Roll Play - Enter Awareness, Allow Flow
Streamed live on YouTube May 2, 2022
Excellent. All right, we are in action. We're gonna do a class today, a Roll Play class, a somatic inquiry practice today, where we enter into our awareness and then we allow flow. So, we allow our bodies to become more fluid. We could actually think of flow–it's very easy to think of flow with the water element, but we can also think of flow with fire, or flow with air, or even flow with earth. I think of things like; flow with fire could be like molten lava, right? And flow with earth it also could be molten lava, fire, earth and what? And fluidity. But also I could think of mud, like mud moving to have that flow. So that the flow doesn't have to be limited to just the water element.
So, let's first enter into sensation in our own bodies. Feeling into what it feels like to be you in your body today. And all of this practice–you can do it laying down, you can do it standing up, you could do it doing the dishes, you could do it on a walk, you can do it laying in bed, or on a couch. However it feels good to you. And you could do very little, nothing movement, or very micro, tiny breath movement and not much else, or you can really go wild and move as much as you want. So make this work for you.
I'm on a ball. So, let's just come into our awareness and as we're coming into our sense of awareness–what is our sense of awareness? It's all of our senses, it's the looker, the person feeling the things, the person seeing the things, it's the awareness inside. Maybe it doesn't have a whole bunch of emotional content but feeling into sensation. And so we're going to invite that sensation to become a very bodily experience. Our awareness is going to travel through our whole body. So, as I'm talking I can already start to feel these sort of waves going out through my arms and my legs. I'm on this ball so there's natural movement happening.
The movement that I–I say, “let's engage our awareness and then let's allow movement”–so it's not like “I'm going to move my arm like this now, I'm moving my arms like this and then like that,” it's more like I'm just letting them do whatever feels interesting. I'm allowing my body to unwind. Or even it could be to rev up, but I'm listening to the sensation arriving in my body and just allowing it to play out in any way that feels good, in any kind of free form play is the best thing. I think when we're in play we're not planning out every move specifically.
So it's really about allowing and receiving the desire of your own body without you having to think about it. So it's not “I think my arms should do this and then they should do that.” It's more like, ahhhhhhh, hmmmmmm, listening, and allowing, and following the impulses that arrive. So this could happen in slow motion, it could happen quickly, and it's almost like you're just receiving yourself on this different level. So it's not receiving in the thought processes and what happened in the day, and it's not receiving in the already busy mind. It's receiving the sensations of the body and allowing them to mobilize in whatever big or small ways feel good.
So it could be micro movement and I like to say there's always micro movement underlying everything, but if we tune our awareness to that micro movement… It's easier to feel things when they're in motion. If I just have this little wave movement happening I can be very aware of it and then I can invite in this playful, free flow into my body where it gets to explore and since I'm actually on this ball there's the extra element of like whoa what if i let myself really go what can happen, right? I can fall off. I can have some freedom with the ball. I can see–I can roll myself around and see–what's gonna happen, giving myself a little more freedom, maybe coming onto my belly.
Imagine like you're–this is one thing I say all the time–an alien that's just arrived in this human body and you have no idea what it can do. So you're in your human body, and you're just learning what's possible. Or you're in your human body with a ball. What can happen here?
What is possible? What are the options?
It's very much an exploration and we could say a somatic inquiry practice because we're not planning something. We're just going in to listen, to allow, and to find what's interesting in there. And sometimes you might find a place that feels particularly delicious, like this one I just found,
ahhhhhh. So maybe you want to let yourself be there for a couple of breaths.
So there's a thing that we do called predictive processing where it's like, “oh I'm going to do this, and then I'm going to do that, and then I'm going to do this,” but if we let go of that and if we notice that we have a plan then we just go somewhere else. So as soon as I say, “oh, I'm going to do this thing now” like “oh, I'm going to roll forward,” instead I just go “nope, I'm going to do something different.” So I'm giving my body this capacity to take over, as opposed to my mind planning what's going to happen.
Hmmmmmmm. Kids in play, when they're really charging around in free flow play–does that happen anymore? There's not a whole lot of planning. It can be a little risky, right? “Oh, I
could fall over.” So, I'm not asking you to fall over, to be unsafe in any way, unless you feel like you have the capacity to catch yourself, but inviting in this free flow. I'm going to get rid of the ball and take it down to the floor. Once I come into the floor it's not as bouncy as the ball, obviously, but I can now start to sort of pour my body around.
And again, I felt myself make-up a plan, so I just changed it. Whenever you start to feel like you know the pattern; do something different. This is how we learn new things, by not doing the same pattern over and over, but trying something different. You can really slow down and let yourself settle or you can speed up and amp up if that feels good.
