Put some sky around your heart:
body-centered communication with
the living world
by John R. Stowe MS, LMT
“Open your feet like roots into Earth. Let go of the load you’ve been carrying.”
“Find the mountains in your
bones. Breathe into them and ask
what they want to show you.”
“Breathe. Put some sky around your heart. Give it space to fly.”
In the quest to foster meaningful connections
between individuals and the natural world, one very powerful tool is the
inherent knowing of our own bodies. Body
awareness is built around feelings, sensations, images, and energies carried
within the muscles and soft tissues. Its
content is often quite different from the more logical, word-based perceptions
of the conscious mind. One of the things
I’ve learned as a massage therapist is that this stored material has a
significant effect not only on posture, mobility, and vitality, but also on our
capacity to make significant changes in attitudes and behaviors. Body-centered healing techniques like
massage, yoga, breathwork, and conscious movement are vital for encouraging
overall alignment, clarity, and personal fulfillment.
With clients,
I’ve seen that one of the most effective ways to communicate with body
awareness is through the use of imagery.
When guiding someone to focus on an area that feels “stuck” or tight,
linear directions such as, “What do you think that’s connected to…” are usually
less effective than a more body-centered approach. For this, we might begin gently -- “Breathe
into your shoulder and notice what you feel there.” We could then explore generalized sensations
-- “What color or texture do you see in there?” -- or seek more specific
impressions --“If this area were a person, what might s/he look like? What would s/he be wearing?” Coupled with conscious breathing, this sort
of inquiry allows individuals to move gently and deeply into their own
experience of body awareness.
Image-based
communication works two ways. In
addition to eliciting information, it’s also a great way to give direction. Most people respond very well to suggestions
framed within symbols or images. To
release generalized tension, for example, the body takes its cue from a
suggestion to “feel a waterfall of cool, white light that washes through you
from crown to feet.” In other
situations, we create more personalized images -- “Let the sun shine through
your chest, so bright that it protects your heart and surrounds your
children. Let the light do the work
you’ve been trying to do.” Though the
client and I sometimes work together for a while to find the most appropriate
image, it’s usually fairly obvious when we get there. Not only is there a feeling of “rightness,”
but the body often responds with spontaneous sighs, shaking, tears, or
laughter.
Communication
with images and symbols is equally effective for moving beyond individualized
body-awareness toward a deep connection with the greater body of the living
world. For me, an important part of this
connection has come through the use of flower essences. Flower essences are vibrational remedies,
first created by Dr. Edward Bach, that tap the subtle energies of the natural
world. Somewhat similar to homeopathics,
flower essences are popular for encouraging balance and alignment around
specific emotional, psychological, and spiritual issues. They act as a gentle, effective complement to
most other therapeutic modalities. Since
1984, I’ve prepared remedies from flowers local to the southeastern US and used
them in conjunction with bodywork and counseling.
In addition to
the physical techniques, a major aspect of preparing flower essences is deep,
meditative attunement with the flower and the living matrix from which it
arises. This communication is almost
always nonverbal and expresses through feelings, sensations, and images. With the huge fragrant white flowers of
Southern Magnolia, for example, I feel myself rise through the trunk of the
tree to look down upon the world and my place in it. The sensation is pleasant, easy, and a bit
heady. Although I record the impressions
with words – “perspective, vision, dreaming, relaxing into one’s life path” --
the process feels more like translation, along the lines of using musical
notation to approximate something that words don’t really capture. These first impressions form the core of
preliminary guidelines that we subsequently refine by using the remedy with
individuals.
Sharing flower
remedies with clients is a lot like playing matchmaker. The relationship between an individual and a
remedy is unique and personal. Although
each flower essence tends to encourage alignment around a particular concern,
the specific steps involved vary from one person to the next. For that reason, imagery is especially useful
for explaining what to expect. Whenever
possible, I try to share pictures.
“Liriope flower essence often comes up when you feel like a puppet with
someone else holding the strings, or like you’re dancing too close to your
partner and stepping on each other’s feet.”
The person adds meaning by interpreting the images in terms of his or
her own life circumstances. This way of
speaking seems to bypass mental expectations and engage a more holistic type of
understanding. Often the body appears to
“grok” the images directly, responding with unexpected feelings and sensations,
and the person feels a strong desire to participate actively in his or her own
process.
