Hello everyone!

I hope that you are keeping well and enjoying the seasonal prospects of snow :) as we do here, in the North-East of Scotland. I cannot believe it is almost Christmas already!

The year of 2023 at Dunami has brought some wonderful occasions to look back on and to reflect and celebrate. We also have a few pieces of good news which we can’t wait to share with you!

First and foremost, I would love to congratulate Diana Monteiro Toombs on the arrival on her second born, most precious baby-girl, Amber, as a wonderful addition to her family! For the last three years Diana's work has been indescribably precious to me, and as much as I am filled with joy for this time of career change for her, I will miss her a lot! Thank you Diana for all your most professional input into shaping Dunami and helping me every step of the way as a talented writer, project assistant and a great friend. All my warmest Diana, and I hope we keep Aberdeen and Edinburgh real close!

I am really excited this year has seen the birth of two new books too! Dances with Sheep was published with Intellect Books in June 2023, and just last month, I have also self-published an experiential walking guide, Walking to Wellbeing, as I couldn't wait to share this work with you in a bit more palpable way!

If you’re interested in finding out more about Somatic Felt Thinking methodology, and supporting yourself on guided walks outdoors, then these books are a great place to start.

Also, please make use of this opportunity to gift anybody you think would benefit from walking to improve their wellbeing and head to the books links! I will be more than happy to receive your comments and thoughts!

I also had some wonderful occasions to share about my work in person during two dance and performing arts festivals. I would then like to send my warmest thanks to the special hosts of 'Flow' and 'Nowe Strategie Choreograficzne' Festival at which I delivered workshops and presentations on Felt Thinking! It was amazing!

Additionally, 'Forest Within' is super excited to be a part of Scottish Landscape Award exhibition at City Art Gallery in Edinburgh, on display till March 2024! Please pop in and visit! Thank you again to everybody who created this special production of In The Open with me, back in 2020, and hope to see you all soon!

Following invitation from Somatic Movement Dance Therapy Association UK, in March 2024 we will be offering our next the Seedling event in Stroud at the Centre of Science and Art! This really is a unique opportunity to experience somatic movement workshops led by Francis Angol and myself, as well as to connect with others who share similar interests, and to move inspired by life music by the incredibly talented multi-instrumentalist Koroleko Moussa Dembele. In time to come, my hope is to instil more and more intercultural openness within somatic work and keep discovering the many joys of moving and creating together!

Tickets are on sale NOW!

In upcoming collaboration with Intercultural Roots, we would also love to extend an invitation for you to join us for Body Scapes sessions. These are monthly therapeutic sessions online which take place every third Thursday of the month. We have greatly enjoyed these monthly sessions and the opportunity they offer us to invest some time in ourselves and our wellbeing. If you haven’t joined us for a session yet, why not plan for our next session in January 2024! The sessions are open to All!

Next year, I am also looking forward to collaborating with a wonderful organisation at the Vinery in Banff (Foyer Aberdeen) and offer regular workshops to local communities who come there to charge and to learn more about our innate connection to the natural world while exploring the supporting qualities of this special, coastal place which supports our wellbeing! Thank you to all the staff for welcoming this upcoming idea!

Additionally, as an open announcement, in 2024 I am looking to expand on the outreach for my written work and collaborate with a literary, creative agent(s). I would love to hear if you perhaps can refer anybody to me, and a warmest thank you in advance! My marketing and outreach skills need a solid support :) and I would really welcome a helping hand there! Please share and get back to me with any ideas, recommendations and suggestions!

Last but not least, I feel that Dunami's online presence is lacking your experiences! I would like to ask and invite to share a message from yourselves on any personal experience you might have had via my work at Dunami, either through individual sessions or any other projects we have collaborated on before. I would love to hear from you, and would much appreciate your sharing!!! Thank you!

As always, please feel free to reach out, share about the work and connect via the website, or on our social media channels, and I hope Dunami's offer will keep supporting your creative side and wellbeing.

Take great care of yourselves, and take this festive season in, wholeheartedly! Hope it nourishes and inspires the spring, on the nearest horizon! :)

Love, Anna

Message from Diana:

I’d like to say a big thank you to Anna and to all the wonderful creative practitioners, artists and participants we’ve worked with over the last three years. It has been a really wonderful journey and I’m proud of all the work we’ve accomplished in that time and the projects we've been able to bring to life.

