Deep Breath - An auto-reflexive account of a collective journey into the healing practices of shared, embodied, breathing meditation
(2023) RHIK03 20222Centre for Theology and Religious Studies
History of Religions and Religious Behavioural Science
- Abstract
- When we first encounter past traumatic experiences in ourselves, we are left with a conundrum; how are we to move forward in our everyday lives and thrive, rather than just cope and survive? By participating in the Belly2Belly ritual, providing analytical reflections and a detailed account from an auto-reflexive perspective, I attempt in this thesis to show, through the Belly2Belly ritual, how participants progress from a state of ill-being into a state of well-being, a form of evolution of well-being. This, it can be argued, takes form when the ritual participants are provided with the opportunity to engage with their unconscious habitus and autonomous physiological reactions through embodiment of intimacy. The Belly2Belly ritual in this... (More)
- When we first encounter past traumatic experiences in ourselves, we are left with a conundrum; how are we to move forward in our everyday lives and thrive, rather than just cope and survive? By participating in the Belly2Belly ritual, providing analytical reflections and a detailed account from an auto-reflexive perspective, I attempt in this thesis to show, through the Belly2Belly ritual, how participants progress from a state of ill-being into a state of well-being, a form of evolution of well-being. This, it can be argued, takes form when the ritual participants are provided with the opportunity to engage with their unconscious habitus and autonomous physiological reactions through embodiment of intimacy. The Belly2Belly ritual in this case was taught as a facilitator course by the Embodied Intimacy community which is run by Rachel Rickards and Buster Rådvik. Belly2Belly’s aim is for their participants to become socialized in a way of being that embodies a somatic awareness which ultimately helps them make sense of their everyday life. As the participants of the practice engage with the ritual, they are faced with drifting understandings of self-perception due to the nature of the ritual and thanks to the socialization in the contextual intimate environment. Here, two concepts are presented as the participants engage with the Belly2Belly ritual, namely negotiating somatic consent and quality of safety. They both represent accounts for how the participants, through the nature of the ritual, are to navigate in the embodiment of intimacy, and so to help them overcome difficulties associated with intimacy related trauma. This intersubjective experience is supposedly regulated through a concept called co-regulation and employs the contested polyvagal theory to explain how it does so. In this thesis, I reflect on these topics through a range of relevant social theory, with a main focus on Sabah Mahmood’s account of the restructuring of habitus through socialization, as well as Kym Maclaren’s account of the embodiment of intimacy. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9107710
- author
- Starco, Michel LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- RHIK03 20222
- year
- 2023
- type
- M2 - Bachelor Degree
- subject
- keywords
- Quality of safety, Belly2Belly, Liminality, Interpretive drift, Embodiment of intimacy, Embodiment, Lived religion, Intimacy, Co-regulation, Intercorporeity, Ritual, Auto-reflexive ethnography, Negotiating somatic consent, Habitus, Socialization, Polyvagal theory.
- language
- English
- id
- 9107710
- date added to LUP
- 2023-11-21 11:56:53
- date last changed
- 2023-11-21 11:56:53
@misc{9107710,
abstract = {{When we first encounter past traumatic experiences in ourselves, we are left with a conundrum; how are we to move forward in our everyday lives and thrive, rather than just cope and survive? By participating in the Belly2Belly ritual, providing analytical reflections and a detailed account from an auto-reflexive perspective, I attempt in this thesis to show, through the Belly2Belly ritual, how participants progress from a state of ill-being into a state of well-being, a form of evolution of well-being. This, it can be argued, takes form when the ritual participants are provided with the opportunity to engage with their unconscious habitus and autonomous physiological reactions through embodiment of intimacy. The Belly2Belly ritual in this case was taught as a facilitator course by the Embodied Intimacy community which is run by Rachel Rickards and Buster Rådvik. Belly2Belly’s aim is for their participants to become socialized in a way of being that embodies a somatic awareness which ultimately helps them make sense of their everyday life. As the participants of the practice engage with the ritual, they are faced with drifting understandings of self-perception due to the nature of the ritual and thanks to the socialization in the contextual intimate environment. Here, two concepts are presented as the participants engage with the Belly2Belly ritual, namely negotiating somatic consent and quality of safety. They both represent accounts for how the participants, through the nature of the ritual, are to navigate in the embodiment of intimacy, and so to help them overcome difficulties associated with intimacy related trauma. This intersubjective experience is supposedly regulated through a concept called co-regulation and employs the contested polyvagal theory to explain how it does so. In this thesis, I reflect on these topics through a range of relevant social theory, with a main focus on Sabah Mahmood’s account of the restructuring of habitus through socialization, as well as Kym Maclaren’s account of the embodiment of intimacy.}},
author = {{Starco, Michel}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Deep Breath - An auto-reflexive account of a collective journey into the healing practices of shared, embodied, breathing meditation}},
year = {{2023}},
}