embodiment practices
with Sarah Gray
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cultivating a living arts practice and an artful living practice.
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Founder, Sarah Gray, is exploring how to create a sacred space where there can be flow to enhance the support and wellbeing of the individual, to nurture creativity and community coherence, whilst practicing ecologically sensitive placemaking. Sarah's teaching and research interests include, but are not limited to, art, improvisation, dance, holistic human anatomy, eco-somatics, site-specific performance, acting, sound-walks, the derive or drift, Deep Listening, and body-mind consciousness.
Sarah Gray
Founder/Artistic director
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Sarah is Head of Community Learning with Schumacher College and teaches with the School Of Experiential Learning on the Holistic Studies in Human Anatomy Course and on a calendar of community workshops. Sarah teaches on community workshops, unaccredited courses, and in higher education.
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EDUCATION
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Sarah studied Theatre and Choreographic Practices at Dartington College of Arts 2005-8 and made Dartington her professional home thereafter. Her professional practice of Curation, Production, Administration and Stage Management began at the College of Arts and has since grown into academic symposiums, arts and theatre productions, and music festival programming in the South West of England. As an alumna of Dartington College of Arts, Sarah was elected to serve as President of the Students' Union for two years (2008-10), and later founded and organised the performance art festival and alumni reunion, Stream (2018).
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MEDIA
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An experienced Broadcaster, and Media Producer chiefly in radio Sarah has worked freelance on many exciting projects with Stellaria Media, Soundart Radio, and for four years working in local BBC traffic and travel news gathering and presenting. Sarah is Director on the board of Soundart Radio, 102.5FM not-for-profit company, inspired by community-centered media, Deep Listening, eco-acoustics, and radio art. Sarah contributed to four cycles of the annual international Sound Camp project, founded by Reveil, as a facilitator guiding somatic workshops for listening with the whole body.
COLLABORATIONS
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Since 2020, Sarah has been a founding member of Sap Rising collective which is a listed Tree Charter Branch for Totnes and Dartington bringing forest bathing, foraging, arts and somatics together in service of trees.
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Sound
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Sarah explores sound as a medium of touch,
listening as an act of both giving & receiving,
& voicing as a means of expression & somatization
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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.
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Site
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Sarah facilitates experiences
to offer up the opportunity to rediscover
our relationship to place.
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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.
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Somatics
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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.
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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.
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By turning in we limit how much we depend on the externals.
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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. ​
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"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"
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-Frawley, D. 2013. Soma in Yoga and Ayurveda. Motilal Banarsidass: Delhi, India. p.13
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For me, somatics practice is a process of deepening my sense of trust in myself and the universe.
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