“Glistening Stones.” Photo by Mercy Sidbury.
Sitting meditation has narrowed the dance of “weight flowing down/energy rising up” to the study of my living structure in an upright sitting posture in Earth’s gravitational field. No more learning how to catapult to the floor, no more tight spins whipping my head around countless times, no more following the cascading circles of tai chi. This is a different way to be in the ‘laboratory’. The laboratory is of course my body. Augusta Moore used to ask us to explore the guidance she offered in her brilliant ballet classes “in our own laboratory.” She was looking for us to find our way into the classic movements of ballet as a personally sensed experience rather than through mimicry. I use her phrase all the time.
Just sitting still, which of course is not really still, there is always movement. There is the movement of breath, the gurgle of digestion, the skin prickles coming from a chill in the room. There is always movement in a live body.
It is the microscopic changes that take place as the body settles, as it finds rest in alertness that guide the steps of this quiet Earthly body dance. I am shown new relationships inside myself daily: As my pelvis drops, it reveals a holding through the muscles of my low back that had previously been imperceptible. The downward release of my bones creates a mild tensional pull in a new direction, from a new location. I now know this place, this line of pull in a way that had previously been invisible to my sensory nervous system. The GPS of my body to itself is being filled in bit by bit through attentive emptying into simple recognition of my living form. It seems to me there is no end to this process of revelation.
In becoming this dance, there is a role for applying all the anatomy, all the movement smarts that I’ve acquired to help me locate myself. But coming only from this orientation I remain distant from myself. And it limits possibility. I will mostly reference what I already know which may not capture the full nuance of what is happening at that very moment.
If I spotlight the sensation that calls me—put a spotlight of attention purely on the sensation rather than what it means or what it relates to—I simultaneously become a participant and an observer in the experience. In this I am only the sensation. And yet I am conscious of being in this field of experience. From this orientation anything can occur. I don’t know how the experience will unfold. I can be shown things or taken places that are beyond what my learned mind knows.
I liken this sensory tracking to being an earthworm sightlessly encountering the next grain of soil as it moves forward underground. The path is chosen by what it determines from each moment of contact. No forethought, no trailing of its history, no story at all. Simply responding to what it senses from its head touching something that is not it, moment by moment.
Ten years of consistent daily sitting practice has brought me to what arrives through the voice of body sensation in this morning’s practice.
I have been with a snag for a long while now. The snag is an area in my body that doesn’t respond to stretch or breath. It is like a black hole of movement meaning there is none. None of my go-to strategies will bring any sensation here. It is a mysterious non-place in the center of my chest. It has morphed through many iterations over these months, maybe years. My attention sways and pitches between trying to understand it and simply staying close to it as it unfolds.
I have learned that my swallowing is labored. Until my spine lengthened out, my shoulders rested down, my sacrum hung between my pelvic bones and I experienced the buoyancy of effortless balance, I was unaware of this trouble. As my skull experienced moments of floating where the rest of my trunk hung from it, I found the hang up—the part of my body that can not drape into gravity. It is this snag in the center of my chest. As my skull hangs the rest of my body, like the sticks suspending a marionette from strings, I experience an uncomfortable pulling on the roof of my mouth. My tongue is being dragged down into my throat. There is pressure behind my heart. It’s no wonder my body avoided feeling this. It is unpleasant and at some times a little scary.
I am a movement educator and a body nerd. I am also a puzzle solver. One of my favorite verbs is “to Sherlock”. These traits bless and condemn me to a point of view that takes delight in studying and understanding the intricate workings of the body’s brilliance.
Since the snag has emerged, I have taken dissection courses, (online classes where cadavers are dissected) to try to learn more about the structures involved in breathing, in singing, in swallowing. Dissection courses on the nerves as they course from the brain and spinal cord to organs and muscles added another perspective. I have taken bodywork courses to release arteries and nerves.
I have a big bag of information from which to look at this swallowing question.
I know that is not what will bring resolution. I must look from the place of being the earthworm meeting soil.
Recovering from a debilitating injury years ago convinced me that the body will show me what it needs in order to return to wholeness. I’ve learned to listen and heed, blending this geeky interest with the body wisdom derived from a life of wide ranging movement practices. It is from this vantage that my investigations arise and guide me. It is this attitude that I bring to my teaching and my sitting practice and to letting the best path towards wholeness be shown to me.
