Resting in the Space Between: Part II – The Relational Field

As two beings come together, the space between precedes them. We emerge from an energetic field, and move within it throughout our lives, and through our relationships.

We meet another within a larger matrix that does not judge us for our appearance, thoughts, preferences, history, or personality. The pain we may associate with relationship is not inherent to relating. It is something we bring with us. On some level, often unconscious, we expect the pain to show up, just as it has in the past. When it does not, we wait. We wait for the other shoe to fall. Does this sound familiar?

Who are we, really, as we come together? Two beings. Two beings with faces we have carefully painted over the years. We have created ourselves so perfectly to meet our circumstances in life that we may have forgotten who we are beneath the façade. Who do we be?

Perhaps an even more important question is “How do we be together?” How can we be together, allowing our history to be there with us, without it determining our interactions? What would it be like to just be with one another? What would it be like to have no conscious or unconscious demands for how our friend, spouse, teacher, neighbour, or that person on the street must act? How would it be to be?

The Relational Field

Franklyn Sills in his book due out this month, Foundations of Craniosacral Biodynamics, refers to “the relational field” between two individuals. This is where we meet each other energetically, sensing the other via resonance. We seem to have a direct knowing of one another.

We all have this experience. Have you ever walked into a room full of strangers, like a party, and immediately felt drawn to some and repulsed by others? What information were those feelings based on? Some might be visual (a field phenomenon). One of the strangers looks like someone you have unfinished business with, and you want to avoid. Or you see a woman who has dark hair like your favourite aunt, and you want to get to know her.

Whether you process these visual cues consciously or not, they contribute to your perception of others. We sense each other in many ways, however. Like visual stimuli, other information comes to us via the space between us.

Visually, we sense patterns of light. We may perceive movement, or facial expressions. Our bodies respond to these stimuli, often without our conscious awareness. Mirror neurons in our brains register certain movements as if we were making them, ourselves. The same neurons fire when we watch someone lick an ice cream cone or when we have our own cone to lick.

These mirror neurons are believed to explain children’s ability to learn through imitation, as well as our capacity for empathy. They may begin to explain the subtle communication experienced within the relational field established between a practitioner and client.

As practitioner, for example, I may sense a pain in my shoulder reflecting that of my client. I can use this information to help me understand what is happening within the client. Similarly, how I am in my own body-mind can influence how the client is. In Biodynamics, we practice calming and grounding within ourselves as practitioners, which facilitates such settling in our clients.

A Larger Field

The relational field between us begins to settle and come into resonance as we get to know each other and feel safe. When we have a sense of trust for another, our sympathetic (fight-flight) nervous system can relax. We can begin to rest together in the present moment, settling into a state of being. This is true when we come together as practitioner and client, as two friends, or as a group.

When I teach classes, I generally ask the participants to say something in the group, even if it is just their names. I usually make a point of speaking for a few minutes first so those who don’t know me can begin to settle in relation to me, as leader of the group. Then, they can feel more comfortable to speak in the group. Once each person has spoken, there is usually a sense of the whole group field settling. We begin to relax as we have more of a sense of those we are with.

Interestingly, this is true for little ones just born, and even before birth. While these little ones have less developed brains and nervous systems, there is abundant evidence from the field of Prenatal and Birth Psychology that prenates and newborns are extremely sensitive to the relational field around them. How do they sense the nature of this field, even before their eyes are open, or their ears are developed?

Even single-celled organisms respond to the energetic field around them. Within our own bodies, our cells communicate mysteriously through resonance. While scientists effort to explain how we know what we know, all we can really ascertain is that we know.

There seems to be a direct knowing, a communication not only between our cells, but also between our beings. The space between is relationally full!

Visual and auditory perceptions are amongst the more obvious aspects of our common field. There are other, more subtle expressions we are usually not consciously aware of.

Ancestors in Action

On a personal level, each of us carries the field of our families. This is expressed in part through our genetic appearance, but our ancestral field includes expressions we may not see or hear. We do, however, sense them on some level. Those raised in a violent household, for example, tend to be drawn to violence in their later relationships. The violence may, however, skip a generation.

We may find ourselves participating in relational experiences akin to those of our grandparents or great grandparents. Lets say your great grandmother lived in a Jewish village ravaged by Russian pogroms. The resonance of that terror may have been carried down through the generations, with each new child, including you, going through life with a mysterious sense of fear. Perhaps, as a child, you were extremely shy and no one could understand why. An unconscious expectation of unpredictable violence plagues you and your family without even being acknowledged. 

When I was a child, I remember people commenting on how scared I looked and how shy I was. I didn’t experience myself as either frightened or shy, but that unconscious shadow material inherited from my ancestors was blatantly apparent to others not involved in my family system. I carried this energy with me into every relational field I entered. Years of work on myself enhanced my awareness of this influence, reducing its unconscious expression in my relationships.

