move

[in progress]

move softly and with ease, when you can

because sometimes we can't - move at all, or move gently

sometimes the literal or proverbial boot on our neck twists and crushes us into not only paralysis but a deafness to what is going on in our bodies

and in order to heal, we need to know and feel where the pain is

it's cliche, but also a long and hard journey towards knowing: the mind and body are not two separate entities - so-called non-duality. we are one organism, and this is but a fractal; we also live in inter-being with all of the earth, one organism as it is, and with all of the cosmos. if the air, water and nutrients i ingest become a part of me, yet arise from 'outside' of me; then i am made up of only non-self elements. in Zen, this is sometimes contemplated with the koan:

what did your face look like,

before your parents were born?

the gateway to this cosmic whole-ness is being present, with and within our being: embodiment. because of how we've been corrupted and colonized out of our bodies and into our thoughts, we can begin to know what embodiment means as a dialectic; from knowing what it feels like to be disembodied, or ill.

lama rod on disembodiment

what the emotions really are, where they are in our body, what sits underneath our rage, what sits underneath tension that we hold ; what is the message that a certain physical

somatics is the field of

gentle slow movement

waking up to where our pain is stored; for me it is my hips. when i open them (and no, i don't mean as in spreading my legs lol but rather deep, hip opening postures such as 'burning log pose' below), i feel rage and grief pouring out

i can then feel into what it is i have been storing and ignoring. how much of this is inherited pain, and not only in the genetic sense? i think of my grandmother, in her later years suffering from crippling arthritis in her hips, and how even - or especially - as a child i could sense her emotional closure, the suffering she was not allowing herself to show. in what ways do i censor or deny what i know to be true about any given moment or situation, and how can my body be the compass to that?

kaya kriya