“(…) esta excitación emocional moviliza los músculos, el sistema motor, Todas las emociones (y sus inhibiciones, añado) se expresan en el sistema muscular. No se puede visualizar la ira sin movimiento muscular. No se puede visualizar la alegría, que es más o menos idéntica con el danzar, sin movimiento musculares. En la pena hay sollozos, hay llanto, y en el sexo también hay ciertos movimientos, como todos ustedes saben. Estos músculos se usan para moverse, para tomar el mundo, para palpar el mundo, para estar en contacto”
Fritz Perls: Sueños y existencia, p. 76
LEAD IN
I’m going to begin my poetic approach by reflecting on ideas from the synthesis made by Juan Jose Albert of Wilhelm Reich’s characterology and Fritz Perls’ Gestalt in his book Tenderness and Aggression. To meditate on the somatic process of my experience in creative writing, I want to use three ideas to link with my experience:
- (1) Psychological processes cannot be divorced from physiological ones—somatic representation.
- (2) The organismic needs that arise are identified by a process of tenderness (awareness) impulse and an aggressive (motor) impulse to lead them to satisfaction.
- (3) The disturbance of these impulses generates unfinished needs that are tensions represented in the body as muscular armour. (Relation between characterological armour and muscular armour).
Hence, from these theories I’m able to comprehend my experience with the body as perfecting my sensory awareness and motor systems through exercises, movement and awareness practices. Regularly exploring and working on the body has led me to experience something new. To feel that I am a body, and everything is interconnected as a unit. Every event and situation affect the whole, mental tension causes muscular, emotional tension and vice versa.
The ability to feel, the ability
to be in the world. Presence
from a body that act, I am
animal, I am movement.
Movement has the potential to awaken emotionality, sadness, fear, anger, joy and the whole spectrum. Emotionality also provokes movement; anger usually comes with an overload of energy with hard, open and big movement to discharge the energy; sadness comes with a decreased energy, and softer, close and small movement to preserve and recharge. The ability to provoke emotionality through movement grew with the exploration of body zones (Sustained focus on how the movement feels, how it is moving, and how does the overall experience feel) From Latin emotion come from emovere to move out, E-motion is movement.
How do I embody my body?
How am I corporal expressing myself?
how do I corporal interact with objects, people, and situations?
It is a practice of releasing mental tension and recharging energy through body movement. To represent and express the emotional body or mental body through the physical. To not interrupt myself, as it should be the organic way of being, as an unit. As a writer this practice has meant a greater imaginative activity. I have more sensory information inputs to play with poetic representations. Providing another spectrum of poetic images born from the body. Ideas flow and connect more agility than having no movement practices. I know how I feel and I’m in contact with my interior life.
Besides the regular exercise of the body and awareness, for the writing itself one method consists of doing this expression practice to stimulate the creation of poetic images. I use different forms of expression; Body movement, dancing, drumming, singing, speaking, and finally the writing. I understand it as a way of entering a trance state and getting in touch with myself and what is happening within me. In this way, I speak/write what comes to me either about something random or oriented to a topic then poetry is made.
On, awareness
the experience of a wh(a)le, off
a capacity for movement, off
a particular way of being, off
becoming aware of the self, off
one’s own organism. On.
As a poet, this has also led to an awareness of my own narrative and has driven my writing as an expression. When I come into contact with my body and bodily capacities, discourses emerge. Stories that I have told myself. Anecdotes or memories that are triggered by feeling parts of my body. The scars, marks, sensations. Everything tells me something. Awareness is capacity to read the subtext of our self.
EMBODIED EXPERIMENTS
I carried out the following experiments.
This is an approximation that occurs when receiving a poetic stimulus. It consisted of interpreting music with body movements. In terms of music, frequency, rhythm, and melody; I asked myself: How do I give body to this? How can I interpret this melody with my arms? How do I represent the bass guitar with the muscles of my leg? How do I respond bodily to the poetic image that this provokes inside me? Several things happened:
- (1) Representing streams of information from the songs with the mind.
- (2) Finding responses from the body (in these cases, I perceived emotional activity related to) what I perceived.