Prayers for the Suffering

Fortunately, we are attuned not only to our own ancestors, but also with all other beings. I have been deeply touched by the news of the recent tsunami in Japan. A few days ago, I watched a video of the tsunami emailed to me by a friend. Observing the waves destroy the town, I was struck by the sense in my own body of a resonant motion. It was as if the giant wave were sludging through my tissues, rocking my own fluid body.

Feeling the enormity of this natural catastrophe so directly led me beyond my previous sadness and compassion. It reinforced my sense of need for prayerful being in relation to the Japanese tragedy. I could not deny the connection I felt with the people on the film helplessly watching the watery devastation. It didn’t just happen to them. It happened to all of us.

I feel the pain and chaos in Japan as if it were inside my own body. I sense a similar connection with the people suffering in Japan as I do with my clients settling in a Biodynamic craniosacral therapy session. Similarly, I can offer Japan the depth of stillness I know in my own system.

I know of other practitioners who travel across the planet to troubled places like Haiti and Japan to help. This does not seem to be my role here. My place seems to be to offer and teach the power of what I tend to see as prayer, of communing through intention and stillness.

Prayer has been shown to have an effect on others, even across great distances. One explanation for how this might work is that we are composed primarily of water, a highly resonant element. Research has shown that meditating with an intention to change the pH of water, can have that effect, even across the planet. If I sit in awareness of the dynamic stillness within each of us, with an intention to share its beneficial effects, others can benefit.

One with the Cosmos

Our relational field seems to be much larger than we might have imagined. If our fluid bodies resonate with each other, is it possible to not be in relationship with all beings?

When we consider the composition of the cosmos is also water, we can begin to appreciate how vast our relational field may actually be.

Rather than unconsciously, habitually re-enacting the historical influences we carry in our field, we can begin to rest in the larger space between us. Instead of just resonating with the pain and the past, we can settle into a state of being where we resonate more fully with the spaciousness of the cosmos.

We return to source.  Possibilities emerge that we had never imagined in our more narrow perspective. Our hearts open. Ah, there is love…

Resting in the Space Between

Resting in The Space Between

It seems these days that a large portion of my life is spent in transit. I have ample opportunity to engage in the present moment, to reflect upon my life since my last trip, and to prepare in my mind for whatever world I am about to land in.

I am aware that there is a way in which we are all in transit all the time. It is just more obvious in my life as I fly across the ocean, wait in various airports for hours for my next connection, and recover from jet lag. We are all moving from this moment to the next. Life is constantly unfolding. We all have the opportunity to be with this transition. Our tendency, however, is to focus on whatever task or entertainment we are involved with, and to miss the mysterious and wondrous unfolding within and around us.

I am reminded once again of one of my favorite topics – Embryology. I am constantly informed by the development of little ones before, as well as after, birth. Embryos, as far as I can tell, are not absorbed in watching TV, in getting things done, or in planning for their future. They are simply present, being in and with what is. In the process of being, their little bodies take form. They grow and coalesce from a single fluid cell into a highly complex human baby. They are changing constantly. If they were to latch on to any one stage of their miraculous development, I imagine the journey to being born would be more challenging.

We know from research in the field of Pre- and Perinatal Psychology that babies who been overwhelmed by trauma, either in the womb or during birth, do tend to lock in to that experience, just like anyone else with unresolved trauma. Our tendency, at any age, is to return to a trauma experience when life reminds us of it, and to react to life as if it were the same as the past. In an untraumatized state, however, little ones are very present in this moment with whatever may present.

What would it be like if we lived our lives more like the little embryo, being with what is? Our grown up bodies do not seem to change quite as quickly as the embryo’s little form. When our bodies do change, we often are not happy about it. We resist the drying, the wrinkling, and the stiffening that often accompanies aging. When we are younger, we may wish we were already more mature. I remember my grandfather admonishing us to not wish our lives away. They will be over sooner than we might imagine. On the other hand, teenagers or young adults may fight against the pressure they feel from others around them to grow up and take more responsibility in their lives.

Being or Resisting?

We all tend in various ways to resist this moment of change. We tend not to nurture our ability to be, to rest in a state of being, as Franklyn Sills describes in his book Being and Becoming. In a state of frenetic activity, awareness contracts. Our perception narrows to the task at hand. Our body tissues also contract, as Emilie Conrad points out in her book, Life on Land. As we narrow in our bodyminds, we become less receptive, less fluid, and less resilient. We tend to identify in this state with our little personality self. Our self state, as Sills defines it, is an expression of the conditions of our lives, our personal history, and how we have learned to hold and defend ourselves when it has been too harsh.

