There is a need for body-oriented psychotherapy research that incorporates theory and process, and blends quantitative and qualitative approaches (Ladas, 2005). Somatic therapy research becomes particularly relevant as media increasingly enable asynchronous, remote, and multiphrenic relationships. A Video Game Approach to Somatic Research
Using video in somatic psychotherapy and related research provides reliable data for studying movements and associated psychological content. A video game research method pilot draws upon a limited set of theories and processes in somatic therapy and research including: attending felt sense; engaging self-myofascial unwinding; practicing somatic presence through experience of weight and pause, and; producing expressive movement-narrative video art.
A complete interactive game design would be the central feature of a web-based somatic-narrative psychological research site. Among the potential study applications is development of telemedical body psychology therapy programs for myofascial pain management.
Today’s blog discusses:
• the use of video and motion capture in psychology and movement therapy
• psychosocial indications to cultivate somatic awareness (sensorimotor literacy) in media saturated society, and
• a rationale for a video game approach to somatic therapy and research
The ultimate aim is to utilize interactive media to scaffold mindful and playful attendance of the whole body, thereby supporting individual achievement of greater life satisfaction and optimal performance.
Video in Psychological Practice and Research
Analysis of Film and Video Records
There is a long tradition of utilizing video and film recordings in somatic psychology in researching movement behaviors, from gaze to gait (Beebe, 2005; Downing, 2005; Field, 1981; Tronick, 1989). Repeated viewing of interactions and communication strategies often reveals very subtle, yet highly relevant details. For example, viewing a film of Paul Roland in session with a schizophrenic patient, BraatĂy realized that analysis of how voice and gesture are coordinated is important to understanding effective communication in propinquity (Heller, 2009). Heller notes that video recorded interaction studies by Beebe, et al (2005) regarding eye gaze exchange and vocal exchange showed that mid-range speed and intensity is preferred; gaze exchange should not be too rapid or too slow, and voice tonality neither too high or too low for effective communication.
Video Intervention Therapy examines subtle physical behaviors and verbal expression, providing clients retrospective self-other interaction analysis as a therapeutic process (Downing, n.d.). Tatkin (2008) uses a video observation approach in couples’ therapy. Video can be useful in somatic research studies of groups, as well. Somatic psychologist Lizbeth Marcher reported at the 2009 European Body Psychotherapy conference on her Kinesthetic Learning research project in which she video-taped pre-school children and analyzed their social and classroom movement and interactions. Her study observed the value of using both indoor and outdoor spaces to facilitate interactions. The study had political implications as the Danish pre-school program is at risk (Westland, 2009).
Somatic Movement Analysis
The coding and analysis of video recorded movement behaviors in human interactions has primarily been by movement and psychology experts. Whole body pattern recognition software in somatic movement psychology has not been developed to any substantial practical degree. Motion capture technologies have, however, been used for research in physical therapy, osteopathy, and biomechanical engineering (Geroch, 2004). A variety of commercial video mocap products of moderate to high expense are available for observing and analyzing localized biomechanics in sports performance.
Due to the deeply personal and whole-body sense of an individual's kinesthetic style, production of animation that represents individually identifiable movement patterns presents a high technical challenge (Bouchard, 2008; Geroch, 2004; Zhao, 2001). Computer animation programmers are attempting to write code that renders individualized movement details for stock human figure models. This would replace the need to first acquire custom 3D motion capture performance in order to render movement of an animated character with distinct individual style (Bouchard). In addition,computer programmers, along with Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) experts, have begun to develop complex motion capture movement pattern recognition analysis programs (Torresani, Hackney & Bregler, n.d.).
Motion capture data files are enormous and manual coding, even utilizing experts in well-established movement codification such as LMA, is a practical impossibility for most somatic researchers due to time and expense alone. Automatic identifiers would replace manual coding of motions into classes of actions. When coding for difficult-to-measure emotional attributes, LMA provides a theory of movement observation to describe set of rigorously defined perceptual attributes that can describe emotion. However, the automaticity of that coding still needs validity and reliability testing (Flaum-Cruz, Sabine & Koch, 2004).
Do The Eyes Have It: Social Bias and Evolutionary Preferences
Psychologists studying interpersonal neurobiology assert that vision is the dominant and most reliable sensory channel for social cognition (Tatkin, 2008). Ekman’s (2003) extensive video study of facial expression in social cognition substantiates that claim. Further, Tatkin asserts that people who are eye avoidant tend to rely on less accurate body cues.
