of all ages accumulate injuries from sports, reporting as many as thirteen surgeries by their college years. When we do a body scan, there may be no sensation. Why feel if it hurts? Numbness can be learned, as a defense. When we begin the “to do” exercises, there may be emotion: feelings about coaches who encouraged them to stay in games even when injured; irritation at their own bodies for not doing what they command.
Often, thoughts are conflicted because coaches were respected mentors; their bodies carried them to success. They began sports because of physicality and camaraderie; as competition took over, health was sacrificed for the win. Now they can’t move. At twenty or twenty-one, they seek a new relationship with their bodies.
As sensation returns, the body can begin to heal. At first, there is discomfort: tension, bulk, strain. But eventually, the hypertoned areas relax, and a new conversation develops. Our structure responds to the task at hand; if you invite a sensitive alert body, you can have one. It’s the heritage of our species.
Frog, drawing by Laura Lee. Graphite.
Painting, two Kangaroos. Oceanic, Australia, Northern Territory. Oenpelli bark, paint. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979. (1979.206.1514). All rights reserved, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The interchange of push and reach patterns modulates the dialogue between self and other, essential for effective functioning with the environment and community. The spinal yield and push patterns draw the body in toward center, integrating head to tail and stimulating internal connectivity—orientation to self. The spinal reach and pull patterns extend outward to the environment, based on internal connectivity. Thus, the rhythm of yielding and reaching, internal Connectivity and outward expression is the continuum we negotiate as human beings, basic to our existence, present in our movement patterns.
The necessary movement sequences of the developmental journey take us through rolling, sitting, crawling (on belly, homolateral), creeping (on hands and knees, contralateral), and kneeling to thoroughly integrate and prepare the neuromusculoskeletal system for the rigors of a vertical stance. This gradual (and overlapping) progression through movement patterns also supports essential fusion of the three bones of the hip sockets. When babies are allowed to pass through all stages of development before standing, rather than being lifted or placed on their feet, they are thoroughly prepared for the complexities of walking.
The transition to standing combines all of the patterns, initiated by a reach of the head and hands. Balancing the tone of front and back surfaces, along with pushing away from the earth to reach, stand, and walk through space, engages our dynamic dialogue with gravity—balance in the upright stance.
TO DO
Pouring the fluid body* 10 minutes
Lying on the floor, eyes closed:
• Imagine you are a single cell floating in the ocean, with fluid inside, suspended in fluid outside. Your skin is a semipermeable membrane, selecting what flows in, what flows out.
• Pour your fluid contents in any direction. Imagine you are totally suspended in a fluid, warm sea, moving and being moved with the tides.
• Now bring your attention to your skin, the selectively permeable membrane. Move with your focus on the skin, the outer membrane.
• Keep pouring and rolling, and bring your attention to the fluid contents inside the skin. Pour the fluid into particular body areas to initiate movement, like an ameba with a temporary protrusion of the protoplasm, a pseudopodium, that serves in locomotion or food gathering.
• Move your body slowly so that you can perceive sensations. In this asymmetrical movement, there is no up, no down, no head or tail, no right or wrong way to move; enjoy the sensations of wholeness and disorientation.
• Pause, noticing what has occurred. This state of nonjudgmental awareness is called “open attention,” simply noticing sensations, emotions, thoughts, and images as they occur.
• Slowly add vision, remaining aware of sensations.
Vessel breath* 15 minutes
Find a comfortable position, seated, eyes closed:
• Focus your attention on your mouth. Start by yawning, stretching the mouth and back of the throat.
• Continue to allow the mouth to open and feel or imagine the sensation of stretch hollowing the center of your body, like shaping an empty vessel (a bottle or vase), with the pelvis as its base. (In humans, the trachea and esophagus separate for breathing and digestion, but imagine that there is simply one open chamber continuing down through the organs.)
• Imagine a primitive sea squirt attached to the ocean floor. Continue to breathe and notice if any sound emerges.
• Gently play, with a gradual opening of the lips, mouth, and throat. Allow a breath that is barely audible to emerge. As you continue opening the mouth and moving breath more deeply down the core of the body, it may feel odd, stimulating primitive patterns.
• Continue this breath for some time, following impulses for movement as they come.
This is related to Ujjai, a breath in yoga in which you slightly activate the vocal folds and surrounding tissues (glottis) deep in the throat to heighten sensation.4
Fish swish* 10 minutes
Lying in constructive rest, eyes closed:
• Focus attention on your spine (the 24 vertebral bones plus the sacrum and coccyx, connecting head to tail).
• Initiating with your tail, begin undulating the spine side to side on the floor, like a fish or a snake.
• Imagine a mouth on the top of your head, a tail extending from your pelvis. (Relax and “disappear” the legs!) Try initiating the undulations with your head, swimming toward or away, directed by the special senses in the skull.
• At some point, see how small the undulations can be; micro-movements may take on a life of their own, with subtle waves undulating your vertebral column as you breathe.
• Roll over; try the undulations on your belly. Allow your organs to hang off the spine, like a fish. Pause in open attention.
OF SPECIAL INTEREST: MORO REFLEX
The startle response, called the Moro Reflex (in developmental terminology), comes from our ancestors. When a warning is sounded in the jungle, our chimpanzee relatives take to the trees, using both hands and feet to climb and swing their way to safety. Babies on the mother’s chest hang on for themselves. A strong reflex is encoded: to arch back, opening the hands and feet momentarily, so they can grab forward again,
