The Nourished Nervous System

Episode: All of Our Bodies: Exploring Somatic Experiencing, Authentic Movement and Cultural Somatics with Daniel Bear Davis
Host: Kristen Timchak
Guest: Daniel Bear Davis
Date: March 27, 2025

Episode Overview

In this episode, Kristen Timchak sits down with Daniel Bear Davis—a somatic experiencing practitioner, dancer, and movement educator—to explore how we can find resilience and healing through somatic experiencing, authentic movement, and cultural somatics. Through grounded conversation and personal anecdotes, they weave together concepts from Ayurveda, bodywork, animism, and trauma renegotiation, emphasizing embodied wisdom, community, and the interconnectedness of all bodies.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Somatic Knowing and Embodied Connection

• Kristen opens with reflections on how somatic practices, especially dance, foster a way of knowing each other that transcends words and histories, hinting at the deep validity of “bodily information.”
  • "He's one of those people who, who I've danced with him more than I've talked to him, but I feel like I know him really well. And that's such the beauty of contact Improvisation or any of the Somatic work really." (01:04)

Daniel’s Introduction and Path

• Daniel introduces himself as a movement practitioner, parent, and bodyworker. His background is steeped in postmodern dance (his father worked with Meredith Monk), slow motion performance (his mother), and he details work with veterans, incarcerated people, and the contact improvisation community.
  • "I have in my blood this curiosity and interest in how movement and movement as ritual, movement as a context to create experience." (03:56)
• He credits dance and improvisation teachers as his primary somatic teachers, valuing presence, curiosity, and the capacity for trauma renegotiation.

What is Somatic Experiencing?

• Daniel explains Peter Levine's creation of Somatic Experiencing (SE): trauma as a bodily process, not just an event, with roots in animal observation and soul retrieval.
  • "It's a bit of a somatic experiencing is kind of a totem for soul retrieval work that gets dressed up in a lab coat to make it accessible...for folks who need some kind of polyvagal scientific stamp of approval." (06:48)
• Emphasizes embracing both scientific and mystical aspects, and not always believing we “know it all.” (07:35)

What is Cultural Somatics?

• Influenced by Resmaa Menakem ("My Grandmother's Hands") and Tada Hazumi, cultural somatics investigates how personal and systemic trauma are interwoven—how bodies are shaped by, and can shape, culture.
  • "It's never just this moment. It's never just me in isolation. But the understanding in itself is a working against isolation as a symptom of trauma and looking how to bridge into what else exists." (10:41)
• Daniel describes an “animist perspective”—bodies within bodies—a multi-layered existence that includes ancestry, the land, and social systems.
  • Kristen relates this to Ayurveda’s model of "sheaths" (koshas), observing that body, energy, mind, and bliss extend out to community, nation, and beyond. (11:17)

Agency of Attention

• Daniel introduces and explains "agency of attention" as the conscious, empowered ability to choose where attention goes, especially in situations of stress or fixation.
  • "If I notice I'm in that fixing mode and my attention is getting small and narrowing...the idea of agency, of attention is I can choose to look at, well, what else is happening that touches that stuck place, where is there something that nourishes it or something that gives it more room so it can express." (12:53)
• Kristen draws parallels to Ayurvedic wisdom: "Prana follows attention", highlighting the power to direct one's life force to what supports healing (15:34).

Pleasure as Activism and Resource

• They discuss Adrienne Maree Brown’s Pleasure Activism, and the importance of connecting with pleasure and community as fuel for resilience and activism.
  • Daniel: "The necessity of pleasure and being with what's good...in order to be able to move from a deeper place as we mobilize change." (16:44)

Authentic Movement: Practice and Integration

• Daniel describes authentic movement: movers with eyes closed, witnessed by another, emphasizing presence and deep listening rather than analysis or judgment.
  • "The reason why we want to witness. There is, again, this coming out of isolation. It's another form of how do we give more space for the thing to move?...bring company to it." (17:29)
• He describes the term "withness" (witness as being with someone), and how authentic movement supported by SE expands possibility, builds self-trust, and gently stretches comfort zones.
• Daniel describes adapting authentic movement—eyes open is okay; orienting and resourcing are key so overwhelm can be met gently.
  • "There's a choice to be with the loudest thing, or you can make a choice to be with the thing that feels good with the thing that feels less dramatic..." (22:08)

Improvisational Dance Meets Trauma Work

• Improvisation is at the root of both Daniel’s trauma renegotiation work and his creative practice: supporting clients to discover what else is possible by re-patterning habitual responses.
  • "We're in a collaborative improvisation together, looking at their composition, their general patterns of the movement of their mind, habitual patterns, and then what else might be possible...That's always, for me, part of the inquiry of improvisation." (27:13)
• He credits movement teachers with concepts like "thin slicing awareness" (tracking nuances of experience) and "the gap" (uncertain, still moments rich with possibility), relating these to trauma work’s need to uncouple sensation from terror/shame and rediscover safety.
  • "The gap is that place where you just don't know what's happening. ...And how do we inhabit the freeze? ...If we can be in that place without the coupling of terror, shame, then it's just another texture." (29:04)

