Lineage • Gratitude
Lineage - Source and Resources and Acknowledgements
I recognize that many unseen and unheard influences are within these acknowledgements because of the context of colonization, slavery, sexism, class oppression and inequity in my history. Understanding the forces that shaped this work is a continuous evolution. So I start by bowing to the Earth and all the voices that I don't know about who have contributed to this moment in my personal life and the growing shape of Wholeness in Motion.
The material in this website represents a life time of curiosity about how the human system works and how we are part of the natural world. I am working to create a more formal bibliography of my primary influences and sources. In the meantime, I acknowledge and honor my sources below. Please look-up anything these people have written or attend a workshop they teach.
David Gorman’s work is the pillar on which the Wholeness in Motion stands. Access to his material can be found at his website www.learningmethods.com. You can order his anatomy book The Body Moveable as well as read brilliant articles and sign-up for his Anatomy of Wholeness on-line courses.
Leon Thurman’s work with the VoiceCare Network and his book BodyMind and Voice laid the foundation for the understanding of well-being as primary to learning and artistry through his articulation of human compatible learning. Like Gorman, Leon is thinker and pedagogue ahead of his time. He applied and studied neuroscience to life and education thirty years before the subject was on every airport book kiosk.
Movement, Nature, Human Function and poetry are the core threads that weave together to form Wholeness in Motion. The sources, resources and acknowledgements in each area are vast. As I acknowledge my teachers, I am also citing my sources for the work. Below I start with somatic/movement work. I follow this with Nature, Human Function and poetry.
My roots in somatic work and modern dance form the foundation for my belief that experiencing a concept is necessary for true understanding. Embodied knowledge is experiential knowledge. Much of WIM"s movement explorations reflect my Modern Dance roots. My first dance class rooted in Laban Movement Analysis was as a seventh grader taking a Saturday class at American University with Anne Hutchinson. Laban and Bartenieff Fundamentals are the scaffolding of my movement training. Thanks to Martha Myers, Diane Schmidt, Maralee Hardenberg, and Collette Barry for their contributions to my continued dance with Laban and Bartenieff. I feel blessed to have had one deeply impactful workshop with Irmgard Bartenieff herself in the late 1970’s. My debt to her his unpayable.
For hands-on work and other embodied approaches that are embedded in this work are Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s BodyMind Centering work and F.M. Alexander’s Alexander Technique. The list of teachers here is long. Alexander: Sherry Oliver, Barbara Conable, Alice Pryor, Bruce Fertman, David Gorman, Elizabeth Garren, Elizabeth Huebner, Giora Pincus, Jessica Wolf, Walter and D. Carrington, Marjorie Barstow and many more. BMC: Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Diane Elliot, Suzanne River, Margie Fargnoli. Cranialsacral work with Hugh Milne. Listening hands guidance from Osteopath and healer Richard Hruby. Years of shared questioning and practice with Elizabeth Garren, my somatic sister, and Elise Bohaty. Randee Paufve keeps me rooted in the dance.
It is hard to even begin the gratitude for my numerous movement teachers. Their influence is in every step I take and in the Wholeness in Motion sequences.
Here is a sampling:
Bharata Natayum, Classical South Indian Dance: Bala Krishnan, K. Neela, Ranee Ramaswamy
Modern Dance: Trude Link, Mark Taylor, Stuart Pimsler, Martha Myers, Beth Channock, Sara and Jerry Pearson, Lenore Lattimore, Daniel Nagrin, Don Redlick, David Dorfman
Ballet: Marcus Schulkind, Carolyn Coles, Jacques D’Ambrose
African Dance: Chuck Davis, Arthur Hall
Middle Eastern Dance: Cassandra Shore
Jacobs Kapers Morris Dance Team
Karagam South Indian Folk Dance: Om Parier Swami
Improvisation: Martha Myers, Martha Moore, Mabou Mines Company
And my colleagues with Spanuptzes Theatre an Improvisation Movement Theatre Company in Cambridge Mass in the early 1980’s.
Tai Chi Chuan: Sat Hon, Phillip Zarrilli, Lenzie Williams, Ben Lo, Bill Zeman.
