STARTING AT THE SENSORY LEVEL

We believe that an essential aspect of how TBT enhances embodiment is that coloring the TBT anchors the movers at the level of sensations in the body before moving up to the level of meaning.

After an experiential that may focus on a certain movement quality or a certain body connection, the mover is asked to go to her TBT that has been hanging on the wall and transfer the sensations she has in her body onto the TBT. Some movers first stand facing their TBT and wait, while others rush immediately over and start coloring with clear intent. Slowly, the blank TBTs start filling up with various colors and lines sometimes filling a specific area, sometimes connecting a body area with another with a very specific line quality. One starts to see circles, zigzags, lines that concentrate in the center or zoom out from the center with a sense of force.

The same body area, the left arm, for example, may be colored with three different colors in different parts, which could reflect distinct sensations of warmth, pain or deadness. Sensations can be powerful but are also elusive. They appear in the moment and can disappear swiftly. Translating the body sensations onto the TBT helps the mover maintain her attention and seek for ways to discern body sensations.

The action of putting the colors on is also sensorial and reengages the same neuromuscular pathways as movement. While the movers color body parts on the life-sized TBT, the sensations that are in their body memory are rekindled. The kinesthetic sense is still awake but is integrated into a visual expression. The colors can be applied with different degrees of force. The particular line formations also have a certain strength, energy and so on. In a way, the movers keep dancing with colors. However, the dance keeps transforming and finding more definition and form.

The importance of tuning into the sensory-level of experience has been gaining much recognition in various domains of psychology and psychotherapy. Daniel Stern (1985) wrote extensively about how the basic aspects of our experiences are represented at a sensorial level through the integration of common elements in multisensorial input. Researchers such as Beebe and Lachmann (2014) showed that the intensity, rhythm, spatial form and affective tone of early interactions mold our way of engaging with the world and our experience of the self. According to Stern (2010), these elements coalesce to form the “vitality affects” which color and form our experience. Consequently, he suggests focusing on the sensorial elements of experience (such as the sense of rising versus sinking in the chest; sense of being blocked versus flowing, and so on) in psychotherapy as a way to tap into the not yet symbolized intricacies of implicit knowledge of being in the world and in relationships.

The process of filling in the TBT also provides a way to anchor the person at the sensory/ perceptive level. What often transpires on the TBT reflects the immediacy of the experience and is not based on a preconceived representation of the body-image. As the mover maps the felt sensations in different parts of her body on a unifying piece of paper, she begins to see the contrasts and continuities in her experience and works towards an integration. What follows is how one mover describes her experience of coloring the TBT and what it meant to her.

After the first movement experience, it gave me a feeling of clarity and fluidity to start coloring the TBT. I always felt that TBT was a great helper to uncover the meaning of my experience.

First, I used the orange color to express the aliveness of the feet, the connection with the ground and the energy flow. I made the contours of the feet, legs and hips clear with orange color. Focusing on the breath and the movement synchronized with the breath, created a sense of centering and connection within me.... With the effect of breathing and then being in contact with the power of the core, the center became well-defined in the form of a green circle. The center’s power linked both up and down through the spine. I used the dark blue rings, spreading towards the sides of the body as an expression of opening and comfort in the upper body. The effect of this on the shoulders was expressed in orange and flame like forms. In addition to all of this, I still felt the uneasiness of being seen. I expressed it with a yellow band on my eyes. I chose yellow, which is a color that I like and gives me energy because it was a restraint that was increasingly relieved in time.....After coloring the TBT, I felt that

my experiences came to an integration in the mind, emotion and body dimension. This gave me a ground for clarity and adaptation.

(see Photo 6.3)

This mover’s narrative exemplifies how the visual, sensorial and kinesthetic functions become integrated through coloring the TBT. While expressing the inner experience in color and form on the paper, the mover also comes to experience a growing sense of integration and grounding in her body.

The choice of colors while coloring the TBT is described by the movers as a significant process but one that relies on intuition rather than deliberate decision making. It follows from the immediacy of the lived-in experience. The sensations that resonate in the body connect with particular colors for the specific mover. Looking back at the TBT, the mover can define their meaning for her. The following quotation by a participant elucidates her experience with colors eloquently:

Coloring the TBT helped me solidify the sensations, the connections in my body; to define what was yet not fully defined in my bodily consciousness. The fact that this process was not verbal but happened through color and imagery allowed me to experience it as a completely personal language, a field of expression that did not rely on concepts.

EMERGENCE OF THE BODY SENSE

In order to study how TBTs evolved, we examined their photographs taken at different points in time. Analyses of 54 photographs belonging to 13 different TBTs allowed us to identify common elements that appeared on the paper and seemed to be important markers in the evolving of the body sense.

One of the most significant elements was the image of center. This could appear around the heart place or the belly area. The sense of the center was represented by captivating images sometimes in circular forms, sometimes extending out into the space or at times involving specific symbols such as the heart. Another element was body connections that appeared between different centers or the center and the periphery. The color and quality of the lines used to express these connections revealed different degrees of felt sense of strength and integration.

In some TBTs, images of sensation in the peripheries emerged early on, seeming to provide a port of connection with one’s body. Especially feet and hands were often colored with bright colors emanating a sense of aliveness. Grounding was another important element that emerged in the process. The connection of the feet to the space below was worked on with a variety of colors, usually expressing a deepening of the sensation.

