This week's post is an excerpt from the book Awakening Somatic Intelligence, and its companion video.
Gravity Referencing Scan
Lie with your back flat on your
bed. If this feels uncomfortable, raise your knees. But if you can lie flat for
a minute, do so. Take a moment to sense what you notice in this position. Where
do you not make contact with the ground? What would the imprint look like if
you had ink on you? Notice any differences between your right and left sides.
Now shift to a more
three-dimensional perception and see if you can feel the shapes; for instance,
where you don’t touch the bed or mat. How high do the bridges span over the
surface? Could an ant crawl through? A mouse? Or a kitten? How big are those
spaces underneath the neck, the lower back, underneath the shoulders,
underneath the thighs, and the wrists?
Now sense your weight distribution.
Does your weight fall to the bed in clumps? If you were to drop a sack of
potatoes on the bed, certain potatoes would be held up by the others, and some
would be held directly by the mattress. Do you feel clumpy? Or to what extent
is the weight distributed throughout your system fluidly? There may be some
places where it is fluidly flowing and others where it is simply sitting there
on the bed. Sense where you are held by the tightness of your musculature.
Take a moment to notice your
breathing, just to sense what moves when you breathe without trying to do
anything. Maybe you feel it in your belly, or your chest. You might try to
sense, Where does the movement end? Which ribs move and which do not?
Do you feel it in the lower back,
or the arms or neck, or is it contained within the chest and belly? Sense what
moves.
Then notice how you are attending
to your experience. Are you scanning it from the outside with your mind’s eye—using
your visual-perceptual mode? Or can you sense this proprioceptively—meaning
through the tissues themselves? And can you sense through the whole structure
without focusing on any part, while paying particular attention to specific
movements or parts of your structure within the context of the whole? This will
reveal whether you have employed your visual perception where it does not serve
you best. Using visual perception, you have to track—as though you were moving
a scope around you. If you are using your proprioceptive mode of intelligence,
you can sense everywhere at once. Because you sense from the tissues
themselves, there is no observer, and no object being observed. Notice how you
are now sensing this. Do not be concerned if you do not sense everything
mentioned here, or if it feels differently inside of you. Listen to what opens
now and reveals itself to you. With continual practice your sensing can open
infinitely.
Note: While practicing the ground
reference scan, refrain from making any mechanical adjustments to your
structure unless you are uncomfortable. Otherwise, it will prove more valuable
to discover ways of self-organizing from the inside-out during the practice. You
need to close the door to mechanical interventions (self-management) to
discover a non-mechanical mode of self-renewal. For instance: do not adjust yourself
when you notice any bilateral asymmetries. Simply notice them as references to
gauge change against later.
Quick
Spinal Release:
Set Up:
Lie supine on a firm mattress (you
can also do them on carpet, or a mat. If you are using a yoga mat, position the
bottom of your torso two feet from the bottom of the mat, legs on the floor.) Position
yourself on ground where outstretched arms can comfortably, with a gentle grip,
above your head, hold onto a post or legs of a piece of furniture that will not
move; or if in bed- use your bed board (often, even if your bed board is solid,
you can squeeze your fingertips beneath the frame just below the top of your
mattress line). If there are corner posts on your bed, you can lie on a
diagonal. Lastly, in the worst case, if you have no bed board at all, you can
use the upper edge of your mattress to grip with your fingertips with your arms
still resting on the mattress. However, if you do not have firm support from
your mattress, we do not recommend that you do this in bed.
Do Not Strain: If it is
uncomfortable to rest the arms on the ground (meaning mat or bed) or if they
cannot touch the ground—place a pillow under your elbows to provide support. It
is important not to leave the arm hanging unsupported or feeling strained.
Practicing: The Quick Spinal
Release
When you bend your knees so that
the feet are standing, the lower back rests on the mattress or floor. This
practice supports you in releasing your spine so that even with the legs
extended, the lower back rests on the ground.
Instructions:
From the ground
reference scan, bend and lift one knee, as if it was a marionette hanging off a
string, passively, placing your foot with your lower leg as close to perpendicular
to the ground as comfortable, aligned with your hip. As you slowly pour the
weight of your leg through your foot into the ground, especially through the
heel, feel the support ripple up through your spine, all the way out your
crown.
Resting your lower
back into the ground begin your exhalation from the floor of your pelvis, using
the snake breathing, (making the “hissing sound.”like a snake, placing the tip
of your tongue on the upper palate while exhaling, especially in the beginning
of your practice.) Often people will hold their breath and use it as leverage
to push from, without realizing it. When your exhalation is accompanied by a
sound, you will notice when the sounds stops. The snake breathing also helps
you bring the breath back along the spine. (For more info see Snake Breathing
in chapter 6.)