Living from this small Self state, it becomes difficult to rest. We must stay active or defended. We live in fear of history repeating itself. Often, with this focus, we find ourselves seemingly re-living our history, just as we have feared.

Being present in the moment, in the midst of the dynamic shifts of life, requires widening our perception. When we slow ourselves down, we can step back a little to observe our patterns, rather than automatically and unconsciously re-enacting to them. We begin to identify with something larger, deeper, and more universal. As we settle into a Being state, we have more access to the more primary forces that formed us as little ones, and continue to form us every moment of our lives.

As we slow down, we begin to settle into the space between. Our perception is no longer limited to the more coalesced forms of our bodies, or our mental or emotional patterns. We also perceive a spaciousness between the forms…a stillness… potency that feeds us on a primary, quantum level.

In this more expanded state, we begin to perceive possibilities we could not access in contraction. Rather than seeing life as black or white, we begin to acknowledge and perhaps even enjoy the shades of grey in between. Polarities begin to present as two ends of the same continuum. Problems become opportunities to explore new realms of creativity. We enter a new plenum, a realm that may have been previously unimaginable.

Coming Home

Here, at last, we can rest, as we did at first. No need to effort to create or re-create ourselves. We experience the wisdom of a force much greater than our little selves. We learn again to trust the intelligence that works through us. Perhaps, we become clearer vehicles for its expression in the process.

Returning to a presence we once knew in the early formative waters of the womb, we can be. We can take joy in the constant change that is life. We can embrace our dynamic aliveness. As we do, we may be perturbed by old trauma patterns rising to the surface, as if wanting to partake of the feast, to be nourished, to be seen, to be loved.

Our challenge is to resist the temptation focus in on the patterns. As we continue to practice resting in the space between, these patterns seem less binding and less bound. We can observe them as they begin to morph, dissolving in the greater sea of being. From this place, anything is possible! Like the little embryo in the womb, we have seemingly infinite potential to develop.

When we rest, our perception shifts. Our vistas expand as the smallest, most subtle spaces between come into view. The space between each cell, between each organelle within each cell, all offering complex worlds of interaction and potential. Our inner ocean expands, as we resonate on a deep, cellular level with the origin of being, the source from which we emerge. We become conscious representatives of the mystery of life.

Welcome back to being.

Correction to previous blog

I just looked at my blog entry from yesterday and realized that the link to Bruce Lipton's book is a great book, but not the one I intended! More relevant to prenatal effects on gene expression is his earlier book, The Biology of Belief.

Enjoy!

Meeting the Roots of Fear

Many years ago, I began to think about people as orienting either to love or fear. It’s not that we can’t have both; it’s just that we tend to focus on one or the other. We tend to hold them as mutually exclusive polarities. They are, however, intimately connected.

Love is inclusive. Orienting to love enables us to embrace our fears and hold them in our hearts, like little children needing a hug. Fear is a narrower state of perception. In a fear state, we experience ourselves as separate and isolated. Love is about wholeness and connection. Fear is based on separation. By definition, it excludes love. Love by definition includes fear.

Love is always present, even when we don’t see it. It is our essence. It does not go away, even when we banish it. But why would we want to banish it? Don’t we all long for love?

I believe we do. I believe we all long to know and be with our essence. We long to just be, which is love. Why is that longing then not enough?

Most of us do not identify ourselves as love! When asked who we are, we give a glorified version of name, rank and serial number. We state our occupation, nationality, ethnic background, and perhaps how many children we have. How many times have you introduced yourself as a unique and beautiful expression of love?

When you look in the mirror, what and whom do you see? Chances are, you are not looking at the love which is you. You perceive the color of your hair and eyes, the texture of your skin, your posture, your facial expression. You may see an expression in your eyes, those windows to the soul, which tell you this is you. But, who are you without these features?

There is a time in our development in the womb when we do not yet have hair, nose, eyes, or even skin. Yet, we are. Apparently, we are sentient beings long before our bodies look the way we are accustomed to seeing ourselves. Who are we prior to the eyes and face and skin?

How often do you ask yourself these questions? Who am I? What am I doing here?

Sometimes, I have the experience of feeling like I have just stepped out of my roles in life and am peeking in. I seem to get a brief glimpse of what Buddhists call “emptiness.” From the perspective of the small ego self within me, this view of myself as nothingness within nothingness can be intimidating. From a larger perspective, it is precious.

A fear aspect of me is terrified of dying, of being lost in the emptiness. The love that I am sighs with recognition.