While the eyes are exquisitely perceptive in orienting and discerning others' intentions and emotional states, perhaps body cues are rated as less reliable due to lack of cultivating somatic acuity in society. Caldwell (2010) references Kestenberg Amighi (1990) and Flaum-Cruz (2009) in pointing out that the value of eye-contact in development differs across cultures; some cultures cultivate attachment by more whole-body means. Caldwell writes that “the body itself is marginalized in society (‘any’ body)…the ‘different’ body, one that is deemed wrong by means of its color, size, shape, configuration, age, ability, demeanor, symmetry, posture, movement, gesture, etc., is oppressed by norms developed by those in power” (pp. 6-8).
It might be that video game-based somatic research could investigate body diversity issues and in so doing, help to liberate and reconstruct not only individual somatic narrative, but social somatic sensibilities as well.
Felt Sense: the Pre-articulate Pause
In addition to body movement observation, video based research has also examined physical behaviors in the writing composition process, leading to theory that keen verbal expression depends on attending somatic sensations (Perl, 1980). In a video taped study of students writing in class, just before students exhibited a burst of writing activity they invariably paused. Perl theorized that in that pause they were accessing what her mentor, Gendlin, referred to as felt sense, or a pre-articulate bodily sense of knowing.
Psychosocial Indications for Cultivating Somatic Awareness in Media Saturated Society
Anthropologist Gitlin (2002) observes that society is in kinetic shock, describing it as a condition in which media deliver tides of disposable sensations, shocking consumers into feeling. As a result, he posits, consumers learn to habitually dispose of feelings.
Locating the Body in Media Space
There are concerns that social fragmentation and overabundant stimuli in the current media saturated social context may contribute to dissociative tendencies, that is, disconnect of mind from body that can range from productive focus to fractured identity and serious social dysfunction (Blackburn & Price, 2007; Caldwell, 1996; Forester, 2007).
Of course, there are benefits of cultural and social diffusion such as transport of ideas, cultural diversity, tolerance and social learning, and collaborative problem solving, among other socially constructive gains (Gergen, 2000; Jenkins, 2006). The current milieu of extensive media use in nearly all facets of life suggests that a web-based interactive somatic awareness development game may succeed, at the very least, in promoting bodily movement and vitality beyond the current exergaming and physical fitness approaches.
Dissociation and the Disruption of Empathy
It is thought that empathy is disrupted by media saturated culture (Singer, 2007; Goleman, 2006; Small, 2008). Speak to friends and acquaintances and there will be some individuals who describe the experience of “feeling into” others (the original meaning of empathy) – or the experience of being related to themselves in a deeply felt way -- as "creepy".
Positive media can educate individuals in ways to more consciously inhabit their own bodies, attune to others, and experience greater flow and vitality without fear of violation or loss of control. Fearing underdeveloped and overly disrupted somatic awareness is stressful and can exacerbate social tension.
Perhaps the current media wildfire has emerged as a compensatory effect of denying somatic intelligence in Western civilization.
Media Dependent Behavior
Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur (1979) asserted that one of the roles of media is resolution of ambiguity in the environment, helping individuals to interpret situations and events. While media dependency theory regards mass media effects, the notion that greater ambiguity leads to greater dependence on media might be applicable to the current situation: Does greater somatic ambiguity resulting from asynchronous and remote communication leads to yet greater dependence on Internet and phone for personal interaction and social networking?
Media dependency in the early 21st Century might at once seek resolution of physical ambiguities and yet afford avoidance of direct physical human presence. It may be important to promote new models of physical competency in media saturated society, including measures of movement awareness, recognition of somatic cues in social interaction, and emotional self-regulation.
Accelerating Social Connection
The ability of media narrative to transport an individual’s emotional and cognitive attention across time, space, and realities is experienced as an everyday phenomenon. The Internet is enabling exponential growth of this transport capacity, affording social communication and access to information in volume that would be unfathomable just decades ago.
Marked shifts in social and sensory environment contexts, increased rate-of-change in formal screen features (for example, extremely rapid editing) that repetitively stimulate the orienting response (Kubey & Csikszentmihalyi, 2004, reference Lang, n.d), and increased complexity of media narratives, both within and across media forms (Jenkins, 2006), may disrupt the practice and process of mindful interoception. Consider that even simple awareness of gross motor conditions attributable to media consumption habits is limited. To wit, individuals resist associating the prolonged hip flexion and frequently poor ergonomics during seated screen use with the pains, weaknesses, and secondary ailments that commonly develop in the knees, low back, neck and shoulders with such behaviors (Bond, 2007).
