The Body as Home: Movement, Language, and Questions (with Liza Futerman)

In this profound conversation, Liza Futerman, a somatic educator, practitioner, and artist, shares her journey from Soviet Russia to Israel, her academic journey pursuing advanced degrees at Oxford and Toronto, and how movement and language became her twin resources for navigating identity, loss, and healing. Liza's life took an unexpected turn when her mother was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. This led her back to movement through contact improvisation, particularly mixed-abilities dance, where she discovered new ways of understanding leadership, disability, and what it means to be human. The conversation explores how major life disruptions - from immigration to divorce to witnessing war in one's neighborhood - can reconnect us to our bodies and reshape our relationship with uncertainty.

Key Topics:

• Immigration and identity: Finding home between Russian, Hebrew, and English
• The body-mind split and the journey toward integration
• Using photography and narrative to communicate with a parent with Alzheimer's
• Contact improvisation as a path to healing trauma and anxiety
• Mixed-abilities dance and the intersection of visible and invisible disabilities
• Somatic approaches to grief, money, and taboo subjects
• Leadership as a question rather than certainty
• How major life events force us to reconsider our relationship with control
• The nervous system's response to crisis and the importance of discharge
• Academic competition versus embodied learning environments

Notable Quotes:

• "As opposed to Russian and Hebrew, my self did not exist in English. And so I could shape it the way I wanted."
• "Whatever is hard, whatever is challenging can be done easier, can be done in a more gentle way."
• "If something is hard, it means that it's not getting the right support."
• "I came to this class and we were invited to lie on the floor. And it was just like an answer to all of my prayers."
• "All of a sudden I was dancing in the studio with people with wheelchairs... And that made me feel human again."

Liza's Powerful Questions:

• "How should a human be?" (from Kelly Rodriguez)
• "How to ask questions?"
• "What support do I need and how to ask for that support and where to ask the support from?"

Resources Mentioned:

• Liza's website
• Liza’s TEDx talk about dementia
• "What We All Long For" by Dionne Brand
• "Maus" by Art Spiegelman
• Get access to CuriosityGPT and find your gateway questions
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