Facilitating movement
Culture has taught us how to suspend our breath in words, ideas, ideals sometimes into breathing artificially or leaving us breathless.
We spend alot of our time as adults in ways that fuel the motor of production and consumption.
We are often fragmented and disassociated. Our minds wander far and wide away from the material mass that we are.
But our culture says that our minds are superior and that we are superior to nature. We turn away from our life energy that feeds and cultivates us.
Did you know that plants are highly collaborative and generous both within their species as well as through interspecies relations with fungi insects and mammals? They have extremely intricate and lively systems of communication. But vegetal life is ghostly in someways, apart from the definite images we remember of the seasons changing, a plant sometimes takes hours or days to react to an impulse.
For us responsibilities are sometimes overwhelming. There is no easy way of navigating the haunted world we find ourselves in.
If air is crucial for life, it is also essential to ensure the cohesion of a physical and even a spiritual whole, be it individual or collective.
It allows us to be both a body and a soul, and for the atmosphere to undergo changes of density and temperature. As it is able to make possible the transition from the materiality of our body to the subtlety of our soul.. But if a lack of consideration for air in our way of thinking makes our thoughts rigid through a sort of drying, the lack of respect for the atmosphere transforms its Ï°uidity into a glass roof. Inhalation is largely related to the sympathetic while the exhalation brings attention to and inervates the paraysmpathetic.
Today:
Self regulation can be thought of on an anatomical and physiological level but also through the imaginary and spiritual.
Forge an alliance between the divine and the mortal.
Body-brain
In releasing our bodies into gravity we reduce sympathetic arousal, if our vagus nerve may already be damaged by day to day traumas, by deep listening, slow-time introceptive awareness, we travel to the tissues where there may be holding, we listen perhaps we can begin to repair and restore some of that damage or simply come together with our life source.
Step by step:
Today I will invite you into some soft tissue rolling into the gravity into the fascial matrix, that wonderful web which in the patriarchal society we live in is often overlooked. This relationship is deeply personal, and fascinating, the fascial matrix is omnidirectional, the largest organ e nveloping all other parts. Every bone, muscle, blood vessel and nerve. It weaves, shapes, enfolds and holds us together. It is deeply intelligent. Think of that geography, when you touch one part you touch the whole.
Superficial fascia is the lowermost layer of the skin in nearly all of the regions of the body, that blends with the reticular dermis layer.[4] It is present on the face, over the upper portion of the sternocleidomastoid, at the nape of the neck, and overlying the breastbone.
Visceral fascia[edit]
Visceral fascia (also called subserous fascia) suspends the organs within their cavities and wraps them in layers of connective tissue. Each of the organs is covered in a double layer of fascia.
Deep fascia
Deep fascia is a layer of dense fibrous connective tissue which surrounds individual muscles.] Deep fascia is also richly supplied with sensory receptors.
One of the most important and life-changing realizations about fascia and its biotensegrity is how the spiral is a deep pattern of and in our beingness. ‘Chirality is the term given to the spiral nature of structure in volume; and “chirality is the direction of its spiral, achieved on all scales”’
(Avison 2018: 60). Chirality can be seen in all living creatures and plants,
where the spiral and counter-spiral support growth and expansion within
three-dimensional volume.
(inviting people to experience their three-dimensional volume and roundedness, rather than their two-dimensionality)
Reducing sympathetic arousal. If there is anguish patterned in our nervous systems we reach out to the living tissues to nourish and cultivate and expand and we do this in a room, together. We can find that our body mind is intraspersonal and one or many may even reach transcendental dimensions by attending to the vagus nerve.
Close eyes.
• Settle into floor, softening and releasing the weight of your body into
ground (earth). Place a pillow behind your head so you can support your
neck from C7 to the occipital bone. Attention to the neck, shoulders to the ventral branch of the vagus nerve.
Soften into the body, our minds land softly in our living tissues, feel into the skin, beneath it, we are full of fluid, feel the surges and swells and let us travel with motor neurons. We are body, a solar system.
I invite everyone to move their focus into breath, settle in the diaphragm, take a slow inhalation and release with a nice exhalation, continue.(thorax/ lungs) (moment by moment)...... • Invite breath to come into your awareness. Sense breath. Rest in breath.
Sense the gentle motion of breath. Contact the rise (inhalation) and fall
(exhalation). Sense breath moving within tissues. Invite breath to find
space in cells. Rest in cells…..gravity. breathing is what allows for a passage from vegetative life to spiritual life.
Take your minds eye to Rest in the heart. The autonomic nervous system, Bringing conscious awareness to the automic nervous system which functions below everyday awareness. Bring awareness to the heart organ. Think of the fascia surrounding it.
Listen, sense perceive, Invite you to dwell, sense the viscerality of the body…self touch the skin on the wrist, the hand, see if you can feel the ebbs and flows under the surface. Time slows down. Sense the quality of the skin and the land around you.