Do not try to
push the surface of your back into the ground, but rather deepen the pool of
your lower back by becoming more fluid. Enjoy a few elongations in place,
gravity surfing on the waves of your breath. As the pelvic floor diaphragm
lifts, anchor the sacrum extending the base of the spine toward the feet and
the center of the earth. Invite the wave through and beyond your physical
structure. As the diaphragms move, space opens and the sacrum anchors
naturally. (Review the instructions for gravity surfing in chapter 6 as
necessary.)
When you feel
ready to move, slowly extend both legs on your exhalation, (heels first,
flexing the feet, so the toes point towards the ceiling), while gently drawing the
support of your head board or post through your hands and spine. Pour the
liquid crystal matrix of your bones down into the ground like salt crystals
through an hourglass especially at your elbows, even as you use the resistance
of what your holding in your hands, to draw support though your arms and spine.
You are extending your spine on the exhalation, anchoring the sacrum towards
the ground and through your feet- as one continuous motion. The legs should not
feel like appendages attached at the hip but as fluid extensions of the wave
traveling omni-directionally: down from the waist and up through the rest of
the spine, head and arms. Maintain the connection and flow all the way through,
so there is no break. The extension of your spine continues to flow through the
extension of your legs.
At the end of the exhalation, as
you slowly release the diaphragms, gradually relax all the tension, receiving
the support from the ground as it rises up through your bones. Imagine your
bones were logs lying in a dry streambed, in which rising water causes them to
float. Do not begin the next elongation until you relax the entire surface
tension, so that you begin each new elongation fresh, holding onto nothing. In
this way, surfing the waves of your breath, gravity can deliver you from
density and habitual tensions.
Repeat the quick spinal release a
couple of times until you feel the space between each of your vertebrae and
joints open. As your tension melts sense your fluid presence like a clear lake,
feel the thirsty earth drink you in on each inhalation. As you interpenetrate
with the earth, you will come into a much more pervasive extension of presence,
that is both relaxed and alert. This alertness does not arise from stimulation
and can be as easily taken into a deep restful sleep or into a wakeful
attention, according to your needs at the moment.
Bring your arms down to your sides
one at a time. While keeping your shoulders down, slide one arm along the mat
or mattress till it extends out from the spine at a 90-degree angle (we call
this “arms on the horizon”). Moving the arm from the horizon the remainder of
the way to your sides represents a new challenge. Keeping the space under your
armpits from collapsing necessitates shape shifting through your arm. As if you
were gliding your hand down through water, use the resistance of “the fullness
of empty space.”to invite space into the structure of your arm. In this way,
the energy releasing from your spine on the exhalation, will flow through the
open channel of your arm. As the breath flows in, the arms will float gently on
the waves of your breath. Then repeat this process to bring your other arm to
rest at your side.
Implications:
When we use
resistance to more fully experience the wave of elongation, it feels like what
I see when a butterfly emerges from a chrysalis. The way the butterfly presses
against the walls to unfold the wings, drawing blood through them. I have been
told, that if someone tries to help a butterfly out of the chrysalis, it will
never be able to fly and so die. It is in the act of breaking out of the
chrysalis that they extend into themselves, and emerge fully into their new
life.
I have seen the
quick spinal release used very effectively during a human birth. I held the
hands of one of my students in this position while she gave birth, and she used
the flowing support I offered her to extend her elongation, getting even more
out of the way … so that the baby seemed
to emerged without strain.
Rest
Pour your bones further into the
ground as the soft tissue disorganizes into a more fluid matrix. You may notice
as the relaxation deepens with each subsequent breath, how quiet the mind is:
relaxed, alert, and extensional. As you rest, repeat a ground reference scan to
notice what is changed since you began.
Getting up from a practice without
resting at least enough for the system to settle into a new order, meaning that
the structure has self-organized to functionally integrate the new space you’ve
invented and discovered, is a little like preparing the soil, planting the
seeds and leaving before harvest. You lose what you gained too quickly, rather
than coming into a new integration.
This is why it is so helpful and
efficient to do before sleep as you will be naturally resting for the remainder
of the night. However, even in the morning, you can use the time before rising
from bed to extend your presence, to receive the infinite as beloved, drinking
in and kissing back—so that when you do rise to start your day, you do so with
your energy in alignment with your deepest longing … to live in love, fully awakened in creative,
compassionate and empowered participation with all that is.
