Sound Site Somatics
Yoga with Sarah Gray
Sound Site Somatics promotes self-nurture and guides students to
reconnect with themselves, each other & their environment.
Sound Site Somatics was founded by Sarah Gray in 2016 as a vehicle to explore somatics as a model for
sound and site-based performance art-making and training.
Her research interests include the conscious experience of mind, body, and place in the context of
ecological placemaking, community coherence, and the wellbeing of the individual.
Sarah Gray
Founder and teaching artist
of Sound Site Somatics
Sarah is an artist, producer, and teacher supporting holistic, embodied learning using somatics to facilitate others to connect with the more than human world.
Sound Site Somatics has been in a fallow period since 2020 due to both the pandemic and Sarah's new role as Head of Community Learning at Schumacher College and the newly launched Dartington Arts School.
Through this time, she has continued her study, practice and training in Body-Mind Centering studying the Nervous System module with Embody Move in December 2021.
Sarah has completed 100 hours of CPD training in 2021 with Yoga Health Mandala with a focus on asana, anatomy and complementary practices for spine health and finding balance in standing postures.
Sarah teaches seminars as part of the new MA Movement, Mind and Ecology, now in its second year, as part of their residential taught modules at Schumacher College, Dartington.
Sarah continues to teach on projects and programmes with SOEL's including intensive workshops and the Holistic Studies in Human Anatomy course. More info.
In June 2022, Sound Site Somatics was part of a diverse and in-depth programme at the Art.Earth symposium, Sentient Performativities, where Sarah taught a workshop with Rosalyn Maynard of the School of Experiential Learning (SOEL) on Waies of Knowing (WoK). In the workshop Sarah shared her explorations in the Sympathetic Mantel through touch and movement, which will feature in the upcoming Nervous System workshop in September 2022.
Inspired by a listening, radio, and sound art practice she creates sound walks, journeys, and poems, to offer immersive, ‘in-ear’ experiences as sensory invitations for participants to relate to their environment, particularly with a focus on becoming more aware of their perception of animal and plant beings.
Sarah contributed to the annual international art project Sound Camp founded by Reveil with a partner organisation, Soundart Radio in 2014-17 offering somatic workshops for listening with the whole body.
Sarah studied Theatre and Choreographic Practices at Dartington College of Arts and has been training in Body-Mind Centering for five years and is a certified Scaravelli-inspired yoga teacher.
Sarah is an alumna of Dartington College of Arts and founded and organised the performance art festival Stream. She is a member of Tree Charter Brance Sap Rising, Director of Soundart Radio, 102.5FM, and Head of Community Learning at Schumacher College and Dartington Arts School.
Sound
Sarah explores sound as a medium of touch,
listening as an act of both giving & receiving,
& voicing as a means of expression & somatization
As part of self-led solo arts project Sound Journeys, Sarah produced a digital sound-walk for Dartington, presented at the Schumacher College symposium Language, Landscape and the Sublime in June 2016. For more information contact Sarah directly.
Site
Sarah facilitates experiences
to offer up the opportunity to rediscover
our relationship to place.
Sarah explores landscape, memory, and ritual on rural and urban terrain. Her most recent work centers on the Dartington Hall Estate through walking, spoken word, and sound recording.
Somatics
The exploration of the relationship between body and mind through first-person perception;
To directly experience; To pay attention to; To notice;
To create the conditions for more choice.
In a world of information,
can we embody and grow our felt knowledge?
Somatics is sensing and feeling the relationship between body and mind. By bringing greater awareness to our whole selves we begin to become present to embody the reality of this constant change.
By turning in we limit how much we depend on the externals.
Overcoming addictions and habits, being neuroplastic and available to respond - these are the benefits of regular somatic practice. Developing this response-ability is a process! It is one where love and patience are required. With regular practice, we develop a greater capacity for self-care and therefore community and place care.
"The key to physical, psychological and spiritual well-being lies in our Soma, which can perhaps best be defined as the essence of bliss or Ananda
arising from the core of our being"
-Frawley, D. 2013. Soma in Yoga and Ayurveda. Motilal Banarsidass: Delhi, India. p.13
For me, somatics practice is a process of deepening my sense of trust in myself and the universe.