HudsonMem6

__**Kenner Memo 6 – Delineating a Project**__

//“Bodywork is a term used in alternative medicine or complementary medicine to describe any therapeutic, healing or personal development work which involves some form of touching, energetic work or the physical manipulation of a practically oriented physical and somatic understanding of the body.” (wikipedia)//

Bodywork—therapeutic or healing practices that involve touch, energy work, physical manipulation, and a somatic understanding of the body—is increasingly sought for healthcare purposes. In the past three decades more and more people have turned to complimentary and alternative medicines such as yoga and massage therapy to address chronic health conditions, intervene in the process of aging, or simply to feel better, in one way or another. The proposed project will explore healthcare practices that are emerging from the convergence of Eastern bodywork traditions and neoliberalism. Particular focus will be directed towards the way health, care, and the body are framed and reconfigured through failures in the US health system, increased emphasis on individual responsibility for health, and the crisis of aging.
 * 1) Elaborating healthcare practices**

Change is not only a perennial condition of life, but also an end perpetually sought in social and material practices. This can be observed at many levels, such as Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, through annual changes in educational curriculum, daily eating choices, and even in efforts to address climate change. The proposed project seeks to understand change at the level of body relations, asking how bodywork such as yoga and massage therapy allows people to tune into or craft change using their bodies. This compliments the above dimensions—elaborating healthcare practices—by showing how neoliberalism re/shapes body relations and constructs possibilities for change with/in the body.
 * 2) Constructing possibilities for change**

This project will investigate the way in which learning is facilitated through and at the level of body relations. Yoga and massage therapy require touch or hands-on manipulation. This often happens at a subtle level that requires a trained awareness from the therapist, yet this awareness may also be passed on to and cultivated in clients. In this project I will explore how biological awareness is learned through touch, practice, and body sensations. Central to this project is the attempt to perform these pedagogical and bodily practices methodologically and textually through the research process.
 * 3) How learning happens through the body**