Short Studies
Kinesthetic Language / Embodied Knowledge
A study of learning through the body using the mediums of Kung Fu and Tai Chi
A study of learning through the body using the mediums of Kung Fu and Tai Chi
Centered upon the martial arts of Kung Fu, Tai Chi and (less directly) Chinese Medicine, this project proposes initial aims to explore and bring to light the various ways that bodily experience equals a language of knowledge.
Structured by a Reading and Conference (DCE 590) with Pegge Vissicaro Ph.D at Arizona State University, my pursuit of embodied experience as a language of knowledge poises at an initial, yet flexible, stratification into two points of focus -
~ spirituality
~ energy
~ ways in which the researcher describes these experiences
~ instructional or descriptive verbal accounts of research participants (instructors and classmates).
Practice-based methods of this project involve attending Tai Chi and Kung Fu classes at Cloud Forest Chin Woo Martial Arts Association, journal writing and ongoing additions to this website in the form of video, images and writings that chronicle the process of synthesizing my experience.
Click below to read the syllabus for this self-designed course.
Structured by a Reading and Conference (DCE 590) with Pegge Vissicaro Ph.D at Arizona State University, my pursuit of embodied experience as a language of knowledge poises at an initial, yet flexible, stratification into two points of focus -
- Beliefs and practices regarding human anatomy including components of
~ spirituality
~ energy
- Individual and subjective languages of kinesthetic experience including
~ ways in which the researcher describes these experiences
~ instructional or descriptive verbal accounts of research participants (instructors and classmates).
Practice-based methods of this project involve attending Tai Chi and Kung Fu classes at Cloud Forest Chin Woo Martial Arts Association, journal writing and ongoing additions to this website in the form of video, images and writings that chronicle the process of synthesizing my experience.
Click below to read the syllabus for this self-designed course.
| ramsey_taichi_syllabus.docx |
The following videos depict improvisations that experiment with concepts learned in Tai Chi and Kung Fu training. These movement experiments do not necessarily represent direct examples of movement gleaned from Tai Chi and Kung Fu. Instead, these vignettes represent my interpretation of concepts and instructions offered by classmates and teachers at Chin Woo Martial Arts Associations. Furthermore, the vignettes represent these concepts as translations in the sense that I have taken theoretical and practical concepts encountered in Tai Chi and Kung Fu training, and let them inform a more dance-oriented method of consideration and experimentation. What ensues represents a process of invoking embodied concepts from Tai Chi and Kung Fu into my own ideosyncratic movement tendencies, resulting in the opportunity for me to explore new ideas, or ways of knowing, within otherwise habitual, tacit movement choices. Not only did this study help to illuminate some of my own movement proficiencies and choices, it also illustrates how the embodied knowledge of research participants can be interpreted and re-constructed through a learning and knowing process that also takes place through the body.