Many of us spend years practicing meditation of various forms to learn how to step back from ourselves enough that we can perceive more of who we are. Settling into a witness state enables us to view ourselves in a more neutral, less attached way. This experience can provide relief, but why is it so challenging to find? Why do we practice for years instead of for five minutes?

Prenatally Yours

Throughout our development, we form in relationship to the environment we grow in. This is true from the very first moment of life at conception, if not before. Our environment includes not only the physical womb around us; it also includes an outer womb – the environment the mother finds herself in.

We know from the new field of epigenetics that genes are turned on or off during gestation depending on environmental influences. Cell biologist, Bruce Lipton, points out that how the mother (and to some extent father) perceives her world is a major epigenetic influence on the baby growing inside her. If she perceives her world as threatening, baby prepares to enter a dangerous world. When mom perceives her world as loving and supportive, baby prepares for that kind of life.

Fortunately, how parents and others treat the baby before, as well as after, birth, also have a profound effect. A mother who feels threatened may still be able to soothe and reassure her baby. That child learns that, even if there is potential danger, love and protection are possible.

Consider that, in meditation, or other mindfulness practices, the witness state the practitioner develops assumes a function similar to that of the pregnant woman. It is as if we take over mothering ourselves. We learn to widen our perception beyond the narrowness of fear, and to offer love and nurturance to the little one within us.

In mindfulness practices, we learn to observe what is, rather than becoming it or identifying with it. We learn to step back and witness and hold what is. As we practice, we undoubtedly encounter our thoughts, as well as various uncomfortable sensations. For example, giving my mind some free time to meditate, I may find my shopping list presenting itself. Worries may come to the surface. My knees or hips may start to complain about the position I am sitting in.

These are all expressions of my personal history - the conditions in my life. If I focus in on them, letting them seduce me, I find myself deepening into fear. I forget about the love that is always there. This is just as true outside of meditation. For many of us, this is natural, everyday activity. Our fears and old patterns rule us. When we try to meditate, we find ourselves drawn in, like Alice down the rabbit hole. If we go down the hole, it becomes more real. Our fear patterns are reinforced. Why is that hole so alluring?

Our fear patterns start long before we are born. As the body develops, it orients to potential danger or love, depending on what baby is exposed to.

The part of our brain primarily involved with emotional learning is called the limbic brain. In contrast to the neo-cortex that is involved with conscious thinking processes, the limbic brain is well-developed and functioning before birth. It is present in the little one as early as eight weeks after conception. Before the age of two, the limbic system is predominant. Memories from this time tend to be implicit or behavioral, and not associated with words. Strong imprints or patterns are established in the nervous system long before we can talk.

These are reflected in later behavior, as well as body shape, function and health . Babies born into a potentially threatening environment may develop a lower tolerance for stress. They are geared for fight or flight, expecting threat. Babies growing in love and affection tend to be more resilient, with a larger neocortex, and more ability to reason and use social and verbal skills in stressful situations.

To read more on this fascinating topic, I recommend Life in the Womb: The Origin of Health and Disease, by Peter W. Nathielsz

How we hold our bodies can be influenced by these very early experiences. For example, pregnancy is often discovered around the fourth week after conception, when the mother has missed her period (although modern technology enables discovery to happen earlier). This is the time when the heart begins beating in the embryo. When there are issues about the baby’s arrival, and the parents are worried, considering abortion or adoption, or simply not ready to celebrate the pregnancy, the baby will tend to contract in this area. In that most pregnancies are not planned, some level of ambivalence is common in the parents upon discovering the pregnancy.

How many of us have heard throughout our childhood to stop slouching and straighten up? It is natural for us to protect the heart area. When we experience rejection, criticism, or lack of love and safety, we withdraw. The tissue around the heart pulls back and in. It becomes less flexible and resilient as it hardens to guard the tenderness of the heart.

Mindfulness, Love and Change

When we practice mindfulness, we enter the possibility of something different. By stepping back and observing our thoughts, patterns, and tendencies, we create some distance from the pattern. We begin to free ourselves to create a new response. Fortunately, our brains and bodies are highly changeable. We have the ability to disengage ourselves from old patterns based on past experience. This enables us to be more present, creative and resilient in this moment.

This all sounds good, especially if our past experience established fear patterns. That little part of us that had that experience, however, is still afraid. When we start to slow down and widen our perception beyond the narrowness of fear, that little one within us may become even more terrified. As mentioned earlier, emptiness can be both attractive and scary. The same applies to love.

As we open our hearts, and attempt to love and be with ourselves, we encounter the original reasons for shutting down. Our fear emerges. It does its best to seduce us back into its limited reality. Our challenge is to stay present, and continue to observe. It is helpful to acknowledge the fear, or the fearful little one within us, and, like a good parent, continue with what we believe to be best for these aspects of ourselves.

