Our fluid body - Nuestro cuerpo fluído

The spine's segmental anatomy lends to its being articulated in wave forms. To begin this exploration and release some of the cultural conditioning and held tensions, you are invited to explore lateral and dorsal-ventral undulation.  To enhance the resonant environment sound is an excellent resource, as India has recognized for thousands of years in the form of mantras.  For this exploration two supportive sounds that compliment front to back and side to side undulations are "ew" (as in dew) and "ee" (as in see), respectively.

“Undulatory movements are not utilitarian in the conventional sense; it is not an efficient movement for “fetch wood—carry water.” It is, however, a vital movement for restoration.” —Emilie Conrad. “Life on Land”. 

One of the basic movements of water is the wave.  Our bodies are made up of more than 70% water.  Thomas Hanna has said that we never really left the sea, we found the way to bring the sea with us to the land.  It is our inner environment still. Water is responsive to sound, to vibration, to electrical currents, one of its native forms is undulatory.  On the fascinating capacities of waves is the encoding and transmission of information, whatever its medium, water, air or earth, or in our bodies themselves.  It is through its fluid, undulatory nature that water brings into touch with resiliency.

“The Primordial Anatomy re-capitulates the atmosphere of the sea even though the movement is taking place on land. The same buoyancy that we experience when in water returns as our internal sea becomes more dominant.” —Emilie Conrad, "Life on Land"

Emilie Conrad, a dancer, then a great innovator in the field of somatics identified three anatomies of our body.  It it through our bodies that we experience existence and thereby describe it.  Normally we describe reality through the conditioned cultural anatomy that is imposed by the society, parents and institutions from the outside.  We take on this patterning, this filter and call it reality.  But Conrad has identified two other anatomies:  the primordial anatomy and the cosmic anatomy. The primordial anatomy recapituates the sea, or origins.  In addressing the cosmic anatomy Emilie says it can be thought of quintessencial unity where all nourishment is available, it is much harder to grasp from the mind with language as in quintessential unity, there is no other, there are no objects.

For now the focus is on the primordial anatomy, our fluid body and its implications to movement and experience as a birthrightas human beings, as vertebrates.  The invitation being offered is to experience, and reembody the spine from a fluid experience, from a wave form, containing and transmitting information to the whole body.

Even bone becomes more resilient cartilaginous when in a more resonant vibratory environment. When we have abandoned the hardened survival circuitry of fight-flight-freeze, the whole system becomes more available to sustainance, more permeable to new information, the feeling tones change, to nourishing sensual, pleasurable

In engaging the fluity of the spine consciously, we activate our biointelligence, that intelligence which the body itself is an expression of, but from which our awareness is largely divorced.  It is an intelligence with is universal, not homosapien-centric, but rather an expression of the body of life itself in all its myriad forms.  Taking a peek into the organization of the human  brain we find that there is a section near the center called the somatosensorial cortex.  It is in this part of the brain that our felt or proprioceptive "map" of the body is held, where ability to consciously sense our bodies is held.  And this part of the brains acuity or sensitivity can be developed.



An additional breath resource which is very effective for moving vital energy in the body in the yogic tradition is called "ujjayi pranayama".  It consistists in closing or constricting the base of the throat very slightly so that the breath becomes audible.

While working with the spine, intersperse the soft front to back undulation with the side to side undulation, using the audible breath, that Emilie at times called the lunar breath or bone breath, as describe.  Take time to pause in open attention to sense deeply what you begin to perceive through your proprioceptive capacity to feel your body.

Explore this undulatory dance of the spirne for half an hour to an hour, and then write about your experience, your observations, anything that changed, anything that surprised you.