ResDance Series 7: Episode 8: Bodies, materiality and touch in multi-person VR: creating immersive performance with Lisa May Thomas

Many thanks for joining me today and to start, I would like to ask you to share something about yourself, so perhaps your background experiences in dance. - I guess I've been dancing for a long time. I've always been a little bit restless. The need to move was important to me. Kind of feels like it's always been important to me. The need to be kind of moving or on the move. And I remember my mum saying, I used to, when we were waiting across the road, I used to like tap dance at the side of the road to wait 'cause I couldn't sort of bear standing still. So I guess like, yeah, movement has been, always been a big part of my life, and then got involved with all kinds of forms of dancing as a child, all kind of ballet, modern tap. I don't think I'd met contemporary dance at that point, but I just sort of, I just kind of really enjoyed, kind of all of it. I think I've kind of enjoyed the process of moving and learning more than I did in a way, the kind of performing, bit of it, even though I kind of enjoyed it afterwards. Before my A-levels was looking into kind of going to ballet school and then decided actually that I wanted to do A-levels and I had other interests. And so I went to extra college, I grew up in Devon and did an A-level in dance, and that kind of introduced me to contemporary dance and to kind of choreography. And then from there I went to the Lab and Centre. I was quite young. I went from Devon to sort of new cross in London. So that was when Lab and was based in that building next to Goldsmith's College in New Cross. I felt really young really for taking that on at that point. When I sort of popped out the other end, I sort of a little bit lost. I knew I wanted to carry on dancing, but really struggled to know how to do that. I mean, did sort of so many other things at that point, trying to keep a thread of the dance in my life, kind of always. That's the kind of bit of a background I suppose in terms of like dance and me. - Perfect, thank you. And so something I picked up on that you shared then this idea of, you know, needing to move and this idea of needing to learn, but also this idea of keeping a thread of dance. And so if you were to think about that thread of dance now, perhaps reflect on it since then, what is that? - I think the thread of dance is something about tapping into my body, tapping into a practice of some form. And for me, I call it my practice. That means different things for different people, but for me, it's just a way of checking in and that it could be anything, really. And actually, as I've got a bit older, it moves into other activities that maybe wouldn't consider to be danced. So swimming and walking, being in nature, gardening, rolling around on my floor. It's just a sort of form of checking in, doing that through a kind of somatic way, I suppose, of checking in. So that kind of interceptive checking in into my body and then checking into my surroundings, my breath, my weight, you know, how everything kind of feels, that kind of felt sense. I do also do kind of meditation, so there can be quite a stillness to that as well, which I've also learnt. So, you know, talking about my restlessness, I have learned to be still. It's actually been really good for me, actually, because I think I just got a bit burnt out from just being too, too movement, to kind of, you know, running around, and obviously having children and getting work, and, you know, it just, you need to stop, and you need to be still. And so finding the movement that in that as well has been really a key part of my practice. The thread, it, you know, it's about that. And it's also about being part of something, being in conversation with others that understand this kind of idea of practice or this idea of body-centered kind of space together. So, I've sort of kept that going through holding different groups and teaching, my own kind of creative work, working with technologies and film, a kind of curiosity and inquiry about, that kind of, I guess, that comes from my practice as well, that kind of then feeds into that more like relational space with other people, with technologies, with other environments. I was thinking about the different contexts and settings that you take your work or share your work, and you spoke there about what your practice is. And so, would you say you have a, like, one practice that you take and share with different, different contexts and settings, or do you have a different areas of practice where that body is still central? - I think my practice comes with me into different spaces. And I've always been interested in the kind of, the edge spaces or the spaces that are not easily defined and bringing that practice into those spaces. For instance, you know, I've always heard the fascination with technologies were, you know, playing with my kind of little camera that I've got playing around with, I remember doing a little kind of foot dance in front of a camera and just being really kind of curious about how, you know, my felt experience, if you like, kind of translates through kind of, through different media, through technologies. I guess I've also been really interested in taking my body into different spaces and kind of like finding out what happens when I do that, when I bring this kind of moving, sensing, feeling, breathing being into a different site, and then playing then with that again with the camera and how that then, how you kind of translate, how these sort of forms of translation or kind of mediation happen. But I don't feel like I'm sort of different in different places. Sometimes it's harder