Somatics & contemplative photography
intro/refresher 5-week course:
13 July – 10 August
new adventures 5-week course:
17 August – 14 September
Thursdays 10-11:15am Melbourne time
7am Perth / 9:30 Adelaide / 12 Auckland
USA Wednesdays 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern
A somatic approach to contemplative photography practice entails beginning with body-mind experience and all of the ways that we might sense our selves and our environments. Tactile, kinaesthetic & proprioceptive awareness are developed through movement and touch, while attending to bodily sensations. As human beings, these senses of movement and touch underlie our senses of hearing and seeing. Connecting seeing back to our felt sense can help free up our visual habits. Working with the camera is a way to slow down, to drop under our habits of seeing and moving through the world, and to discover a new fresh palette of visual experience.
How this course works: each week I offer guided somatic movement meditations that engage different aspects of sensing and perceptual process. We play with ways of attending to and framing sensory experience, and invite creative perspectives on movement and the visual world. Somatic meditation practice leads into a theme to guide your contemplative photography practice for the week.
There is a shared space on Padlet, where you can easily upload photos from the assignment, and see the images other participants have created. Reflecting on the felt sense that the images convey is part of the process. We learn from each other and our shared practice.
Zoom classes will be recorded in case you have to miss a session, want to revisit a class, or even want to do the course at a slower pace.
This series is offered in two 5-week sections – the first is an intro – start here if this is a new practice for you. It’s also a refresher if you’ve done previous classes with me. The second 5 weeks is ‘new adventures’ – if you’ve done a course with me previously there will be new explorations and prompts to play with.
Some of the themes we will touch on in the Intro/Refresher course:
-synchronizing mind, physical presence, camera and environment
-noticing and framing the foundational elements that constitute the visual world
(colour, texture, shape, light & shadow)
-shifting perspectives and points of view
-touch and presence in visual perception
-vibration & liveliness in matter
New Adventures goes further into exploring a shared language between movement and visual perception, through themes such as equilibrium/disequilibrium, transitions, and centre/periphery.
Requirements:
-You need a camera or phone with enough space for photos. It doesn’t have to be fancy! Sometimes in fact, the simpler the better.
-About 30 minutes a week to practice contemplative photography. This can happen anywhere, including inside your home.
-Logging into weekly zoom sessions or watching the recordings. A little space to move or lie down during the sessions.
-Uploading a selection of your photos before the following week’s class (if participating in ‘real time’)
book online at www.trybooking.com/CJBTE
kim sargent-wishart 