Bodily Authority as Resistance and Recovery

Christine Caldwell

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No democracy can survive without a free press. Our ability to sustain human rights rests on our access to information, coupled with the power to choose. This presentation will examine the idea of a ‘bodily free press’ and how we can cultivate it. Our bodily free press involves an ability to investigate our lived experiences, and to act upon them. Our primary information source in this type of inquiry is careful attention to sensation. The primary source of our choices comes from our ability to move – to act in accordance with our bodily integrity.
Looked at in this way, oppression and injustice can be seen as a suppression of sensory information, coupled with a restriction of mobility, delivered by consumerism and making certain
bodies wrong. Oppression and injustice strive to create a ‘docile’ body, where we internalize critiques of our physical form and replicate them in our attitudes and actions.
Recovering from and resisting these forces involves restoring a rich sensorimotor life, one that involves practices that awaken, clarify, and organize our body. This presentation will introduce ways in which we can choose amongst both old and new practices that develop our ‘bodily authority.’

Christine Caldwell, Ph.D., BC-DMT, LPC, ACS, is the founder of and professor emeritus in the Somatic Counseling Program at Naropa University in Boulder, CO, USA, where she taught coursework in somatic counseling theory and skills, clinical neuroscience, research, and diversity issues. Her work began forty years ago with studies in anthropology, dance therapy, bodywork and Gestalt therapy, and has developed into innovations in the field of body-centered psychotherapy. She calls her work the Moving Cycle. This system goes beyond the limitations of therapy and emphasizes lifelong personal and social evolution through trusting and following body states. The Moving Cycle spotlights natural play, early physical imprinting, bodily authority, and the transformational effect of fully sequenced movement processes. She has taught at the University of Maryland, George Washington University, Concordia, Seoul Women’s University, Southwestern College, Pacifica, and Santa Barbara Graduate Institute, and trains, teaches and lectures internationally. She has published over 30 articles and chapters, and her books include Getting Our Bodies Back, Getting In Touch, The Body and Oppression, and Bodyfulness.