Completing the Core
The past two weeks I’ve been working on truing the wheel of my life, starting with the most core areas and working outward. All of this is part of the ongoing theme of self healing that began way way back on January 1st 2009. Remember back that far? All the changes so far this year! Who’d a thunk it, eh?
So the quick recap is that 2 weeks ago we took on food, and last week we took on intimacy. Following the spiral of human development, once we have met our needs for food nourishment, and touch–connection–intimacy, the next step is to begin to increase our ability to move about.
Primary for the development of language and the nervous system, movement is one of the core areas of Self. As we move, so we think; as we move, so we speak; as we move, so we are.
Movement as Energy
So when we are truing our wheel and bringing ourselves into balance and wholeness, the sooner we get into movement, the sooner we examine our movement, the sooner we increase the range and quality of our movement, the sooner we will experience an increase in our vitality, in our sense of calm, and in our sense of place, of being in the right place at the right time to do what we are here to do.
If eating and touching, food nourishment and physical intimacy, are the core of our beingness, then movement is the thing that completes out core and then begins the transition outward into expression and doing. Movement helps us to ascertain and develop our sense of place in the world.
So as important as movement is, why are we so limited in our expression of it?
Consider the child, in constant expression of movement. Running, jumping, dancing, squirming, wiggling, giggling–so much energy expressed at movement. It is this movement itself that we call having energy, it is the movement of the child that tells us the child is full of energy. Energy expressed as movement.
Busting a New Move
And then consider the adult. For most of us, we live in a world of repetitive and limited movement. We do the same thing every day, from the time we wake up to the time we go to sleep. Our range and palette of motion is so very narrow, and hardly ever do we surprise ourselves by busting a new move, and when we do, it’s usually not a good thing! Like a fall, or something strenuous that wakes us up the next morning with an ouch!
The result of this movement streamlining is that our emotional and mental lives have become streamlined as well–we emote and think in the ways that we move, and we get narrower and narrower as the years go by. The groove becomes a rut.
What to do? Well, everyone is different, and there are so many options!
- Hiking and biking.
- Dancing and prancing.
- Tai chi and chi gong.
- The burgeoning world of yoga.
It’s an endless list of possibility, and the important thing is to shake it up and surprise ourselves, and in that spirit my project for the week is to walk ever day–on a new path! To find a different way to get where I am going, and to find a couple of new places to take some walks for pleasure.
And then to add to that a daily 15 minute session of Shiva Nata, that wacky brain training movement thingy that gets the arms and legs moving in all directions at the same time. Noting will shake up your nervous system in a good way like Dance of Shiva. Talk about let’s get lost! And laughter of course. No point getting intentional lost in the dance without working in a solid sense of humor.
Ultimately, it’s an impossible practice, as the whole point of the thing is to keep progressing to the point at which it becomes impossible! In some respects, Shiva Nata is the practice of making the impossible possible, and then abandoning the possible for the impossible. Woo hoo!
So that’s the week ahead. Shake up the movement, inspired by my son who is completely uninhibited in his crazy life of movement, who dances like no other, and who loves to run, jump, and climb.
Free your ass and your mind will follow, as they say. And may this be the week of free your movement and your life will follow. Salut!
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