CHRISTINE CALDWELL, PhD

Clinician & Core Faculty in the MA Somatic Psychology Program

Naropa University

      I know Christine Caldwell can help me understand the body. She has built her life -- both as clinical therapist, innovative researcher and core faculty in the Somatic Psychology program here at Naropa University -- on the recognition that the body is constantly in motion, and attending to the myriad implications thereof. My body is sizzling with the familiar sensation of tiny, almost cellular popping --  excitement-meeting-anxiety flows through me as my body chants it’s mantra of vision: “Yes, go, ask; yes, listen, listen.”

     I take another deep breath and eased into the couch. Her mauve sweatshirt similarly eased into the reading chair across from me. The abundant bookshelf behind her right shoulder bleeds out of focus as I meet her eyes. Armed only with questions and the vulnerable warrior’s hearts, we begin.

  “What is the body’s role in processing experience?”

  Caldwell pauses as if savoring a favorite flavor, before saying,

    “People talk about this thing called the mind, but I’ll go out onto a limb and say that the body is the only thing that does process experience. There’s no mind that’s independent from the body [...] I think of what we call the mind [is] just another operation of the body, one of many.

      “The body’s operations [...]  are largely about processing experience. So, you’re taking in information, you’re processing it in order to know how to act or move or behave, adaptively. The idea of processing experience to me is basically a function of the sensory-motor loop: incoming sensation, some kind of central processing -- and that, not necessarily in the brain -- and that then, a resulting action. That action could be gross motor movement like jumping up  and down, or it could be quite tiny in terms of some kind of cellular exchange. But all of those are actions. All of those are also behavioral responses to experience.”

     We are speaking the same language. After I savor the new tingle of relationship in my guts I lead in with another sweepingly broad question, which I frame widely to allow her the most room to fill the space.

    “How does the body interface with culture?”

    She offers, “Culture is generated […] anytime you have relationships rather than just encounters. I see culture very broadly and in a lot of different species -- humans are not the only species of animal to create culture. The way that the body moves -- and I mean movement again all the way from gross motor back down to the cellular --  is what creates culture... Movement is not just  biological, it's also social… Because movement is at least partly a social regulation, and social communication, and social bonding, etc., the body creates culture.

     “This is a great question,” she continues. “How I would mean that the body creates culture is that the only way that we have culture is through enactment between and amongst our bodies… If an early human is in a cave in France, and that person draws on the walls of the cave, and creates this beautiful cave painting, we all say that's a beautiful expression of culture because it's about symbolism, it's about image, it's about communication, possibly religion, etc. So the body of that human is what drew it, and the movements of the hand and the eye and the breath and the position of the body is what shaped or created that image. That's what I mean by enactment. BUT! I’m not totally convinced I believe that. I could be full of shit.”

     “Well, let me ask you this counter-example,” I offer. “You're walking down in Times Square in NYC today, and you look up and you see a billboard for Victoria's Secret.  There's culture there, and a body did create everything about that advertisement. But by interfacing with that, is that creating culture or is that being in a culture that is already created?”

     “I think both are true,” Caldwell leads.  “At that moment, I am both in a culture that is already created but I'm also creating culture by looking at it, by not looking at it, by looking away, by snorting, or going "ooh, where's the nearest Victoria's Secret?" So, I also create the culture. This is a really super question, actually.”

       Themes of projection, the nervous system, and the reification of culture by participation ebb and flow in a tide of virbratory exploration. But we only have an hour (how, I wonder, can we fit this into an hour!?) and yet another beckons:

      “Next question: what information do we have about the body’s role in culture? How much of this is anecdotal, and how much is concretized?”

     Christine Caldwell laughs with an honest smile.  “Well, the anecdotal can get pretty concrete after a while.”

I concur with an enthusiastic “hm!”

       “An area we might be circling in on is a lot about identity… This area of interest in identity has some overlap with your questions about culture and the body. And so, from that sense, we can say that the body exists along a continuum of a very stable and enduring, to very movable and adaptable.

     “Some of the structures in our bodies are very enduring, and others go through a life cycle every few days (like the lining of the gut, the skin, etc). There’s a few [kinds of] cells inside me that are 61 years old. That’s pretty cool! [...] And yet, there’s other cells in my body, tissues or parts of my body, that are always changing, and in the middle, and all along. The body is this very cool thing that is both highly changeable but also stable, and we can see that the body is always dancing along that continuum -- OR, that identity, to me as a psychologist, identity has to dance along that continuum.

      “I have to both have parts of my identity that feel really stable, and allow me to create very stable culture because of that identity; but, from a Darwinian standpoint, I also need parts of me that can” -- Caldwell snaps once, loudly and with vigor -- “turn on a dime. Tomorrow, what if I got in a car accident and became a paraplegic? That would fundamentally alter my life course. Yes, parts of me would be the same but parts of me would be radically different, and my identity would shift. This [is the] basic understanding of how we need both continuity and changeability … If we understand and cooperate with what the body is already doing biologically, if we can work with identity and culture in that same way, … we get a kind of unified field theory of human nature instead of all these dualisms and reifications.

     Rephrasing, I reflect, “So you’re saying that if we can integrate the continuum [of ourselves within our bodies], we can defeat a dualism?”