to bring my body to certain spaces and environments that find it quite challenging, but that's also really interesting to me. So, you know, in terms of the sort of research I've done in the last, or 10 years or so, I have been resident as a researcher in kind of chemistry labs, currently working in a center which is, it's called the Center for Sociodigital Futures and it's a real, it's a premise is this idea that we live in a sort of sociodigital world where they're sort of everyday lives, social lives, are kind of a digital technology, are kind of increasingly kind of bound together. The premise for that center is this kind of collaborative interdisciplinary space between social scientists and engineers with a sprinkling of arts and humanities people in there too. And so, bringing my body into that space has been really both challenging and interesting and bringing the question of the body to kind of other forms of research. Mostly what I do is I just try to bring a sense of my practice again into those spaces that sometimes I feel challenged in my body to do that. And often I'll bring a big kind of physiological inference to sit on and that immediately shift something in the space. I might lie on the floor, that those sorts of things start shifting a environment, but they're really small and sort of subtle things that they can kind of have effects in an environment that isn't dance, that isn't body centered necessarily. - Theme has come from the podcast a lot of the times. It's idea about a validation of experience and validating the body. And as we see the set to changing where people are working in a much more, perhaps, cross-discipline, trans-disclinary way, we're finding dance being used in different settings. And do you feel that, that there is a sense that you have to kind of validate that experience with the body, or because everyone has a body, do you feel there is that shared experience already? - Sometimes you have to remind people they have a body and you have to make that point because I don't often think it's explicit or obvious in the way in which kind of conversations go or also in the way in which the way in which people are in their bodies, in spaces. And that's often dictated by the way in which those spaces are set up, the kind of historical, cultural, social, all of those things that kind of create academic spaces if you like. I mean, I remember walking into the space that is now shifted quite a bit and there was just a row of tables down the center, a bit like a cool center. And the way that bodies are in those spaces was not the way I wanted to be. And talking with my colleagues, they agreed and it took a while, but we changed the format of the space. People won't necessarily do that because they won't think about that. It won't be at the forefront. So a guest coming in with that sensibility can be kind of helpful to others. And I think in terms of different forms of knowledge, if you like, we're always kind of languaging our knowledges and kind of languaging that of the body can be kind of really tricky to do and finding the kind of right language and finding the ways to talk about that in that kind of interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary space can also be challenging and not wanting to appear wafty or kind of like not clear. Try trying to find language for bodies or bodily knowledge because it's been something I'm always seeking to do to find better language or not better language, but different language to appeal, I suppose, to. to other people. Most people seem to be open to that and open to the question of the body in their research. And I think quite often dance or kind of embodied practice in other disciplines is used often as a kind of method. So it's a kind of methodological kind of piece or it's used at the end as kind of impact the kind of impact space. We do a dance about it or perform it in some way to open up our audience base or open up our participatory base for this research as a method. I guess it's what I've noticed, where do we have value as dance folk, as people who understand or have embodied knowledge, spent a lot of time inquiring with our bodies, with bodies. Sometimes how we, when we're kind of in conversation with academics from other disciplines, they, and I'm talking, I guess, in that academic space right now, but we are useful in those two areas often in that kind of methodological area of kind of using movement or dance practices to explore something. A phenomena as a way of working with different participants or in fieldwork and then at the end where we're looking to demonstrate something. And I guess I was sort of bringing up the question of the body as the site of research as something that's that's distinct from those things and that actually bodies are always part of research, whether they are the bodies of the researchers themselves or the bodies of that, which is, which is researched and the bodies are also kind of part of more than human worlds and also kind of always implicated in some form. That, for me, felt feels important and, you know, the centre that I work in is, is amazing centre. We have these different kind of themed areas of research interests and it's very kind of futures facing as well and then we have different technologies that we're thinking about the futures of those themed areas. So, you know, AI, robotics, immersive tech, VR, AR and high performance networks. And so that's been really fascinating learning about those different domains of technology where we kind of fit into that. And for me, the kind of question of the body always arises in that space, you know, what happened, you know, what are future bodies in the field of robotics, what are future bodies