Falling and Catching Yourself Part 2

Continued from Part 1 on Walking

Much of our science and philosophy revolves around thinking about thinking. But under the gaze of this particular study on walking, it appears that the navel shouldn't be left behind in our understanding of ourselves as a whole. After all, it is where we were first linked with sustaining life, where we are most vulnerable, and where we experience many emotional sensations. Our brains formed upside down, within our mother's pelvis, we heard the juices of her organs, and our feet learned to kick as they pointed toward her heart. Her own navel inverted while we set our emergence into motion, and her body responded in surrender to our will. Someone is there to catch our very first fall. None of this interplay of development and movement can be explained by any one part of us.

Knowing where we're headed before we think we know. Photo image credit: Shutterstock

While our brains lay its plans, our bodies push us onward and the rest of us figures out what to do, think, feel, see and understand about where we are going, and what we are moving away from. If we want to move forward, science proves that we must start with "tiny falls". The body proves with each step that it will have the wisdom to catch us.

For further consideration, from someone who knows the brain from bupkis:

Jon Lieff, MD (I could spend years exploring this website.)

The most advanced studies in brain science show that a region called the pre supplementary motor area, the preSME, is relevant to decision making.  It is a region, which appears to be related to “intending to act” and “controlling action.”  This area is located between the cognitive regions in the frontal lobe and the motor regions in the primary motor cortex.

Stimulation of this area produces 'conscious urge to move' and high current causes muscular movement itself.  In other studies stimulating the posterior parietal cortex, causes a similar feeling of “wanting to move.” This area seems to be a bridge from visual information and motor movements.

Unfortunately, these do not prove that that is how human beings make decisions.  Also, there are probably other areas that are involved in translating other data into 'wanting to move'”.

Note to self: Interestingly, these "other areas" of study are limited only to the brain, and presuppose that the brain is the sole and rightful origin of intentions and actions.

But before our heads begin to hurt, let us recall that after chakra charts and before scientific readouts, the good doctor, Sam Cooke, could diagnose both what ails and wails:

Go to link "That's Where It's At" from Keep Movin' On

or listen here:

Walking is Just Falling and Catching Yourself

Science proves that we have to fall to move forward.

Discover Magazine reports, "Each step we take is really a tiny fall, a mathematical model suggests. The random-looking variation in our footfalls is actually a series of corrections. Our strides are all screw-ups—but thanks to the fixes that happen without us knowing, our walking routines look like a perfect ten."

Scientists at Ohio State University's Movement lab put motion-capture markers on people's feet and pelvises, with cameras tracking them as they walked on treadmills at various speeds.

The results of the study show that our pelvis directs us, and then our feet catch up and place themselves where they need to be, so that we keep our balance. "With each stride, we start to fall, and 'we are constantly making little corrections to be stable,' Wang says".

The researchers wrote in their paper, "the pelvis 'knows' much more about the future foot position than the foot itself."  More than 80% of the side-to-side variation in foot placement could be predicted by movements in the pelvis beforehand.

It seems that scientists can demonstrate, in part, what the Hindus believe about our bodies having centers of energy. The first three are found within and just above the pelvis, and are basic to our lives. If we are out of balance here, the upper torso with its more evolved chakras, can topple along with the bottom.

Notice that the familiar symbol of the hexagram, or "star"-- at the level of the heart--  is between the body and the mind. This symbol actually is not representing an astral star at all, but is two super-imposed triangles symbolizing the heart's mediation between the upper and lower states of existence. One triangle points to the lower chakras, the other points to the higher, and is considered where the heart-mind makes its point of decision. Will I live for the lower three or the higher three? In her book, The Chakra Bible, Patricia Mercier interprets part of this symbol's function as "mentally, it governs passion, and spiritually it governs devotion."

While it is easy to think of the "higher" chakras as being of higher value because of their placement, the subtle fallacy of this idea is easier to see if we turn all of this on its side. If the human body's chakras were depicted horizontally, as along a tiger's spine, or depicted on a body in repose, then the concept of a hierarchy of superior and inferior states dissolves more easily. Understanding can be rooted as well as liberated.