For me, right now, like just ooohhhhh, now that I've connected to the ground it feels delicious to be here. Even feeling the hardness of the ground, it's like there's something very comforting for me with connecting to the earth, connecting to this wood floor, and this oriental rug. And then these different flows emerge. I start–I still feel very connected to my arms and it's almost like I'm in the ocean and the arms are like sea grasses, or like octopus tentacles. Just feeling out the space around me and as I start to notice that, I become aware of my spine, and the fluidity possible within my spine if I'm not holding and rigid, rigidly forcing anything to happen, I'm just allowing and listening.
So when I think of that fluidity of my spine I can feel the density of the bony structures from my head to my tail, my pelvis, my scapula. I can feel that earthy density but I can also have this fluid movement in my guts, this fluid movement in the relationships of my parts. We are this system of biotensegrity and it's alive, it's biomorphic, it can shift and change and do all sorts of things, adjusting and adapting in ways that just feel good or feel interesting.
So, you're inviting yourself to dive into the I-don't-know-what, the exploration. And if you feel like you know it, then shift it, change it to something less concrete, less knowable. The invitation is to dive into your awareness without knowing what the flow has to offer, without having a plan ahead of it.
Yeah, and my flow has become much more earthy and much more like angular. In Laban (Laban Movement Analysis) one way that we define flow is that it's sort of not stopping. So if I pause that shifts the flow. I can pause and arrive again in my awareness and then just allow the flow the movement to start happening again. Haaaaaaaaaa.
And I'm really inviting in this ahhhhhh, ummmmm sound because it gives me more sensation. And if I listen in, and feel into the vibration of that sound in my head, it gives me other information about my movement like it frees up the pattern even more just by paying attention to it.
Aaaaaahhhhhh, breathing into it. Making sound if that feels good. Yeah, so for some people it's very uncomfortable to make sound it feels very judgmental and “oh my god, I can't do that.” If that's where you are, maybe start to let go of some of that judgment on yourself about what you can and can't do. Let your persona, your personality become more fluid so there's more space and when you make sound it's not about judging that you've become the perfect opera singer or you're suddenly Prince, right? Or Maria Callas. It's none of that. It's just, “ahhhhhhh, mmmmmmm, I can make sound, and I can take up space making sound.
As I’m making sound, I'm vibrating the tissue in my body in different ways, so my awareness is going to shift. Yeah, I feel like for me now that I'm seated up again I'm feeling these different spirals, like whirlpools and eddies, coming up through my spine, or up through my torso, up through the tissue around my spine. So if we want to have freedom in our spine, we want to then free up the tissue around it. We also want to free up the space inside of it.
So we've got that cerebrospinal fluid, which is nourishing our brain, and it's also bolstering our brain, and our spinal cord, and it's clearing away waste. It's filtering through our system, bringing nutrition, oxygen, and taking away waste. So as I'm moving, I’m thinking about thefluidity of that cerebrospinal fluid in there which is also the closest thing in our body to fresh water, right? It's not salty. Aaaaaaahhhh, so we have this very fluid cerebrospinal fluid supporting our brain, supporting our nervous system, supporting our spinal cord. And it's filtering three or four times a day through there. Aaaaaahhhh, so what if you listen into that? What is the flow of that fluid? What is the density? The speed?
Hmmmmmmm. When I really start to listen into that, it shifts my whole tempo. So allowing yourself to play with that idea. Hmmmmmm. Yeah, and when I make those odd mmmmm sounds and also I feel like the–I sort of have this image of some of those fascial sheaths in our brain that are separating the quadrants. So we've got that tentorium cerebelli, or is it cerebelli tentorium? It’s one of those but it's there. It's like if we pull on our ears it's like in here, in and up creating these tents between the upper and the lower half of our brain, along here. If we pull on our ears we're pulling down. So just feeling into that as sort of like a supportive diaphragm in our body, like the supportive diaphragm of our breath, under our lungs, supportive muscle and massive connective tissue going on there too. And then down into our pelvic floor, again so we have these relationships of our head, our ribs, our pelvis. And we can think of the palms of our hands and the soles of our feet also having that kind of diaphragmatic shape, right? Right in here.
What does that diaphragmatic shape in our bodies offer us? What kind of support do we have coming from there? Right? So for our feet it helps us with the rebound from the earth as we step down. In our hands it allows us to cup things and hold things in there, right? If this was just flat what would happen when you tried to hold something? This is also where the glabrous skin is and that is skin that helps us to regulate temperature. So if we're hot, cooling the palms of our hands and the soles of our feet and our forehead are ways of cooling down. We want to cool those down if we're starting to really overheat. Throwing your legs outside of the covers of your bed when you're too hot and letting your feet be free does so much for your body. And if you're
at the opposite if you're hypo–hypothermia, hypothermia hyperthermia–the one where you're too cold, you want to warm up your hands and your feet, the extremities.
