SEEDBODY — a series of bodily explorations/provocations

How can facilitated embodiment act as a pathway to ecological relationship and creative expression; what songs are resonant within the body?
I recently attended a 2-year, part time training at the Thomas Prattki Centre in Berlin, ‘Integral Embodiment & Performance Making’.
Facilitated pathways include: neutral mask (Jacques Le Coq), blind charcoal drawing & clay, voice resonance, dance and visualisation, Alexander Technique, ritual, storytelling and social arts.
The final part of each module invites performance making—to give shape to an emergent theme or resonance experienced within the container of the course.

Below is my personal exploration of swampland; an environment that is illusory and impenetrable as it is mesmerising. A place of retreat and regeneration, and a sinkhole from which you never escape; the lotus grows from the swamp!

Spring 2025
Arriving at the end of the IMPP journey, or the beginning of the middle, I found myself exploring my body in relation to pine pollen. I’m struck at the felt difference of the two videos (above and below).
Therein is a certain encapsulation of my IMPP journey.
One, loving myself in a murky, cold swampland, to then finding communion with a pine tree releasing itself to the earth with great exuberance; for what else can we hope for in this life?

Video shot by Jamboree Productions: Camilla Edwards, Florence Gross.
Music by Theo Best

What form does my creativity take when immersed in ecological relationship?
I received this provocation from Julie Brooks while visiting her exhibition, ‘What Will Remain’ in Kendal, Cumbria. As a guiding question for the container of my life, I love it, and can’t think of a better summary of what it means to be alive. September 2023, together with Suzanne Boniface, I made a series of Hawthorne Footprint Moulds on a footpath at Shingle Street, Suffolk, UK.

The berries, when collected and squashed form an imprint-able mould, high in pectin and which naturally sets hard over the course of a few hours. Wasps, butterflies and bottle flies all fed on the decaying prints, rich in sugars.

Edited by Jay Simpson

Eros in nature, eros in the body—where’s the overlap, what shape does it take?
I experience an overlap between sensuality in nature and kink; one fleshes out the other, and my body’s similarly resonant with love whether I feel it for myself, others or the fabric of our wild existence. I nurture eros, and so give shape to expressions of the love-body held within nature.

A shibari-bone resonance

I’ve been weaving my own strings and ropes for the past couple of years.
I collect fibres from wild plants then spend hours weaving. It’s been a kind of meditation.
Below you can see one I made while in Berlin living next to a lake and studying.
When I got home, I signed up for some private Shibari tuition (Japanese Rope Bondage); I like the idea of making my own ropes for this.

Later in the year, while in Portugal, I slipped a disc in my lower back.
This was the second time in 2 years. Apart from being fucking painful, it slows me right down.
I used walking to recover, going a little further each day.
During one of my walks, I found a backbone of some small creature, bleached white and lying on some sand dunes, and with some of the vertebrate discs still visible.

Back in the UK, I find myself wanting to turn the found backbone into a necklace.
Rather than tie a simple knot at the top, I decide to decorate it with some shibari-style decoration using the string I wove in Berlin.
As I tie/weave the string, I realise I am securing, fastening, supporting the backbone—holding it together.
The circle completes itself, and I have a lovely new necklace to remind me to take care of my back.

Soul conversations through charcoal

One of my tutors in Berlin was the estimable Peter Oechsle. Among other mediums, Peter leads blind-guided charcoal drawing—to initiate conversations with the soul and new creative resonances.
He plys his trade in the Black Forest, at the Initiatic Therapy school, Dürckheim Rütte.

Following his tuition, I was inspired to make my own charcoal, which became an enjoyable winter ritual.

Edited by Jay Simpson