The Spiritual, the Ecological and the Pleasurable
In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung wrote of his 1920’s conversation with Native American Elder Ochwiay Bianco, as follows:
We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think they are mad…..They say they think with their heads,’ he said. ‘Why of course. What do you think with,’ I asked him in surprise. ‘We think here,’ he said, indicating his heart. – Jung 1995 (1962) p276.
For her PhD, Maya Ward researched the role of embodied awareness in enhancing our capacity to think differently, and in more complex and ecologically informed ways. Heart-thinking, it turns out, is not just a metaphor. Neither, it seems, is gut-knowing.
Recent science is catching up with Indigenous experience of the fundamental importance of the body in a type of comprehension we could call Wisdom’ – a full-bodied knowing of the way of things. There is growing awareness of the essential role of emotion in learning – the body tells us there is pleasure in understanding.
Maya will explore how Jung’s intimations and respect for other ways of knowing indicate the ongoing relevance and power of his thought for our culture’s essential turn towards the ecological, the spiritual and the embodied
Book here: http://www.jungsocietymelbourne.com/december-2020
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Dr Maya Ward is a writer, dancer and educator working in community, arts and environmental settings.
She lives in Warburton and is the author of The Comfort of Water: A River Pilgrimage, an account of her 21 day journey along the Wurundjeri Songline of the Yarra River. This book was shortlisted by the Victoria State Library for the 2012 ‘Year of Reading’.
Maya has a Masters Degree in Applied Science (Social Ecology). Since completing her Phd in Creative Writing. Maya has continued researching the nexus between Archetypal Presence, Somatics and Body Awareness.