One of the most significant elements was body boundaries appearing at different points in the process. Some movers began with a clear delineation of the boundaries, while others reinforced the boundaries much later in the process. The use of different colors and line quality allowed for fine distinctions in different parts of body boundary.

Space within the body and space around the body also became important elements in the TBTs. Differential coloring of the left and right body halves or upper and lower body articulated contrasting sensations in these areas. In some TBTs these colorings converged at some point, expressing the integration the mover had attained.

Overall, there seemed to be a process of emergence, development and integration of the body sense in the TBTs. Tracking the appearance of these different elements and how they related to each other provided a sense of the particular pathway to embodiment the mover carved out. As an example, one could walk through the images of one mover’s TBT with Photos 6.4, 6.5, 6.6 and 6.7.

WHAT HAPPENS WHILE LOOKING BACK AT THE TBT?

An important component of the process of filling out TBTs is stepping back and looking at them. This appears to be a rich experience at various levels. The mover’s first encounter with her TBT is actually when it is first put up on the wall in its empty state. This is described as an experience that brings up elements of surprise and sometimes discomfort, as it triggers self-criticism. One mover describes quite poignantly all the feelings that are evoked by facing her empty TBT:

The first look at my body outline gives me a feeling of the first encounter with myself ... At the same time it feels like the quiet before the storm. Makes you feel the unknown of what it will turn into, what it will give birth to with that form and the empty space that surrounds the outline inside and outside.

Despite the discomfort of the unknown what also stood out in students’ accounts were feelings of curiosity and acceptance with the knowledge that the TBT was going to be transformed. The element of transforming the body outlines allows it to be seen as a tool for change and not a fixed entity.

When the mover steps back and looks at her partially colored in TBT we believe that the process of resonating with one’s movement experience expands to a new level. This is a point where the mover switches from actively expressing her experience with color and form on the TBT to stepping back, looking at it and taking it in. Koch and Fuchs (2011) identify the process of going between the expressive and impressive functions as the central element in the development of embodiment. Each element feeds into the other, expanding on the enactive capacity of the mover as someone who actively shapes her/his experience and environment while at the same time responding to it.

Recent publications in neuroscience enable us to appreciate how the process of perceiving an image is a bodily one. As Damasio (1999) had pointed out, the brain’s response to imagery is as if it is really experienced. Vision is a multimodal capacity; it engages multiple brain regions such as sensory, olfactory, memory, emotion-related networks, not just the visual cortex.

Therefore, the experience of viewing an image and particularly our life-sized body outline engages our capacity to resonate at different levels of the brain. It is in fact a process that likely engages the mirror neuron system. Research on mirror neurons since the 1990s has demonstrated that the corresponding sensorimotor networks in our brains become activated while we observe someone else move or display an affective expression, while we imagine doing a movement, or even at the sight of an object that suggests movement (Gallese, Fadiga, Fogassi, & Rizzolatti, 1996). Hence, perception is an embodied phenomenon, which seems to be a crucial part of our capacities for empathy. Heimann, Umilta, and Gallese (2013) point to a number of studies that suggest that a similar process is in action when we look at printed letters, scribbles or graphic images. While looking at these images, which suggest a distinct hand movement, the viewer’s motor representation of their hand becomes activated. Similar responses were observed in reaction to viewing art work that included dynamic brushstrokes (Sbriscia-Fioretti, Bcrchio, Frecdbcrg, Gallese, & Umilta, 2013). Gallese (2005) coined the term “embodied simulation” to explain these processes where the viewer is able to understand the intention of the other through reconstructing the same experience in her bodily experience. In fact, Gallese postulates that the internal experience triggered by artwork is more intense than real-life experiences due to an increased effect of embodied simulation. He states that while viewing art work, being immersed in it, we can distance from the external world and do not need to attend to its demands. This positioning allows for deployment of more simulative energies, a process he names “liberated embodied simulation”.

Hence, looking back at one’s own colored TBT with its particular strokes and colors is likely to expand one’s bodily resonance process. It is also significant that the image of the body that is reflected back to the mover through the TBT is in a transformed visual form, as will be exemplified in the next excerpt. The colors, lines and sometimes specific imagery that appear on the TBT evoke their own affective resonances in the mover. As it becomes evident in the following quote, the TBT reflects back not only the resonance of the actual movement but also the potential for movement. It awakens different senses in hidden corners of the body and kindles new capacities. The creative and aesthetic process helps put on paper the possibility of an awakened sense of self and new potentials as elucidated so poignantly by this participant’s reflection:

The first piece I put on my TBT were light pink circles that spiraled around each other in the very center of my body. . . . They appeared easily, feeling soft and strong. Like a stone being dropped into the water. Pink fell into my body, it expands into the peripheries of my whole body. . . . Deep inside me a green snake appears. It leaves a feminine energy everywhere it touches.

Every time I encounter my TBT I witness it becoming more alive. The pink circles already started rotating around themselves and into every direction. I feel the vibrations very strongly. But I can’t discern the source. Is it coming from me/my body or from the body that is hanging on the wall across from me?