Article on how art can inform medical education

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/what-medical-residents-learn-from-art-museums_us_56bb95aee4b0c3c5504fd6c5?ir=WorldPost&section=us_world&utm_hp_ref=world

CREATIVE METHOD COURSE - 31 Oct to 2 Nov 2014 (weekend)

Location: Kalk Bay, Cape Town
Dates: 31 Oct to 2 Nov, 2014

Please click here to view the workshop details.

Brave work with the Eloquent Body

http://blog.petflow.com/this-is-so-touching-everyone-should-watch-this-at-least-once/

Dance With Suitcase

I am very pleased to announce that Dance With Suitcase: A Memoir resting on Movement is out, and in your real and online book stores. You can also order the book from me at dawn.garisch@gmail.com.

“So, there’s this suitcase. If I were the choreographer
of my life, in the planning stages before anything had
happened, or else at the end when all is done, and
nothing can be altered, I would begin with that. Start
with a bare stage, except for a large, cardboard case,
the kind my father used while travelling in Africa on
business, with a big enough cavity for a dancer to
scrunch up in. The first problem would be
claustrophobia; then how to emerge, how to step
outside the confine.” 

The memoir is a companion piece to Eloquent Body, looking at how dance practice can help us manage our lives. It also focuses on how we move through the world.

Answering the question: What is this really about? can be the hardest aspect of writing memoir, perhaps because it carries the weight of that potentially terrifying question: What is my life really about? In Dance With Suitcase, it took me several drafts to realise that I was investigating freedom and limitation, desire and restraint, as they have shaped me.

The difference between poetry and prose ...

http://www.mhpbooks.com/study-reveals-the-neurological-differences-between-poetry-and-prose/

On being observant

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/08/12/on-looking-eleven-walks-with-expert-eyes/

Our Imprisoned Images

I am giving a talk at the Body Knowledge Conference (2 - 4 September) organised by WISER at WITS on The Image in the Symptom. This lovely quote by Rilke sums it up:

 Work of the eyes is done, now

go and do heart-work

on all the images imprisoned within you; for you

overpowered them: but even now you don't know them.

                                                                 - Rainer Maria Rilke from: Turning Point

Henry Miller on Life, Dancing and Surrender.

• 
  
• From Brain Pickings:
  
  Henry Miller begins with a riff on Howe’s book War Dance:
  

  The art of living is based on rhythm — on give and take, ebb and flow, light and dark, life and death. By acceptance of all aspects of life, good and bad, right and wrong, yours and mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, ‘the dance of life,’ metamorphosis. One can dance to sorrow or to joy; one can even dance abstractly. … But the point is that, by the mere act of dancing, the elements which compose it are transformed; the dance is an end in itself, just like life. The acceptance of the situation, any situation, brings about a flow, a rhythmic impulse towards self-expression. To relax is, of course, the first thing a dancer has to learn. It is also the first thing a patient has to learn when he confronts the analyst. It is the first thing any one has to learn in order to live. It is extremely difficult, because it means surrender, full surrender.

  […]

  Life, as we all know, is conflict, and man, being part of life, is himself an expression of conflict. If he recognizes the fact and accepts it, he is apt, despite the conflict, to know peace and to enjoy it. But to arrive at this end, which is only a beginning (for we haven’t begun to live yet!), a man has got to learn the doctrine of acceptance, that is, of unconditional surrender, which is love.

The Worried Sick

Interesting article on the nocebo effect...

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/36126/title/Worried-Sick/

Another brave and thoughtful article from Karen Hitchcock

https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2013/march/1361848247/karen-hitchcock/fat-city

Doctor / writer Karen Hitchcock

Thanks Bridget Thompson for pointing this doctor / writer out to me. Thought-provoking, well-written, humane and hilarious articles about the problems of the contemporary approach to health care, e.g.:
https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2012/july/1341560637/karen-hitchcock/last-resort

Article on Anxiety by Rosamund Handler

http://mg.co.za/article/2013-05-24-00-anxiety-driven-and-derailed-by-fear

The Aroma of Spring

Amazing man - John Parker. These changes are happening in my lifetime...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaeTq7ne0Pw

Online Interview with Anthea Garman

Anthea has a wonderful blog Writing Across Genres. Check it out.

http://writexgenres.wordpress.com/dialogues/dialogue-with-dawn-strengthening-the-spirit-of-my-writing/

Poetry writing workshop at the FynArts Festival

I will be running a three day poetry writing workshop in Hermanus as part of their new cultural festival. Monday 10th to Wednesday 12th June. Get out your pencils and join me...
http://www.hermanusfynarts.co.za/

Oliver Sacks on Memory

What a lovely man and role model. I am reviewing his latest book "Hallucinations', which is fascinating reading. http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/02/04/oliver-sacks-on-memory-and-plagiarism/

A Tough Language

‘When people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it should not be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language – and that it what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say it how it is.

It isn’t a hiding place, it is a finding place.’

Jeanette Winterson, from Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Dance Project with Bettie Coetzee Lambrecht

This collaboration, where I danced some of my poems for Bettie's camera, was a rich experience, and has resulted in a book: To Life; Dance It. The current trend towards an interdisciplinary approach to art and life can help us understand each other and ourselves better.

http://www.facebook.com/bettie.coetzeelambrecht/timeline/story?ut=32&wstart=1359705600&wend=1362124799&hash=594915223856875&pagefilter=3&ustart=1

The book and prints of the photographs can be ordered from Bettie: bcbrecht@gmail.com .

The Bird Novel

I have come to think of birds as the original anti-depressant. A friend posted the following to me today, which just about sums it up, and more. The review is about writing, keeping what is important alive, and having a reference point outside the narcissistic world of human beings:

http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article08221202.aspx

Memoir writing course in Cape Town Feb 2013

The next memoir writing course is from February 25th to March 1st 2013, mornings 9am to 1pm. For more information, please email dawn.garisch@gmail.com.