Fear may present as an emotional response, but it may also arise in less obvious forms. Meditators are familiar with the challenges of sleepiness, distraction and boredom. These can be seen as efforts by the fearful part of ourselves to resist potential annihilation.

We have an instinct to survive. Our limbic brain is designed to help us with this task. When we begin to melt our old defenses, the limbic brain goes on alert and does its best to resurrect them.

Considering our early development, we can understand the fear and resistance as including a deeper confusion. Vulnerable little ones depend on our caregivers to protect us. If we don’t feel safe, we do our best to protect ourselves. When we sense our self structure dissolving, as it does in mindfulness practices, the little one in us may believe we are in danger of dying. We associate the dissolution of self with the  potential of actual physical death.

This fear dynamic can be one of the most seductive. It is important to continue witnessing. As we hold ourselves, including the terrified little one, with love and acceptance, the fear can begin to melt. If we have spent our entire lives trying to deny or suppress this fear, it may need to express itself. It may need to be heard and seen. We can practice being its witness, loving and embracing all that arises.

It is in the midst of this kind of practice, that we return to the wholeness and connectedness of love. This occurs in formal meditation or while having a mindful conversation over breakfast. The key is presence, being able to witness ourselves, and continuing with this intention no matter what arises.

Letting Go, Letting Be

“Letting go, letting be. Highest practice.” - Hongzhi

These guiding words from the 12^th century Chan master, Hongzhi, are at least as relevant today as they were nine centuries ago.

In this autumn time of year, Nature gracefully demonstrates the ubiquitous beauty and practice of letting go. As the temperature drops and the days shorten, dead leaves and twigs remind us of a time gone by, not long ago, when all was green and lively. One morning, frost covers whatever green remains. The scene has completely changed again. Before we know it, all is white with a cloak of snow. Do we even remember the green gone by?

As we approach the darkest time of year, it is natural to seek the warmth and light of hearth and heart at home. Like the frozen plants outside, we naturally quiet ourselves under blankets, burrowing into the depths of our psyches.

Our mad western culture whips us into frenzied shopping sprees. Anything to keep us from our deeper essence…

What would happen if we allowed ourselves to settle under the howl of winter winds, cuddling with our loved ones in front of the fire, eating warm food and listening, listening, listening to the whispers of wisdom most easily heard in the darkness…

We might ask ourselves, what is it we are running from? What might we feel should we allow ourselves to let go and be? What might we notice? What might we sense?

What is it we so fear?

If Nature’s images are relevant at all, we might conjecture that deepest fear is of the very death and dying we are surrounded by.

Dying our Birth

We all know that leaves fall and flowers die in autumn. What may be less obvious is that death surrounds us from the moment we are conceived. We are, in fact, dependent on it for our survival…

How can this be? There is so much to be learned from the littlest expression of our humanness – the embryo. Programmed cell death (also known as apoptosis) is an essential aspect of our early development. Our formation in the womb occurs through a combination of cell activities. Cells divide, migrate, change shape, and even disappear in service of the larger figure being created.

The hands I am typing this article with, for example, began much the way they would if you were to form them from clay. Two little roundish blobs of clay are pressed into more specific fingers and thumbs by pinching out the spaces between fingers. Extra bits of clay are discarded, perhaps to be recycled into some other parts to be added later. The little blobs of embryonic tissue that will form into hands begin similarly, growing webs between the fingers. Through apoptosis, the cells between the fingers die in the 16th week of gestation. If this important cell death does not occur, the child is born with webbed hands that are less able to do important things like typing.

Similarly, the development of the nervous system in young humans depends on certain cells dying at the right time. We now know that the nervous system produces billions of neurons, or nerve cells, before birth. In the later part of pregnancy, the number of brain cells drops, so that we are born with only about one hundred billion. As the little one learns, new pathways are formed while unused ones fade. At several important periods of development, the brain cleans house, resulting in a drastic reduction in the number of neurons.

If death is such an important part of our development, why do we not celebrate it more? Instead, our modern, western cultural tendency is to work hard to achieve what we have and cling to it. We value youthful health, and fight against symbols of aging, the wrinkles, the glasses, the stiffness and aches.

Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 – Dylan Thomas

As I watch my parents in their eighties age in a way I can no longer deny, I must also acknowledge my own resistance to them changing. Even with years of practice observing change from moment to moment through Vipassana meditation, part of me still hangs onto an imagined security of the past. Why is it so hard to loosen our hold on what has been and simply embrace what is?

The Lure of this Moment

My life has a way of speeding up, with all the spaces becoming full. Resting in the moment becomes reminiscent of finding a parking space during the Christmas shopping rush. If I start early enough, I find a space before all the shoppers arrive. My practice, therefore, is to give myself space each morning, before things accelerate.

