User talk:FourViolas/sandbox/Somatics

Hello FourViolas,

Nice work thus far. A few suggestions.

In "Somatics": "Physical therapy" is a very specific term for a profession with specific licensure. I think what you mean to say here is "bodywork" which is the most general term. Or perhaps you'd like to go even more general than that, and say something like "healing arts" or "therapeutic practices" since that's the term you use in the section heading later. As a side note, the PT field is not known for being progressive-minded around somatics; they tend to use mechanical thinking though of course there are exceptions.

In "history": interesting that you mention Dewey and Steiner. I don't see how Dewey relates; if you can find a source that ties his ideas about experiential education to movement, that would be helpful. With Steiner, gosh, he was all over the place. I'm not sure that his general ideas about education relate here, but certainly eurythmy does. Marie Steiner-von Sivers likely deserves at least as much of the credit for it as Steiner; it was common in the day for the husband to receive credit for a collaboration such as this. Alexander pre-dated eurythmy (began as early as 1911 according to the eurythmy article, while Alexander was 1890).

Other important people were:

Elsa Gindler - called her work Arbeit am Menschen (work on the human being), emphasised self-observation. This article mentions other important people as well.

Charlotte Selver - sensory awareness

Mabel Elsworth Todd - ideokinesis founder; visual imagery

Eric Franklin - inspired by ideokinesis, created a new approach that is well-known

I appreciate that you've put Hanna in the appropriate context here, as the coiner of the term, rather than the whole article being about his work.

In "therapeutic practices": It's great that you want to differentiate F & A. The F article says Moshe was influenced by A. I think of them as being quite similar in attitudes but a bit different in practice (and I'm no expert). Seems to me that A focuses on some very specific actions, like rising from a chair, or singing/talking, with an extreme focus on the initiation of the actin. I think F focuses more on finding a way to move with ease; if a joint is painful, is there a way that joint can be moved without pain? Hope someone else who knows more can help... perhaps post messages on their article talk pages?

I don't think of Pilates as being a key somatic discipline on the level of these others. Certainly less than yoga. Thoughts?

Category:Mind–body_interventions and Mind–body interventions have lists of practices that might be fertile ground (weirdly, these two lists each have different items missing). I wasn't familiar with Kinetic Awareness or Strozzi Institute before getting involved with these topics on WP which makes me think they are perhaps less notable than others but have inserted themselves effectively on WP. Are you familiar enough to be able to give context for these? I did skim their articles.

I hope some of this is helpful!--Karinpower (talk) 23:59, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your excellent feedback!

Good point about PT. "Bodywork" is good.

The history section is basically a redox of Martha Eddy's paper, including the claim that the somatics movement was a synthesis of Steiner/Dewey's individualism and Laban/Fuller's dance radicalism. I'll add "Movement scholar Martha Eddy says...". Note on her paper, since I cite it heavily: I usually wouldn't consider it very reliable, since it was published in her own journal in the first issue, but it's frequently cited since, and I keep seeing references to Eddy as a prominent scholar in the field.

i agree, those people seem to be important to mention. I won't have much time to edit over the next few days, but if you want to work them in feel free to add directly to my sandbox. If you're busy, I can do it myself next week. And yes, the current article verges on WP:PROMO for Hanna and his school.

I put Pilates in prominently because it's popular and (at least originally) somatics-based. I agree it's not really in the mainstream of the bodywork world, though. Maybe it can have a sentence in "Other therapeutic"?

I'm actually not an alternative-medicine expert at all; I'm a modern dancer, and I have a sense of how the term is used in the dance world as well as a little experience of Feldenkrais and Rolfing, but everything else is new to me. I think it would be reasonable to get hints on notability from Mind-body interventions and similar WP resources, although of course I prefer the real-life academic ones I've found for the reason you mention.

Thanks for your help! I think pretty soon it will be ready to WP:BOLDly move the draft the actual Somatics page, where other people can drop by and contribute. FourViolas (talk) 00:27, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Sure, glad you found my comments interesting! I've been editing (and researching for) the Rolfing article and some other alt-med articles so I have consulted sources for that which *might* provide useful sources here.

I don't know about the roots of Pilates, but I think modern Pilates is often done with a gym-rat mentality, cranking out the reps rather than attending to the internal sensations of movement. I wouldn't have included it in this article, but the source you cite that discusses it as a somatic practice does support that concept.

Your background as a dancer is great for this, I think. I took a dance class for a couple of years in high school, taught by a lady who made a point of giving us the history of dance (as well as teaching competent units on ballet, jazz, modern, African, tap, Hindu dance, etc - she was amazing). So I recall a bit of that but am not fresh on it and I'm not familiar with Martha Eddy (or even know much about the list of people I provided above - just that they were names that came up as influences on Dr. Rolf's ideas about movement).

What do you think about proposing a name change to "Somatic Education"? I really think this is the proper term for what we are building here. Also, I'm pleased that you have been working on this because I dreaded the idea of trying to create it from scratch! I would rather peck at your writing and add things here and there.

Regarding Hanna, I'm wondering if he is notable enough to be mentioned with any more detail in the History section, beyond just getting credit for coining the term. I really don't know; hopefully sources will tell us.

I'm very busy for the next week, and also not sure how those notable individuals fit together. When I do have time I will probably focus on using the print sources that I've got on hand and seeing what they have to add. Nice collaborating with you. --Karinpower (talk) 07:02, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

About the sections. Therapeutic makes sense, but "Traditional" isn't really parallel with Therapeutic. I would call those Movement Disciplines. And I would put Dance under Movement. I imagine that you are inclined to put Dance as one of the three major sections because of being a dancer :) but this is what I think.

On an different note, I've never heard of Skinner Releasing Technique. Are you familiar with it?

Also, I noticed the Contact Improv article has a list of movement disciplines that might be helpful to you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Karinpower (talk • contribs) 05:41, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

All right, I've incorporated most of your comments and I think it's ready to go to mainspace. Any objections? Of course it will continue to evolve once it gets there.

Thanks for your support! FourViolas (talk) 04:16, 15 December 2014 (UTC)