“Do you know why you shouldn’t worry about the world ending on December 21st?”

“No, why?”

“Because in Australia its already tomorrow.”

I heard this conversation between two brothers on the plane right home for the holidays. Although articulated in a simple fashion the older brother was getting at a very profound point about the substance of the world. If it is already tomorrow in Australia, that means that December 21st would arrive there before it came here and it is illogical that the world would destruct sequentially, beginning at the international dateline and proceeding around, because all parts of the world share the same substance. All the Earth’s countries are really aspects of a whole that on the level of existence or non-existence cannot be separated.

Consider the body in the same light. A slight chemical imbalance in an isolated area of the brain changes the demeanor of the entire person and sometimes his or her ability to communicate, fashion of moving etc…. A cramp in a muscle prevents the entire runner from finishing the race. A damaged nerve paralyzes. Every part is just as much the whole as the whole is because it is all of the same substance. Connection renders the parts inseparable.

So also, with our relationships to others and to our environment. In 21st century life I imagine it would be challenging to describe my experience of my life and my self without addressing technology, my family and friends, my place. All of these have bearing on the development of my self and I on the beings of all those other things and so we become a whole. Now imagine in my place all the others that stood before me establishing it in the ways it would influence me and preparing the place to be influenced by me. Imagine all the people who my family and friends know. They say only 6 degrees of freedom separate any two people on this planet of 4.7 billion and our interconnectedness establishes a whole. What if we thought of politics in this way?

I started saying all the countries of the Earth and all the limbs of the body are whole because they are of the same substance. What then, is the substance that we all share in our connections that makes humanity whole? I tend my connection to all those places, things, and people like precious plants in my garden because I am fond of them. Our substance is love. I am sure of it.

I believe there is a difference between function and purpose. Both answer the question, “what does it do?” but I think purpose also answers, “What is it for?” Purpose explains intention. That said, I am always interested in the structural similarities and functional cooperation between the upper and lower body.

The sutras* offer lines of continuum throughout the body, and call into connection parts of the body that are related in structural and functional similarity. Interestingly we are aware of these similarities as infants. When we are startled, our upper and lower joints flex together drawing everything inward to protect the vital organs in our front body. Differentiation between the joints is only honed as we enter society and learn the common uses and purposes of these joints. We don’t use our pelvis-knees-feet to connect with people! That is the purpose of our solar-plexus-shoulder-elbow-hands! Similarly we don’t stabilize the body with the upper limb complex, but these purposesare trained, and this training has had an evolutionary effect on our structure.

“You are the product of your life, the proof of your approach”… except we are also the product of the approach of all of the history of the human race! The purposes of the parts of the body are engrained in their architrecture because of the way those parts have been used advantageously (or not so…) over thousands of years. But imagine that this is not necessarily the case. Consider monkeys who open bananas with their toes and acrabats who walk just as easily on their hands! Imagine if our pelvis was for greeting others?! What would that change about the value of sex and the vulnerability of the front body?

*the sutras are pathways of connective tissue that can be physically dissected, but enforce energetic connection between parts of the living body.

“Rabbit’s clever,” said Pooh thoughtfully.
“Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit’s clever.”
“And he has Brain.”
“Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit has Brain.”
There was a long silence.
“I suppose,” said Pooh, “that that’s why he never understands anything.”

When an organ is conceptualized as an external tool for internal processing and understanding, we forget that the organ itself, its process, and its product, are equally part of the person. I don’t have a body, I am body. Rabbit doesn’t have brain, but Rabbit isn’t just brain either. Rabbit is all the things that make up Rabbit including the brain, but, as Pooh points out, once we conceptualize the self as only one part, we cease to understand the whole.

Consider your models. Yoga is a great practice to train the minds’ attention in cooperation with embodied activity, but the how and the why of the activity are important too. The mindfulness purpose of yoga that exists as it was originally practiced in eastern cultures has been distorted for the purposes of exercise or a dieting tool or increasing flexibility.

