Rhythms of rehabilitation

​‘Talk and Rhythm Practice’
For those experiencing disruption, how can rhythmic bodily intervention(s) help to re-find a sense of connection, belonging and balance?

​For details of the event, please visit:
https://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/52243/

​About this network

​From cellular processes and bodily systems to cultural expression and cosmic cycles, existence is a rhythmic endeavour at every scale. Yet while a growing body of evidence indicates that rhythm is fundamental to the health of our bodies, our societies and to life on Earth, the ubiquity of rhythm has largely escaped notice because different disciplines use distinct terminology for rhythmic phenomena. To take one example from medicine: how can we understand the links between Heart Rate Variability (HRV), environmental stress factors and the non-linear symptoms of chronic illness if we cannot ‘see’ the relationships which connect across scales and between fragmented epistemological approaches? This network asks how thinking with and through rhythm helps us to foreground relationships often obscured by disciplinary divisions.

​Rhythm is not a metaphor. In its broadest sense, rhythm describes the interplay between patterns of repetition and difference which texture complex processes as they emerge in space and time. Unlike category-based epistemologies which tend to study objects in isolation, rhythmic enquiry examines what happens in the liminal space when and where they meet. Complex rhythms can hold combinations of multiple – even contrasting – rhythms simultaneously: similarity and difference, conflict and consensus, can co-exist without requiring conformity. If we can make sense of rhythm, we can engage with diffuse, non-linear processes without the need for complete control of all variables.

​This conceptual orientation informs the Rhythm Project and its programme. Rather than seeking definitions, the network is a space for collaborative exploration of rhythm as a form of knowledge that emerges at the interface between theory and praxis.

​For details of the network and event, please visit:

​https://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/research/networks/rhythm-as-knowledge/

​For general enquiries or if you have any accessibility needs, please email: networks@crassh.cam.ac.uk