in the field of kind of immersive space. I mean, my research, my PhD research was working with VR technology, multi-person virtual reality technologies. That's kind of more my area of expertise in terms of technologies for that I worked a lot with a camera and with filmmaking. I then worked a lot with motion capture actually was a former for kind of video games. I did a lot of martial arts and was used as, you know, kind of motion captured up and used to do the movements of characters in video games and then working with connect or Xbox technologies and then into kind of VR. So, kind of quite a lot of exploration of different kinds of technologies, but particularly in that immersive tech space and what that does to for the body or bodies. And particularly bodies that are my kind of interest was also bodies that are kind of co present so bodies are together in a space and not kind of remotely mediated. I'm hoping with this idea is that I was going to come on to my next question being the experience you've had with technology. I'd be interested. Well, perhaps to know a bit more about your PhD research, but also in terms of immersive technologies and dance, what kind of literature there might be or people working in their area perhaps you want to spend on your research for listeners a bit more about the value of that perhaps for dance and then and the moving body. That it's a really the immersive technological space is a really interesting one for dance for kind of understanding the body for thinking about performance also thinking about the role of an audience slash participant in performance. And obviously as soon as you're bringing in an immersive technology that audience member becomes very different has a very different role if you like to play, you know becomes participant becomes mobile in a space becomes more intimate perhaps with the performance performers. So that's sort of really interesting and fascinating for thinking about dance performance and how we might inhabit as kind of audience participants that space of dance differently. And I mean film does at the some extent taking the viewer close to the body, you know extra close up shots mean that's always something I was really interested in doing is getting really up close and personal to that moving body through the lens of the camera, but in the space of immersive that shifts that again and it sort of mediate something particularly with virtual reality where you're actually kind of in a completely different environment. So there's something called the reality virtuality continuum, which is like a spectrum of reality on one end and virtuality on the other it's designed by someone called Milgram back in I think 1994 the 90s and other colleagues and you know BR is one end of that spectrum necessitating this sort of absolute inclusion into another another environment and you've got real life if you like on the other end or physical reality. And in the middle you've got other texts, smartphones, you got so they are somewhere in the middle that kind of layered reality so VR is quite an extreme sense of an extreme technology in that way in that sense. It kind of replaces our physical bodies and our physical world with something else so that really interested me like I say it's really interesting you know for the kind of question of the body the question of the moving body. The question of the dancing body and the kind of coded body and also that kind of relational aspect and how that mediates relationships between bodies. It's also technological medium that involves bodies in space in three dimensional spaces rather than bodies that are sat engagement technology in a kind of one directional way. So yeah multiple kind of questions emerge for me in this in this space but I mean to be honest with you I first went into VR headset back in probably 2016. What would be known as a second wave of VR technology was around then really and I really really really did not like it. I felt really uncomfortable I felt really just a sense of discomfort and I was kind of asked at the time you know was going into my PhD you know would you like to explore this system this technological system as part of your PhD research. And I really kind of didn't know I thought do I really want to deal with this because don't like it very much don't like the feeling it gives me and then I thought actually maybe that is interesting. And you know very inspired by and influenced by Donna harrowways work and her words that were staying with the trouble and thought yeah okay I'll stay I'll stay with that I'll stay with that trouble that sort of tension and see where it takes me so that's basically what I did for three or four years of my PhD was I spent a lot of time in VR headsets trying to really understand what was going on bringing my practice. If you like to that space but also inviting other people to do that as well so working with other dance Samatic people but also other kind of other participants. So a lot of scientists public engagement were lots of different kind of groups of people really and just kind of exploring with them and observing them going into VR. And that's been a really really fascinating journey I came to realize was that my so after I left the lab and sent her had a bit of a kind of start got really into martial arts and then I met a teacher called Janice clackston. She was a she's an Australian she was an Australian choreographer she's not with us anymore unfortunately and she I think she moved to Bristol so I ended up in Bristol at that point you know I was involved in a sort of dance film work went to a workshop. And sort of remet improvisation which I've done a little bit at larban but in a completely different way