Let the mind return to the tissues, to its source, we are here in this room recovering from the body-mind duality. And when the mind floats about/ above, skybound, don’t judge yourself, gently catch it, like a butterfly, and hold it. Take it to your tissues, take your wandering there. You may want to put your hand there on your frontal lobe. Feel the texture of the forehead, is the skin tight or stretched? Jaw, mouth sounding, softening the face. Sense your skin and muscles and fascia with your fingers,
follow any movement of unwinding.
Let us attend to the VAGUS nerve. Release the weight of your head into the pillow from C7 all the way to the occipital bone. Invite the trapezius to release and the sternocleidomastoid overhead work such as painting, carpentry, or hanging curtains. Bring into awareness the brainstem. Distill your awareness in this area. Shift your awareness into the occipital bone. Trace the pathway of the vagus nerve – breathe into its presence.
Rest into the landscape that is the body. (fulcrums) Contact and rest into your fulcrums, of support: the occipital bone, the scapulae, the sacrum and sacroiliac joints. Gently release in these fulcrums and any others you may find – then rest in delicious decompression.
Notice how you feel as you release into ground (earth). Sense, trace and notice – allow holding, torsions, pain and twists to come into awareness; how do they need to unwind? Rest in this awareness. Following impulses of unwinding. Gently compress and release areas of tension, pain and holding – sensing
into tiny pathways of release. Wait for delicious decompression to arrive.
Rest settle tip pour yield roll glide slide. Fulcrums of support. Tip, pur , yield, across floor. The floor is safe, you can always come back to the floor. Ease into nature, become part of the landscape. Sense the difference between you and it. Pour yourself into gravity. (pivot tip roll yield push reach lengthen squeeze ripple undulate.
Have a little play there. Yes your tissues, so nutritious. Releases all the stress of being vertical. (sea star) suction pads. Ripple. Being vertical is apparently what makes us human, facing the word and eachother. Play with the vertical you and the curl up you. And dwell in the fluid body. Dissolve. (sinovial fluid)
Receive and explore the floors touch. Feel your skin and fascia. Be tender to all the layers. Use the floor as a fulcrum of rest and force. Play with some gentle pressures. How can you support eachother?
Imagine you are a fish, and the water around has dried up, suddenly you are on land.
Gravity, gravity, gravity, gravity draws you to the centre of the earth, but you never collapse under the force of gravity. Something keeps you radial, omnidirectional, growing out, with roundedness and volume. Of note, breath is the mediator.
I now invite you into some soft tissue rolling, feel into those luscious synovial joints. Squeeze, stretch, compress, decompress in gravity. Let the stiff fascia come into fluency. Is it dehydrated? Listen to it, it may be shouting out. Squeeze like an orange.
Radiating out and radiating in) deformation, distortion and asymmetry, noticing how the organism reorganizes itself through compression and tensility.
Softening, rolling, pouring, yielding, melting, easing, releasing, flowing, tissue fluency. Your body is fluid, free flowing and wave
like. You are not limited to one direction or one limb or two, you have many limbs. You spiral off in many directions.
If you feel like doing so bring some attention to the cranial bones, the sphenoid and occipital bones. Allow some self touch.
Sense into the tissues…. Do any images occur? Notice the images of the landscape arising. The shapes, the colours and the textures, symbols maybe. What can you hear? Birdsong?
Bathosphere - engagement, keep moving…
Bring stillness and rest in breath and space and time.
Body as original source. Mark make, togetherness social, noise, an interrelated network. Our transpersonal selves together. Symbolic or active expressive of our collectivity or collective unconscious. So we draw as a verb, to express life, not to remake it.
Speak in the first person - present tense and share your experience.
THEORY INTO PRACTICE: CARING FOR THE VAGUS NERVE AND
VENTRAL BRANCH OF THE VAGUS (THE CRANIAL NERVES)
• Settle into floor, softening and releasing the weight of your body into
ground (earth).
Place a pillow behind your head so you can support your
neck from C7 to the occipital bone.
• Contact and rest into your fulcrums of support: the occipital bone, the
scapulae, the sacrum and sacroiliac joints. Gently compress and release in
these fulcrums – then rest in delicious decompression.
• Invite breath to come into your awareness. Sense breath. Rest in breath.
Sense the gentle motion of breath. Contact the rise (inhalation) and fall
(exhalation). Sense breath moving within tissues. Invite breath to find
space in cells. Rest in cells pooling in gravity.
• Release the weight of your head into the pillow from C7 all the way to the
occipital bone. Invite the trapezius to release and the sternocleidomastoid.
• Bring into awareness the brainstem. Distill your awareness in this area.
• Shift your awareness into the occipital bone.
• Trace the pathway of the vagus nerve – breathe into its presence.
• Notice how you feel as you release into ground (earth). Sense, trace and
notice – allow holding, torsions, pain and twists to come into awareness;
how do they need to unwind? Rest in this awareness. Following impulses
of unwinding.