On Building Capacity, Witnessing, and Embracing Awkwardness

• They talk about the discomfort of “the gap” both in improvisational dance and in life, and its relationship to larger cultural uncertainty.
  • Kristen: "I think we're in a lot of ways experiencing that as a nation right now, this bigger cultural gap that we're in." (31:08)
• Daniel highlights the importance of learning to trust one’s body, being present with awkwardness, and supporting a wide range of energetic states in both art and therapy.
  • "We can honor that as deep wisdom and we can get curious and playful with it, even if it's kind of ugly or funky or awkward. Embrace of awkwardness was the best contact improv lesson I ever got." (33:34)

The Role of the Elements (Ayurveda and Somatics)

• Daniel and Kristen discuss parallels between Ayurveda’s elements (earth, water, fire, air, space) and somatic/cultural experience.
  • Daniel: "Elements are in us and. And we are in an elemental world. ...Ancestors includes more than just our human ancestors. It includes fire and water, earth. ...There's something that suits the dryness that leaves in its place." (34:56, 35:36)
• Daniel describes how different stress responses (fight, flight, freeze) correspond to different elemental energies in Ayurveda (pitta/fire, vata/air, kapha/water/earth).
  • "That freeze energy once, once time. And it wants company. It's that kapha energy you're describing. ...That withness and the foreverness and the trust that there's no rush..." (41:09)

Nature, Pathology, and Western Culture

• Daniel critiques the Western tendency to pathologize natural energetic cycles and intense emotional experiences.
  • "No one's going to look out at nature and say, you know, too much storming and you blooming too early. It's this, this fabrication, the separation that western culture, the culture I'm of has. ...It pathologizes the movement of energy." (42:52, 43:00)
• He and Kristen reflect on the need for cultural tools and time to sit with grief and strong feelings, not just push forward.

Notable Quotes

• On Somatic Experiencing’s Relationship to Science and Mystery:

  • "Somatic experiencing is kind of a totem for soul retrieval work that gets dressed up in a lab coat to make it accessible..." – Daniel (06:48)

• On Cultural Somatics and Belonging:

  • "It's never just this moment. It's never just me in isolation. But the understanding in itself is a working against isolation as a symptom of trauma..." – Daniel (10:41)

• On Agency and Attention:

  • "The idea of agency, of attention is I can choose to look at, well, what else is happening that touches that stuck place, where is there something that nourishes it or something that gives it more room so it can express." – Daniel (12:53)

• On Improvisation and Trauma Healing:

  • "That's always, for me, part of the inquiry of improvisation. It's embodied questioning what's possible here? What does this moment allow for? What wants to happen?" – Daniel (27:13)

• On Witnessing and Healing:

  • "There's a building trust that we can be okay inside of those states and building trust in the improvisation. ...My deep trust in other people's bodies and in the okayness of a wide range of what humans can be, how humans can be more than human, and that those energies move through us, just is everything." – Daniel (32:21)

• On Embracing Awkwardness and Transformation:

  • "Embrace of awkwardness was the best contact improv lesson I ever got. That it's not about flow, it's not about doing some idea of something. It's just about showing up for the awkwardness to see what else can emerge." – Daniel (33:34)

• On Elements and Ancestry:

  • "Ancestors includes more than just our human ancestors. It includes fire and water, earth. ...They're something wisdoms that are part of us, that we have access to, that we belong to and with." – Daniel (34:56, 35:36)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro and Daniel’s Background (00:04–06:18)
• Somatic Experiencing & Cultural Somatics Defined (06:30–12:03)
• Layers of Bodies (Ayurveda and Somatics) (11:03–12:43)
• Agency of Attention Explained (12:43–15:34)
• Pleasure Activism & Community Resources (16:16–17:07)
• Authentic Movement & “Withness” (17:07–20:10)
• Adapting Movement Practices for Accessibility (20:10–24:08)
• Improvisation as Trauma Support (27:01–31:41)
• Embracing Awkwardness and Capacity Building (32:21–34:41)
• Elements, Somatics, and Ayurveda (34:41–43:44)
• Pathologizing Experience vs. Nature’s Rhythms (43:44–45:04)
• Upcoming Group Series Info & Access (45:23–46:43)
• Final Thoughts and Reflections (47:19–47:53)

Memorable Moments

• Daniel’s story of teaching and seeing his practice group continue without him—“the greatest honor, the greatest acknowledgment of what we built.” (25:22)
• Shared recognition of how improvisational principles—embracing gaps, awkwardness, the unknown—translate both into therapy work and how we navigate uncertain social/political times.
• Resonance around the elements—how Western pathology separates us from natural cycles, and how Ayurveda and animist perspectives bring us back into relationship.

Details: Daniel’s Upcoming Offerings

• Web Nest, Earth Home: Somatic Practices for Woven Bodies
  • 8-week in person series; first 2 weeks are open/drop-in (April 9 & 16), then commitment requested.
  • Location: Greenfield, MA at Community Yoga, Wednesdays 9:30–11:30am; sliding scale available—reach out for accessibility.
  • Daniel is available for one-on-one work (online or in person in Northampton/Greenfield, MA).

This episode offers a rich, multidimensional exploration of the nervous system, trauma, and community through movement, stories, and embodied wisdom—interweaving Ayurveda, somatics, and cultural context for those hungry for depth, connection, and new ways of being.