Most of the time we exist as ghosts tied pretty well down to the fluctuating tensional and neurochemical balances of our bodies, which are mostly on autopilot. if we are communicating, we are on autopilot. That includes talking to yourself AKA thinking. . . The thing most of us apparently cannot stop doing for a few moments no matter the reward. or, are we just addicted to communicating? Are symbols addictive? Absolutely. I am a junkie, are you? I love words, I’m not ashamed to hide it. Also gestures, postures, shapes, sounds, etc. Well actually that is a lie, I can be very ashamed of this periodically imagined flaw in me.

Lets compare our species’ use of symbols with our use of screens. Most of us cannot escape symbol land without greatly heightened anxiety. Many of us are getting the same with screens.

SO, what are the basics of learning to interact with bodies, with discovering how to operate these Earthships, these meat suits? Well, if your are serious you are going to learn biological and bio-energetic anatomy. I cannot stress the value of creating a life-size, holographic model of our anatomies superimposed over each other (including chakras, meridians, sephirot, etc). This helps you interpret reality whenever you feel like actually attempting to pay attention. Not a common thing for most of us.

A place to start is discovering what you are doing without realizing it. You want to increase access to your body and if you do not start from a place where chaotic discovery and the unknown have a place. How do we do things? In the vast majority of situations, we do things with our muscles.

Another place to start is discovering what is happening that you did not realize. Anatomy teaches us that we only know anything about the outside world through our senses, through our body picking up physical energies and transforming them into neural signals. The foundation of all knowing is sensing.

We can use the yin-yang symbol to model this basic physical-energetic model of our existence. Awareness comes as energy enters our senses then central nervous System: we know things about the near-current state of our inner and outer environments. Action comes as energy exiting our Central nervous system: we change the state of our bodies and our environments. As this happens, more information is coming in, updating our environmental models. Some actions we hope keep happening when we are not in control: heart beating, breathing, blinking, holding ourselves upright with countless reflexes and coordinated muscular contractions, dilating and contracting blood vessels, lymphatics. . . and then we are also monitoring how our body is responding to the actions we are making: do we need to rest or move? does anything? Am I hungry or thirsty? It is the song that never ends until we die. We die when we cannot listen to it any more. Sounds like a decent description of A-D type diseases?

How can we discover what we are doing with our bodies? By paying attention. Sometimes it’s that simple. Sometimes we need some help delving into unfamiliar or forgotten waters. Here are some basic tools I lean on regularly to understand and unwind pain/dysfunction patterns of all kinds. It pays big dividends long term to understand how a certain approach can affect you over various time-scales.

Lift-drop: lift up a body part, then drop it. How many ways can you do this? What did you learn?

Tense-relax: tense a body region, then relax it. How many ways can you do this? What did you learn?

Stillness: attempt and fail to be still (heart beating + breathing = literally impossible while alive). How still can you get? Can you still muscle twitches? Can you calm your heart? Can you breath more gently? What did you learn?

Mobility: take a joint, set of joints, or body region through a path within it’s range of motion. How many ways can you do this? What did you learn?

Breath: How many ways can you breathe? What did you learn in each one? How did they change into each other?

Stretching: bring a joint, set of joints, or body region up to an edge of it’s range of motion with the intent of increasing expanding that part of the range a bit. How many ways can you do this? What did you learn?

Activate: perform a movement with some quality of repetition to generate heat within you, exert yourself, and discover/expand your movement limits. How many ways can you do this? What did you learn?

No-Form: stand in any way that supports vertical rest and be nothing. For more explanation from an expert, GO HERE “as all self-governing bodies eventually realize, real power (not control), real freedom (not ego-independence) and real creativity (not consumerism) stems from intimacy with the formless, invisible sources — the fertile void — behind all palpable, visible and manifest effects. – Antero Alli

Sense and Feel: lying on your back with your eyes open, continuously verbalize whatever you are sensing and feeling. For more information, GO HERE.

Sounding: Make sounds. How many ways can you do this? What did you learn?

I enjoy hearing about interesting results. I’ll probably post some more thoughts on other embodied experiments soon.