The Practices in this Toolkit explore the body as a tool for (ethnographic) research and/or as emotional and mental support during the many challenging aspects of doing research. It takes the physical body (‘soma’) as a starting point, but includes all levels of you as a person.
Some Practices are more ‘reflective’, while others are more ‘meditations’ on a topic related to being a researcher, or to your specific study. Most have a spatial and hence bodily component to them, while some rely more on visualisation techniques rather than a lot of movement. However, they all emphasise becoming more present in your body.
Because people have different learning styles, we include different types of instructions. Some are practical and concrete, others more metaphorical. We might encourage you to try things that may seem out of your general comfort zone, which simply means you are learning something NEW! However, always be gentle with yourself.
Practices might be slower than you are accustomed to in society in general, or in tutorials. This is partly because the material is unusual, but mostly because the body has a slower rhythm than we think. Please give yourself time to adjust to a more reflective pace.
Recordings of both the Core and the Extended Practice have a deliberate homey feel to them. We did not record them in the studio, so at times you might at times hear birds, traffic, or some reverb.