formed a company of dancers with her leading. And that was probably early 2000s and she then got some funding from the arts council and invited a whole bunch of amazing teachers and dancers to come work with us. And I you know I just started learning about contact improvisation we had some work with Alexander teachers. Other kind of improvisation practices a key do so many so much kind of rich learning also mapped into the work I've been doing with martial arts so that just felt such a rich time for me to sort of refine. Find myself as a dancer that differently and just to completely under felt like I'd sort of found the world of dance I needed to through that through those people and those practices in that community that was in Bristol at the time through that process I'll get to the point now. Through that process, I had spent a lot of time actually closing my eyes and we worked a lot with blindfolds and that kind of like de-centering are kind of visual in that kind of visual information. And that obviously that often happens in somatic practices so we can kind of tune into our body, just take away all that visual noise and tune into touch as a central sense. I remember at one point thinking, "Oh, I don't need to close my eyes anymore." And it was a real moment of like, "Oh, I can feel that without having to kind of shut down the visual." And so that was kind of interesting to me and I didn't really think much more of it. But when I was sort of engaging with VR, I realised that I've probably been kind of re-tuning my senses and kind of tuning this kind of felt sense and need a little who's a dance scholar that I work with and take inspiration from as well, talks about this sort of tactile attention that dancers train or tune. And so that really, because again, it's this idea of how do we language this? How do we talk about this? How do I talk about this to a bunch of scientists who, you know, in a chemistry lab? So, you know, that was also what's trying to find how I could articulate what was going on, what was not working for me in VR. And most people were like put on a headset and they're like having a great time and I'm putting on a headset and just kind of like having this kind of issue really or like not able to just get on with the thing, but having this field of kind of tension that I had to sort of work with all the way all the time and discomfort. So, realising that obviously VR technology is visually oriented. So, everything is, you know, based on this screen that's fixed around your eyes. And that kind of visual world, that simulated visual world sends that information to your kind of senses if you like to your body and you, and it is, you know, the visual, we are kind of visually dominant. So, typically we're visually dominant beings. And so, vision sort of drives the other senses. And so, in VR, that's sort of how VR works is the vision information sort of drives us to believe that, or drives our sensory system to feel like we're somewhere that we're not. Even though our kind of cognitive system, even though our brain in our brain, we're like, well, we're not really there, but that's quite slow in comparison to our kind of senses. So, by the time our brain sort of caught up, well, that cognitive system has caught up, we've already kind of reacted. Our bodies already kind of reacted. And I realised that my sensory body, if you like, had been sort of reshaped or re-tuned through the work, I was the sort of somatic work I was doing for many, many years, ten years of closing my eyes. And so, that kind of sense of that felt sense of being in the world was directly at odds with that visual, that visual kind of simulated reality that I was seeing in the headset. And I kind of was thinking, well, maybe this is the tension, maybe this is what it is that I'm struggling with, because what I'm seeing is not what I'm feeling. And what I'm feeling is not what I'm seeing. And so, just kind of like trying to kind of explore that space and then find out from other people like, does this feel the same for you? I did a really interesting, I did workshop at Bath Spa quite early on in my PhD with some somatic people. And it was really interesting, because one of the things in the VR space is that I was exploring is that you don't have a body in that space, so you look down and you're not there. It's kind of an interesting phenomena to experience, to sort of not have a body. And I noticed that the people in the workshop had these are quite different reactions to that. Some of those participants felt really freed up by not having a body. And some people really, really couldn't handle it and needed sort of anchoring, needed a kind of anchoring somehow, a visual anchoring of their body in that space. And again, that really fascinated me why that would be different for different people. So yeah, so like, this is this whole kind of, for me, very rich territory of trying to understand the sort of sensory body in that kind of VR space. Yeah, and also acknowledging that it's okay that these experiences are different, because as you were talking, I was thinking, were you talking about being in the work, being in your world had felt, in a sense, for some individuals putting on a headset, is their lived experience of their body, whereas your lived experience of your body was completely different. And that's really hard, because you kind of go to what feels safe for body and environment. It's really hard than isn't it to know, or does it matter that people experience the body and the equipment and the realities in different ways? There's a whole minefield really, isn't it? But the way you talk about immersive technologies is that the technology isn't about capturing the movement, but