     “ ‘Defeat a dualism,’” she responds. “I like that! Continuity. Continuum.  So, I feel really comfortable getting from biology to identity. But, I think that we need to [more closely discern] how we get from identity to culture. I’ve spent less time articulating that, it’d be fun to talk about. What do you think?”

      I take a slow breath, now quite comfortable in this discourse, and touch into the wellspring of knowing that has driven my curiosity this far. “Well, from what I’m witnessing, the relationship between biology and identity, it’s a motion of creation. I have this sense that is unchecked at this point, but that a perhaps parallel motion from the very fundamental, internal sense of living, into how we act out ourselves [in (perpetuating) culture] … I see it as a simile between our self understanding and how we understand the place that we’re living.” It’s a parallel, exponential scale arising from our biology, into our identity, which then forms our culture and context.

       She grins again with soft cheeks and smart eyes, murmuring and nodding in agreement. “And in fact I think you’re on good ground there, because a lot of how we defined particularly mental health and mental illness has to do with a sense of disconnect -- the disconnect between what’s going on inside me -- even from a self regulation standpoint -- and what’s going on outside me. And the sense of disconnect between those two, as if they’re almost competing, conflictual or different animal [is frequently how we define mental illness in the West].”

       Before we get to the final questions, I want to remind Caldwell of the social relevance of what we’re working with. “Part of my integrity [in investigating] this work is bringing the real basis of it out and to democratize the field a bit.” It seems easy for Christine to follow what I am saying when so frequently this dramatic hook and tremendous relevance doesn’t land in my conversations about this compelling topic. I’m so relieved Christine Caldwell really hears my voice and my spirit.

      I continue, “I was describing my background to Eric Glustrom recently, saying that behind my background in somatic psych and peace studies are my backgrounds in performance art and political activism. So for me, there’s a real edge of somatic psych that is becoming politicized in my investigation of it. That feels really aligned with my core values and desires to be in the world.”

      I emphasize this point with a mutual sense integrity and fervour; this conversation would be pointless without sharing the basis from which it arises -- my deepest, truest knowing of my values in this life, and a transpersonal calling to skillfully engage them in the name of social equity and change-making. I know in my soul that resourcing Westerners back into their own feeling bodies can provide the much needed individual scaffolding for the tremendous social transformation demanded by our aching world today. My generation, the Millennials, has been born into legacies of dissociative consumerism and a depression so profound we rarely escape the vacuum of those paradigms. When I feel my body light up at the idea of simply feeling and registering enculturation in our bodies, I know it shines in the name of freedom. My body knows there is life beyond the constraints of the hegemonies of productivity, apathy, and patriarchy. My body knows it’s alive, that I’m alive in it, and that feeling aliveness is an act of defiance in the Western industrial paradigm.

Caldwell sees me.

     “There’s just one more question that I have, Christine... What would you say to activists who are interested in politicizing body marginalization? Do you have any advice?

      “...Woah,” she starts in with a pause. “One of the things that happens for me when I go to conferences that have to do with social justice issues, or if I read in sociology/phenomenology texts about social justice issues, I have this strong experience that the writer is brilliant, the speaker is just so brilliant, [and while] it’s amazing how they’re deconstructing these really important things, ...  but, I just want them to get up and move around a little more.

     "There feels like a deficit in activists of actually embodying the principles. What is your practice that helps you embody your principals, and to live it out? Because there’s no difference between what’s happening in your thinking and what’s happening in your body,you need to move in ways that are going to counteract the marginalizations that [every individual encounters], all the time.

     “So, I would champion the personal practice of the activist that keeps deconstructing [all] that you and I have internalized, first and foremost. And, finding creative ways to express that. It doesn’t have to be speeches or really dense theoretical papers; it should also be in performances, paintings, and in how you take a walk with your friend, these kinds of things.  That would be my advice."

     I can feel my face flush as I exclaim, “Oh my gosh, I love it!” The two of us in our cushy chairs burst into mutual giggles. My whole body lights up with excitement. “I’m getting such a big, green light in my whole activation portal here [gesturing from crown to pelvis].” Christine laughs loudly and gestures in the affirmative with her whole body.

    “Good!” she says. “Good.”

     In digesting that vibration, I have to tell her the one last thing:

    “I mean, what’s thrilling is that I can say that, without a doubt, that’s exactly what I’m working to do with my life.”

       For a moment, the power of those words reverberate in the stillness of her office. I can literally feel heat flying off of me. In my spirit, deep in the core of my being, I am aflame.

Christine looks at me cooly, noticing.

      “Nice, very nice...” she says to my flames licking at the windows, and to the white light at its core. My spirit, shining, feel timeless; past and future swirling inside me in a vortex of passion, calling, curiosity and knowing. Because I feel, I am alive.

Her eyes find mine in that happy storm:

       “...That’s great.”

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       In collecting and disseminating the individual stories that construct culture, we will take a profound new look at the values and experiences that have transformed a crushed, industrialized Western nation into a thriving, global leader of cultural self-reflection. With access to this content, PROJECT:BERLIN will collectively offer a values-based presentation of the scaffolding needed to catalyze North American social transformation. If properly resourced, this research can evolve into a service-based social enterprise with consultancies, film screenings, and speaking engagements.