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 Workshops & Seminars

Eros, Sexuality and Identity

Dates:       Saturday, 7 May 2011
Venue:       London
Fee:         £100
Eros and sexuality evoke profound emotional and psychological responses. The undeniable intensity of bodily experience in passionate desire and unrequited love compelled ancient Greek poets and philosophers to recognize psyche as the body's inner dimension. Eros evokes states of passion, anguish, confusion or helplessness, imbues music and poetry with expressions of sensuality, longing and consummation, individualises our experience and awakens the body-mind to itself.

How we experience erotic contact and how we express ourselves as sexual beings affect our identity and self-hood. Wilhelm Reich discovered how respiration and motor activities regulate not only our emotional expression but also our erotic and sexual experience. He observed psycho-erotic build-up of physiological tension and anxieties and fears linked with their release, with surrendering control, or shadows of disowned longings.

Psycho-erotic tensions flourish on the boundaries and sensual edges between 'self' and 'not-self'. Eros' play between self-hood, intimacy, sensuality and desire is accompanied by dynamic build up of muscle tension, heart rate and blood flow in the organism. But intense emotions arising with erotic charge and sexual activities can also overwhelm rather than nourish the self and threaten its structural integrity. Our 'self' organising capacity depends crucially on sensory-motor integration and particularly so in moments of high excitation.

This experiential workshop will focus on psyche-motor skills which help us build but also contain erotic charge and intimate relating. We will also use movement work to explore how sensory-motor integration can shape and support gender and sexual identity in our relationships with others.