"Sleeping Buddha" Photo image: arts.cultural-china.com

Dreaming can be the body's contemplation without the mind's interference

Western religion or psychoanalysis usually presents the opposite proposition when it comes to problems in our forward progression. They practice upon the precept that we have bodily symptoms and syndromes due to emotional and spiritual ills contracted during childhood. From this standpoint, the task is to get the conscious mind to recall these traumas, so that they cease to express themselves through the body. Eastern philosophy posits a different theory of affliction-- that many of our feelings of disease can be located in energy centers of the body that aren't actively engaged-- regardless of the reason behind the disengagement. The work of healing becomes more comprehensive, then. The body is called upon to help restore the mind, as often as the mind is called upon to restore the body.

Maslow's pyramid of self-actualization seems more similar to the diagram of the chakras, yet its graphic shape suggests upward progression toward a self that is more activated at the top, than at the bottom. Most of us have experienced a flow of these states, having a need for problem-solving, belonging, or creativity simultaneously with feeling hungry or cold. The process of intellectual and spiritual development happens because of and along with bodily development. Although we may recognize this abstractly, we often resist listening to our "Netherlands" as Roger Ebert liked to call them. We might think of them as cruder parts with impulsive urges that have to be brought under control by our more presentable, sociable, and spiritual upper or "better" half.

To use an example of experiencing creative engagement with the body, I'll relate an experience from my own past. During college, my drama teacher demonstrated that motivation from our characters needed to come from our guts-- he would put his fist on the area of his navel and show us how to walk, gesture, and talk as if each movement originated and was pushed or pulled from there-- rather than from our minds, our mouths, or even the chest. He had us do exercises of moving and delivering lines from our guts versus our heads, and it was exhilarating to see students act with more power and focus in our deliveries. Our entries upon the stage weren't tentative-- we owned it. That rooted state then created the connection with the audience, because our more energized presence commanded it.

Classical Philospher Loving Wisdom and maybe also the sound of his own discourse

That connection of our libido with the world is frightening and troubling as well as exhilarating, both to feel and to witness. We've tapped into power, and it always threatens to careen out of control. Western philosophy and religion is predicated on the idea that our bodies are a mass of libidinal impulses to be mastered, a cluster of symptoms from the id or the traumatized ego that require suppression, or an earthly burden to be shed as the soul is liberated. By contrast, Eastern philosophies teach that the body has its own wisdom, and where we go astray, as both mice and men, is with our minds.

Scurry on to Part 2 of Falling and Catching Yourself

Bliss Unfollowed and Back Again: Black Horse and a Cherry Tree

Black Horse and a Cherry Tree

"…tells the story of finding yourself lost on your path, and a choice has to be made. It's about gambling, fate, listening to your heart, and having the strength to fight the darkness that's always willing to carry you off."
                     -- KT Tunstall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQmDUEv939A&spfreload=10

Well my heart knows me better than I know myself,

so I'm gonna let it do all the talking.

I came across a place in the middle of nowhere

with a big black horse and a cherry tree.

I felt a little fear upon my back

I said, Don't look back, just keep on walking.

But the big black horse said, Look this way, 

he said, Hey, lady, will you marry me?

But I said, No, no, no, no-no-no

I said, No, no, you're not the one for me.

No, no, no, no-no-no

I said, No, no, you're not the one for me.

And my heart had a problem in the early hours,

so I stopped it dead for a beat or two.

But I cut some cord, and I shouldn't have done it,

and it won't forgive me after all these years.

So I sent it to a place in the middle of nowhere

with a big black horse and a cherry tree.

Now it won't come back cause it's oh so happy,

and now I've got a hole for the world to see.

And it said, no, no, no, no-no-no

It said, no, no, you're not the one for me.

No, no, no, no-no-no

It said, no, no, you're not the one for me.

It said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

you're not the one for me.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

you're not the one for me.

Big black horse and a cherry tree

I can't quite get there cause my heart's forsaken me.

Big black horse and a cherry tree

I can't quite get there cause my heart's forsaken me.

