Dances with Sheep

Felt thinking is a body-based way of working with movement in somatic experience of the ecologically inclusive sense of self. Dances with Sheep presents the multitude of personal journeys which bring the lived connections between Nature and the self to the fore and offers new insights into how to remedy multiple imbalances. 68 b/w and 8 col. illus. Anna Dako details the methodology of Felt Thinking in Movement as an eco-somatic practice inspired by re-thinking the nature of being human, as well as contextualising it within the wider frameworks of cultural, philosophical and therapeutic viewpoints on wellbeing. In Dances with Sheep Dako elaborates on creative journeys in and with the natural environment in relation to the movers’ overall wellbeing, as she explains the processes encompassed within Felt Thinking. Practitioners use free movement to interact with the landscape and become attuned to its sights, sounds, scents, and sensations. Gradually, participants focus on their psychological experience of time and cultivate greater awareness of the relation between nature and the self. Combining insights from performance studies, art therapy, and counselling, Dances with Sheep is about the depths of personally-felt narratives awakened in movement and which are offered here as a step, full of hope, towards more compassionate living. Foreword by Sondra Fraleigh Dances with Sheep presents the methodology of Felt Thinking in Movement as an eco-somatic practice inspired by re-thinking nature of being human, as well as contextualises it within wider frameworks of cultural, philosophical and therapeutic viewpoints on wellbeing. Felt Thinking is a self-inquiry practice grounded in somatic movement experience that originates in site-specific and embodied dialoguing between what is felt and what shapes as a responsive thought, as creative movement itself, and which paths ways for ecologically inclusive care for being well with self and other. The book elaborates on creative processes in and with the natural environment in relation to the movers’ overall wellbeing and covers creative journeys of opening up to the living agency of Nature itself through the emergent three phases of experiential relatedness in embodied experience of the self. The book presents its original contribution to eco-phenomenology with its ontological principle of embodied relationality in towards and away from movement as a primal gateway to wellbeing and its creative inter-constitution. An intriguing and inspiring resource for students, practitioners, educators, self-learners, therapists and researchers. Foreword by Sondra Fraleigh.