Hatha Yoga: William Protengier, Teresa Pritchet, Scott Anderson, Regina Wray
South Indian Martial Arts: Kaluripayattu: Phillip Zarrilli, Selumbu: P. Veran
My movement passion was met with my passion for the natural world. Nature herself is my first teacher in the flow of living life. My lessons came from such moments as walking the beach in Bayside, Maine, paddling Rush Creek again and again, back packing the Rockies, sailing Penobscot Bay, growing our food. Living with my wife Suzanne Baker, has been a deep education in listening and learning from plants and the world around me. She is a plant whisperer. Experiencing how she sees, hears and relates to the plant kingdom has broadened my heart and mind more than I can say. Working in her nursery business as a crew member, growing herbs, has opened me in everything from loosening my classism to testing the efficacy of WIM in the context of hard physical labor 4 months a year. Studies with my neighbor and renown herbalist Mathew Wood has also given me a window into other avenues for learning and knowing.
Studies with Starhawk, the Reclaiming Movement and ritual have deepened my practices in mystery and the 'imaginal realm' as Stephen Buhner would say. They have helped my intellect let go enough to more frequently experience the heartbeat of the Earth. These experiences are supported by books, articles and experiences in Deep Ecology and Herbalism. Here are a few greats: Stephen Buhner, Susun Weed, Rosemary Gladstar, Robin Rose Bennet, James Green, Dolores LaChapelle, Arne Naess, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leapold, John Seed, Kay Grindland, John Muir, Edward Abbey, Dave Foreman, Terry Tempest Williams, Wynona LaDuke , Bill Devall, George Sessions, Johanne Macy, William Bryant Logan, Julia Butterfly Hill, Tyler Volk, Brian Swimme, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Diane Ackerman, Charlenes Spretnak, Peter Wohlleben, David Abram, David George Haskell, Joshua Michael Shrei of The Emerald podcast. My colleague and friend Christine Wolf shares this dance of nature and somatic work with me. The books she has given me and led me to are many of those listed in these pages
In the area of Human Functioning I see three blurry divisions: spirit and mind, anatomy, social, education and neuroscience.
Here are some influential spirit and mind authors/teachers: Dalai Lama, Krishnamurti, Toni Packer, Jon Kabat Zinn, Thich Nhat Hanh, Jospeh Campbell, Thomas Moore, Byron Katie, Carl Jung, Eckart Tolle, James Hillman, Robert Holden, Gayle Kimball.
Anatomy and body: David Gorman, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Linda Hartley, Morris Berman, Deane Juhan, Arnold Mindell, Ashley Montague, Lenore Friedman, Mathew Sanford, Stanley Keleman, Hugh Milne, Kristen Linklater, F.M. Alexander, Michael Gelb, Gretchen Reynolds, Barbara Brennen, Robert Fritz, Joan Jacobs Burmberg, Lulu Sweigard, Will Johnson, Leon Thurman. Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen's work, BMC, permeates all I do, particularly seeing the politics in anatomy, rewriting the anatomical and physciological pathological, dominant ideas of body to the more nurturing- health rooted container of naming patterns of growth and thriving. For example the Autonomic Nervous System is not just a fight, flight, freeze, calm system, it is an action, embrace, nourishing system.
Recently a new generation of powerful Women reclaiming body: Sonya Renee Taylor, Amanda Montell, Nicole Byer, Melissa Febos, Janet W. Hardy, Dossie Eaton, Maree Brown. Olivia and Aleda McMonagle
Sciences (distinctions are blurred): Norman Doidge, Antonio Damasio, Charles Duhigg, Timothy Wilson, Marco Iacoboni, Leonard Mlodinow, Richard Davidson, Barbara Fredrickson, David Eagleman, Michael Gazzanga, Elizabeth Blackburn, Elissa Epel, Susan Cain, Sharon Begley, Candace Pert, William Dement, Amit Sood, Rollo May, A.D. Craig, Richard Panek, Neil Shubin, Marshall Rosenberg, Lori Bailey Cunningham, Becky Bailey, Alfie Kohn, Mary Pipher, John Holt, Nancy Jo Sales, Polly Berrien Berends, J. Bronowski, Kenneth Clark, Lisa Feldman Barrett, Eugene Gendlin, Peter Levine, Stephen Porges, Andy Clark, Michael Anderson, Ed Taub, Gregory Hickok, John Ratey, Penelope A. Lewis, Luiz Pessoa, Michael Merzenich, Seth Grant, Temple Grandin, Jaak Panksepp.