Social cognition is increasingly embodied in media spaces and devices that can dominate life and work styles, as well as emerging education models. Distributed cognition through media nevertheless holds great social promise. However, the volume of media stimuli, often designed to persuade and to intensify emotions (Luskin, 2002), may be disruptive to sensorimotor learning and development. Care must be taken to ensure valuable motor cognition and somatic intelligence is not lost in the process expanding social cognition through media communication.
Rationale for a Video Game Approach to Somatic Psychology Treatment and Research
Somatic psychology research may be particularly indicated in a world where increasingly abundant media-embodied social communication, by its very nature, displaces direct somatic interactions.
Given the emergent psychosocial context of individual media production and sharing (Jenkins, 2006) there is a natural practical opportunity to expand active media engagement in video assisted somatic therapy and research designs. A video motion capture (mocap) based somatic-narrative (body-mind) integration game concept is proposed as a somatic therapy intervention model that can also facilitate extensive research data collection and analysis in clinical and emerging telemedical settings.
Access to Felt Sense and Authentic Expression of Self Narrative
Research investigating the experiential, person–centered psychology process known as Focusing, has rigorously shown that attending a felt sense of an issue can be more effective in problem solving, promoting individual authenticity, and producing more genuine mind body transformation than talk therapy (Gendlin, 1981).
Felt sense and other Focusing principles have been applied with great success in expressive arts approaches to psychotherapy (Rappaport, 2009) as well as in fostering authentic expression in written composition, noted earlier (Perl, 1980).
Various somatic movement therapies help individuals become aware of their bodily sensations and motor movements, and recognize which life experiences have established particular body response habits. For example, Caldwell’s (1996) Moving Cycle approach observes gestural behaviors unique to an individual that reprise out of a defensive need to regulate emotional arousal. Gestures offer clues to the event in which the movement was first made, the emotions and mental constructs associated with the movement pattern, the motivation to dissociate, and where that is located in somatic sense.
The Soma Unwinds
Posture, along with gesture, gait, and other movement patterns have been used as bodily clues to "unwinding" trauma and recovering more functional self-regulation of response to potentially stressful stimuli (Aston, 2008; Bainbridge-Cohen, 1994; Bainbridge-Cohen, Conrad, Salveson & Beringer, 1997; Barral, 2007; Caldwell, 1996; Conrad, 2007; Feldenkrais, 1991; Gintis, 2007; Myers, 2007; Painter, 1987; Rolf, 1977; Upledger, 2002). This unwinding, a tensional balancing phenomenon, has been related to the muscle connective tissue wrappings that constitute the myofascial network of the body. Unwinding of somatoemotional trauma correlates with resolution of distinct myofascial strain patterns (Upledger, 2002).
The Importance of Fascia
Fascia gives the body its shape and plays an important role in protection, movement, and physical resilience, perhaps more literally than metaphorically embodying an individual’s personal narrative.
Highly innervated, fascia is important to interoception, particularly proprioception, that is, an individual’s sense of their body’s location in space.
Psychological factors can perpetuate myofascial pain and dysfunction manifest in physical tensions, strain, and trauma (Travell & Simons, 1983).
Current myofascial trigger point research uses real-time ultrasound imaging and microanalytic methods of examining biochemical changes in tissue (Sikdar, Shah, Gebreab, Yen, Gilliams, Danoff & Gerber, 2009). Tissue imaging evaluates functional and structural changes resulting from exercise or manual therapy interventions (personal communication with Leon Chaitow). Ultrasound is used primarily to measure changes in muscle response to various conditions (pain being the main one). Ultrasound imaging has also been used in some rehabilitation trials to show change in muscle behavior with various treatment programs (personal communication with Diane Lee).
Psychological Implications of Fascia
There is relatively little research specific to psychological factors of myofascial pain and dysfunction. Psychological concerns tend to focus on: patient frustration and anxiety due to pain symptoms (Issa & Huijbregts, 2010), individuals who strive to demonstrate “good sport” pain endurance, or those who seek gains from illness behaviors (Travell & Simons, p. 150). Somatic movement psychology studies may provide useful practical insights into psychological holding of myofascial pain and dysfunction.
A video mocap game could establish an extensive database mapping individual somatoemotional and somatonarrative patterns for careful analysis and application to further development of media-based somatic therapy programs.
Select Elements to Pilot in a Movement-Narrative Video Game Design: Felt Sense, Unwinding, Presence through Pause & Weight, and Movement-Narrative Video Art
As noted earlier, accessing felt sense, or bodily knowing, in the pause preceding authentic verbal expression helps facilitate the composing process. The notion and experience of pause, of still awareness, of “listening to silence”, is key in many somatic healing and personal transformation models (Blackburn & Price, 2007, p. 71; Gendlin, 1981; Upledger, 2002).
