The Still Point
From an embodied approach to working with art, I will introduce somatic exercises/techniques that help regulate the nervous system and allow for a still point from which to work.
T.S. Eliot speaks of the still point in his poem below, the place we return to when we stand in the middle between opposite poles. The tension of opposites allows us to hold two opposing views at the same time. This is the place of Both/and—not either or. When we can allow our nervous systems to settle, we are open to our bodies becoming conscious containers or vessels for the new life that wants to be known.
This new life is alive in the image created and born out of our somatic unconscious. Integrating through embodied reflective dialogue, the life of the image activates in our psyche what is known in Jungian terms as the ‘transcendent function’. Pouring consciousness too quickly on the image can depotentiate the life of the image, resulting in the new life being lost and losing its potency.
If we can learn to wait in the stillness with curiosity and receive the image through our senses, we bring alive the image within our own psyche, which then activates the potential for a state of flow and transformation.
“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.”