• Gently compress and release areas of tension, pain and holding – sensing
into tiny pathways of release. Wait for delicious decompression to arrive.
• Drop your awareness back into the occipital bone, both the external and
internal surfaces. Pour the weight of the skull from side to side.
• Drop your awareness into the brainstem. Sense into the cranial nerves.
Invite slow micro-movement to initiate from the brainstem, the occiput,
unwinding the neck.
• Drop your awareness into the face inviting the facial nerve to come into
awareness. Sense your skin and muscles and fascia with your fingers,
follow any movement of unwinding.
• Invite the trigeminal nerve into awareness, encouraging the temporomandibular joint (jaw) to release. Invite gentle movements in the jaw. Always
invite breath to come into awareness; follow and unwind with your jaw.
• Invite your face and jaw into your dance, expanding and releasing the jaw
– allow the body to follow.
• Invite the muscles of the face into self-regulatory pathways of unwinding
Shift your awareness to the sacrum and sacroiliac joints. Invite compression, release and decompression.
• Roll from side to side across the sacroiliac joints onto the ilia and iliac
crests – notice the soft tissues snuggly hugging and spreading on the
inside and outside of the ilia – sense their spongy nature.
• Sometimes rest on the iliac crests, like they are a cliff or ridge, invite gentle
compression and release.
• Invite the legs to freely express in response to your point of consciousness
in the sacral areas.
• Play between the cranial bones and the sacrum, swapping your point of
attention and consciousness a number of times.
• Trace, track and sense each vertebra through the sacral, lumbar, thoracic
and cervical spine – and back down again – rest in places of tensions or
points of pain
• Rest in T4 between the scapulae – notice any holding, pain – breathe
unwind.
• Rest in L5–S1 – the lumbo-sacral region – notice any holding, pain –
breathe unwind.
• Initiate movement from the sacrum again – invite the rest of the body to
respond rather than hold.
• Initiate movement from the cranial bones again – invite the rest of the
body to respond rather than hold.
• Play between these two parasympathetic neural outpourings (the cranium
and sacrum).
• Invite the spine to unwind, following and flowing between these two
points of consciousness
• Shift your awareness between T1 and L2 – where the sympathetic nerves
are neutrally expressing – invite breath, softening, unwinding, unlocking
and releasing.
• Notice how the arms and legs respond to the vertebral column.
• Notice how the arms and legs respond to the sacrum and cranial bones.
Let go of the structure and move into free self-regulatory movement.
Write and mark-make: continue to bring the living life of the body into
consciousness on the page in front of you
Soft-tissue rolling, melting, compressing, pressuring and tensility
When you invite your participants into self-regulatory practice, remember
the fascia enjoys different pressures, frictions, rolling, lengthening, stretching,
melting, reaching, releasing, compressing, gliding and sliding. When working
with fascia I always start in gravity. After the client has softened and arrived
in gravity, and has initiated self-regulatory movement from their own proprioceptive and interoceptive feedback, I invite and offer the following (not in any
particular order):
• Invite clients to soften, melt and pour their weight, encouraging softtissue rolling.
• Invite the extensor muscles to lengthen supporting sympathetic release
and a move into the parasympathetic.
• Invite clients into different pressures, compressions and release,
remembering the Pacini and paniciform receptors ‘respond well to
rapid changes of pressure, and this develops proprioceptive feedback
and kinaesthetic awareness’ (Schleip 2003: 143).
• Invite clients into sustained pressure and releasing, remembering
the Ruffuni receptors ‘respond to sustained pressure, as well as a soft
melting and yielding quality; these receptors are evidenced to inhibit
sympathetic arousal’ (Schleip 2003: 143). Rapid changes and sustained
pressure will also stimulate the interstitial receptors causing a change
in vasodilation.
• Invite participants into slow stretch which stimulates the Golgi receptors ‘resulting in a lowered firing rate of specific alpha neurons, which
translates into a decrease, or softening, of related tissues’ (Schleip 2003:
143).
• Invite a play into tension and compression, which augments and
enhances bio-tensit
exploring omnidirectional volume (inviting people to experience
their three-dimensional volume and roundedness, rather than their
two-dimensionality);
Fascia and biotensegrity
• compression and tension (inviting people to explore the interplay
between compression and tensile forces);
• gravity and ground reaction force (sensing the earth’s pull and ground
reaction force);
• centripetal and centrifugal sensing (exploring how compressive and
tensile forces can be felt as radiating out and radiating in);
• floating bones and joints (exploring practices that invite the bones and
joints to float);
• chirality and counter-chirality (inviting spirals and counter-spiralling
patterns in sensory relationship with gravity and ground reaction force);
• de-differentiation of body tissues, parts and systems, exploring the
body and fascial matrix as a fluid continuum,
• deformation, distortion and asymmetry, noticing how the organism
reorganizes itself through compression and tensility
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