Eco-somatic dance is an umbrella term that encompasses many different practices of moving and engaging with the living world that recognises the relationship between place, environment, body, and mind. It results in outward action. It aims to re-situate the human body into its web of ecological relations, through movement, and it is centred around mindful awareness, sensory perception, and creative expression. These three pillars are important, and provide something specific that is not captured by e.g. forest bathing, standard environmental education, meditation or somatic practices like pilates alone.

Why eco-somatics?

Nature-connectedness has been associated with mindfulness practices and practical engagement with nature, such as gardening. What makes dancing important, or more interesting as an intervention?

Ecosomatic dance as a tool to improve nature-connectedness has the potential to have more profound effects, precisely because it extends into the creative, and the actionable. It has been shown to interrupt automated behaviours and create emotional resilience against mental challenges such as climate anxiety. It involves an embodied approach to cultivating emotional regulation, positive relationship to the earth, rather than purely mind-based, and it involves vulnerability – something that we must all embrace in relation to the climate crisis. In an educational context where online-learning and technological mediation of much intellectual work is done (even for young students – and including learning environments beyond schools) it is imperative to not lose sight of the basic physical needs and resources that people have. Not only does dancing and sensory exploration offer a contrast to indoor classroom or online learning, it offers an opportunity to develop one’s own relationship to the natural world through the body, and therefore also develop one’s relationship with oneself, and one’s community.