In light of #MeToo, the women’s march and the recent election of Donald Trump, womxn around the world are calling out the realities we face on a daily basis and demanding that we come together to create the change we need to see.
As powerful and necessary as these conversations are, they can also be draining and trigger painful memories. In the Western context, there is a dominance of rational conversation and debate to approach traumatic issues and little focus on methods to move trauma through the body. Work such as “The Body Keeps the Score” by Dr Bessel Van Der Kolk highlights that trauma has a huge impact on our physical health and needs to be approached by working with the body, rather than the mind alone.
This workshop provides a space to physically process feelings that you have in relation to your experience as a womxn, using movement, meditation and exercises that engage the felt sense of the body.
Throughout the session we will do activities to release fear and anger, explore boundary setting, consent and desire. In addition mindfulness exercises, active listening and some time for discussion will be incorporated. By the end of the session, you will hopefully leave feeling lighter with new insights and a sense of empowerment in your body.
Outline:
→ Welcome and intro circle
→ Mindfulness
→ Connection games
→ Active listening exercise
→ Release, shake, rage
→ Dance and movement w/somatic prompts
→ Body work
→ Debrief conversation
→ Close
There will be a person in the session available for emotional support, if difficult feelings arise and you need to take some time out. However we cannot provide professional therapeutic services.
The session is open to all people who self identify as a womxn.
About Camille Barton:
Camille Barton is a movement artist who brings her passion for social change to life through a variety of art mediums, including dance, film and clowning. Her art practise fuses improvisation, ritual and Afrofuturism to weave new realities inspired by the creativity of the African Diaspora. Most recently Camille directed and danced in ‘Space is the Place’, a three minute Afrofuturist sci-fi film produced by Channel 4 Random Acts. The film was selected to play at Sheffield Doc Fest 2018. In 2016, Camille produced The Sisterhood, Glastonbury festival’s first intersectional, women only venue. Camille has recently launched a workshop series called Embodied Movement for Social Change fusing somatics and dance to explore issues such as sexism and racism by focusing on its impact on the body.
Camille is the founding director of the Collective Liberation Project (CLP). CLP designs educational experiences to help people understand oppression, and how it relates to their lived experience, so they can stop behaving in ways that reproduce oppression, such as racism and sexism. This work is inspired by Camille’s ongoing research into somatics and social justice: exploring how trauma from oppression is rooted in the body and how it can be healed with movement and mindfulness. CLP has worked with clients including Quakers in Britain, Release, Sisters Uncut, The University of Sussex, SOAS, The Arts Marketing Association and Sunday Assembly London.