Body Mapping
A contemporary-ancient and holistic process
Body maps are recordings of dynamic body signals. When placed in the context of place and people, body maps are a symbolic representation of how you experience You. Providing a way to re-member and archive the languages of your body, informed by experience, social ecology, culture, and ancestry. A way to understand yourself more intimately with discernment, anchored in relationship.
Mapping Technology Acknowledgement & Image Credit
The painting that supports our title is by and from the Aboriginal people of Australia, the original singer obscured by colonial practices. Aboriginal people use an intricate symbology & journey process to represent location, function or purpose, spirit, energy, and story lines at all body scales including land-, animal-, people-, plant- & water-scapes, bringing to form areas of space and time spanning local to cosmic. Aboriginal practices date back 60,000 years. For contemporary artwork and explanations we invite you to your own explorations, inviting a conscious choice to listen to the original peoples voices and knowledge.
We, at SENSE8, want you to know that the methods we have developed are a contemporary iteration of practices that have been in place long before now. Emma's specific Body Mapping process has emerged through years of practice weaving inquiry-based creative methods with somatosensory art therapy and liberatory somatic practices of The Resilience Toolkit®. Practices informed by indigenous mapping & decolonizing technologies from around the world and Emma's sociobiology+physiology+ neuroethology research and learning with newts & others.
Our emergent Body Mapping model at SENSE8
At SENSE8, Emma Coddington Brown has developed and practiced Body Mapping with a body-up relational approach that is culturally-, indigenous, & science-informed. First developed in physiology classrooms fifteen years ago, Emma now offers this class re-imagined. Anchored in western and indigenous science, inquiry-based creativity and the somatic practices and frameworks of the Resilience Toolkit®. She incorporates biology of creativity and art therapy methods of Guided Drawing® to sustain the experience.
Why Body Mapping?
Map your body signals for increased connection, agency and sovereignty.
Our bodies are an antennae to the world, a sacred vessel, a compass by which we navigate, and the material form in which we are a vital part of this collective life.
The extent to which we know ourselves is the extent to which we can be in relationship,
navigate storms of life,
stay the course on our dreams,
and make decisions that nourish us.
Why Map your Body, Place & People
Body Mapping is a creative way to learn how your body attends to, experiences & translates being in this world.
Body Maps offer a way to: * understand how you experience, store, and befriend stress&trauma, love&creativity * identify the patterns of your mind * access and identify your energetic body * sense spirit & collective mood * store cultural norms and stories * recognize and anchor in the relationships you have with human and non-human collectives (family, ancestry, land and waters) * discern, name, & translate your individual and collective emotions and sensations
At SENSE8, we offer a kind, playful, creative, and respectful way to accompany you as you expand your capacity for self-awareness and practice tools for soothing - so that you can cultivate creativity, true connection, agency & sovereignty, and cultural humility.
Body as a language,
landscape & compass
In our offerings you are invited to:
* RESOURCE the journey: recognize and share your own skills and practices. And, engage in somatic practices of resilience toolkit. * RE-MEMBER & TRACK how your body detects and perceives sensations, emotions, feelings, mental states, energetic field, spirit and collective. * MARK-MAKING. Translate tracking into Map form: Each inquiry and subsequent body response is converted to a color mark(s) made on a representative body outline. An integrated map emerges as each body facet is explored and brought into form. * ATTUNE to your somatosensory system: what composes your accumulated stress (allostatic) load, social location of stressors, and how relaxation dynamically emerges. And, learn how the state of your somatosensory nervous system speaks to you through your body. * LEARN how your body discerns sensation from perception and how current & accumulated experience, physiology of cycles, and cultural stories inform what we notice and how we make meaning of it all. * REMEMBER & RECALIBRATE conditioned tendancies and survival strategies. * PRACTICE using your integrated body map as a compass. * If supportive, we also offer science & cultural evidences, frameworks, and group sharing to assist in consolidating your learning.
What is Body Mapping?
Body maps are recordings of dynamic body signals in context of place and people. With practice, they can reveal the languages of your body and function as a clear compass in life.
We anchor to the ancestors, land & waters that raised us, guides, family and tools we have each inherited or learned.
and
We use color and mark-making on paper to reflect your specific dynamic somatic/body experience and languages .
The process is the practice and primary tool. And, while the end image is not the goal, the resulting image is beautiful and deeply informative. Escaping the boundaries of colonial categories and cultural norms, the process is holistic & integrated. And the painting becomes an artifact of your inquiries and your body map. Each workshop is facilitated as a brave space: where every body can show up supported and seen with courage and vulnerability. Collectively, we craft and sustain a container that is a disability justice informed, trauma-informed, and culturally inclusive. Personal stories stay within these confidential circles and all tools and practices shared are intended for participants to take home and use.
Sequence of Offerings
Sense8 uses Body Mapping to facilitate reconnecting with your
many facets of being, in support of an anchored and more resourced relationship with self, intimacy, and community.
The following sequence of offerings are intended to provide an ease-ful introduction, with the opportunity for deeper dives if desired.
SENSE8 Cohort
Cellular Stories
Deeper Navigation Skills
A six week experiential course, exploring your body as a multifaceted antennae to personal and collective sensations, emotions, and mental patterns. We will use Body Mapping as a creative somatic process to integrate how you attune to, understand, and act in accordance with the wisdom, insights, needs & desires of your body -
- your re-membering.
You will leave with different ways to track your body, integrated maps of your body languages, and working knowledge of the Resilience Toolkit that offers somatic tools to assist in day to day life and settling your Nervous System.
Why cohort? See invitation below.
A four week experiential course for folx who are realizing that colonialism and capitalism have been colluding, through white supremacy and heteropatriarchy, to control your body, family systems, organizations and the way you relate with self and others.
Inviting you into an embodied approach to examining and re-wiring stories that construct us. SENSE8 offers a creative method to gently untangle the poison from the person - body mapping and the Resilience Toolkit.
Offerings can be customized to the individual or group. These sessions can offer deeper dives into techniques and practices of tracking and interpretion - The specific topic & duration will vary.
Eg. 1: explore the biology of creativity with heart monitors and frameworks of physiology of stress & excitement, relaxation & creating. Eg. 2: Analyze intuitive mark-making to reveal NS state and past experiences - informed by research and practices of Somatosensory Guided Drawing founder Cornelia Elbrecht and colleagues. Eg. 3: Personal Journey to explore body mapping as a divining tool.
$247 | $197 | $127 | trade
Est Date: April, 2025
customized pricing
Est. date
Feb, 2025