Back to Bodily Knowing with Weena Pauly-Tarr
I’m excited to have Weena on the podcast today. She happens to be a dear friend of mine and also one of our rooted team members. In rooted, Weena is probably the person who more than anyone else, brings us back to the body, to the impulse of bodily knowing, and how we can engage with the themes we’re working with in a space like rooted. Her work is focused on truly experiencing this world through our bodies. It’s a critical component of what we do. This conversation was both enjoyable, given our friendship, and felt somewhat incomplete to both of us, hinting at a possible part two in the future. It’s a casual, kitchen table talk that went wherever it wanted to. We begin by discussing perimenopause and its impact on cognitive functioning, verbal fluency, and the challenge of showing up authentically in spaces. This is tied to the unlearning process we’re undergoing and our critique of cultures linked to supremacist systems. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Weena. If you want to learn more about her, you can find links to her Instagram and website below.
Weena’s been working and playing in the worlds of dance, movement training, and somatic therapies in New York City for the last 25 years.
Her guiding light is to value the interconnected reality of bodily aliveness (and its absence in the tangible sense). She finds that aliveness through making dances, facilitating SE+AM group work, working somatically with folks individually, partnering and mothering, and in her amazing neighborhood of Jackson Heights. Weena is passionate about getting to the heart of what shifts our human-made systems toward that which protects, cares for, and supports our human needs for mobility, stability, clarity and love. SE+AM has been her response to that need. SE+AM is a practice Weena developed that is about making direct contact with the internal, bodily-felt aliveness within and around us. You can learn more about SE+AM and experience it for yourself at:
Weena's website: weenapauly.com
Weena's instagram: weenapaulytarr
Weena's Podcast: Reverence For Impulse
About the author(s):
Weena Pauly-Tarr has been devoted to the fleshy experience of human movement since she started moving. Weena focuses her curiosity where the somatic therapy world meets the dance world, and it is there where she developed her body of work SE+AM, the synergistic location of Somatic Experiencing with Authentic Movement. Weena’s newest work, “Monster Mourning” premiered in NYC in 2023 with a sold out run. Along with running SE+AM groups and sessions, Weena currently works as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, a dancer and dance maker, a movement trainer, a Rooted team member and a mother to four. She delights in the incredible range of humans bodying.