Before I even turn over in bed, I remind myself of breath. Breath moving in. Breath moving out. I sense the weight of my body resting into gravity, the support of the bed under me, the weight of my arm on my ribs. Emerging from my dream into the morning light, I check into sensations in my body. Warm or cold. Tingly. Itchy. Heaviness. Lightness. Achiness or a sense of glow. As I survey the sensations, the possibilities are endless. I find myself drawn into the magic of the present moment. It has so much to offer.

As a practitioner of Continuum Movement, my next step is to make some sounds into the tissues of my body. I often begin by bringing my attention to the mid-line running up from my tail to the top of my head. I make some gentle “O” sounds, sensing their vibration traveling up the mid-line, waking up the tissues. As the sound moves, the aches begin to dissolve. It is as if the cells wake up and stretch and sing. I find my usual morning stiffness melting into warm, soft waves of pleasure streaming up and down my body. Tissues decompress, becoming so light that they begin to float weightlessly in the air. At some point, my body begins to lift itself off the bed and I flow with it into my day.

As the day takes over my consciousness, the activities of breakfast seduce my mind, attempting to convince it that preparing porridge is different, or even more important than being present. On my better mornings, however, the left over pleasure from my morning practice continues to predominate. The sensation of flow in my body is so delicious and omnipresent, it counters the temptation to be distracted by the tasks at hand. Instead, the flow of pleasure infuses the cooking. The porridge tastes better, and I am present to taste it.

Fluid Presence, Letting Go

I notice that when I am in a more fluid state, change is easier. When my tissues are tight, my mind contracts. My body holds on, lessening the sense of inner space. Once my body is flowing, the mind also softens. Old fear-based walls become less important. Mind flows with the moment. Porridge. Cells singing. Morning news. Morning kisses. Whoever enters my morning world becomes part of a fascinating whole, each moment offering enhanced sensation and potential.

Being present in this way requires a willingness to let go. If I demand that reality stay the same, I stop the flow. I stop the pleasure. I may be under the illusion that I also stop death. But death continues, every moment, whether I acknowledge it or not, whether I embrace it or not. The leaves still fall. The frost still comes. I can complain about the loss of green, or I can enter the potential it offers. Ironically, as I embrace the change and death all around and in me, I experience a new level of aliveness. Every dead twig presents its beauty. I am nourished by each new moment in a new way.

The wintery days continue to shorten. The darkness is everywhere. If we push it away, partying late into the night, we may not appreciate the brightness of the snow in the morning. We may not notice when the darkness reaches its peak and the days actually begin to lengthen. Clinging to our winter woes, we may forget to celebrate the death of winter as the spring is born.

Like seeing a glass as half empty or half full, we can perceive a world filled with death or characterized by birth. It is only when we look outside the usual definitions and perceptually enter into each moment that we recognize the wholeness of being, where death and birth are one, both to be welcomed, both offering gifts.

Journey into the Fluid Body

Who am I?

I am but a drop of water within a larger well.

I am the deepest tide under the surface waves.

I am the stillness

Dynamic stillness

Foundation of all being

I am being

I am water

I am fluid

I am fluid.

Who are you?

My life has gratefully guided me from the dryness of my intellectual mind, where I used to live, to the wet and juicy creativity of embodied being.

Perhaps you are old enough to remember, as I do, sitting tightly in a little school desk designed to restrain the curious, active bodies of little girls and boys. I was six years old, trying my best to fit into these little classroom boxes. We were told to sit still – for hours – hands clasped in front of us on the desk. Who knows what trouble those hands might get us into if allowed to roam freely…

It has taken many years and much hard work to return to the freedoms lost in those early years. Dancing, stretching, an hour of yoga each morning, cracks and creaks persuaded to change their ways.

I began to find my body in a teach-yourself yoga book I discovered in a bookstore as a teenager. No one was doing yoga then. At least no one I knew of. I loved the stretches. They felt so familiar.

I remember my first dance classes. I had patiently waited for them through my entire childhood. Finally, at eighteen, in my first innocent year of university in Toronto, I eagerly attended a ballet class. We stood in a row along the bar in first position. The perspiration poured down my skin. The pain was unbearable. After three classes, I quit. Would I ever be able to dance?

I was young, but my body was a tightly bound mass of tissue, a carefully protected mass of history. I was born in Sarnia, a town now known as one of the most toxic in Canada. Along with the chemical toxicity I gestated in, my body grew in relation to various other traumas in my family environment. I learned to avoid this painful thing and all its feelings as much as possible. I discovered the intellect was a much safer abode, rewarded with good grades and abundant approval.