Music and lyrics by KT Tunstall 2006

Art inspiring art: "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" with Chinese Characters

by Parcel-Sister 2006

"…I believe the Chinese translates to "old horse knows the way" and refers to a story where people get lost on a trail and release an old horse to show them the way back home."-- Parcel-Sister, artist

From Tunstall's blog, a split geo-biography that reflects the heart in flux, finding just the right flow rate:

// There she was, in cactus-country, Arizona, far from the adoptive London scene that provided the backdrop to four albums, 4 million sales, one Ivor Novello and one Brit Award, and further still from the Scottish folk heartland that had nurtured her. She was working with Giant Sand frontman Howe Gelb; maverick, desert punk spirit, a storied musician and producer. In Tucson’s Wavelab Studios, the pair were recording a set of songs that had bloomed into life, almost without Tunstall knowing it, and that foreshadowed two momentous events that would make summer 2012 a turning point in the 37-year-old singer/songwriter’s life.

“I’d always had this yearning to crack open my ribcage and be able to let everything out," she reflects. She had attempted it through her personal journal writing, but had never had the confidence – the unselfconsciousness – to do it in song. “And then last year led to it all happening without even trying anymore,” says Tunstall. She’s referring to the death of her dad last August, then, the following month, her split from her musician husband. “But you know, the first half of the record was written before any of that happened, so there is a kind of weird savant quality to it.”

The result: an album of two halves, both temporally and physically. Invisible Empire//Crescent Moon straddles either end of 2012, the year KT Tunstall’s world was rocked from its axis before settling on a new emotional orientation. Each was recorded in Arizona, and both are swaddled with atmosphere, poignancy and, yes, hurt – but, also, hope. One, oddly, prefigures the losses that were to come; the other, beautifully, captures a new, reinvigorated state of being in the aftermath. Together, they combine to create the album of Kate Victoria Tunstall’s life. //

Following Your Bliss Can Feel Like Grief

I had a friend who was going though a painful time of making a decision. She was trying to decide between two different towns and situations to live in, after a lot of searching and eliminating options. 

Freedom of choice comes with a burden of saying no, over and over again, as we move toward the right fit. A contrasting idea floating around is that "following your bliss" means saying yes to everything good, and doing whatever makes you happy, like chasing after a butterfly. But the originator of that line-- Joseph Campbell, himself-- used the example of Christ's crucifixion to explain the concept. Jesus followed his bliss all the way to the cross, and was "a servant unto death." There's nothing ephemeral about that.

The tragic drama of the crucifixion and the comedic resolution of the resurrection speaks to millions of people, regardless of how they interpret the literalness or historical accuracy of the story. At the very least, the Garden of Gesthemane reassures us that wishing away a cup of bitterness that has been served up along with our freedom is an acceptably distressed state to be in. Bliss doesn't always reflect placidity.

Most of us will never face the kinds of soul-splitting circumstances recounted in religious texts, but most of us will be faced with decisions that can feel agonizing in their complexity. All of us friends, who were trying to help the one caught up in suspended indecision over where to live, recognized a common theme emerging from our shared individual experiences. We had often known the right move in our hearts, but our minds kept trying to talk us out of it. The heart comprehends the full meaning of bliss and its revolutions better than the mind does.

Reflecting on my own experiences, I was often aware at a deep level that I was going to make myself do something that was painful and difficult, but right for me and my situation. That didn't mean that I could foretell a satisfactory outcome of going forward with that decision, but realizing that I was going through the cycles of grief helped me to understand why the process was so difficult, even agonizing at times.

illustration by Charles Dana Gibson, 1903

Around fifteen years ago, due to a back injury, I had to choose among: a series of deep injections that would be administered over several months, a painful surgery with a long recovery, or doing neither and remaining in pain. None of these options felt good or happy or joyful, which is what we associate with bliss. Instead, I was faced with more pain to get out of pain, which didn't fit with my idea of freedom at all. But freedom was what I had, even while immobilized physically, scrutinized and handled by all sorts of doctors and practitioners, and even while I felt like a bug on a pin.

During this constrained freedom, as I was moving through the emotions of fear, sadness, anger, and bargaining (trying to talk myself out of what I was going to make myself do), I was also an observer of my actions. I seemed to be reading a lot about the surgery, and listening to other patients tell their stories of improvement, yet feeling afraid to read about the injections. It turns out that my fear surrounding the injections kept coming up because I knew that they were the right course for me, and I didn't want to do them. Reading about the surgery and its benefits was a distraction for me. Reading stories of how the injections had failed people was also a distraction.

