Inge Blockmans

Background

About Inge Blockmans

I am diving deeply into the world of the body through dance and movement. I do this in my postdoctoral research project (Ghent University), my Creative Consciousness coaching practice, and my training as a dance & movement therapist. How can we feel at home in our bodies? How can we deeply own and fully express our desires? How can we "pleasurise" our lives, also when we face loss, pain, etc? My work is driven by my belief that everyone can experience their body as a warm home and as a source of giving and receiving pleasure. My qualitative doctoral research project explored the lived experiences of being a woman with sexual desires living in and with a body with spinal cord injury (completed in 2019). This resulted in the dissertation “Manoeuvres in the dark: Re-creating (new) stories about sexuality and the body”: a blend of auto-ethnography, life stories, collective biography, ethnographic fieldwork involving hospital-internships, photography and dance, alongside academic writing experiments inspired by poetry and theatre. My PhD inspired me to continue my work as a researcher, coach, and story teller around reclaiming ownership of one’s body and desires, connecting and discovering one’s body from a place of curiosity and unconditional love through creative practices including dance and tantra, “pleasurising” one’s life despite the presence of medicalisation, and rewriting sex scripts. In my interdisciplinary postdoctoral research (Disability Studies & Studies in Performing Arts & Media, Ghent University, Belgium), I focus on people’s infinite potential for pleasure through dance.