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Improvisation One: 60/40
This movement improvisation investigates the Kung Fu and Tai Chi stance referred to as 60/40, where the practitioner stands with one foot diagonally in front of the other with 60 percent of body weight dropping into the back foot and 40 percent of body weight dropping into the back foot. As if standing on an imaginary, vertically-running rectangle, there should be some space between the lateral placement of each foot, tracing a diagonal line from the back left to the front right corners of the rectangle. I found difficulty in maintaining a width of space between the lateral placing of each foot as I encountered a habitual inclination to keep the feet aligned from front to back as if standing on a straight line rather than a rectangle (an inclination that remains very obvious in the following improvisations where I tend to habitually cross my legs in a kind of undercutting action to shift weight from one foot to the other). This improvisation study depicts an attempt to shift into new facings and locations while maintaining this wider stance and arriving in a 60/40 weight distribution ratio. Furthermore, this improvisation experiments with the benefits of the 60/40 stance in terms of kinesthetic central stability and perception. In this 60/40 stance, the knees remain supple and the lower-spine lengthened so the tail-bone drops under to lift up through the torso's central line of gravity. Especially given the width between the lateral spacing of the feet and the effect of pelvic floor support provided by the lengthened spine and lifted tailbone, I noticed a stronger sense of energy tracing a kinetic pathway from the inner arches of my feet, up through the inseams of my legs and thighs, continuing through my inner hip joints to my psoas muscle insertions and then following the psoas connection upwards through the center of my pelvis to brush along the front surface of my verterbral column as it surges upwards and outwards through the top of my head. I found this central energetic awareness very useful in transporting the spine through space into new orientations of fancing and stance. |
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Improvisation Two:
Inhale Rise/Exhale Strike In the Tai chi and Kung Fu lessons that I participated in, I often received the instruction to inhale when rising and gathering energy and exhale when moving downward and striking. While I was often advised to employ this breathing pattern in elemental exercises, its importance in longer, more complex drills and forms was made apparent to me by another more advanced Kung Fu practitioner. Upon watching my executions of a series of strikes, blocks and stances called “Linking Form,” he encouragingly noted, “well, for the most part you’ve done very well, but without the breath you’re doing it all wrong.” The practitioner goes on to demonstrate the linking form as he explains the movement with an emphasis on using an inhale when rising and gathering and using an exhale when striking or settling. I Found this advice very useful in helping me to move through the Linking Form with more ease and fluidity and to find a more rhythmic flow of actions that felt as though it reflected a more clarified sense of how to gather and mobilize internal energy or chi. In this improvisation I employ this notion of inhaling to rise and exhaling to strike as I experiment with a variety of movements, occasionally including movement actions that resemble movements learned in Kung Fu and Tai Chi training. After watching a recording of this improvisation and giving more consideration to the movements particular to Kung Fu and Tai Chi, I began to notice a major difference in the variability to which I used the concept of this breathing pattern while dancing, versus the specificity found in the movements of Kung Fu and Tai Chi. For example, in the already mentioned Kung Fu practice called Linking Form, rising movements are accompanied by an inhale; however this inhale to rise works more like a gathering of energy where the hands, arms or elbows pull inward, or chamber through the center before the exhale/strike action. Within my movement improvisation, I unconsciously stretch the notion of inhaling and rising to include movement that might be described as expanding, extending and spreading. As opposed to a Kung Fu quality of rising and gathering, my kinetic tendencies seem to more often favor rising and reaching. Similarly, while the Kung Fu action that accompanies an exhale exhibits a “striking” quality or downward force, I often employed the exhale during movements that would more accurately be described as sinking, falling or releasing. Interestingly, my experience within the improvisation often felt punctuated with the occasional kinesthetic feeling that prompted me execute a movement thinking, “that moment felt very much like Kung Fu.” This experiment of inhaling/rising and exhaling/striking helped me to recognize with greater understanding my movement habits and tacit ways of interpreting ideas, such as the ways I unconsciously interpreted the words ‘rise’ to also mean expand, reach, and extend. Furthermore, through an experiential movement improvisation, I came to deeper more clarified understanding of how concepts used in Tai Chi and Kung Fu are employed with more specificity of application. |
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Improvisation Three: Chamber Through