Connection is at the core of so much of Anna’s work and your support, as readers, participants and supporters of Dunami is always extremely valued. I can’t wait to see what other exciting projects Dunami embark upon during my maternity leave!

Thank you so very much to all of you and have a wonderful continuation of 2023!

Diana

the Seedling 2024

Upcoming!

Tickets on Sale!

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the Seedling' 24

Join us in movement to explore interconnections between

culture, nature & soma!

16th March, Stroud, UK 

The Seedling is a workshop exchange series that connects the fields of dance and somatics with intercultural dialogue and environmental contexts of practice, and which is based around a given theme. 

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This 2024 year's theme is:

Fostering Resilience and Wellbeing

in Connection to the Living Matter

We will seek to explore different ways in which we can utilise somatic movement practices to foster resilience and wellbeing in connection to living within the coastal landscapes around us.

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We will focus on finding new paths of 'letting go' through exploration of our own vulnerability and courage. We will consider how we can begin to dig in to our 'stone' bodies, while connecting to aspects of the natural environment as an opening to access our inner selves, as well as examining our own relationship to self and others.

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The workshops will explore how we can trust our embodied experiences to build our own  resilience and promote wellbeing as well as how to adjust our mindsets and grow a toolkit of support strategies to use in daily life. Throughout the course of the day, we will seek to find new entry points into this year’s theme, always opening ourselves to emerging possibilities, perspectives and opportunities presented by the workshop facilitators, as well as the participants themselves. We will explore sensations, imaginings, visit the stored residue of memories, and individual ways of belonging and relating. 

For full details about the Seedling '24 including the schedule, venues and workshop descriptions, please see the website.

Dances With Sheep Book

Anna's book will be published in June 2023 by Intellect Books.

"Dances with Sheep presents the methodology of Felt Thinking in Movement as an eco-somatic practice inspired by re-thinking nature of being human, as well as contextualises it within wider frameworks of cultural, philosophical and therapeutic viewpoints on wellbeing.

Felt Thinking is a self-inquiry practice grounded in somatic movement experience that originates in site-specific and embodied dialoguing between what is felt and what shapes as a responsive thought, as creative movement itself, and which paths ways for ecologically inclusive care for being well with self and other. 

The book elaborates on creative processes in and with the natural environment in relation to the movers’ overall wellbeing and covers creative journeys of opening up to the living agency of Nature itself through the emergent three phases of experiential relatedness in embodied experience of the self. The book presents its original contribution to eco-phenomenology with its ontological principle of embodied relationality in towards and away from movement as a primal gateway to wellbeing and its creative inter-constitution.

An intriguing and inspiring resource for students, practitioners, educators, self-learners, therapists and researchers. Foreword by Sondra Fraleigh."

To purchase the book or to find out more, follow this link.

Walking to Wellbeing Book

Walking to Wellbeing

is an experiential guide that introduces walking with embodied receptivity as the grounding principle of ecologically-minded wellbeing.

The book presents twenty-four walks as guides to self-care outdoors, which form the first part of an ecologically inclusive practice of Somatic Felt Thinking in mindful movement, and invites to re-think wellbeing in wider contexts of being-well-with-nature.

Presented together with inspiring imagery of versatile landscapes, the guide offers therapeutic instruction on personal development while walking outdoors in creative self-reflection as well as further teachings about this self-help methodology.

Recommendations:

Walks to Wellbeing is a simple guide to putting one foot in front of the other and also a complex cosmic journey. Like our lives. Dr Anna Dako, with decades of inspired and dedicated somatic practice in her fingertips, has created a practice of felt thinking which is of real use. The words on the page are like her voice in your ear, showing you breath by breath how to connect with the earth as it is, as your body and mind are, and tap into the strength and wisdom needed to navigate these times. She speaks with soft practicality, precision and a deep freedom.

Dr Sarah Luczaj

artist and writer, therapist in private practice in Glasgow and co-founder of the terrealuma healing refuge in South-East Poland

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