In this project, Savannah Eklund considers the psychological and physiological imprints of stress and trauma, and how they are reflected through the body in movement and writing.
The Body as a Discordant Mirror: Reflections of Stress and Trauma in Physiology
Essay: The Body as a Discordant Mirror_ Reflections of Stress and Trauma in Physiology
Gogol, Nikolay. “The Nose.” The Diary of a Madman, The Government Inspector and Selected Stories, translated by Ronald Wilks, Penguin Books, 2005.
Hemon, Aleksandr. “A Coin” The Question of Bruno. Vintage Books, 2000.
Juster, Robert-Paul, Bruce S. McEwen, and Sonia J. Lupien. Allostatic load biomarkers of chronic stress and impact on health and cognition. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, Vol. 35, Issue 1, pp. 2-16, September 2010. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2009.10.002
Kiecolt-Glaser, Janice K., Timothy J. Loving, and Jeffrey R. Stowell; et al. Hostile Marital Interactions, Proinflammatory Cytokine Production, and Wound Healing. Archives of General Psychiatry, Vol. 62, Issue 12, pp. 1377-1384, December 2005. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/209153
Payne, Jessica D., Lynn Nadel, Willoughby B. Britton, and W. Jake Jacobs. “The Biopsychology of Trauma and Memory.” Memory and Emotion, edited by Daniel Reisberg and Paula Hertel. Oxford Scholarship Online, 2012. https://oxford-universitypressscholarship-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195158564.001.0001/acprof-9780195158564-chapter-3
Perez, Lydia Gomez, Murray P. Abrams, Alicia E. Lopez-Martinez, and Gordon J. G. Asmundson. Trauma Exposure and Health: The Role of Depressive and Hyperarousal Symptoms. Journal of Traumatic Stress, Vol. 25, Issue 6, pp. 641-648, December 2012. https://web-b-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=fbac8a2b-c8ca-40b3-a9f7-c1b1cb55ea53%40sessionmgr101&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=83927951&db=a2h
Riva, Giuseppe. The neuroscience of body memory: From the self through the space to the others. Cortex, Vol. 104, pp. 241-260, July 2018. https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/science/article/pii/S0010945217302381?via%3Dihub#bib42%23bib42
Van Der Kolk, Bessel A. The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, And Body In The Healing Of Trauma. Penguin Books, 2014. (E-book)
Vashi, Neelam A. Obsession with perfection: Body dysmorphia. Clinics in Dermatology, Vol. 34, Issue 6, pp. 788-791, November-December 2016. https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/science/article/pii/S0738081X16300724?via%3Dihub
Statement of Purpose
With this project, I wanted to understand why the themes of dissociation, dysmorphia, and the fallibility of memory felt so relatable to me, despite the themes explored in the readings mostly being so disparate from my own. To be truthful, I wasn’t sure where I was taking this project, until I actually started researching. From there, I ended up finding connections between these themes – the psychological and physiological responses to stress and trauma – that illuminated my focus for me.
The scientific literature that I read made me think about how much of our psychological state is reflected in the physical nature of our bodies, which is what then made me think of the body as a sort of discordant mirror. Subsequently, I began reflecting on how many of us dancers rely on the ability to express ourselves through movement to account for our frequent inabilities to do so through words alone, as well as the tendency for many advanced and professional level dancers to be from abusive and dysfunctional homes, and relying on dance as an escape and a catharsis. I began linking these thoughts together, aided by insights from Aleksandr Hemon’s “A Coin,” and Nikolay Gogol’s “The Nose”. This culminated in my essay portion, that attempted to thread these connections together.
At the same time, I filmed and edited a short dance piece, trying to reflect on the experience of expressing these internal discontents through movement (which I danced to selections of Hans Zimmer’s “S.T.A.Y” from the Interstellar Soundtrack). Most of it consisted of improv, trying to remain mindful of the feelings of internal discontent, in an attempt to express the same idea of the physical body reflecting the imprint of stress and trauma that I write about in my essay. In the beginning of the piece, I tried to edit it so that there were clips overlapping to create a hazy effect, to express the fog and fallibility of memory.
Overall, the experience of trying to express these same concepts through dance was a little paradoxical: at once, I both feel as if I can understand and express them better through movement, but also worry that no one else will be able to comprehend the same meaning out of this. However, I also feel that the research I did for this project, and of course the material we covered in class, illuminated my understanding of myself a little more, and it felt cathartic to be able to reflect on that in movement. I also felt less concerned with the imperfections and size of my body than normal, as well as less concerned with technical flaws that would normally unnecessarily upset me, which was very freeing.
