Petri Berndtson & Saara-Maija Strandman

Petri Berndtson & Saara-Maija Strandman: The House of Breath, the Well-Being of the World and the Ways of Ventilating Oneself : A Dialogue Between a Philosopher and a Singing Teacher

Petri Berndtson (PhD, a philosopher of breathing) and Saara-Maija Strandman (MA, singer, singing teacher and psychophysical breath therapy instructor) will a have dialogue about the house of breath and its connection to our well-being and various ways to ventilate this house of breath.

In the first part, Petri will give a presentation which introduces philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s ideas concerning the self as the House of Breath. Bachelard understands human being and our embodied subjectivity as a house with different rooms and floors. The lower levels of the house represent the unconscious parts of our subjectivity and the higher levels more conscious parts of ourselves. The most grounded house Bachelard calls “an immense cosmic house” as it is a house that breathes the immense elemental atmosphere of air. The better the ventilation of the house the better is the well-being of ourselves.

After Petri’s presentation he will have a dialogue with Saara-Maija about the experimential atmosphere of the House of Breath. They will talk about singing and breathing as ways to ventilate the house and thus to deepen our experience of this house as the House of Breath.

In the last part (workshop part), Saara-Maija and Petri will instruct singing and breathing practices in order to learn to recognize and listen various rooms and floors of our embodied houses and how open, closed or hidden different dimensions of the our houses are. After this process of recognition we will also experimentially ventilate our houses and thus transform them into Houses of Breath that may breathe as freely as possible.