Laura Geiger

applied theatre practitioner

Your trauma is not stuck in your body.

What happened to you is not you, not hiding in you, and not trapped in your tissues.

There is nothing in you that needs digging out.

You are not a walking ghost of your past.

You do not need an exorcism.

You are not ruined, wrecked, or poisoned.

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The trauma-is-trapped framework can perpetuate victimhood, prolong wounding, and paint us as broken.

It is reminiscent of a theology that creates "healed" as a destination, mistrusts flesh, and demands that we excise the sin within to achieve a material and spiritual purity.

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It is reminiscent of a colonialist approach to life as mere parts that can be cut up and cut out, rather than an intricate symphony of interdependent wholeness.

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Just like the entire universe, we are made of rhythms. We are in rhythms and patterns that began as brilliantly adaptive strategies, and we move from rhythm to rhythm all the time. If we see ourselves as patterns and rhythms rather than "holders of trauma," I believe we would be more likely to seek people, movements, activities, experiences, and nourishment that provide the entrainment of a more preferred rhythm. We would seek demechanization, dishabituation, and novelty in order to shake loose the patterns that are no longer life-giving and welcome the next right rhythm. We would seek fun and play. Paradoxically, we would be more open to both acceptance and change.

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"A machine can be controlled; a living system, according the systemic understanding of life, can only be disturbed." -Fritjof Capra

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Social systems work the same way. We access collective change through changing patterns that change structures. We cannot cut out oppression, drive out trauma, reject violence, or overthrow the dictator and expect to arrive somewhere new. We must reach the patterns and rhythms that grow the violence, groom the predator, and reward domination.

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And so I help people find new rhythms.​

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New rhythms are found in so many ways: repetition until mastery and release, rehearsal and practice, interpersonal entrainment, agency through artistry, freedom through mythic distance, supernatural jolts, and many more. I use a broad combination of methods including the foundational work of neurodevelopmental repatterning and primitive reflex integration, the creative work of mask, clown, movement, voice, improvisation, and liberatory theatre practices, the relational work of social field sensitivity, conflict fluency, somatic nonviolence, and generative collaboration, as well as the mystical work of Akashic access, intuitive development, somatic prayer, and the creation of holy moments.

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In my work with people, I am interested in going:

-beyond regulation and into creation

-beyond safety and into risk

-beyond body connection and into synthesis of self

-beyond fixing and into building

-beyond connection and into solidarity

-beyond passive object and into active subject

-beyond the visible and into the unseen, the imagined, the impossible, the infinite

-beyond personal practice and into the collective duty of feeding our living communities

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