Are You Flowing?
May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back like children.
—Rainer Maria Rilke
There are times when I come across a poetic verse that sticks with me. I memorize it and carry in my heart. I wonder what the author might have been thinking or the mood that solicited the penned words. I wonder what circumstances prompted a particular collection of symbolic expressions that end up serving as inspiration for centuries to come or how the words might have soothed the writer’s troubled thoughts.
The concept of flowing usually comes easily to me as a dancer, it means my body is in sync with the rhythm of the music, the movements, and that I’m present to the moment. That doesn’t mean that during a practice this level of communication is consistent. Occasionally there are moments of disembodiment, a fragment of the desired shape gets lost. It’s a sign of disconnection. Attempting to re-claim my balance or re-center forces me to pay closer attention.
The dissonance may come from a crick in the ankle, knee or neck making movement uncomfortable and alerting me to be more attentive to a sensitive body part during a particular practice session or if nothing else the interference like static on the radio, causes me to be more careful. I become more attentive to physicality calling out and the next few steps requires engaging a kind of vital awareness in order to prevent an injury.
Those visceral and acute signals bring me back into alignment. The interferences are like little rocks that inhibit the flow of water from a mountain stream. The water just continues and does not get dammed up by the blockage, it gurgles over the impediments. Frankly, I don’t think humans are quite that resilient, but we want to be.
While I suspect that dancers have a heightened awareness of coherence due to their training, I believe anyone can develop a keener sense of congruency in their daily lives. Whether the crag is a stiff neck or aching back, a sore tummy after eating or some other type of annoyance — when we acknowledge these momentary intrusions into our movement potential and pull ourselves fully into our bodies we regain an assurance and a deeper connection to spirit. It’s the body’s way of speaking to us.
When you have a few hours of what seems like confrontations, or someone says something that you interpret as hurtful, or you overreact to a situation those are little stones and rocks that are invitations to pay closer attention to our actions, words and deeds. When you are anxious, irritable, or confused you don’t need anyone to tell you things aren’t going well. Your body is the messenger in tight shoulders, tense facial muscles, and restricted movements. Sometimes it is hard to recognize our lack of synchronicity with ourselves and nature because given the pace of our society and the urgency to strive for more, it’s sometimes accepted as normal for the body to hurt and ache. But I believe we get hints all the time to snap out of our assumed normalcy, if we are willing to listen and pay attention.
We don’t have to be victims of emotionality, false flags, and overreactions in our attempts to live a full life. We can be beacons of joy and light more regularly than we think as long as we know what the inner feeling is that leads to a higher resonance. It has been my experience that the ability to switch into a state of joy among disturbances and chaos comes with developing an attunement of the body with a deep knowing and understanding of when the nervous system is in sync. Then when a difficult situation arises we are prepared because we know something just doesn’t feel right in our body, we can feel it in our gut. In other words, to acquire a higher state of resonance takes practice.
Lately, I’ve noticed in my interactions with people that I’m drawn to place my hand near my heart, just under the collarbones. It seems to be a natural inclination which I recognize as part of a technique that I learned years ago in a class on brain-body integration. Variations of the gesture are also found in several other ancient healing practices. I’m also reminded of the numerous times after a particularly rigorous rehearsal when intuitively I would place my hands on my heart and belly, around a sore knee or over aching shoulders and the sheer warmth of my hands resting on an anxious body part releases the tension allowing the necessary flow of energy and relieving the minor disruption in that area of the body.
As a Reiki Master and Practitioner, the healing modality with which I am most familiar, I teach participants to become self-aware. It is a simple technique to learn and within the entire process the student acquires a toolkit of self-healing skills. With the right hand placed flat on the upper part of the sternum, just under the collarbones the thumb and forefinger rests in the soft tissue just below the notches of the collarbone. The other hand is placed over the heart making a “v” shape with the tips of the left hand forefinger and middle finger touching the side of the right hand. In this position, sustained for a short time, the blood supply to the heart and oxygen to the brain improves, facilitating the re-establishment of the gravitational center of the body.
Every time I feel a need to assume this posture, I’m amazed at the genius of such a simple gesture in restoring balance to this brilliantly designed human organism. By placing a hand on a particular part of the body to calm our nervous system, cultivating harmony we take responsibility for the moment and raise the energetic level of the body, aiding in the return of our own wholeness and potentially that of another at the same time.
As we collectively grow into holistic beings we learn to become accountable for directing our energies in a rational manner and our hands are useful tools for that endeavor. While this is only one position of many, the fact that it is universally prescribed in various forms across other healing modalities speaks to its efficacy and value. It is one way to keep your body flowing and healthy throughout the day.
Perhaps, with a little practice we could live life as Rilke suggests flowing like a river in child-like glee.