To be alive
To be alive is to inhabit the ephemeral wonder of our embodied state. Six million years of evolution, the story of our ancestral lineage, embryological journey, and the stories of our lives all dwell in the container in which we live, our bodies.
There is an inherent duality in our life force, the essence of our being is both dynamic and not still but restful. This duality is in evidence in our physiological processes such as the systolic and diastolic phases of cardiac function or the animating inhalation and the relaxing exhalatory phases of respiratory activity, the ebb and flow of our thoughts.
Philosophers, spiritual teachers and neuroscientists and psychologists from Descartes to Spinoza to Damasio from William James to Carl Jung have wondered and attempted to prove the source of our consciousness as a precursor or postscript to our cognitive and somatic experience. Ancient traditions and movement practices such as Yoga and Qi Gong offer beautifully structured sequences for entering into the undivided state where our consciousness and movement potential meet. This non-dual landscape where our minds and bodies travel together in a conscious rhythmic flow is a state to be cultivated for its own sake as a practice for self healing and wellbeing, as well as serving to refine a particular goal for athletic or artistic performance. Here we are fully alive and in simultaneous harmony with the source of our internal and anatomical experiences. Linda Hartley has aptly called this, “psychosomatic unity.”
How do we begin to cultivate this beingness? In fact, it begins with what feels like doing nothing. I invite you to enter into a dynamic paradoxical state of moving non-doing, a kind of active rest or restful action. You will be both a trusted witness and lively participant in your body/mind’s potential.
Being and moving are both ephemeral and slippery realities. By nature they do not lend themselves to being pinned down. This is both their beauty and power as well as their inherent enigma and frustration. Their essence is easily lost in translation. Words are poor substitutes for experience. And yet, to describe experience allows a retrieval of it, a remembering. Thus, we enter in a conscious way into our own rhythmic flow in order to channel our experience as it is happening. Through moving, we gather armloads of sensation that reinforce the living, breathing, tactile and ever-changing celebration of being, the pulsing rhythm of ourselves and the miracle of being. Pausing in the stream of this surge to find the quiet center of our mind’s eye, we can toss the lasso of our breath toward our bodies or...visa versa to meet ourselves as we are. Finding ourselves in a receptive state of somatic listening allows us to begin to move from a pure open place of safety and proximity to ourselves which may generate a glimmer of curiosity and spirit of inquiry. This may initially bring about a cautious uncomfortableness, as we have been conditioned to follow specific guidelines imposed by various exercise or movement protocols or techniques; however, with repetition and practice we can begin to find the usefulness of moving from the inside out as a manner of understanding our movement patterns as reflections and expressions of our life force, our very essence.