Acceptance did not come with a peaceful feeling. After observing my own behavior-- that I was actually preparing myself for the injections-- acceptance came with a jarring realization of "Damn, I'm really going to do this." I became despondent with dread. But then my physical therapist suggested the same kind of injections, without knowing that I was already aware of them. I didn't hesitate to consent.  Within moments, he was on the phone to a highly skilled specialist and I had an appointment with her. Sometimes when you're finally exhausted with trying to be perfect in your choices, the right person appears who can point you in the right direction. The repetitious inner spinning on the wheel of fretfulness begins to cease and desist.

I already knew that these needles went all the way down to the bone, would number up to twenty in repeated sessions, and could not be administered under sedation. I understood that I only had three months to ready myself for them, which is not as much time as readying for a baby. It had already taken me months to get appropriate drug relief, and now I would also have to learn pain management on a more sophisticated level. The time had come to leave rumination and to enter into discovery.

I consulted a referred psychologist who specialized in non-pharmacological pain management, and was alternately hooked up to a biofeedback machine, an alpha brainwave stimulator, an accupressure ear stimulator, and a specially ordered back support. My husband traded in our car for the dreaded symbol of responsibility-- the mini-van-- so I could get in and out of it more easily, adjust the seat, and lie down in the back if necessary. In spite of having pre-schoolers, I had resisted making this change of vehicles, but now I was the one who was the catalyst for this dubious upgrade.

Just as in my childhood, I was transported around town while looking up at the ceiling as traffic lights and treetops passed by the windows above me. Surrounding me were all of my hopeful comforts. The inside of that van could have been mistaken for a Victorian peddler's wagon containing cures and contraptions for all that ails ye. Together, these things did help. There was no one fix to get me through the bigger fix. What lacked in effectiveness was more than made up for in imagination by inventors I am grateful to.

Frida Kahlo, who went through more back trauma, surgeries and fixations than anyone I have ever heard of.
Photo image by Nickolas Muray, 1946

I also dredged up everything I had learned surrounding childbirth, with breathing, visualization, meditation, relaxing music, homeopathy, and aromatherapy. I had a lavender and rose scented washcloth rolled up to bite down on. I came into that doctor's room April fresh and loaded for bear. I'd like to say that I roared like one only in my mind, while keeping serenely silent on the outside. Howling is closer to how I reacted. The physiatrist had to stop because she didn't want to feel like she was running a medieval torture chamber. But by the next time, I had more practice at all of my borrowed methods and tricks, and I could bring down the volume to a whimper. The final sessions, happily, I can't recall.

Each session was about three weeks apart, and I spent some of that time trying to talk myself out of going back, but kept preparing for them all over again. Sometimes the mind has to pay attention to where the body is steering itself. And I had a lot of help from loved ones. A lot of help. A lot. I can't stress that enough. A lot. Help that could be measured in miles. Bliss requires a Simon of Cyrene to carry your cross for you before you get to that awful place of resolve. Sometimes these helpful people get forced into it along with you.

All of this could have failed me. I could have gotten nothing from the procedure but traumatic memories. But it did turn out well for me. I was a good candidate for it, and I did my part of the work. The bliss came on the day that I showed up for my life. Not as a martyr, a savior, a legend in my own time, or anything noble at all. I simply was able to drive myself to my daughter's school, walk the length of it, however slowly, and then hold her hand all the way back to the car. The sun gleamed off of the parking lot so brightly that she became nearly invisible right next to me.

My disoriented friend, who didn't know where should live has yet to know. I sometimes receive updates from her as she has moved around southern Europe and then returned to the States. No one in our group could foresee or choose her path for her, even if she had wanted us to. There are many variables that none of us can helpfully predict. But we could help her by holding the tension of uncertainty while she grieved each possibility that she tried to talk herself into, and accepted the one that she had been trying to talk herself out of.

Heart album cover: Greatest Hits 1998

The beautiful singer KT Tunstall says, “I’d always had this yearning to crack open my ribcage and be able to let everything out." Follow her to the next post to hear her sing about how the heart decides and how it feels when we don't heed it.

Poem for a Grown Girl: Leaves of Grass for the Uninitiated

My older daughter is turning twenty-one today, and is setting up housekeeping with her mate, far from home. It is spring, and so, too, are the birds outside my window staking their claims. Mostly, this is a gentle swooping across my line of vision, but I am embattled against a woodpecker who favors my eaves. 