This, for example, doesn’t look healthy to me.

Seriously honor the integrity of your spine’s natural counterbalancing curves. When you stand do you tip your head back like that looking at the sky?  The handstand serves the purpose to put your vertical alignment into gravity in a new way so you must attend to the trueness of that verticality. This means don’t look to the ground. Look forward…just like you do everyday of your life. Why should it be any different when life is turned upside down?

“We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.”

I’ve learned animals are AMAZING models of the basic actions patterns and motivations that underscore our complex movements. Sherry, correct me if any of the captions are wrong. Click on the images to open the full size.

-Julia

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Where do words come from? Who decided that a certain combination of sounds makes a syllable that has meaning and combines with other syllables that complexify meaning?

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So let’s think about the word Somatics. Does its meaning reflect our intentions in using it?

Soma, of greek origin means, body or bodily. Thomas Hanna used the term soma meaning the whole body or person as experienced from within, in more than a sense that is only physical. This makes me wonder what the greeks meant by soma as the object body. Part of the reason Somatics is so difficult to define is that there is no language in english for this fundamental concept of the body as a whole, and because there is no vocabulary for it, there is little concept of it. Awareness of the body as a whole in all its physical and mental and emotional processes is too big to conceptualize simultaneously for those who have not had practice understanding the self in this way throughout life. The second origin also intrigues me. Bodily says to me referring to, but not necessarily of the body. If the very root of a word refers to something else can it have its own definition?

ics, rooted in both greek and latin, meaning organized knowledge, or treatment. I think of words like mechanics, academics, aerodynamics, aesthetics, statistics. They are all fields that include a set of systems to address the same knowledge content. Somatics seems to fit under this category given that it comprises many body methods (most having therapeutic origins, possibly falling under the category of treatment.) But something still feels weird about limiting the field to the practices it includes. I feel Somatics is more about a value set those practices endorse rather than the practices themselves.

One other possibility I considered is that Somatics is a study. logy vs ology meaning “the study of.” (Consider biology, logic, archeology, analogy…) Unfortunately the anthropologists have already taken “somatology,” defined as the study or science of the human body, through the lens of anthropology. Somatics has no disciplinal lens. The only lens that is applied is the life experience of each individual, however the value-set of Somatics can be used as a lens over other disciplines. Imagine learning about Chemistry from a Somatics point of view!

One alternative I considered comes from the value of embodiment and experience in Somatics, and bears the point of view that Somatics is a study. I came up with embodiology, the study of embodiment. Whether that is studying how to embody a personal value set or how to sense and perceive the world with real awareness of a person’s embodied participation in it. That seems to get at a few of the problems and propositions above, but again only comes from one aspect of the Somatics value-set. What do you think of my new word?

-Julia

Bryson Andres Cover of One Republic’s Secrets

As part of his method, Alexander warns against what he calls, end-gaining, that is approaching a project giving attention only to the end product and not the process to reach that goal. In this video the musician builds a remix cover of One Republic’s Secrets by recording loops that form the baseline and harmony that layer underneath varying melodies. What is interesting is that the building process is as much a part of the product as is the cover itself because he establishes these layers in performance. However, he doesn’t just establish the underlying parts then play the cover, but the piece becomes something completely independent of its inspiration. What if he had layered the phrases differently? It would be a different song…with the same ending. Furthermore, he finds other melodies to contribute to the piece that are not part of the original song by allowing the process to lead the song instead of his intention to cover Secrets. By allowing the development to be part of the performance the musician affords himself the freedom to invent each subsequent line, opening up creative potential. It is this ethos that also underlies movement improvisation. The next step, the next phrase, is uncharted territory, yet it is informed by what came before and by what the mover wants to establish. Each step of how the mover establishes his or her intention is governed by the process and the development carries as much weight as the product, because it IS the product.

-Julia Moser-Hardy

“We wouldn’t look at ourselves at the end of say 5 or 10 years and wonder how we got that way, but rather realize that we did it.” -André Bernard