Check out Dr. Ginger Campbell’s Brain Science Podcast for interviews with the scientists doing the research.
Poetry: Whatever touches you. Please read, listen and write it. This list is just too long or I am out of steam.
Oddly this attempt to acknowledge sources feels futile. The random encounters, the innocent statement of a friend, a news story, a beautiful design, a work of art, an injury, a gift, so much combines to give us our perspective and vision. I bow in gratitude to all these random and carved moments that have shaped me and this work. I made a video for a class that is about how the most profound wisdom moments in my life came not from the published or famous but from people around me. It inspired other's to see how much of what shaped their life came from familiar people who don't self identify as wise - scroll to Theory Week Ten Recollections: LINK
Energy and Miscellaneous Work that I thank for stretching the edges of my WASP heritage belief systems: Dr. Gayle Kimball- Energy Tools Work, Dinah Lawson in the lineage of Brenda Johnson's Esoteric Healing, Holotropic Breath Work/Rebirthing at the time, Complete Self Attunement-Vita Segala, Sri-Vidya Tantra Training - Guruji Haran
I bow at the feet of those who have been willing to work together with me, to study, to take classes, join in the practice, to give feedback, contribute material and make aspects of the work their one. My colleague, Jennifer Moir, has her own powerful voice in this work. I am forever indebted to her support in every way. Alison Jane Taylor is also firmly teaching from this perspective but from her own unique perspective. It is exciting to see. Katharine Grant is a teacher in her very being: her gifts of listening, thoughtful feedback, books and song influence me every day. Thank you for your trust. Thank you to the Living Wholeness community. There is no work if there is no one to explore it. I am bowing.
Loving and being loved is the foundation for it all. My family and friends are the bedrock of my life. Thank you all for immersing me in the swirl of love. I name my brothers John and Ned; my daughters Olivia and Aleda; my wife Suzanne and my sweet dear dog Willa. Blessed we be.
I recognize that many unseen and unheard influences are within these acknowledgements because of the context of colonization, slavery, sexism, class oppression and inequity in my history. Understanding the forces that shaped this work is a continuous evolution. So I start by bowing to the Earth and all the voices that I don't know about who have contributed to this moment in my personal life and the growing shape of Wholeness in Motion.
The material in this website represents a life time of curiosity about how the human system works and how we are part of the natural world. I am working to create a more formal bibliography of my primary influences and sources. In the meantime, I acknowledge and honor my sources below. Please look-up anything these people have written or attend a workshop they teach.
David Gorman’s work is the pillar on which the Wholeness in Motion stands. Access to his material can be found at his website www.learningmethods.com. You can order his anatomy book The Body Moveable as well as read brilliant articles and sign-up for his Anatomy of Wholeness on-line courses.
Leon Thurman’s work with the VoiceCare Network and his book BodyMind and Voice laid the foundation for the understanding of well-being as primary to learning and artistry through his articulation of human compatible learning. Like Gorman, Leon is thinker and pedagogue ahead of his time. He applied and studied neuroscience to life and education thirty years before the subject was on every airport book kiosk.
Movement, Nature, Human Function and poetry are the core threads that weave together to form Wholeness in Motion. The sources, resources and acknowledgements in each area are vast. As I acknowledge my teachers, I am also citing my sources for the work. Below I start with somatic/movement work. I follow this with Nature, Human Function and poetry.
My roots in somatic work and modern dance form the foundation for my belief that experiencing a concept is necessary for true understanding. Embodied knowledge is experiential knowledge. Much of WIM"s movement explorations reflect my Modern Dance roots. My first dance class rooted in Laban Movement Analysis was as a seventh grader taking a Saturday class at American University with Anne Hutchinson. Laban and Bartenieff Fundamentals are the scaffolding of my movement training. Thanks to Martha Myers, Diane Schmidt, Maralee Hardenberg, and Collette Barry for their contributions to my continued dance with Laban and Bartenieff. I feel blessed to have had one deeply impactful workshop with Irmgard Bartenieff herself in the late 1970’s. My debt to her his unpayable.
