WEBS OF ATTENTION
WITH NURIA BOWART AND DANIEL BEAR DAVIS
AUGUST 17 - 20
In this workshop we will map neural pathways through a myriad of ways we connect with self, partner and the world.
Together we will weave through materials from Somatic Experiencing, Contact Improvisation and the Axis Syllabus. Our interest is the Nervous System and, in particular, the concepts of regulation and co-regulation.
This workshop will be co-facilitated by Nuria Bowart and Daniel Bear Davis. All welcome.
Photo by Alice Arida
The Axis Syllabus offers a highly progressive and sophisticated understanding of the form and structure of the body, emphasizing the roles of fascia and tensegrity, as facilitators of skillful movement. The Axis Syllabus provides a way to understand dynamic movement, and to see healthy pathways and choices that are available within a structure that has parameters and design elements. The Axis Syllabus offers ways to facilitate the cultivation of self awareness within dynamic motion. Co-director Nuria Bowart is our resident Axis Syllabus instructor carrying over 12 years of experience. (for more info please visit axissyllabusforum.org).
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Somatic Experiencing is an approach to the resolution and healing of trauma developed by Dr. Peter Levine. The word “trauma” in this sense covers a wide range of physical and psychological symptoms that result from the effect of accumulated stress on human physiology.
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SE employs awareness of body sensation to help people "renegotiate" and heal rather than re-live or re-enact trauma.
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SE's guidance of the bodily "felt sense," allows the highly aroused survival energies to be safely experienced and gradually discharged.
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SE may employ touch in support of the renegotiation process.
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SE “titrates” experience (breaks down into small, incremental steps), rather than
evoking catharsis - which can overwhelm the regulatory mechanisms of the organism.
SE supports individuals in completing basic fight, flight, and freeze response patterns that remain inhibited after stressful or traumatic experiences. The completion of these response patterns can bring greater capacity for self-regulation as well as an increased sense of well-being, integration, increased resiliency, and resourcefulness. SE is not only effective in re-negotiating trauma. It is also effective in supporting individuals to engage their world from a sense of capacity.
SCHOLARSHIP + WORK TRADE
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We offer 3 full scholarships for Black, Indigenous and People of Color [BIPOC] folks in each session. As well as 3 Work Trade spots in each session. If interested please select 'BIPOC Scholarship' OR 'Work Trade' when registering via the link below. For more information about the work trade exchange, go to the Work Exchange page.
ABOUT THE FACILITATORS
Photo by Anna Maynard
Nuria Bowart
“Looking into the body I find myself repeating the words of Jaap van der Wal: “The body is a living performance in time.”
The deeper I go with my studies the more I can perceive the multidimensional fabric that is the body.
A fertilized seed unfurling. We become.
A series of sacs tethered to trunks that move in the wind, carrying their water, rooted to the center and the sky, and subjected to the forces of the physical universe of which we are a part.

A bloom of possibilities with prerecorded intentions and limitations.
The body needs metaphors of ecology not technology to define it. We are organisms, multiple environments interacting.
We are the fractal expression of the larger ecosystem of which we are a part. It is evident that we are made up of relationships in movement.
Movement is the mechanism through which we become. It is the way that we inhabit space and time. It is our story, and our message.
Creation funnels through the process of thought, word and deed. And, movement is necessary for each of those phases to exist.
Movement is the trajectory of energy.
Form is the consequence of movement, and the servant to it".
Photo by Anna Maynard
Daniel Bear Davis (MFA, SEP) is a Movement Educator, Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner, and interdisciplinary performance maker, dedicated to support humans to step into greater aliveness so we can more fully inhabit the details of our lived experience. Daniel has taught Axis Syllabus, contact improvisation, contemplative movement practices, and embodied anatomy throughout Europe, Asia, North America, and the Middle East. When not teaching groups, he has a private practice as a somatic coach, using tools from Somatic Experiencing® to re-negotiate trauma and support resilient nervous systems. His work is also influenced by cultural somatics - the recognition of the larger web of human and non-human relations in which our somatic experience is situated. Daniels work seeks to thread the personal within the larger webs of ancestral lineage, nature, culture, and so much more. Whether teaching movement skills, nervous system regulation, or compositional practices, his intention is to foster informed choice and increased possibility through cultivated curiosity and exploration.
Daniel has worked with veterans and non-veterans in collaboration with Krista DeNio and EchoTheaterSuitcase project, and in San Quentin Prison with The Artistic Ensemble. His original performance, On Contentious Grounds, explored intersections between the experiences of students at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and the experiences of oppression expressed in interviews he conducted with Palestinians in the West Bank.
His performance work has been presented at Performaticá (Mexico) in the Imagining Bodies Symposium (Estonia), Dancing in Place Festival (Malaysia), SummerWorks (Canada) the San Francisco International Arts Festial, SoWat Now Contemporary Performance Festival, and Looking Left Festival in California, the SEEDS Festival and E|MERGE Residency at Earthdance Center, MA, and at danceh0l0 in Brooklyn. He has been blessed with opportunities to perform with Guillermo Gomez Peña, Nancy Stark Smith, Nita Little, Pipaluk Supernova/Live Art Installations, Felix Ruckert, Kira Kirsch, Erika Tsimbrovsky, Scott Wells, Cid Pearlman, and many other inspiring body/minds. danielbeardavis.com