Why does
communication using images and symbols work so directly? Maybe it’s because images are an internal
representation of external form, conveying qualities like shape, size, and
texture. I can think of many examples in
which living systems use form to transmit and process information. Within our cells, proteins regulate cellular
operations as a function of their shape.
Small shifts in outward configuration mean big changes in how a protein
acts – or we could say, in how it shares information. At an organismal level, form and function go
hand in hand. I remember taking
invertebrate zoology in grad school. By
the end of the term -- after we’d memorized a mind-boggling array of organs and
appendages -- it was very clear that every animal carries the environmental
strategies it needs for survival encoded within its own anatomy. Behaviorists describe the rigidly structured
“rituals” through which many animals negotiate the intricacies of mating and
conflict resolution. On a larger scale,
look at how form and structure affect the environmental impact of different
human activities. Compare the square
fields and monocultural “efficiency” of agribusiness with the nature-mimicking
polyculture of more traditional societies -- or the sprawl of cities like
Can we draw a
line between our own bodies and the rest of the living world? In both, external form – or its internal
representation through imagery – appears to be an essential element of
information storage and processing.
(Even typing, I see it: “in-form–ation”). If this be the case, we’d expect
body-centered experience to be a very potent path to receiving insights from
Nature. It certainly seems to hold true. Over and over in workshops, I’ve seen
participants access profound awareness by using their bodies to capture the
form and energies of the living world.
--- “As I sat there drawing the
sunflower, I felt it coming into me, making my spine want to be tall and
straight. I felt joyful to be alive,
just as I am, and wanted to share that with the whole world!”
--- “When I asked the apple tree to
show me a dance, my body started moving from the center of my heart. I felt the Earth flowing up into me, then
overflowing into the world. The sense of
receiving was so deep that after a while I had no choice but to give back or
burst. That made me really happy.
Telling it now, I feel like crying. I
wish I could be that open all the time…”
Body-centered
processes help individuals move beyond their habitual perspectives and open to
new input. Do the insights come from
within the person, maybe through a shift from left- to right-brain
awareness? Do they come from an actual
Nature consciousness, or perhaps an interaction between both? A good case can be made for all three
possibilities, yet in practical terms it doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that the perceptions are
valid and deeply meaningful for the individuals involved and often inspire them
to make significant changes in both behavior and world-view.
If we look
around, we see many other examples of body-centered communion with the living
world. Since ancient times, peoples
around the globe have employed chanting, drumming, ritual dance, and other
body-based techniques to move beyond the realm of the rational. Many long-standing traditions use fasting,
sensory deprivation, “teacher plants,” and solitude in Nature to facilitate
transcendent awareness and personal vision.
In two fascinating books, Martín Prechtel describes the elaborate
ceremonies by which the traditional Maya “feed” the world of spirit and
nature. To communicate with these unseen
realms, the emphasis is on form, as individuals and community translate their
intentions into outward creations of “beauty and eloquence.” In a similar way, Joanna Macy and John Seed
encourage participants in the Council of All Beings to step into direct,
body-centered awareness in order to evoke a core-level shift in their image of
self in relation to the living world.
What if we
took the principle a step further? In
our attempts to surmount environmental challenges, what if we encouraged a more
holistic, body-centered approach? Would
governmental panels convened to address, say, global warming be more effective
if they included not only scientists and politicians, but also poets, artists,
and architects? What if UN commissions
on hunger or AIDS invited participation from dancers and musicians, or if the
head of the EPA were required to know the traditional ritual invocations for
the spirits of mountain, river, and air?
If we listened to our own bodies, trusted their wisdom, and began to see
with broader vision, what kind of world might we be able to create?
References:
Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown. Coming
Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World. (New Society Publishers, 1998).
Martín
Prechtel. Secrets of the Talking Jaguar: Memoirs from
the Living Heart of a Mayan Village.
(Jeremy Tarcher, 1998).
________. Long Life, Honey in the Heart: A Story of
Initiation and Eloquence from the Shores of a Mayan Lake. (Jeremy
Tarcher, 1999).
John R. Stowe. Earth Spirit Warrior: a nature based guide to authentic living. (Findhorn Press, 2002).
Flower Essence Services at http://www.floweressence.com.
Vibration Magazine (online magazine devoted to
flower essences) – at http://www.essences.com
John R. Stowe
M.S., LMT is author of Earth Spirit
Warrior: a nature based guide to authentic living. (Findhorn Press, 2002).
Contact him at: jrstowe@mindspring.com or www.goodweeds.com.
