Conscious Anatomies and Singing Fields

Tuesday 28^th October 2025

Sometimes you need to binge on something really satisfying. My latest binge has been reading The Rose Field by Phillp Pullman (2025), his latest book, and the last in his trilogy - The Book of Dust. This world has been a welcome detour from the responsibilities of academic, community and personal life that fills my days, weeks, months with streams of to do's and should be's. Regardless of the fact that I have consciously inserted rest, creativity, joy and relational care into my practices, I'm somehow still feeling exhausted. Maybe my idea of rest is not aligned with the reality of my body's capacity.

Pullman is exploring the relationship between our consciousness, our imagination, and the stuff, the spacetime that our universe is made of. Are we points or waves? If we are closing ourselves off to our creativity, are we decreasing the aliveness of the universe around us? Are we truly alive without an acknowledgement and care for our individual and collective creativity? He moves us between theosophical, philosophical and quantum questioning. Lyra Silvertounge, and those who travel with her throughout these books, seek to reveal these relationships – to understand not only the underlying physics of our existence, but also our role within the universe as a whole. She comes to understand consciousness itself is a field, and our attention, our thinking, as well as creative activity and care, are the means by which this field is attended to. This field of consciousness is not only a human phenomenon, but exists between all living or created things, and – the health of our physical realities is reciprocal to the health of this field. In Pullman's vision, humans have a clear role to play in the maintenance, repair and regeneration of our physical as well as quantum realities through artistic practice, community and place-based acts of care.

From a Kāi Tahu perspective, how are we - how can we sensitise ourselves to the fields we are embedded within, and thus vitalise them through consciousness and intentional action?

We have whakatauki, we have pūrākau and waiata, we have mahika kai and maramataka, raranga, whaikōrereo, whakaiiro. What do we need in order to regenerate these as technologies of listening, perception and creative action? What do we need in order to develop and refine our technologies of regenerating whakapapa and whenua?

Here I am now, writing in my whare, surrounded by the mess, the toys, the washing. At least the dishwasher (mīhini hōroi pēreti) is on and I'm drinking warm water and lemon. The wind, Tāwhiri, has been blowing all day, and the chimes, our constant singing companions are harmonising with someone banging in their garden and the wash-wash-wash-wash--wash-wash-wash of the dishes. I do feel tired by the thingness of our lives. There's a longing for the messiness of nature that is never out of place. Maybe that's why my bedroom appeals to me, I can burrow down into the focus of a screen or a book without the demands of visual clutter.... but my room is only a shelter until my body starts to squirm.

So, this afternoon I left my bed and lay on the floor of our clinic/practice room to breath with another reading, Te Waiatatanga o Ngā Atua, by Matiaha Tiramōrehu. Specifically; I was sensing, feeling moving (Bainbridge-Cohen, 2008), with the whakapapa relating to Tane and the creation of Io-Wahine*, the first woman made of clay (Tiramōrehu, ed by van Bellekom and Harlow, 1987, p31-33)

Ūpoko, Head – Huruhuru, Hair

Rae, Forehead – Tōtā, Sweat

Ihu, Nose – Hupe, Mucus

Kānohi, Eye – Roimata, Tears

Tāringa Ears – Tāturi, Wax

Waha Mouth – Horomi kai, Swallowing food

Kakī Neck – Kenakena, Adam's apple

Kēkē Armpit – Kurikuri, the smell of sweat

Ū, Breast

Poho, Chest

Rara, Ribs

Tūara, Back

Pito, Navel

Hope, Hip

Papa, Buttocks

Kumu, Anus

Io, Thigh

Pona, Knees

Waewae, Feet

Tara, Vagina.

I got to my feet and then my whānau came home. Maybe this was a sign. Maybe this wānanga needs to come slowly, carefully, at the right time. In the right space. With the right people and questions...

My body was whole though, I felt whole. I felt as though I was a being acknowledged, I was woven space rather than a jointed, stacked, piled collection of doings.

How did this happen though? Not just in the listing of these words as places on my body as a map. It was in the slow accumulation of feeling of these words as relations, as sensations and suggestions for both a feeling and of a listening to what they could, or wanted to do and be. What are these words i te reo offering? They are both questions of physical functionality as well as cultural and physical relations to taiao, community, whakapapa and whenua.

Roimata – emotions (as an internal lake), expressed through the eyes

Waha – space to breathe

Kakī – to speak

Kurikuri – Dogdog

Papa – Earth

Tūara – Standing to the sky

Waewae – forms the second half of Tūrangawaeawae – a place to stand.

A conversation with a friend, colleague and whanauka later opened up the things that were missing in this whakapapa; the gendered nuances, the potential distortions through patriarchal, colonial, christian-centered perspectives, even then coming through Tiramōrehu in his writings in the 1880s. I've had similar conversations with other wāhine and takatāpui in other times, and I agree, we need to hold these pūrākau and whakapapa with equal measures of respect and criticality. In another breath however, they can hold essences of kinds of knowing, processes of coming to know, hints towards what might be a pathway to reorganise and re-store/y our bodies as taoka, treasures, woven from our places.

So, what whakapapa do we need in order to become ourselves more fully, joyfully, in presence with and as our whenua breathing, dancing, evolving? What new pūrākau, what rituals, and practices do we need in order to serve in these new times? This leads to a question of how can these deeply creative and spiritual practices co-evolve through conscious collective processes, as a dialoguing through and with place, in service to the future of our living systems - our fields as conscious and alive?

When I return to a question of our (human) role in our worlds, could we be intentionally crafting not only stories that reconnect us to place and lineage – regenerating the spirit of the land within collective human consciousness – but also practices that enable these stories to breathe and evolve in real time?

Field consciousness and evolving whakapapa anatomies might be hanging out in a valley of thought that speaks to the moon, the wind, our blood and our lullabies, singing in futures of reciprocal becomings.

*Other iwi, tribes, families, name the first woman made of clay as Hineahuone. This reading has been a revelation that this name is not necessarily the same for Kāi Tahu/Ngāi Tahu whakapapa. Previous to this, I have been working from Hineahuone as an embodied anatomy practice I follow.

Bainbridge Cohen, B. (2008) Sensing, Feeling, and Action - The Experiential Anatomy of Body-Mind Centering. Contact Editions

Tiramorehu, M. (1849) Ed. van Bellekom and Harlow (1987), University of Canterbury, NZ.