The convergence of developments across distinctly different traditions within Social Theory  Organisational Studies (Senge, Scharmer) and Emancipatory Education (Boal) Conscious Movement Practice contribute to the turn towards increased attention to embodied learning.  From board rooms to nurseries practices that draw on these developments are being embedded into daily routines.  However, little is known about how these are understood, implemented and reflected upon by educators or experienced by learners.  Theorisation that would enable comparison across traditions to better identify and adapt practices most suitable for learners needs, the learning context and purpose and congruently substantiate educators underlying value base are lacking. Drawing on seven years engagement with practice and theory within three of these traditions and work to integrate them into Higher Education, this paper compares how somatic and psychological theories underpin the practices of Forum Theatre, Social Presencing Theatre and Interplay and provides detailed reflection upon how these understandings become available in the lived moments of embodied practices.

The method of inquiry will be to facilitate a workshop experience the will blend an overview of the theoretical underpinning of the approaches under examination with opportunity to experience, process and reflect on their comparative affordances and the implication for educational practice in the differing contexts participants work within.

The intention within this workshop is akin to that of auto-ethnographic accounts which seek to include researchers’ vulnerable selves, emotions, bodies, and spirits and draw attention to the moral, ethical, and political consequences of social inquiry (Ellis 1999). Like Miller, I seek to retain “the voices of the researchers exploring and accounting for what they see, hear and interpret” (1998:68). Taking inspiration from the collective biography work of Davies and Gannon, I hope to make visible and therefore revisable the discourses and practices through which we make meaning and selves in order to deconstruct the idea of the individuals as independent of collectives, discourses, histories and places (Davies and Gannon 2000:7).

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