For hands-on work and other embodied approaches that are embedded in this work are Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s BodyMind Centering work and F.M. Alexander’s Alexander Technique. The list of teachers here is long. Alexander: Sherry Oliver, Barbara Conable, Alice Pryor, Bruce Fertman, David Gorman, Elizabeth Garren, Elizabeth Huebner, Giora Pincus, Jessica Wolf, Walter and D. Carrington, Marjorie Barstow and many more. BMC: Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Diane Elliot, Suzanne River, Margie Fargnoli. Cranialsacral work with Hugh Milne. Listening hands guidance from Osteopath and healer Richard Hruby. Years of shared questioning and practice with Elizabeth Garren, my somatic sister, and Elise Bohaty. Randee Paufve keeps me rooted in the dance.
It is hard to even begin the gratitude for my numerous movement teachers. Their influence is in every step I take and in the Wholeness in Motion sequences.
Here is a sampling:
Bharata Natayum, Classical South Indian Dance: Bala Krishnan, K. Neela, Ranee Ramaswamy
Modern Dance: Trude Link, Mark Taylor, Stuart Pimsler, Martha Myers, Beth Channock, Sara and Jerry Pearson, Lenore Lattimore, Daniel Nagrin, Don Redlick, David Dorfman
Ballet: Marcus Schulkind, Carolyn Coles, Jacques D’Ambrose
African Dance: Chuck Davis, Arthur Hall
Middle Eastern Dance: Cassandra Shore
Jacobs Kapers Morris Dance Team
Karagam South Indian Folk Dance: Om Parier Swami
Improvisation: Martha Myers, Martha Moore, Mabou Mines Company
And my colleagues with Spanuptzes Theatre an Improvisation Movement Theatre Company in Cambridge Mass in the early 1980’s.
Tai Chi Chuan: Sat Hon, Phillip Zarrilli, Lenzie Williams, Ben Lo, Bill Zeman.
Hatha Yoga: William Protengier, Teresa Pritchet, Scott Anderson, Regina Wray
South Indian Martial Arts: Kaluripayattu: Phillip Zarrilli, Selumbu: P. Veran
My movement passion was met with my passion for the natural world. Nature herself is my first teacher in the flow of living life. My lessons came from such moments as walking the beach in Bayside, Maine, paddling Rush Creek again and again, back packing the Rockies, sailing Penobscot Bay, growing our food. Living with my wife Suzanne Baker, has been a deep education in listening and learning from plants and the world around me. She is a plant whisperer. Experiencing how she sees, hears and relates to the plant kingdom has broadened my heart and mind more than I can say. Working in her nursery business as a crew member, growing herbs, has opened me in everything from loosening my classism to testing the efficacy of WIM in the context of hard physical labor 4 months a year. Studies with my neighbor and renown herbalist Mathew Wood has also given me a window into other avenues for learning and knowing.
Studies with Starhawk, the Reclaiming Movement and ritual have deepened my practices in mystery and the 'imaginal realm' as Stephen Buhner would say. They have helped my intellect let go enough to more frequently experience the heartbeat of the Earth. These experiences are supported by books, articles and experiences in Deep Ecology and Herbalism. Here are a few greats: Stephen Buhner, Susun Weed, Rosemary Gladstar, Robin Rose Bennet, James Green, Dolores LaChapelle, Arne Naess, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leapold, John Seed, Kay Grindland, John Muir, Edward Abbey, Dave Foreman, Terry Tempest Williams, Wynona LaDuke , Bill Devall, George Sessions, Johanne Macy, William Bryant Logan, Julia Butterfly Hill, Tyler Volk, Brian Swimme, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Diane Ackerman, Charlenes Spretnak, Peter Wohlleben, David Abram, David George Haskell, Joshua Michael Shrei of The Emerald podcast. My colleague and friend Christine Wolf shares this dance of nature and somatic work with me. The books she has given me and led me to are many of those listed in these pages
In the area of Human Functioning I see three blurry divisions: spirit and mind, anatomy, social, education and neuroscience.