it's becoming part of creating the movement. I think that's sort of how I've been exploring it as a kind of extension, or a disruption, or a mediation, or an enhancement somehow of bodies as opposed to representing them in some form, even though I've kind of explored that space of, for instance, avatar development, actually, it kind of just really didn't interest me as much as the fact that I didn't have a body, so how would I then access it, or what do I need to feel like I have one visually, or do I need anything? And so those became more interesting questions to me. And to speak about your point on difference, I think, so from my PhD, I then created a VR participatory performance, called Soma, and it went through multiple iterations, and it sort of ended up, so it started as a kind of prototype, probably back in 2019, and then got further funding from the Arts Council to develop it, and ended up being launched, I mean through COVID and everything, there was a lot of cancellations, and it was, you know, you can't do a participatory VR performance in the middle of COVID, it's like, you know, no chance, so we ended up launching out the Bluesby Theatre in 2022, I think it was, and it was a performance, participatory performance for four participants and four dancers, and then it shifted since then, working at the centre of social digital futures into a kind of tool for thinking about futures and future bodies. But whilst I was doing that, and also working with the University of Bath as well, and exploring the kind of perceptions of people that kind of undertook the experience from a kind of psychological point of view, and there's a whole bunch of research sort of wrapped up in that, but moved into this kind of social experience. So what happens in Soma now in the current model is that there's eight participants, and there's a kind of onboarding or kind of tuning activity that happens at the beginning before the VR section, and then a kind of off-boarding or kind of final phase of kind of decompression, if you like, afterwards. What I'd experienced also with VR is this lack of care with the technology and the body in terms of these onboarding and off-boarding moments or phases. So that thought really important to me, and the onboarding, this kind of tuning activity, is the whole thing is sort of centered around string play. So I was started to play with string figures or cast cradles on my hands and started transposing that to bodies, but it also came from this need for me in VR to have some form of connected nuts in the physical world to someone. But I found that a kind of direct touch to another body was almost took my attention too much into that physical space, but then I just inner objects didn't redo enough. So the strings became a way of feeling connected to someone, but not to put it indirectly whilst I was in the VR space. So then started playing with these string figures, the sort of storytelling devices, and then transposed those from hands to bodies and played with those in the space and became quite an improvised activity and a kind of tuning practice for tuning that tactile felt connectivity in the group. And then when people move into the VR section, the strings are virtual. So it's also a play on an exploration of materiality and how physical and virtual materials feel if you like and the sort of multi sensory aspect of that. But what happens in the social model of VR is that participants four go into VR and four become their guides or kind of witnesses, and then they sort of switch. And it's become a kind of interesting like negotiation of reality because you've got four people in a virtual space and four people that aren't in that space. And they are encouraged to talk to each other through the experience, to share their differences, if you like, where someone is seeing something and someone that isn't, but someone that's also physically present and someone isn't. And how that happens depends on the participants. There's also a sharing of the technology. So at points in the the piece, someone's in a VR headset, they're engaging with a string and there's bits that they do that with using handheld controllers, but there's also bits where they're doing that with their hands, to be finished. i'wch chi'n cael ymwch i'wch i'wch i'wch i'wch i'wch i'wch i'wch i'wch i'wch i'wch i'wch i'wch i'wch i'wch i'wch i' yn yw'n yw'r gwybod i'n gwybod i'n gwybod i'n gwybod i'n gwybod i'n ac mae'n gweithio hynny'n gweithio hynny'n gweithio hynny' i'n gweithio'r yw'n gweithio rydych chi'n gweithio'r yw'n gweithio'r yw'n gweithio'r yw'n gweithio'r yw'n gweithio'r yw'n gweithio'r yw'n gweithio'r yw'n gweithio'r Iwch chi'n hynny i'n cymryd i'n cymryd y cymryd y cymryd i'n cymryd y cymryd y cymryd y cymryd y cymryd y cymryd y cymry ac yn yng Nghymru ac yng Nghymru ac yn yng Nghymru ac yn yng Nghymru ac yn Nghymru ac yn Nghymru ac yn Nghymru ac yn yn ymwyr i'n gweithio, mae'n gweithio yn gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio. Ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio. Ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio ymwyr i'n gweithio. That kind of awakening for me is really critical and important to be considering and to be dialoging across disciplines, into engineering, into human computer interaction, into those social science psychology spaces, which is what I've sort of been doing. And sometimes I really miss being in a dance space, feels slightly like, you know, that's what I kind of more I belong, but I also understand how what dance knowledge is and kind of embodied experience can off what they can offer. I'm, you know, at the centre I'm currently working on a project, which is looking at AI and predictive analytics, which is a whole nother domain of technological development and at the moment, just a massive wave isn't there around generative AI and the sort of predictive AI space is distinct from that. You know, the question of the body is, is kind of missing and that data, you know, that drives these kind of systems originates in bodies, like it starts in the body, and it impacts bodies, it sort of finds its way back into that material space. And so that black box of AI, you know, is for me really interesting to also unpack. I think also in one side it is really exciting and it is, as you say, also equally terrifying. But it's also one that's actually will be can't get off of, you know, we're going in a particular way, but I think what's interesting is, and this can happen sometimes in areas research where research is done to the person or on the person rather than being about the person. And so I guess in artistic practice, I'd like to think we have a luxury of it being about the self and the person in experience, but, you know, this kind of area, it doesn't really lend itself to that rich experience because it's such a big sector. It needs things that can be quantifiable and large and produced in a particular way. So again, yeah, what you, I can see what you're saying, the danger is that it's going to lose the person in all of it. And I think I'm, you know, I'm not someone that's like, particularly like, I don't know, I don't know if I necessarily feel optimistic or pessimistic about futures, but it's more this idea of like, and again, the center that I'm working in this sort of uses this notion of like futures in the making, you know, there's no such thing as the future or futures. They, you know, they're not there ready awaiting us. We are shaping them right now. And so that feels to me that kind of embodied agency feels really important to how we think about and attend to bodies as we are shaping those futures. So that, yeah, so that sort of, you know, having having two children, you know, they are on technologies, like you say, it's not going away, technology is not just going to go away, and I feel that it's important. And this idea of us, bodies and environments, this kind of connectedness we have, this fact that we're the fact that, you know, we're all kind of it's all one system, technology is a part of that kind of life world, that material space that we inhabit, they're not separate or distinct from it, they're part of it. They're not include that in that kind of conversation about kind of bodies and environments and futures feels important to do that for me. And so you spoke before about the things that you are curious in or have been curious in. And so I'm now curious about what's next for you, what you're currently working on, what kind of thing you're doing next. And in this funded role at this center, so it's near src funded center at the University of Bristol Center for Social Digital Futures. So I've got a senior research associate role in that center, been there since January, 2023, and I've got sort of finished the role at the end of 2025. So I need to figure out what's next after that. I'm exploring kind of different avenues for that really, whether that's sort of going for a fellowship. I'm really interested in continuing the kind of interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary kind of conversations around future bodies and how we think about and consider and attend to our bodies when we're thinking about futures, particularly with technologies. So I'm definitely still up for kind of inquiring into that space, but in dialogue with technologists, computer scientists, data engineers, you know, people actually who are at the forefront of that technological development, as well as others from other disciplines, as well as dancers. also really up for making new creative work, maybe making another film. They're just having to think about how I might carve out time for that. I'm missing in the work I'm currently doing. I'm sort of missing practice involvement in my research. A lot of my research becomes quite desk based or doing all kind of running participatory workshops that I'm missing the kind of act of moving, the practice of moving through research inquiry, which just doesn't feel like it's easy to do, as I mentioned before, it sort of doesn't necessarily fit into that way of working in that environment. So it feels like something I'd have to do outside of it. So I really would like to just bring those things back in and also maybe just come back into the dance space. We engage with that more wholly as well with some of the stuff I've been exploring kind of outside of that space. So this kind of towing and throwing a little bit happening, but that also feels important to do. So as we move to the end of the episode, I would like to ask you to share perhaps a takeaway message or a reflection that you want to share with listeners. So I think for me, this idea of practice and coming back to practice, coming back to my body, coming back to my felt sense of being in the world, has been like critical in how I've been, how I've navigated my career. And also that that practice shapeshift, so it's not just one thing. And being open to that, just being something that just is ongoing and changing, and that it brings its surfaces inquiries from the body. And I guess, I mean, it's a kind of message to myself as well as to others is to not kind of not disconnect from that. I mean, not lose the sense of that because that feels important. It's a new area kind of discourse for me and it's been really interesting to ponder just that potential of immersive technologies, but also the body tech relationship that he's spoken about. So many thanks for your time today.