- (3) Perceiving images, symbols, ideas from body movement. The same ideas that I expressed verbally.
I listened to the music via headphones, and an external recorder waited for what I said. From the voice recording, I transcribed and edited the poem.
Which I expose below.
NOSTRA CORPORALIDAD
probando
nos
experimentamos
nos
perdimos
nos
chocando
nos
los huesos
a bunda que abunda
nalga con nalga movement
petan las trompetas
sobre mis palmas húmedas
ha
ha
ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
que se mueven en ondulatoria
hacia abajo
rebotando rebolando
rebotando rebolando
rebotando rebolando
sobre los pies
sobre las piernas
sacude
la musculatura
arrítmicas palmadas
el cuerpo suena
sana y rebota
contra las carnitas
huesos que chocan
a través de fibras musculares
se percute
ta ta tatat tata tatat ta ta tata
a través de fibras musculares
el sacro imperio iliaco
cadera zigzag
cadera zigzag
cortan las tijeras
en zigzag
mis caderas
son tijeras
cortan el espacio
cadera zigzag
cortan las tijeras
en zigzag
torniquete torbellino tornillo
torniquete torbellino tornillo
torniquete torbellino tornillo
en espiral
hacia centro
al centro
zona pubocoxigea
pubis que gira sobre el suelo que gira pubis que gira
sobre el suelo que gira pubis que gira sobre el suelo
pubis que gira sobre el suelo pubis que gira sobre el suelo
pub is
se parecen o que tienen
y se parece, pero en la unidad
y no en una totalidad a
triangulo de una palma de
patas de una polla
o pollo
demostrado esta
por un látigo caderal
de tipo látigo
por la derecha
de tipo látigo
por la derecha
látigo látigo látigo!
por la izquierda
y
un lucky
por el centro
ya estoy en el placer
el placer del cuerpo
somos todos
en mi pecho las manos
que descienden caen
por piernas
suben
y
b
a
j
a
n
las horas
soy trepadora
como la serpiente sandia trepo
con uñas araño espaldas
y balanceo hacia abajo
araño con mis dedos en garra
arremolinando el efecto
arremolinador
protegiéndonos
los hombros en infinito
healing dirían los new age
pero es
puro feeling
This second experiment involved exploring the spine from the center of the holy iliac empire (the pelvis) and directing a whip-like movement. Moving the pelvis back and forth generated a sinusoidal wave movement over the entire spine. That is, an “S” shaped spine movement was perceived. The same was true when moving from left to right. This exercise triggered the following poetic approach.
S
perenne amanecer
s
delante tuyo
S
se va erigiendo
s
un virtual futuro
S
erguido ya
S
la muralla
s
no pieza {{ inerte }}
S
sino saludan
s
a la ventana
S
tus pechos
S
desnudos hombros
s
ondulados cabellos
S
cambios de piel
s
y sudor
S
un cuerpo ajustado
s
encaja
S
presiona
S
roza
s
tu piel
S e r p i e n t e
AWARENESS
In creating poetic images, I often use an identification technique. From the towel experience, the first time I approach this; I saw a towel lying on my bed, and I represented that towel with my body. I felt that towel and began to speak in the first person from the towel. Starting with a body movement with the symbol and then talking or imagining from there.
a body
an intermediary, a body
an interpreter, the body
itself
In free movement, I have had moments where my body has taken control of my movements. It was the body and not the mind that expresses. The body itself claimed its space of control over its own movement and nature. The emotionality associated with the experience arises. It related to events experienced during my life. The act of looking at the body. Looking at the wounds. The marks, the traces, the clues of who I am, are written in the body. From there, triggers are born to explore in writing. The body literally speaks in many ways.
In these kinds of experiences, I realize that the body’s movement generates poetic images in my mind. The combination of images develops a poetics after sensorial, mental, and emotional maturation. The movement makes me more aware of my inner life (physical, mental, emotional). The embodied practices become an input for creativity and stimulate the creation of literary text.
Frente (de)Liberación Poética "Saturnino Parral Perales" 