Artful Practices for Well-Being

Hello. My name is Francesca Margarite Maximé. I’m a somatic experiencing trauma healing practitioner, a somatic psychotherapist, and a narrative poet, and I'm delighted today to share with you, Constantine Brâncuşi’s, Fish.

Taking in the enormity of the space in which we exist. Feeling, as we watch from our residents our office, Taking in what it feels like to be supported by the earth, the ground beneath us. Feeling our feet on the floor and our seat in the chair. What is it like to actually be able to rest here?

Feel the force of gravity. Recognize that this is ever present underneath us. And that we are both on the earth and of the earth.

Breathing in and breathing out.

Orienting to this figure before us. This aquatic creature sculpted for our entertainment. For our interaction. For our curiosity.

Breathing in and breathing out. A body breathing. What is it that we're noticing? Where are our senses most drawn? Is it more the quality of the texture, of the smoothness of the marble? Is it striation of the way in which the white and the blue gray are horizontal?

Is it the shape that is tapered...front to back, mouth to tail, narrow and wide.

Are we called into experiencing what it's like to have a sense of the quality of the texture of the heaviness and the weightedness of this piece of art? Is there something fluid there? Is there something evocative of movement, fish swimming...

How many are in the sea? What is it about this fish that moves me?

What am I noticing is happening inside my body? My throat. My neck. My chest. My belly.

As I spend some time here, interacting with this piece and also feeling my feet on the floor and my seat in the chair. My breath Breathing. The body of me.

Imagining the vastness of the ocean, in which schools of fish team and swim. And also being present with this moment. This experience. Here now in this space.

And that both are there, the Fish swimming, me sitting, taking in.

Is there a separation between the art. I am taking in and the art that I am?

Breathing in and breathing out. The body breathing me as naturally as the fish swim so fluidly at depths we cannot see. An eternal mystery that we may never know.