How does it happen? It was 11:30 and I was going to look up one thing on the web and now it is 12:40 and I feel as if I have just emerged from a long journey (a little physically dazed) through multiple worlds linked by my ongoing curiosity. It’s that “I’ll just follow this thread”  that takes me down the hole. Because in the genius of the webbing is the linking to another and another and another evermore tantalizing bit that catches my attention. (Fortunately I was not enticed to buy anything in the process!) I have practiced this paying attention so rigorously that it works and it’s fun and energizing and……It’s like when I’m hiking or kayaking or skiing and I just have to go to the next rise, around the next bend to that clump of trees, because there might be something there that I would miss otherwise—the experience of doing it. It also is what moves me onward doing my Mindful Moving practice–a particular sensation, an idea born out of moving, a “what if” question. Interesting that one of the threads I was following this morning was inactivity research and and its relationship to mitochondrial function.

-Sherry

How is navigating my day a delightfully physical event? A physical event that is not just making it to the gym and doing my workout,  but is an ongoing doing that has meaning in unfolding my life? So if this sounds a bit obtuse let me explain. I have a gang busters raspberry crop this year and in mid July I still have great greens in my garden–and yesterday I noticed that I also have my first batch of green beans to pick! So my early morning was spent picking raspberries, harvesting lettuce, picking green beans—and of course tending to all my perennials—watering, deadheading, admiring! This is the somatic life–doing something physically that supports my daily life, is distinctly enjoyable and  has a wholebody payoff.

–Sherry

-Sherry

“Owning up to being an animal, a creature of earth. Tuning our animal senses to the sensible terrain…. Feeling the polyrhythmic pulse of this place…. This vexed being in whose flesh we’re entangled. Becoming earth. Becoming animal, Becoming in this manner fully human.”

Becoming Animal, David Abram

I’ve discovered that it is the artists who know.

Whenever I try to describe somatic work, (and I do not have a perfect ‘spiel’ yet,) it is always the artists that catch on first. They are the people who say “space” and don’t mean “empty,” or hear the word “place” but don’t think ‘building’ or ‘city.’ They are the people who recognize that there is an inexhaustible fullness and richness in life accessible by the powerful will of humanity. And what is most amazing, these artists come from every corner of the world and from every area of expertise. They are environmentalists, dancers, physicists, philosophers, therapists, and scientists. They are the people who recognize that we live on this world and not on any other. Ours is a physical existence and there is absolutely no escaping that fact.

The passage above is excerpted from David Abram’s Becoming Animal, An Earthly Cosmology. I’ve yet to find out what this guy really does for a living, he is clearly an environmentalist, but look at the way he writes. He prompts you to imagine, ‘What if the world was sentient?’ ‘What does that mean “the earth’s flesh?”‘ He draws a connection that implies a more full relationship between humans and earth than we, as readers, may have previously realized or appreciated, and that is the kind of artist I refer to here. Thats the kind of artist who knows.

I like to think that the parts of myself are not perfectly distinct from my “self”. Perhaps in a certain sense, my neurons, my stomach, my spine are a part of my soul. My hormones are not perfectly distinct from my feelings, or my thoughts even. Can’t we say that we are Beautiful Machines, without reducing ourselves merely to machines? There is a meaningful dance in the falling apart (disarray, inefficiency, confusion) and in the coming together (unity, synchronization) of our individual cogs. Those cogs only useful in the presence of other parts and in the presence of their collective sum. In this sense I think that, though my “self” doesn’t always recognize its parts, the sum, myself, ME, I am “one of” my parts just as they are “one of” me.

Eric Teachout St. Olaf College ’13

Hard, dense, strong bone nested in space. Squishy space. The space contains tissues that move the bones and change the shape of the space, but between and inside the tissues there is also space. It has always seemed that without my muscles to move the bones I would not be mobile, but in truth it is without space that I would have no mobility.

Yield and Push. What is the mind of push? Push integrates into the self. Push is powerful. Push resists. Push grips. Muscle tonus embodies the mind of push. What about yield? Yield releases. Yield separates what push integrates. Yield prepares. Yield creates space. Space embodies the mind of Yield. Its clear then, which “mind” affords greater mobility. I need space to move into in order to move. Yield prepares space. Space prepares the body for mobility. Space allows me to be mobile.

