Research field 06 · Ritual Space
Body and Body Memory
Body Memory means bodily memory: knowledge that is stored and updated in breath, tension, posture, movement, stillness, balance and resonance.
What does the body know before thought does — and how can this knowledge be described without immediately translating it into language?
Core thesis
Ritual knowledge arises through breathing, posture, balance, repetition, exhaustion, tension, relaxation, orientation and disorientation. The body is a place where experience is ordered.
Body Memory means bodily memory: the body stores, recognises and updates experiences in the doing. Contraction and expansion form a model of aliveness: pulse, breathing in and out, gathering and opening, tension and release.
In many rituals the threshold begins with a bodily marking: to enter, stand, sit, lie, walk, breathe, turn, listen, sing, stamp, fall, be held. Only afterwards is it named what has happened.
How Body Memory arises
Body Memory arises in the doing: through repeated bodily patterns, sensory feedback and social framing. Dance is a strong example of this, but only one possibility. Ritual postures, stillness, lying, kneeling, sitting, standing or prayer positions can equally become carriers of bodily memory.
Breath
Breath structures activation and calming. It connects voice, pulse, attention and group synchrony.
Rhythm & repetition
Repeated, rhythmically coupled movement reduces choices and condenses attention; the body follows instead of deciding.
Movement
Turning, gait, rocking, stamping, head and hip movements shift balance, spatial reference and attention.
Posture & stillness
Standing, sitting, lying, kneeling or prayer positions shape attention even where little happens outwardly.
Exhaustion & affect
Exhaustion and strong affect can mark a threshold. Risky without a frame; with a frame they can loosen control and shift perception.
Contraction & expansion
Gathering inward, opening outward, holding tension, releasing tension: many rituals emphasise one of these poles or lead rhythmically between them.
Ritual experience rarely arises from nothing. It needs a bodily disposition: attention, permeability, concentration, breath, patience, trust in repetition and the ability to dose intensity. Meditation, dance, singing, stillness or long observation develop such dispositions.
In the Gnawa Lila this also shows biographically. Many participants grow into the practice: they observe the sequences, recognise songs, colours and roles, learn when a body reacts and when bringing back is needed. Body Memory arises here as practised knowledge in the body.
The dancing body
In the research manuscript on the dancing body, the body is described as the primary space of ritual enactment. Transformation takes place in a breathing, listening, mobile and exhaustible body. Music, space and symbolism act through it.
Cyclical movements play a central role: rotation, swinging, rocking, stamping, circling hip movements, repeated head movements, breath coupling and rhythmic step sequences. In Carolina Márquez's body-oriented work it is exactly this quality that becomes important: movement generates knowledge, because the body experiences its own limits, resistances and openings in the doing.
The Gnawa ritual also makes visible how closely musicians and dancers are coupled. The Maalem reads the bodies in the space; the dancers respond to pulse, singing, timbre and transitions. This synchronisation is a situational dialogue between musical guidance and bodily response.
Modern forms such as Five Rhythms, Ecstatic Dance or Wave work are contexts of their own and remain structurally interesting. They create a framed space in which free movement, improvisation, vitality and letting go are meant to become possible. It is precisely this mixture of structure and openness that makes them relevant to the question of secular ritual spaces of practice.
Comparable procedures appear in very different practices: in the rotation of the Mevlevi sema, in the breath and voice of dhikr, in the exhaustion dramaturgy of tarantism, in Bori, Zar and Gnawa trance, but also in modern body practices such as Butoh, capoeira or contact improvisation. The forms remain culturally distinct; what is comparable are procedures such as repetition, breath coupling, disorientation, social resonance and bringing back.
A rotation is legible differently in different traditions. Dance becomes ritual practice only through frame, role, interpretation and bringing back. Exhaustion needs protection, dosing and a form of return.
The motionless body
Body Memory also arises in the motionless body. Ritual postures, prayer positions, sitting, lying, kneeling, standing, open hands or closed eyes are active forms of ritual attention. They structure breath, muscle tone, inner perception and social legibility.
Felicitas Goodman's work on ritual body postures is an important pointer here: certain postures can be understood as techniques that favour perception and changes of state. Ancient statuettes, devotional images, liturgical body positions or meditative seated forms also show that ritual body knowledge is often organised in seemingly quiet forms.
The motionless body forms another pole of the same field: gathering, contraction, inner activation, listening, holding, waiting. Music too can support this pole by reducing movement, binding attention and condensing stillness.
- Dance, gait, rotation, stamping, cyclical head and hip movements
- Expansion, opening, reaching out, bodily discharge
- Visible social coupling in the space
- Sitting, lying, kneeling, standing, prayer position, ritual posture
- Contraction, gathering, inner activation, stillness
- Resonance that need hardly be visible from the outside
Synthesis: the body as a resonating object
The common denominator of dance, posture, breath and stillness is resonance. Body Memory means the body's ability to store states, recognise them again and update them in new situations: tense or open, gathered inward or directed outward, mobile or still, activating or calming.
For artistic research this becomes a methodological task. A ritual space need not produce the maximally moving body. It can equally enable a precise state of calm, gathering or return. What is decisive is the tuning of body technique, sound, space, group, interpretation and integration.
Sources
- Arystan Petzold, research manuscript 2026: The dancing body. Basis for rotation, proprioception, cyclical movement and somatic transformation.
- Arystan Petzold: Musik und Trance (2011). Material anchor for Gnawa, dance, tempo, bodily trance induction and multi-factor logic.
- Working and research material Reconnection 2024–2026. Practical anchor for body work, activation, calming, witnessing and bringing back.
- Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson & Eleanor Rosch: The Embodied Mind (1991). Foundational for embodied and enactive cognition.
- Thomas J. Csordas: Embodiment and Experience (1994) and Body/Meaning/Healing (2002). Anthropological foundations on the body as a field of cultural experience.
- Maxine Sheets-Johnstone: The Primacy of Movement (1999/2011). Philosophical reference point for movement as an original form of cognition.
- Chava Sekeles: Music: Motion and Emotion (1996), Judith Becker: Deep Listeners (2004), Erika Fischer-Lichte: Ästhetik des Performativen (2004). Connections to music, movement, trance, listening and performative corporeality.
- Marc Leman: Embodied Music Cognition and Mediation Technology (2007), Jessica Grahn & Matthew Brett (2007), Bronwyn Tarr et al. (2015). Empirical and theoretical reference points for sensorimotor synchronisation, movement, music and social coupling.
- Felicitas D. Goodman: Trance: der uralte Weg zum religiösen Erleben. Rituelle Körperhaltungen und ekstatische Erlebnisse (1992). Reference point for ritual postures as a bodily technique of state change.
- Ernesto de Martino: La terra del rimorso (1961), Janice Boddy: Wombs and Alien Spirits (1989), Deborah Kapchan: Traveling Spirit Masters (2007). Fields of comparison for tarantism, Zar and Gnawa.
Open research status
An open methodological question is how bodily knowledge can be documented without destroying it through documentation. Language often comes too late; video can show too much; physiological measurement changes the setting; memory is selective.
For artistic research this becomes a concrete task: to develop forms of notation, inquiry and observation that take seriously bodily memory, quality of movement, spatial perception and after-effect.