Even so, I always loved to dance. That same first year of university when I discovered ballet was unattainable for me, I also discovered the international folk dance club. I quickly became a folk dance addict, dancing five nights a week, and within a short time found myself performing with two troupes and teaching weekly classes. Finally, I was able to dance!

Then, the concussion happened.

It was 1979. The scene was a workshop in Scandinavian turning dances somewhere north of Toronto. The room was crowded and someone accidentally tripped my partner and me as we were dancing. With all of the momentum of the spin we had been in, we landed on the floor, the back of my head smashing into the hard concrete with a thud. That moment changed my life.

The stillness was profound. I could hear the gasps and the doctor present asking me my name. I could see the worried faces all around me. I knew my name, or at least I thought I did, but my brain could not communicate to my mouth. I was paralyzed. I could not respond. After some undefined period of time during which I exerted more effort than at any other moment of my life, I was finally able to say my name. The entire room sighed a sigh of relief. I began to laugh and soon the whole crowd was roaring with laughter. The sound gave me a headache.

Moments later, I was led to a mat at the side of the room to lie down and recover while the dance went on. As I lay there, I turned my head and noticed with awe and delight that I had a companion. On the mat next to mine lay a tiny newborn baby, sleeping while her parents danced.

Years later, I recognized the symbolic meaningfulness of that baby’s presence beside me. It was as if I had been reborn that day. Like the little one next to me, I had been given a new body, and found myself slow to process information in my newly forming brain.

My old identity as an intellectual whiz was left behind on the dance floor. It took some years for me to understand that what I now had available to me was my body.

Discovering the Body

The body I used to carry my intellect from place to place prior to the concussion was in many ways unfamiliar to me. I used to tell people that I processed everything through my body. What that meant was that, if something was upsetting for me, I would get sick. That was the only way my body had to process, or to get my attention. That was also a sure way to get attention in my family.

After the concussion, I found myself unable to function in ways that had been important to my identity before. Instead of jousting with my friends with verbal puns, and winning word games, I began to enter more intuitive realms. My intuition eventually led me to hands-on healing work, which inspired me to study massage and bodywork.

Studying and receiving deep tissue massage immediately evoked experiences I could only interpret of memories. I experienced childhood traumas as if they were happening on the massage table. It took years of therapy and training to resolve and integrate these early experiences to the point where they were no longer subversively running my life. My body, once held captive by these shadowy forces of the past, began to change.

As part of my training and healing, I returned to school to study Dance/Movement Therapy. One of the prerequisites was modern dance and ballet. Twenty years after my first painful encounter with ballet, I nervously returned to ballet class. I was shocked and delighted to find my body now worked and moved quite differently. Where just standing in first position had been torture at eighteen, I was able to actually enjoy much more challenging moves at thirty-eight.

This was not supposed to happen! How could I be so much more flexible at thirty-eight than I had been as a teenager? The only answer that made any sense was that all the emotional and bodywork I had done over the years had enabled my body to release its hold on the past. The places of holding and stiffness were no longer required to protect the emotional pain that had been too much to process as a child. Instead, the tissues could flow and flex with increased ease and pleasure.

Enter Continuum

In recent years, I have been blessed by the guidance and support of a special mentor, Emilie Conrad. Emilie, the founder of Continuum Movement, moves at seventy–six like a twenty year old. She has devoted her life to the powerful medicine of Continuum. In this inquiry into our fluid nature, we use breath, sound, movement, and sensory awareness to slow down, and enter into a more primordial state of being. Our tissue patterns dissolve as we undulate and flow in spontaneous, fluid expressions of the mystery of life. We learn to allow our bodies to move as they wish, honoring and learning from a profound bio-intelligence that is so much wiser than our more linear intellects.

Emilie taught me about pleasure. In her classes, in stark contrast to my family environment, we were encouraged to sense and support the pleasure our bodies are capable of. At one intensive Continuum practitioner training consisting of seventeen consecutive days of this powerful movement work, I began to feel extremely pleasurable spasms running through my heart. My heart seemed to open and open and open in Continuum. I began to sense my heart as a long, broad beam running all the way down to my womb. I had to learn to tolerate the intensity of the pleasure, the love, the expansiveness I experienced.

Life has finally offered a complete counterpoint to that little girl glued to her little chair in the classroom.

While the pain of my early years has eased in the ocean of my fluid body, the scars are not gone. I remember who and how I was in that life, in that time when the terror froze my tissues, seemingly squeezing all the fluid out. Within the resonant waters of my being, I hold that frightened little one in love, bathing her in liquid light. My tissues still remember, but they have also learned another way of being. The stiffness, pain and tensions of the past can still arise, but I am not at their mercy now. I have sounds and breath and micro-movements to revive the undulations of life within. As fluid returns, potential grows. All things become possible. I become all things. I smile. Pleasure drips with the fluid. I have come home.