The bones float in space. They barely touch. Kissing each other as they drift with the intentions of the nervous system that moves muscle. Buffered by space and tissue.

Text: Julia Moser-Hardy, Image: Kelsey Daly St. Olaf College ’14.

This stabilized entity is what we now call our body, but we are basically movement without particularized boundaries. Stabilizing localizes and gives the illusion of a fixed boundary. This serves us well in ordinary circumstances, but as a process of existence may become self limiting.

Excerpted from a chapter written by Emilie Conrad Da’oud included in Groundworks: Narratives of Embodiment edited by Don Hanlon Johnson North Atlantic Books, 1997

What does knowing about the inside of me tell me about me?

“Although we had both seen skeletons before, we had never perceived the unique quality of the scapula in relation to the other bones of the shoulder, ribs, arms, and back. We were intrigued to discover that the scapula is only connected to the shoulder joint. Through embodied practice and research, we learned that the scapula connects to the clavicle through the acromion process in the shoulder. We realized had never considered the scapula as being a part of the shoulder joint.

In our practice, we explored the mobility of the scapula, beginning with a process of touch initiation. We were interested in finding where exactly our scapula rest in our back-body which resulted in using the floor to feel our scapula lay and move against it. Beginning with these touch exercises allowed us to gain awareness of the mobility of the joint structure. With this foundation we then took our etude to all fours. We felt gravity’s pull against the push of our hands in the floor. This established a connection from the scapula down through the humerus, elbow, ulna, radius, carpal bones, and into the hands. Next we increased our sense of this connection by balancing on one hand, and experienced the same pathway down on one arm at a time instead of two simultaneously. Finally, we began to move our bodies upward toward vertical by moving from the scapula, with attention to other parts of the body. After doing all of the beginning awareness exercises, it was much easier to find mobility in scapula initiated movements.”

Karina Culloton ’15 & Ben Swenson-Klatt ’16 St. Olaf College.

“The remembering self does more than remember & tell stories, it is the one that makes decisions. If you have a patient who is deciding which repeated surgical experience to choose, then, the one he chooses is the one that has the memory that is less bad.

The experiencing self has no voice in this choice. We actually don’t choose between experiences we choose between memories of experiences. And even when we think about the future we don’t think about the future as experiences. We think about the future as anticipated memories.” –Daniel Kahneman

The agenda of Somatic practice often, if not always, involves challenging divisive thinking about the self. Truly an individual is only one self, so the question this talk introduces is how to bring the experiencing and remembering ‘selves’ closer together? Pay attention. Pay attention to daily life and its mundanity. Designating attention intentionally makes moments count and doesn’t allow us discount them by turning them into memories that recall them as they were not. I’m no empirical research analyst, but I wonder if intentionally paying greater attention to the details of present experiences might allow memory to maintain their integrity. If the “remembering self” records experiences in a more truthful manner afforded by enhanced attention, the “experiencing self” has more authority and voice in decision-making process about future events and we can conceptualize these two “selves” as not-so-distinct.

“Its a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your front door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

J.R.R Tolkein

I am always amazed to find odd little pockets of somatic insight everywhere, even in one of the most popular novels of all time. A few notes on this passage:

1) Baggins never instructs Frodo not to go out the door, he only warns that it is dangerous. The first thing you do is “you step onto the road,” there is no question that this will come to pass.

2) The only question that arises is of whether or not the traveller will know where it is he will be swept away to. To avoid this ignorance, Baggins advises, “keep your feet.” Stay grounded. In yourself, in to roots of yourself, in the Hobbit’s noble broad base, the feet. Stay aware in the very thing that connects one to the world which will sweep him away.

But, truly the root of the traveller’s self is more than his feet.  It is his intentions that guide the actions of the self, including the feet. By staying grounded in his intentions, the traveller bears some knowledge of where the world is sweeping him, and of his participation in the sweeping journey too.

So lets turn the phrase, “If you keep your feet, there may be some knowing where you might be swept off to.”