In manual somatoemotional release, the pause is called a still point. It has a palpable biological basis in that the intermittent draining of the cerebrospinal fluid from its meningeal route halts as the central nervous system reorganizes. This still point is typically associated with a specific position that an individual’s body was in at the time they originally experienced trauma; as the body literally unwinds, the still point is said to occur at a point of significance (Upledger).
The felt pause is a component of presence and re-presencing a broken or dissociated past (Blackburn & Price, 2007). The pause is a ripe space of reorganization; it presents the opportunity to recognize and remake life in the present moment.
Pause affords deep reflective listening. This quality of presence informs flow in movement, as the pause organizes potential energy into kinetic manifestation of change. Laban Movement Analysis designates Flow as a key quality of movement (Zhao, 2001), although there is no particular emphasis on pause.
Another felt quality of movement identified in Laban Movement Analysis is Weight. The experience of feeling weight, or feeling the support of gravity, is also important in achieving presence (Blackburn & Price, 2007). It is a means of becoming body-centered, which can only occur in one time-space. Informal observation of 21st Century behavioral norms suggests that individuals are not widely practicing feeling pause or weight in everyday activities.
Postural alignment therapist Mary Bond (2007) and bioenergetic psychologist Julie Henderson (1992) assert that humans tend to adopt a strategy of muscular contraction to stabilize the body in situations of stress and defense. The result is chronically held tension patterns, contractile habits that do not typically serve the individual well. Bond observes that habitual contraction does not allow the body to move fluidly, to articulate with the environment with a sense of ease, to embody grace; habitual contraction requires constant effort. Such physical effort compromises one’s ability to listen to felt sense.
Feeling weight is the opposite of tension. In Expressive movement: Posture and action in daily life, sports and the performing arts, Pierce & Pierce (1989) write:
“
[U]nless the body and its movements give us pain or intense pleasure, sensation is buried in a welter of preoccupations…If you deliberately tighten your arms and shoulders, hold the tension for a few seconds, then slowly release, you will feel your arms drawn down by gravity…eased away from the head and neck by their own weight…The perception of one’s own weight is a healing process; it directs us toward wholeness and integration…Being aware of weight is not doing anything, not imagining or even actively relaxing, but simply directing attention to a sensation which is always accessible….One learns to slip in and out of the perception of weight, to melt through the identification with an all-too-familiar style of contraction, and to let the sensation of suspended, swinging weight be operative as the background of all activity” (p. 32-33).
Social embodiment research observes that the compatibility of bodily states and cognitive states modulates performance effectiveness (Barsalou, Niedenthal, Barbey & Ruppert, 2003). Body and mind together generate presence. Presence is described as:
“a state of awareness that can only be experienced through the body in which we
become conscious of a correspondence between our internal and external
environment…Conscious breathing, conscious weighing, conscious awareness of
balance and of effort expenditure – all are ways of remaining present” (Blackburn
& Price, 2007, pp. 69-70).
Focusing Oriented Art Therapy: Bridge to a Video Game for Somatic Therapy
Video can be useful in analysis, but video cannot be used “on the spot” in a clinical situation to assess/diagnose (Caldwell, 2010). That is, as a therapeutic tool, use of video affords a retrospective process rather than a means of supporting therapist or client interpretation in the moment of active somatic movement exploration. Somatic discovery can, nonetheless, occur in a composite process of somatic awareness, movement exploration, reflective expression, and retrospective engagement with felt sense of movement.
For example, Rappaport (2009) presents a body-based, person-centered psychotherapeutic process called Focusing-Oriented Art Therapy. Focusing-Oriented Art Therapy is recognized by pioneer art therapist Judith Rubin (2010) as a specific theoretical and methodological approach in the field of art therapy/expressive arts therapy. There are psychoanalytic approaches to art therapy; however, Focusing-Oriented Art Therapy is considered as a Humanistic and Person-Centered Approach.
The essence of the approach derives from Gendlin’s Focusing (1981) and incorporates artistic expression exercises to embody the clinically successful process of:
a) focusing on interoceptive sensation (one example is inner tensions);
b) creating a visual expression of that feeling through drawing or painting;
c) participating in guided breathing and movement exploration practices;
d) creating a second visual piece;
e) comparing the two visual representations of felt sense, and;
f) sharing one’s reflective thoughts about the changes in felt sense, or the felt shift, with others (Rappaport, 1993).