Here are some influential spirit and mind authors/teachers: Dalai Lama, Krishnamurti, Toni Packer, Jon Kabat Zinn, Thich Nhat Hanh, Jospeh Campbell, Thomas Moore, Byron Katie, Carl Jung, Eckart Tolle, James Hillman, Robert Holden, Gayle Kimball.
Anatomy and body: David Gorman, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Linda Hartley, Morris Berman, Deane Juhan, Arnold Mindell, Ashley Montague, Lenore Friedman, Mathew Sanford, Stanley Keleman, Hugh Milne, Kristen Linklater, F.M. Alexander, Michael Gelb, Gretchen Reynolds, Barbara Brennen, Robert Fritz, Joan Jacobs Burmberg, Lulu Sweigard, Will Johnson, Leon Thurman. Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen's work, BMC, permeates all I do, particularly seeing the politics in anatomy, rewriting the anatomical and physciological pathological, dominant ideas of body to the more nurturing- health rooted container of naming patterns of growth and thriving. For example the Autonomic Nervous System is not just a fight, flight, freeze, calm system, it is an action, embrace, nourishing system.
Recently a new generation of powerful Women reclaiming body: Sonya Renee Taylor, Amanda Montell, Nicole Byer, Melissa Febos, Janet W. Hardy, Dossie Eaton, Maree Brown. Olivia and Aleda McMonagle
Sciences (distinctions are blurred): Norman Doidge, Antonio Damasio, Charles Duhigg, Timothy Wilson, Marco Iacoboni, Leonard Mlodinow, Richard Davidson, Barbara Fredrickson, David Eagleman, Michael Gazzanga, Elizabeth Blackburn, Elissa Epel, Susan Cain, Sharon Begley, Candace Pert, William Dement, Amit Sood, Rollo May, A.D. Craig, Richard Panek, Neil Shubin, Marshall Rosenberg, Lori Bailey Cunningham, Becky Bailey, Alfie Kohn, Mary Pipher, John Holt, Nancy Jo Sales, Polly Berrien Berends, J. Bronowski, Kenneth Clark, Lisa Feldman Barrett, Eugene Gendlin, Peter Levine, Stephen Porges, Andy Clark, Michael Anderson, Ed Taub, Gregory Hickok, John Ratey, Penelope A. Lewis, Luiz Pessoa, Michael Merzenich, Seth Grant, Temple Grandin, Jaak Panksepp.
Check out Dr. Ginger Campbell’s Brain Science Podcast for interviews with the scientists doing the research.
Poetry: Whatever touches you. Please read, listen and write it. This list is just too long or I am out of steam.
Oddly this attempt to acknowledge sources feels futile. The random encounters, the innocent statement of a friend, a news story, a beautiful design, a work of art, an injury, a gift, so much combines to give us our perspective and vision. I bow in gratitude to all these random and carved moments that have shaped me and this work. I made a video for a class that is about how the most profound wisdom moments in my life came not from the published or famous but from people around me. It inspired other's to see how much of what shaped their life came from familiar people who don't self identify as wise - scroll to Theory Week Ten Recollections: LINK
Energy and Miscellaneous Work that I thank for stretching the edges of my WASP heritage belief systems: Dr. Gayle Kimball- Energy Tools Work, Dinah Lawson in the lineage of Brenda Johnson's Esoteric Healing, Holotropic Breath Work/Rebirthing at the time, Complete Self Attunement-Vita Segala, Sri-Vidya Tantra Training - Guruji Haran
I bow at the feet of those who have been willing to work together with me, to study, to take classes, join in the practice, to give feedback, contribute material and make aspects of the work their one. My colleague, Jennifer Moir, has her own powerful voice in this work. I am forever indebted to her support in every way. Alison Jane Taylor is also firmly teaching from this perspective but from her own unique perspective. It is exciting to see. Katharine Grant is a teacher in her very being: her gifts of listening, thoughtful feedback, books and song influence me every day. Thank you for your trust. Thank you to the Living Wholeness community. There is no work if there is no one to explore it. I am bowing.
Loving and being loved is the foundation for it all. My family and friends are the bedrock of my life. Thank you all for immersing me in the swirl of love. I name my brothers John and Ned; my daughters Olivia and Aleda; my wife Suzanne and my sweet dear dog Willa. Blessed we be.