved in environmental activism and ecopsychology for so long with so many exponents in these fields who preach about connection with nature but had always learned to remove myself from the equation, rendering my authentic interdependence invisible? 

I also felt, at times, a comical kind of guilt, like I had been caught doing something naughty that I thought no one saw me doing.  For example, I noticed that I totally forgot to draw the toilet in my bathroom, as if I had completely blocked out the reality of my dependence on a sewage system.  I also had forgotten to draw a faucet on my kitchen sink, and I could feel how some part of me had bought into an imaginary universe based on these dissociated experiences with my environment.  You mean faucets don't just miraculously create water from within their shiny chrome beacons?

I am relieved that I was able to address my disillusionment from last week and devise an activity that has allowed me to go further into this work of re-wilding.  I still don't know what I will do next week, but I trust that the next step will become clear.   

I'm a fraud

Earlier this week, while walking to class one day, I saw a black and white cat sleeping between two trees in a patch of woods on UWG campus.  Looking at its body curled up among leaves and dry bushes and imagining how its weight and its fur make a personalized impression in that wind-protected nest, I was moved by its intimate and visceral belonging in the world.  I have also become much more attentive to birds near my home and on campus, imagining what it would be like to know myself as strong enough to weather freezing nights, to rest in brown, crinkly places, to forage throughout the day.  They make it look so easy.  It has given me a feeling of courage and some kind of strange joy to imagine that there might be safety in a life so variable and unpredictable.

This quote in the Endredy book seems to speak to this:
"The lover of Nature is the one whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of adulthood.  Such a person's intercourse with heaven and Earth becomes part of her daily food.  In the presence of Nature a wild delight runs through the person, in spite of real sorrows.  Nature says - this is my creature, with all his impertinent gifts, he shall be glad with me."  ~Ralph Waldo  Emerson

For this week's practice, I selected the following exercises from Earthwalks:
1. Barefoot Walk: "The soles of our feet are wonderful sensory organs that we tend to keep wrapped and hidden away - but when they are free to experience the air and earth, the sun and water, they can provide us with a great deal of information that can lead to discovery" (p.33).
2. Count Three: "With each step, as you look at the ground directly in front of you, count three things you see" (p.38).  In describing the practice, he quotes Lew Welch, "Step out onto the Planet.  Draw a circle a hundred feet round.  Inside the circle are 300 things nobody understands, and, maybe nobody's ever seen.  How many can you find?"

Unfortunately, my re-wilding practice was predominantly a frustrating experience this week.  I did, however, enjoy the sensory pleasure of feeling my feet on the cold, wet soil and the silent, observant steps that almost seemed dance-like.  I was attentive to my knee alignment and felt almost like I was performing the deep lunges in t'ai chi-style walking, except I placed the ball of my foot before the heel.  I also saw about ten enormous vultures on my drive into the park standing around (what I think was) a dead armadillo.  I often found myself thinking of taking pictures on my walks to put on this blog, but then would stop myself and ask how the "capture" of a visual experience can serve to objectify and commodify the event.

As I walked, I was often distracted by thoughts from my day and struggled to maintain focus on the activity, as if some unpleasant realization was gnawing at me.  When I finally attended to this feeling, I saw the cognitive dissonance in using fossil fuels to drive almost forty minutes to indulge this sensory pleasure where I fantasize about belonging to the earth.  The very fact that I have to try to belong on this planet seemed to be the ultimate attestation of my alienation.  I was the Other in this place.  I felt like a fraud, like there was no way to be a part of a place that I so wholeheartedly reject in all of my actions, buying food in plastic containers at supermarkets and cruising nonchalantly over paved roads every day.  As if it wasn't enough that my species has taken over so much of the world - we even have to be a nuisance in the few wild places that are left. 

I recently read a piece in "The Coming Insurrection" by The Invisible Committee that speaks to this conundrum:
"The environment is what's left to man after he's lost everything. ... What is frozen in an environment is a relationship with the world based on management, that is, on foreignness.  A relationship with the world where we're not made as well as the rustling of trees, the smell of frying oil in the building, the bubbling of water, the uproar of school classrooms, the mugginess of summer evenings, a relationship with the world where there is me and then there is my environment, surrounding me but never really constituting me."

My disappointment in my experience seemed mirrored by my discovery about the author of the book, James Endredy.  In his introduction, Endredy describes that he is a first generation Hungarian-American who spent much of his youth on wilderness adventures.  He is a photographer by trade and, in search of answers to spiritual questions, studied with Victor Sanchez, a "modern-day Toltec," who was conducting workshops on the "Art of Living Purposefully."  Sanchez wrote the preface to this book, Earthwalks, in which he praises Endredy for making these Walks available to the world through his books as needed "medicine."

I became curious about the potential for cultural appropriation of this work and visited the site, http://www.newagefraud.org/ which has excellent information on plastic shamans and exploitation of Native practices.  Endredy is not listed on their forum, but Victor Sanchez is named as a fraud, as is Castaneda, whom Sanchez mentioned in his preface.  Though Endredy often describes the Earthwalk practices as being derived from his own nature immersion experiences, he does refer to his Toltec teachings as one of the inspirations for his work.

I really like this video with Charlene Sul of the Ohlone people who shares her insight into "ways that non-Native people can get involved in indigenous ways." 

With the troubled history of this land and the prevalent disrespectful use of Native ways, I feel ambivalent about whether I can continue to follow Endredy's exercises with integrity.  I would still like to take a peek at the Ecoshamanism book, but I now also fear that Endredy's exercises may be promoting a misguided and distorted fantasy about nature that is unrealizable.

I have long suspected that, until I am utterly dependent on a particular landbase for my shelter, food, and livelihood, I will always be a tourist in wild places, like an anthropologist who gets a thrill from traveling to foreign lands to live with the "natives."  The more I chase down my belonging on this planet, the more it will elude me.  I feel disillusioned with the project of this blog, but I don't see this as an end, but an opportunity to go further.  I am hoping to discover a practice that somehow integrates the principles of rewilding in a way that is honest about my current role on the biosphere.  What will help me move toward embodied membership in the world, not as a recreational escape, but as an authentically lived experience?