Somatic practice, chronic pain and self-care technology: inhabiting the lived and contextual body

This network brings together experts from dance and somatic practices, health and digital design to explore the living, sensate and subjectively experienced body in context as a means of understanding chronic pain and self-care strategies. Current pain management programmes offer layered treatments, covering physiotherapy, occupational therapy, psychology and medical procedures. Somatic practices have been used in treating pain in private sessions and occasionally in health care contexts (hospital/GP surgery), but are not widespread in being acknowledged as a source of support for those experiencing chronic pain. Somatic practices offer body-mind reflective tools that support taking ownership of one's own bodily experience and finding ways of living with complex conditions. The network seeks to stimulate a dialogue between arts based (dance, media, design) and science based (physiotherapy, occupational therapy, nursing) experts who are both practitioners and academics to explore innovative and transdisciplinary methods for understanding multi-dimensional pain experience in relation to sense-perception and environmental factors.