A highly socially relevant outcome of cultivating focused presence through creative movement and traditional art therapy is that it provides a method for stress management (Rappaport, 1993). Digital art production based on somatic narrative attendance may have a similar positive effect.
Embodying the Feeling Self: Live Action, Avatar or Abstract Play?
In providing rationale for a somatic movement-narrative interactive video game, the nature of somatic relationship to media forms must be given careful consideration. In the expressive arts component of the game, for example, would it be better for individuals to interact with and manipulate live action video images, geometric still or animated representations of the individual’s movement patterns, random character animations rendered using an individual’s movement exploration mocap data, or create an avatar, which people tend to want to construct as models of their actual physical self? Might it be more developmentally engaging to use visual representations of movement patterns that accurately represent actual movement, but via an image that is not clearly recognizable as a human form?
It may be preferable to avoid use of animated character designs in the avatar tradition, and instead reflect the individual's own movements back to them in various shapes, colors, and textures representing the player’s individual movement patterns or still frame postures. Image representations in the art play can be layered to incorporate visual stylings of affect and personal narrative elements recorded as audio concurrent with the motion data. Such a movement-shape only (without the body) design approach, based on actual individual movement data, may facilitate greater privacy and opportunity for creative movement art play than animating either a random character, a somewhat-look-alike avatar, or a physical fantasy avatar model.
One reason for the high privacy concern is that the ideal of an online game available from a research website. The purpose of the website would be to offer individuals an opportunity to experiment with transforming their movement patterns from a precise observable set of behaviors to a desired set. This process is not as a matter of traditional physical conditioning, rather a matter of cultivating bodymindedness and feeling creative expression. The idea of eliminating the traditional formal physical representation of human likeness is to promote engagement with authentic feeling and self-regulation of those feelings; in turn this may limit projective identity construction, as is the tendency with customary avatars (Gee, 2003), and instead cultivate a more reflective experience of being grounded in the physical world.
Technology Considerations Regarding Game Design:
Motion Capture for Expressive Art Application
A technological approach that might provide genuine movement data and game engagement, as well as ease of use, is 2D video motion capture. The data could provide graphic models of body movement paths and patterns, and be converted to 3D representation that could then be interpreted and manipulated by the user in creative expression challenges. The range of technology to support this is from fairly inexpensive desktop PC based single camera animation packages, to high-end mocap labs (typically 3D) with state of the art animation and analysis capabilities.
Ready availability of user friendly video mocap programs that allow an individual to initially record video concurrently with audio of their spoken narrative account on to a computer or website are under consideration to support a pilot study. The pilot would specifically look at the effectiveness of various types of image data files offered for player manipulation. This pilot could be facilitated at a physical site where participants could record and play with their movement-narratives using 3 different commercially available production/editing software packages. At this point, the practicality of these compromises does not serve the rigors of validity and reliability in experimental design. Pilot planning is still in progress. A few thoughts on analysis are shared below.
Data Coding and Analysis
As an alternative to automated movement pattern recognition, expert somatic therapists will be trained in particular features to be observed in this study and careful hand coding of participant movement paths and patterns will be noted. In addition, the movement data will be coded a second time for narrative features. A grounded theory process will be used to identify themes. Time code will allow hand coders to match narrative themes to movement phases. This process will be applied for both an initial movement-narrative exploration data file and the subsequent expressive art video production. A comparative analysis of original movement narrative and re-rendered movement and revised narrative will be conducted.
The selection of key data by the individual along with their play interaction with the data will be analyzed in order to create programs that present developmental challenges in the games appropriate to any given individual player. For example, do they select to perform a high point or low point personal narrative? What are the key poses they select to recontextualize? What are the qualities of weight and pause in those key poses? How does the key pose(s) selected compare to qualities of weight and pause along the path of movement? Where are the gaps in movement flow across the paths of motion? What art elements do they select to modify their key poses?
Conclusion
A somatic-narrative video game may be useful as a somatics research approach, as well as for assessment and therapeutic application in clinical and telemedical settings. Advances in video content analysis technology and motion capture technologies may present many new ways to study body-mind phenomena, personal narrative, psychological perpetuation of myofascial pain patterns, self-regulation of emotions, and social interaction behaviors. However, there is still a need for technological advances that will provide fluid, individualized, accurate and detailed human-machine interface. In addition, the ideal to automatically code for an extensive range of individual narrative and creative experimentation will take extraordinary time, effort, and money to realize. Laban Movement Analysis inroads with motion capture technology may provide a fertile ground upon which to grow, particularly in developing detailed movement-narrative analysis coding.
All images in this post are original art and photos of the blogger.
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