Nina Wise teleseminar on "Transformation through the Arts"

I first discovered Nina's material in an article in a Vipassana publication: http://www.inquiringmind.com/Articles/FreedomToFallApart.html, where she wrote about the courage to grieve: "Freedom is about the willingness to feel deeply. Freedom is about the willingness to fall apart. Freedom is about holding onto nothing. And at the heart of that letting go, that dissolution, that surrender, you discover something sublime and unspeakably, heartbreakingly raw. Call it love. Call it compassion. Call it kindness. Call it redemption."

I was again emotionally overtaken when I followed the SIA thread here to http://www.ninawise.com/body_tells.html ("body_tells"), where she writes of a young woman, hopelessly lost, it seemed, from who she was within herself. Drawing upon a "recently evolved field of Somatics", Nina guided the lady to some profoundly healing self discoveries.

This is what I found to be so moving. As does Nina in her own improvisational performances, the participant began a spontaneous evolution of movement that eventually discharged some deeply held grief: "when we are able to move with abandon, we encounter a vast inner landscape of characters, stories, memories, and images that encode the core issues of our process towards freedom," she says in the body_tells article.

Although unnamed in this article, I suspect the "recently evolved field of Somatics" she refers to would include Peter Levine's trauma-healing Somatic Experiencing (http://www.traumahealing.com/), based on the idea that many psychological symptoms are from incomplete trauma reactions residing in the body, especially the nervous system. It's strongly distinguished from traditional talk therapies, which attempt to heal through our thoughts and beliefs.

Still, it needs to be said that Nina's work is not about therapy; it's about art: "The primary goal of improvisation is to make good art." Yes, indeed. And even her writing shows that.