The preparatory Set: A Novel Approach to Understanding Stress, Trauma, and the Bodymind Therapies

Basic to all motile life is a differential approach/avoid response to perceived features of environment. The stages of response are initial reflexive noticing and orienting to the stimulus, preparation, and execution of response. Preparation involves a coordination of many aspects of the organism: muscle tone, posture, breathing, autonomic functions, motivational/emotional state, attentional orientation, and expectations. The organism organizes itself in relation to the challenge. We propose to call this the preparatory set (PS). We suggest that the concept of the PS can offer a more nuanced and flexible perspective on the stress response than do current theories. We also hypothesize that the mechanisms of body-mind therapeutic and educational systems (BTES) can be understood through the PS framework. We suggest that the BTES, including meditative movement, meditation, somatic education, and the body-oriented psychotherapies, are approaches that use interventions on the PS to remedy stress and trauma. We discuss how the PS can be adaptive or maladaptive, how BTES interventions may restore adaptive PS, and how these concepts offer a broader and more flexible view of the phenomena of stress and trauma. We offer supportive evidence for our hypotheses, and suggest directions for future research. We believe that the PS framework will point to ways of improving the management of stress and trauma, and that it will suggest directions of research into the mechanisms of action of BTES

An Embodied Approach in a Cognitive Discipline

Academia can be an uncomfortable place to work. Academics are examples of professionals who have multiple stresses and pressures. Being an academic is often a fundamental part of someone’s identity. Academia can be a cerebral, critical, competitive and judgmental environment. This chapter draws from a study using creative research methods with academics who self-identified as having an embodied practice. There are different definitions of embodiment. I use embodiment to mean both a state of being and a process of learning about the self, and so embodied practices are ways of bringing conscious self-awareness to and about the body. The academics reflected on the meanings they attributed to these embodied practices, tensions with their embodied identity, and how they used them to impact on their wellbeing

Voltmètre rotatif pour la mesure de très hautes tensions

Un voltmètre rotatif Kirkpatrick, adapte à la mesure de très hautes tensions des générateurs Van-de-Graaf a été construit afin de comparer entre elles quelques méthodes récentes de mesure des hautes tensions. L'appareil donne de très bons résultats. Il est très maniable, donne une mesure continue sans prendre de l'énergie à la source de tension et suit promptement les variations de tension

A reflection on “Trash, teaching and the city”

This is a commentary on Carina Truyts’s photo essay entitled “Trash, Teaching and the City: The ‘Big Hole Counter Narrative’ project and the ‘Urban Anthropology: Research Methods and Fieldwork’ Course at Sol Plaatje University.”http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rasa202019-10-04hj2018Anthropology and Archaeolog