He hammers the house, and each time I stamp and clap him away with hoots and shouts, he retreats in his red and white regalia, trying impossibly to camouflage himself from the top of a distant cedar. He flicks his head with stilted and faked nonchalance, waiting and watching for my pastel tunic to move out of the window, farther away from his target directly above me.

His desired sweet spot is right beneath the peak of the living room which overlooks a large expanse of grass. He is sure of himself and his choice, and rightly so. This dry shelter affords him a view of both predators and prey moving upon the gentle slope of his aspired domain.

By this time in my life, there is much I could advise to birds and to my own chicks about where to roost, when to hunker in and stay put, and when to flee. But advice is as welcome as the woodpecker. So with a restraint that isn't in my nature, I only offer her a poem for a someday read. This was written shortly after moving from the desert to this newly lush and verdant landscape of ease or toil, depending upon who tends to the green.

My Sweet, my wish for you is that there will be only celebrations of both love and work ahead, but because I love you so very much, I give you my full knowledge, as I see it from here.

"The Haymakers" by Jules Bastien-Lapage 1877

Leaves of Grass for the Uninitiated

1.

I awake in the afternoon to a nervous buzz

-- not from a late night with a bottle--

but from an interrupted late morning snooze,

lids flying open to a leaf blower, an edger, a mower,

over and again, until the attempt at sleep is futile.

This cacophony barely muffles the response of the blackbirds

who call and razz from phone poles and tree limbs,

remembering the faces of those below who disrupt

the wide, cool, blanketed hills, bustling before tee time.

These birds will pass along this facial memory to their offspring,

for this is what crows and ravens do, I'm told with awe

by my mother who likes her PBS on Saturday mornings.

I am left to wonder at how they manage to fashion 

this bold point-and-whisper, a black-robed amen corner

each hatched from an egg, a single cell of the likewise-judged.

Shame-faced of sleeping at high noon, I dare not show my own.

2.

My upstairs room has windows that won't allow screens

-- the latches are on the frames, and not the cases --

invented by a man, my aunt would have said.

At night, crane flies find these wide open squares of my nightlight 

to pay an exalted call to a mate, promising a place for them,

only to fuss and dust the manicured ceiling alone

which someone, sometime, painted a muted sage.

So much to pass along to my girls (but how to do it?):

Memories of plaguing faces, insects and inventions

but none as stinging as the Man pushing against the lawn.

The woman colludes on behalf of the soft bare feet of her young

For they won't be young or bare for long,

soon enough mincing in pointed heels

to pose under a tree for a dance, crushing larvae,

as they trail and lift the hem to prevent a green stain

The woman also won't always find the ease in her joints to sit

and watch on the damp emerald verge of her self.

3.

Where a man finds the job of his dreams

-- by which his wife finds the house of hers--

there becomes a precarious perch.

The outside swath of pure devotion requires mastery

of hired hands or self and vigorous horticultural tomes

and wide is the path which leads to beetles, root rot or voles.

By the sweat of the brow shall these two maintain their splendor

With a tabernacle of assorted plowshares and swords

kept in apple-pie order by the man of the Grounds

while she teaches settings at table, blade inward,

and the mystery of mysteries

how to keep out encroachments of moss on the drive

or ants in the cupboard who creep from

these perspiring borders of impatiens, lavender, and marigold

to where the tasks of their marriage meet

and rub up against the neighbors.

The passersby in cars, holding fruit from the store,

will sit back and gaze half-lidded at the satin edge of our street.

                                                                                                        --2011 Lizbeth Leigh

© Copyright 2015 by Gilded Lily Press

TALES BOTH TALL and TRUE: Brother Orange for Easter

If you haven't read this story by now, then I hope that it is the best part of your basket of joys today. For a story of hope and renewal as an Easter Blessing, a tale of travel for your Spring Break, or just a glimpse of life on the other side of this bouncing ball, I present to you by way of BuzzFeed, featured in the Washington Post:

"Brother Orange"
              or

I Followed My Stolen iPhone Across the World, Became a Celebrity in China, and Found a Friend for Life by Matt Stopera

Thank you Bro Derek, for sending this to me.