Touch Wood: Stuckness, Risk assessment, and Embodied Knowledge in Practice

This practice-based research explores stuckness in creative work not as a problem to eliminate, but as a threshold state where tacit knowledge becomes operative. Drawing on autoethnographic narrative, I examine how attending to stuckness reveals the autonomic nervous system's (ANS) role in embodied knowing. Through a close reading of wood carving practice, I document how physical engagement with materials offered a way to work with, rather than overcome, stuckness. When invited to exhibit this work, I experienced acute stress that led me to adapt a Risk Assessment form—typically used for physical hazards—to map emotional risks such as shame and humiliation. Rather than eliminating uncertainty, this adapted matrix became a tool for aligning conscious awareness with bodily knowledge. This account contributes to practice-based design methodology by offering one practitioner's methods for lingering within stuckness, opening questions about working with embodied intelligence at threshold moments.