I am water.

I am fluid.

I am the ocean

I am the sea.

I am the wave across the surface.

I am the tide

The stillness at the ocean floor

I am all this

And more.

Cellular resonance

Cellular reso-dance

I am

I am

I am….

Like the single cell I came from

Like the one ocean we all came from

Emerging

Life on land

Let us swim in the ocean of life

Let us remember our birthright

Let us be.

Clouds and Being

I usually enjoy the flight to Castlegar, the closest airport to my final destination of the beautiful little British Columbia town of Nelson. I love flying over the pristine BC lakes and vibrant, green forests. The closer we get to Castlegar, the more it feels like I can just reach my hand out through the airplane window and touch the trees and boulders passing by.

This day, however, is different. We seem to have left the sun behind in Vancouver and have been flying through clouds for a disconcertingly long time. Knowing how close we usually fly to the mountains, I wonder if the pilot can actually navigate this narrow valley in these clouds. They go on and on. I remember hearing that the pilots chosen to fly to Castlegar are the best in Canada. Castlegar, affectionately known as “Cancle-gar” by the locals, has no radar. Landing here can be treacherous, if not impossible in the morning fog.

This is not morning, however. I have already been traveling all day. Our flight has been delayed because the previous flight to Castlegar was cancelled and time was needed to rebook the passengers onto our flight. Now, as we coast through the seemingly endless mass of cloud, murmurs and groans agitate the passengers. We may need to return to Vancouver. The locals who go through this often are telling stories about the frustrations of various cancelled trips. Then, suddenly, the sky opens up and we see the airport below us. Delighted and relieved, I reassure the woman next to me that this means we can land. We feel the plan descending. Anticipation spreads through the little aircraft until, just as suddenly, the engines rev and we are rising up again, back into the clouds.

 My heart sinks. I suddenly feel hopeless. The fatigue of travel returns to its full weight. How can this be happening? There was a clearing. That is usually all they need. They just need one little hole in the fog and down we go.

The chatter amongst the passengers changes note. It’s a good sign they haven’t made an announcement yet. As long as they don’t tell us we are heading back to Vancouver, there is still a chance of landing in Castlegar.

This can’t go on forever, however. Eventually, the overly cheerful flight attendant announces our destiny. We are heading back to Vancouver.

What do I do with this pit in my stomach? I had been so ready to land and get on with all I need to do to prepare for my training in Nelson, starting in two days! What if I can’t get there tomorrow, either? Various alternatives pass through my mind. All rejected.

Then, I remember.  My challenge, my intention in life is to practice being. There is nothing I need to do here. Probably nothing I can do. I am in the plane heading back to Vancouver. Instead of complaining, I could be grateful for being safe. I could celebrate the opportunity to have a surprise visit with my elderly parents in Vancouver.

I begin to feel a shift. The feelings of frustration, despair, impatience, hopelessness, all dissolve in the love and radiance that grow stronger each moment I stay with the intention to be.

Isn’t this what Buddha taught? Isn’t this what we are here for? To practice being with whatever arises. Even a plane arising after it had already started landing…

When I finally emerge from the plane, back where we started from at the same gate of the Vancouver airport, I find myself calm and smiling. No, I don’t know when I will get to Nelson. No, I don’t know how I will get everything done there that needs to be done before the training starts. The truth is we never know any of these things. We can make plans, but didn’t someone say that’s when God starts laughing?

I love to make plans. Some fire lights in me when I start new things. Perhaps, that is God laughing, too.

I am learning to find love in other ways. The glow I experience when I settle into a being state is far more satisfying than the excitement of planning something that may or may not actually happen some day.

The radiance of being in this moment is even stronger when the moment is challenging. There is an added richness and depth when I can find this state of being when life is hard.

I am not recommending looking for challenge so as to deepen the experience of being, but I do strongly encourage using challenges as opportunities to practice settling into a deeper state of perception. In a state of being, I am calm, settled, oriented to brilliant intelligence of life.  I am present, receptive to whatever the moment offers. Life is certainly a lot more fun this way!

As I enter the airport, like a boomerang returning home, I am surprised and delighted by the surge of gratitude welling up within. I am grateful for the opportunity to be with my parents one more time. Who knows how many more chances we will have? Even deeper, however, is my gratitude for being able to receive the lesson offered on the plane. Regardless of the weather, the clouds have cleared. The sun shines within. From there it can spread. What else really matters?

When it comes to my time to die, what will be most important? Will I remember the efforts it took to organize this training. Or will I remember the precious moments shared with my parents? And the radiance that brought me there. 

And what will you remember?