Body Scanning

When I first visited the Kazuo Ohno Dance Studio, I had never seen any butoh performance and had absolutely no idea what butoh was. With a mixture of excitement and uneasiness, I arrived at the studio. The first thing I noticed was that there was no mirror, which was quite different from what I had imagined a dance studio to be. One of the very first practices I experienced was to observe the body while slowly walking and raising the arms up and down.

My teacher, Yoshito Ohno, the son of Kazuo Ohno, later explained that this was a practice his father had taught him when he first began studying dance. Yoshito often repeated the question: “Where is the dancer’s eye? What are we looking at?”

This resonates deeply with the ideas of Tatsumi Hijikata. He once said, “On stage, I keep looking closely within myself. The audiences are looking at my body, but I am also peering at my dancing body. Therefore, in my dance, the relationship with the audience is not that the dancer shows and the audience looks.” On another occasion, he said, “Why don’t we place a ladder and descend into our own body? Why don’t we pluck and eat the darkness of our own body? Yet people look for solutions by going outward.”

One of the fundamental revolution that butoh brought to the performing arts is that, instead of using the body as a tool to express stories, concepts, or ideas, it opened the possibility of letting the body to reveal itself. The essential question becomes: what is the truth of the body?

To explore such a question, we must observe our own body closely and experientially, not only intellectually. During the Renaissance, with the rise of modern science, people began to look directly at phenomena in order to explore truth. Galileo observed the planets through the telescope; anatomical studies were revived by figures such as Andreas Vesalius; later, the microscope enabled even subtler forms of observation. In our practice, we attempt something similar, but not as external observers. Instead, we adopt an introspective approach, through direct bodily experience.

However to observe the body during the practice of walking as we were taught, there are a lot of other details to be developed in that practice of walking and I found it difficult to look at the body really closely in the subtlest level.

If we look at Hijikata’s method, he offered countless images to his dancers and asked them to embody these images in different parts of the body as well as in the surrounding environment. Through this, he attempted to sharpen and transform perception, in order to reveal the reality of the body. These images were not meant as merely a fantasy exercise, but as a way to deepen contact with the body itself.

Yet in modern times, we often lack a deep and subtle connection with our own bodies. Rapid technological development continually pulls our attention away from physical reality. In some cases, traumatic experiences also lead people to disconnect profoundly from their bodies. In such conditions, beginning directly with imagery carries a risk: images may not reveal the body’s reality, but instead generate further layers of fantasy and illusion.

For this reason, I consider it crucial to first re-establish a deep and subtle connection with the body itself before venturing into image-based practices. If we can become aware of subtle changes within the body, then later, when images, sounds, or tactile stimuli are introduced, the body will be ready to embody them fully. For these reasons, I have been practicing and developing a practice of Body Scanning as one of the very first basic practices.

In Body Scanning, we observe the body through several movement patterns, or sometimes freely without any pattern. At times we focus on individual parts, at other times on the whole body simultaneously. We begin at a gross level and gradually move toward subtler layers: from bones and muscles, to the nervous system, and further to the tiniest particles of the body.

As we move into subtler layers, deeper layers of the mind begin to unfold. Sensations, images, memories, feelings, emotions start manifesting by itself spontaneously. Through introspective observation, the deep connection between body and mind becomes evident. It becomes clear that the body is not merely a collection of chemical substances, but a vessel carrying immense histories. It also becomes apparent that the body is not a solid, fixed entity, but something constantly changing at great speed.

Butoh dancers often move extremely slowly. Why is that? One of Yoshito Ohno’s answers was: “Because we are trying to touch the moon.”

The same applies here. Whether we approach something immensely vast or infinitesimally small, movement naturally becomes slow. Slowness itself is not the goal; subtlety and awareness is. While the external movement may appear slow, internally there is intense activity. This subtlety is essential for exploring deeper layers of body and mind. And as we surrender to the subtler level of the body, we will experience that body is moving by itself without deliberately moving the bones and muscles. We generally habitually believe that this body is our own possessions, but strangely, lungs are moving by themselves and breath is coming and going by itself, hurt is pumping by itself, blood flowing by itself, deeper layers of the involuntary muscles keep moving by itself... cells are created and destroyed by itself, particles are moving by themselves, created and destroyed by themselves.... The body exists here as a natural phenomenon. As we continue to go deeper and subtler, our conventional perception of the body starts changing, and it will start dissolving the solid idea and image of ourself. For dancers as well as everyone, a strong sense of identity is very much based on our image and perception of the body. And that habitual fixed image and perception keep ourself bound in a cage in our dance as well as in our life in total. Learning different styles of dance can often also lead us to develop some new cage of movement pattern instead of freeing us. Or at times some dance practices might even enhance the rejection to our own body that does not exactly meet with the pattern that the certain style is striving to create. In our everyday life, if we look at the new-born baby, his/her movement is so much more free compared with that of the grown. The baby moves the body not being habituated by culture or education, but purely to explore the body itself. They do not yet have a strong concept of what hands are, what feet are, and in fact such are all our mental constructs. When we peer at the body at a very subtle level, billions of trillions of particles are moving, and such a thing as “hand” or “feet” or “head” does not actually exist, but only designated on trillions of particles. And even going subtler, we will start loosening the sense of a solid body with a distinct border. What is discussed here seems to be in accordance with the discoveries of modern physics, and not just subjective experiences. Thus the concept of the body starts being deconstructed, like the dolls of Hans Bellmer or like the painting of Henri Michaux. In fact, Hijikata was often using the images of these artists, and many of the images he was giving to his dancers seem to have such aim of dissolving conventional perception of a solid body. Some of the examples of images he often used are such as: body and environment filled by pollen of flower or dandelion fluff, body made of ash, tiny insects everywhere on the body and also coming from outside to inside and from inside to outside, etc. What is common to these images is that all are made of very tiny parts, and importantly he always move the image from within to the environment around and thus try to expand the awareness to the space around, not only within the body. But for the reasons discussed in this article and another article “Tibetan Dance Cham and Butoh“, I would propose first to work on the Body Scanning method. And finally, the most important key for performing art, and that naturally means also for our daily life, is the awareness that is observing all these phenomena of the body and mind as if from the far, as if looking ourself from the audience while we are on the stage. Tatsumi Hijikata called it bird's eye (俯瞰の眼) or the founder of Japanese Noh Theatre, Zeami called it distant view (離見ri-ken). This presence of the awareness that is observing one's own body and mind is the most important key to transform the personal experience into universal poetry on the stage. While we are experiencing something very deep and intensive, deeply experiencing own body, feelings, emotions, or memories, in the same time we shall keep ourself clear and sober without being drawn in what is happening on the stage, without identifying ourself with this body and mind. If there is not this distant view, there is a risk that the performance becomes merely personal journey not to be shared with the public audience. The performance is at the end not about the performer him/herself, but rather the performer shall be an identity-less mirror for the audiences to allow them to look into themselves. For that we must open a space where the audience can be part of it. And the nature of this awareness is deeply connected with the presence of the space that is one of the most important concepts in Japanese art, such as Noh theatre, flower arrangement, paintings, tea ceremony, and also in butoh. Further discussion will follow on this important topic.