The Art of Attuning
1 - 1 Sessions & Group Workshops
“Embodiment is the awareness of the cells themselves. It is a direct experience …. the fully known consciousness of the experienced moment, initiated from the cells themselves.” Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen
Introduction Dr Mairéad Vaughan holds a PhD in the field of Contemporary Dance, Somatic Practice & Creative Process. Her work as a Biodynamic Craniosacral therapist, an artist, educator, researcher and writer engages with a creative & embodied enquiry.
The Art of Attuning remains the Source through which Mairéad’s work continues to evolve. Her work changes and adapts according to how each moment unfolds. She works within group contexts within the arts practice field. As well as through 1-1 sessions, specifically tailored to each clients needs. Explorations revolve around aspects such as: ‘Movement as Stillness’, ‘Body-Mind as Space(iousness)’, ‘Wholeness as Motion’, ‘Being as Emergent Unknown’.
Attuning Attuning was framed within Mairéads’ Arts Practice PhD research. This psychosomatic practice, offers an embodied approach to living. Attuning is a listening practice, through which we tune in to what is occurring inside our system in this moment here and now. Within the contents of our direct living experience. Attuning advocates a radical shift of attention, a return back to our body as an anchor to remain with and as our momentary experience. And to enquire through the substance of our living reality right here and now.
Attuning cultivates our capacity to tune in, to listen & to enquire to and through our bodymind whole system. To stay in contact with the immediacy of our direct living experience. Through our 3 centres of intelligence - our belly, our heart & our head. More specifically, through the cultivation of our sensory, kinaesthetic & energetic awareness.
3-Fold Frame 3 Qualities of Awareness Inner Spaciousness - Outer Spaciousness - Pure Awareness
3 Capacities of Awareness. Sensory Awareness - Kinaesthetic Awareness - Energetic Awareness
3 Centres of Intelligence Belly - Heart - Head
3-Fold Process Inner Spaciousness - Cultivating our ‘sensory awareness’, supports us to make contact with our inner receptive spaciousness. The process of listening through our felt sense is our sensory awareness. Cultivating this supports us to re-inhabit our bodymind more wholly through Belly, Heart, Head. Our bodymind as a living self-organising system - the a living organ of our experience. Attuning as a harmonisation with our inner landscape right here and now just as it is expressing. Allowing our patterning - our felt sense of disharmony - within our system to surface. Listening, reflecting, enquiring, exploring - all ingredients for an embodied enquiry. Allowing a natural intelligent process to unfold. An alchemical process of digestion, metabolisation & integration. A re-cog-nition - a seeing into & through to our more essential nature.
Outer Spaciousness - Cultivating our ‘kinaesthetic awareness’ supports a direct embodied knowing of our inner self in relationship to the spaces we encounter. This supports us to become aware of how we move, engage, relate with the spaces we move through. We enquire into how our inner felt sense informs our outer perception of space. And how our inner experience formulates and forms our projections out into the space around us. We begin to deepen our understanding of how our inner, relational & behavioural habitual tendencies are reflected back to us, through the mirror of our inner outer environment. We become aware of inner ‘as’ outer, as they integrate into a wholeness of unity within our direct experience.
Awareness - Cultivating our ‘energetic awareness’ supports a more subtle yet potent process. As we build our capacity we become more aware. And our experience becomes more subtle. Our bodymind becomes an ongoing living mastery of continuing refinement. As our awareness clarifies, our subtle system ignites. Essential living qualities begin to become embodied. We begin to experience our natural flow state - fluidity, coherency, ease, intuition, creativity, inner wisdom/knowing all ignite. As we embody our essential capacities, we sense fully our active agency in the world as an embodied yet subtle human being. Living as pure creation. Allowing all to emerge out of the unknown. Being human and absolute mystery simultaneously.
Principles of Attuning Attuning is informed by a wide variety of living disciplinary practices including: Yoga, Release-Based Contemporary Dance, Improvisation, Somatic Movement Enquiry, Creative Process & Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy. Attuning engages specific principles & sensibilities that unfold in aa intuitive, creative & spontaneous manner.
Stillness - Learning to self-regulate, to settle, to become still supports our capacity to access our living spaciousness.
Breathwork - Pranayama supports balance/regulation, purification & re-generation - cleansing/purifying breath, energetic/generative breath, sun/moon balancing breath.
Somatic Movement/Yogic Asana - Grounding, Softening, Opening, Expanding, Flowing, Yielding, Pushing, Pulling, Radiating, Pendulating, Titrating - all movement principles necessary for particular developmental stages of growth & evolution - specific movements initiate trapped, frozen, stuck energies to begin to move, express/process & integrate.
Self-Touch - Discovering & understanding our structure and our boundaries, through our living felt sense of touch is vital for embodiment. This supports our individuation, autonomy & stability to live as the unknown.
Biodynamic Cransiosacral Therapy - Engaging with the living breathing whole system of tissues, fluids, potencies, all living expressions & states of consciousness - please see my page dedicated to this therapy.
Artistic Authentic Expression - Engaging with different artistic mediums that support a depth of enquiry & cultivate & master your own unique creative capacity.
For more information, or to book session, please email Mairéad - maireadmv@gmail.com