The Space Behind You

WARM UP 1

Let’s start with a game. I call the game The Cloth Behind You. All you need is a small cloth, (I’ve been using a clean yellow dust cloth) and a space where you can sit on the floor, or stand, with some room behind you.

Its inspired by a martial arts exercise I read about where the student kneels down on the floor and the teacher stands behind them with a foam stick. Perfectly still. When they are ready the student gives a sign. The teacher then silently raises the foam stick, and tries to quickly strike the student on the head. The student needs to feel the correct moment to roll away and escape unscathed!

But Fear not! In The Cloth Behind You there is no striking or rolling.
The game has 2 steps.

Step 1 – Sit or stand in any position that’s comfortable for you, and without turning to check, lightly throw your cloth into the space behind you, and listen carefully to where it lands.

Step 2 – Again – without turning to check, keep your body facing the same direction and reach back into that space and pick the cloth up. If reaching back like this causes you any discomfort, you could also choose instead to close your eyes and go to the cloth to collect it. Now here’s the game. You need to do this reaching, or movement to the cloth, in one clear action. No groping or searching with the fingers. You choose a point to go to, and your hand goes only there. Then you will know if you were right, or not.

Repeat this as much as you like. If its easy you can start to be more adventurous with your throws. More behind, or to one side, or the other.
When you finish playing, bring yourself to stillness for a moment and notice how the space behind you feels before moving on. You can pause the audio here to give you a chance to get into the game. Press play again when you’re ready and the next part will start.

WARM UP 2

For this warm up you can be seated on a chair, a stool, or on the floor.

In last months invitation, one of the things Bryn asked us ‘what does the space behind me feel like?’ In my own work as a performer, I’ve been asked this question a lot, and the answer remains illusive & mysterious.

Right now you are engaged with some technology to access my words. I imagine whatever device you are using, you had it in front of your body. What body position did you have as you were pressing the buttons or reading the words? Where were your head, and shoulders, in relation to your spine? And what’s your body position right now? Every day, I feel myself disappearing forward into the screen. And in my daily life, I feel myself falling forward into the future. The next thing I have to get done, or want to happen, or want to stop from happening!

In the studio, raising my back awareness is a counterpoint to all of this tumbling away from the present. Choreographers have talked as we dance about all the nerves that spiral out of the spinal column on the back. Asking us to dance with eyes on our shoulder blades, or a nose at the tip of our tail bones.

Lets work gently on our backspaces now. Sit forward with your shoulders and head above your hips. Feel free to close your eyes if it helps you sense.

How does the space behind feel in this moment? Is there anything to notice? Or nothing to notice? Which in its own way would be something to notice!

Place a couple of fingertips at the top of your breast bone, and make a light contact.
Notice any movement of your breathing.
Somewhere in the middle of you behind this place is your spine.
Very gently, and with as much specificity as you can find, could you move this part of the spine a little backwards, away from you? It doesn’t have to move far, just enough for you to know you moved it.
And when you’ve found that, take your fingers a little further down the breastbone, and feel or imagine the spine there. And again move just that part of the spine backwards, away from you.
Keep making your way down, stopping off at different locations. Perhaps the bottom of the breastbone is next, then the diaphragm that sits beneath the rib cage. As you work, notice the movement backwards, but also the movement of return. The back moves back, then moves back to where it was, by moving forward.
Choose a couple of last places to try and move from lower down, like the belly button, or a few fingers below. As you sense the movement there, what happens to your tailbone? And the feel of your pelvis on the seat? Is there any residual movement back at the top? in the head? Or the neck?

Stop and take a rest for a moment. Let yourself simply breathe and do nothing. How does behind feel? Any different to when we started? When you feel ready, move on to the first exploration.

EXPLORATION 1

Here’s where you will need your camera nearby.

Now that we’ve warmed up the backspace, ask yourself again, what is your sense of your behind now?

Where does the front of you end and the back begin?

Could you use your arms and hands to find that threshold? When are your arms in front of you, and when are they behind?

Try it with eyes open first. As a sighted person with eyes open, I find this threshold is intricately linked to the edge of my visual field. If I hold my hands out to the sides and let them sway in and out of the corners of my vision, I get a sense of them being in front, or behind. But that might not be true for you. Explore for a moment.

What happens if you close your eyes? Does the threshold change at all? In my own experience it moves quite a bit to a new place.

With your eyes open again, turn your head to the left side, where does the space behind go? And now to the right, where does it go then? What about if you lift your chin? Or lower it?

In my experience the space behind is very agile! It seems to be able to move with me in perfect synchronisation. Lets try and capture it! Here’s where you need a camera. I am going to use my phone, and hold it with both hands so that it touches the back of my head, with the lens was facing away from me.

On my phone I can use the volume button on the side to take photos. I am going to take one straight behind my head, and then turn to the left, to the right, look up and down. And now I should had 5 photos in all. But I’m not going to look at them yet! We’ll save it for the end. So go ahead, take your 5 photos, leave them in the camera for now, and move onto the next exploration.

EXPLORATION 2

Here is where you might need your pen and paper now, or a way to record your voice. Once you have them, bring yourself to sit again, and come to stillness.

How is your backspace in this moment?

I wanted to ask you now, without checking – to visualise or map out the space behind you as accurately as you can. Close your eyes if it helps, and ask yourself what’s there.

What does it look like or what do you know about that space?
Is it a light open space?
Are there shadows? Or colours?
How many objects are there, what are their textures or colour?
Does that space have a particular sound or acoustic?

Once you have a sense of the space, take time to compose an audio description of it. You can work with pen and paper, or recording your voice, or both. As you compose, start to let go of accuracy with the words, and play with the description as a poem. You’re creating an ode to the space that lives behind you. Distill it into a few lines. And remember not to check what’s there!

Here’s mine from the desk where I’m working:

A door way.
A shadow space.
white walls that move away
And a ceiling I can’t touch.

Work quickly and see what comes. When you’re ready, move onto the final part.

CLOSING

We’re going to bring things to a close now. Is the space behind you still there?

Let’s remember what we’ve done. Sometimes when I try and remember something, I take up eyes up and lean back into the space behind me. Its like my memory lives there somehow.

How much of your understanding of what lives behind you do you think is made from memory? how much is sensed? And how much is imagined? Is it fair to say the poem you composed was made from your memories? Or a combination of past memory and present sensation? And how did you know where the cloth was when you threw it? And how did you tune into those specific parts of your spine?

From making this invitation, I have come to think the space behind gives me a chance to meet many parts of myself. My senses, my imagination and my past, all speaking to one another in a dynamic interplay. Being brought together to meditate on a curious absence.

Let’s finish with the photos you took. You can have a look at them now, or ask someone else to look at them and describe them to you. I’d like you to think of these photos as masterpieces. Give them a title. Choose your favourite. What’s does each composition tell you? How would you arrange them in a gallery?

If you’d like to please send us a photo or two, and your poem, or any other reflections on what the space behind means to you. I’d really love to see, or hear or feel what you’ve been up to.

And remember the next time you’re falling into a screen, the space behind is quietly calling you. Always present.