The terminology "chamber through" refers to instructions given to me during Tai Chi and Kuing Fu training when a hand or fist passes by the pelvis, sagittally aligned with the weight center. I interpret this wording to imply a gathering of energy - a drawing inward or coming home in order to express a movement action from a place of centered situatedness. Chambering through is not movement that remains in the peripheral kinesphere; it means recoiling the hands out of the periphery so that the movement of the arms and hands can again mobilize outward into another expression of movement (strike) stabilized and enforced from an origination point near the body and center of gravity. In this movement improvisation I experiment with this notion of chambering through by employing it in the context of dance movement, particularly dance movements that reflect my own kinetic tendencies. This exploration begins with an attention to the hands as they chamber through my central kineshpere. Included is a build into other extremities capable of referring to or chambering through my center of gravity such as my head and feet. My experience from within the improvisation begins to shift from an attention to the most distal points of my extremities to include an awareness of how kinetic pathways participate in chambering through via more proximal connections to my center of gravity. For example, when the hands chamer through the center, the shoulder and rib cage corresponding to the chambering hand help facilitate this movement as well. The same goes for the thighs when chambering through with the feet and for the chest cavity and upper torso when chambering through with the head. With this more connected awareness, I began to experiment with how chambering through involves more than just a pathway of an extremity in space as it moves toward and away from the body’s center, or home base; it also involves entire connected kinetic pathways as larger sections of the body collect at a point of centeredness where one gathers potential to strike with more power, clarity and stability. |
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Improvisation Four:
Death Points and Dreams The focus of this vignette takes a personal term to explore a pre-existing way of bodily knowing that I held before learning about Kung Fu and Tai Chi, and that lessons in these practices clarified with new insight and vocabulary. The dream takes place within an oval shaped hut with a straw-covered ceiling that slopes all the way down to the earth. I am hiding in this hut because I am naked and people who I do not know are roaming around outside. I become aware that someone approaches and I intuitively know that this person is a man with malicious intentions. I search around the back perimeter of the hut through grown-up grasses and vegetation for my clothing or for a place to hide. When I realize it is too late, that the man has almost reached the open doorway behind me at the front of the hut, I turn and move towards the door to defend myself. Just as I raise my hands in preparation to strike, the gnarly and grotesque man appears, catches my wrists and presses his index finger hard into the right side of my side of my rib cage. Accompanied by the sound of an excruciating, high pitched organ drone, I feel a wave of strange painful sensation from this point of contact at my rib cage radiate through the rest of my body causing me to buckle into my rib cage and sink to the ground. At my next Kung Fu lesson, one of my trainers introduced me to Chin Ah, various sets of blocks, grabs and take downs designed to break free from an opponent’s grip and defend oneself from attack. Although I only learned a few of many Chin Ah tactics, two of them involve striking the opponent in such a way that opens up the rib cage on the side of the body corresponding to the striking hand. In this situation, my trainer stressed the necessity of using the opposite hand not engaged in striking to reach across the body and guard the vulnerable rib cage and armpit. In this area of the body exists what my trainer termed as a “death point,” or a pressure point that, upon infliction, may result in serious injury or death. Interestingly, after learning about the need to guard the side of the rib cage at all times, not only with the hands but also with the upper arms, I began to become aware of how often when dancing I employ movements that deliberately reveal the sides of my ribcage in various ways. This improvisation serves as a kind of re-enactment of my dream where I search through foliage for a solution to my vulnerability and in the end, re-experience the kinesthetic sensation I felt when the man in my dream attacked my body at a place that could hurt the most. Within the movement exploration, however, I attempt to maintain an awareness of when my movement choices that reveal the sides of my rib cage and in these moments use my opposite hand to protect this vulnerable area. In addition, I also explore a way of standing employed in Kung Fu drills and forms that protects the groin as one knee rotates inward towards the other to block a low kick directed up through the center of the legs. I do not know the specific information about this death point, such as its exact location, its name or the corresponding meridians and organs assigned to it in Chinese medical science; however, upon learning about the existence of this death point, it became clear to me that, as evidenced by my dream, I already possessed an intuitive, bodily knowledge of this vital point and the need to protect it. It seemed that learning about this death point in Kung Fu presented an opportunity to reinforce with new martial arts-based terminologies and perspectives a way of knowing about my own body that already existed through an intuitive and kinesthetically felt embodied understanding. |
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Video, Images and Writing Coming Soon! |
Embodiment, Emergent Design & Ethnography:
A Dancer's Process This project extends from research conducted during the spring and summer semesters of 2012 focused upon the implications of kinesthesia and embodied experience in ethnographic research and methodology. Guided by the work and mentorship of Dr. Sarah Amira de la Garza at Arizona State University, this project proposes the development of a performance work based upon a re-examination of methodology, findings and further considerations related to practice-based research conducted with an autobody mechanic working in Phoenix, Arizona.
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Header photos from A Sense Of... choreographed by Kathryn Ullom.
