Winter 2017, CairoThematic Course
Bringing the gut home: on movement and memory
Course details
- Cycle
- Winter 2017, Cairo
- Taught in
- English / Arabic
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About the course
course description
In this course we will attempt to experience moving with intention, where this movement can be bodily, emotional, or a mix between both. Together we will look into the role of intention in movement that leads to discovery or remembrance.
Asking questions like “why do we have the tendency to be drawn to what is not “seen”?”, we will uncover the role of the subconscious in our daily decisions, where a change of perspective and shifting of focus can lead to great discoveries about oneself and hence, others. Prompting our discussions often will be experiments with this very change of perspective, that happens naturally in journeys of mutual discovery, but are sometimes interrupted by certain hidden barriers.
Building on notions of movement and transmission, we will ask questions that help us pay more attention to those natural interactions. We will use those questions to explore notions of criticality and understanding dilaectically and intedependently, in relation to the concepts/events: thinking, feeling and knowing.
We will analyze and deconstruct how our bodies can be a vehicle for memory that thought cannot contain, drawing on examples from abdominal massage, which is a routine procedure, and differs from one person to the other depending on…
What to expect?
Participants are expected to show up.
Participants are expected to be willing to share and move.
Why apply?
Just a little bit of understanding.
to play, enjoy, and discover.
Who teaches it
Feeling fed up with a world that no longer fills my deep longings, I decided to quit the corporate world in order to connect with human sisters and brothers on a deeper level. I started my journey by learning the abdominal massage “Chi Nei Tsang” believing that we humans need to find a way to release ourselves from our minds and patterns in which we find a lot of comfort. Being exposed to the metaphysical world and the different alternative healing techniques allowed me to never judge a journey by how it looks like and thrive to more “seeing”.
Batool El-Hennawy is from Cairo, Egypt. She is currently completing her degree in Fine Arts at Helwan University. She has worked at the Cairo Institute for Liberal Arts and Sciences (CILAS), as a co-fellow, pedagogical coordinator, and media lab director. She is interested in the transnational dimension of education and social justice with a particular focus on collective learning and storytelling as pedagogical forms. She will serve as a Skills Lab facilitator at CILAS Alex.
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