So tuning into those areas and that they all sort of relate to each other, these diaphragms in our body. I can move my foot around and it's affecting my pelvic floor, as my pelvic floor is being moved by my foot ,that's also coming up here and affecting my diaphragm, right? We're one whole connected body as I said before this system of biotensegrity. Yeah, a lot of the models that we've been using in the fitness world are really not the best models for what's possible in human bodies, even the medical, like allopathic medicine. Sometimes it's great, sometimes we really need that, but there's so much more possibility and potential when we really integrate and relate with our bodies in different ways.
Ahhhhhhh. Letting yourself shift and adjust and again bringing it back to; what am I noticing now? Where's my awareness now? What's happening now? Is there something I'm holding on to, and not softening or releasing? Is there something where I'm blocking my own flow? That is what most humans do. So how do I soften that gripping, or that forcing, or that tension? How do I let that go?
Get into the wu wei of the Tao, do nothing, accomplish everything. That's really, in many ways, what it is when we get into these flows and we're really letting it happen. It's not us doing it. It's the allowing. We might just be following it, “Oh, that feels good. Let me follow that some more. Well, that's interesting. Let me follow that. Oh, I feel something. I can relieve…I can let go of some of that tension because now that I've been feeling up here, I feel the strange tension somewhere else. It's come into my awareness. Now that I know it's there I can let some of it go.”
Breathing. You can also just imagine that you're dancing with the space around you, that you're being partnered by this three-dimensional space, this up-down, side-side, forward-backward. Or the air and thinking of how the air has that–the air can just do whatever it wants. The air has this total freedom. Aaaaaahhhhhhh. It can come into my lungs and go out going into the cat's lungs. He is over there on the chair out of your vision wrapping around over there and then coming through over here. Hmmmmm. This thing that we live in and it sustains our life, and yet we have–what kind of relationship do we have with our air? What do I feel when I want to touch the air or let the air touch me?
Hmmmmmmmmm. Can I be in a loving relationship with the air? Hmmmmmm. I have a new relationship, it's with the air. We love each other so much. Yeah, the air fills me up and then it goes away and then it comes back. Aaaaahhhh, but it always comes back. The air always comes back to me and I don't have to do anything, it just comes back. Can I find the flow of energy between me and the air? Can I light that up with some awareness, with some aliveness?
Hmmmmmm. Yeah, and this can happen, and you could be on the floor in a chair moving around in any way that feels good. You can dance with me. Aaaaaaahhhh. You can dance with the air, with the room, with your clothes, or you can just be still. Maybe you're in your bed. Maybe you can feel the sheets and maybe you can imagine the sheets have consciousness. Hmmmmmm. What if I listen to the sheets? What if I listen to the walls of the room? What are they saying?
Huh? What if I shift my awareness around to take in the whole house? It's like meta. What if I take in all the neighborhood? Neighbors and the neighborhood, and I'm dancing with the neighbors in the neighborhood? Or just moving in a tiny way. Maybe there's one neighbor over there calling me. They don't even know they're calling me, right? They don't even know I'm dancing with them. Hmmmmmm. Or that I'm dancing with the city. I'm dancing with Kingston. “What did you do today?”
“I danced with the town.”
I have two new relationships; the relationship with the air, and then the relationship with my town. Haaaaaaaaa. Actually, the town relationship and the air, they're not new ones but we've bolstered things up and I can feel the wonder of it.
I can feel the gratitude for being here, for this space. And then when I start to think about the space and the awareness of the ancestors and the first nations people that were here before. the stewards of the land. Ummmmmmmm.
Can I be a steward of the land for what comes next? For what comes later, for the children, and the children's children, and the other plants, and animals, and creatures?
Hmmmmmm. Bringing the awareness back to the awareness. Hmmmmm. Giving yourself permission to move, to make noise, to enjoy being in a human body in whatever way. It could be so tiny, just a little extra breath today. Sometimes the smallest little thing is the biggest gift, the smallest little change is the most delicious thing. Oooohhhhh. Yeah, the smallest little relief. Ooooooohhhh. Can I let go of that extra tension I was holding in my belly? Oooooooh. Can I notice it? Can I say, “Oh, hello there, I see what's going on.” Maybe I can soften a little bit of that. Maybe I can let go.
Hmmmmmm. Yeah, so the micro movement can just be any kind of tiny little movement. It can underlie the big macro movement so you can feel it's almost like–I don't know–the string section that's bolstering up the rest of the orchestra, right? They're like…maybe they could be the macro movement. It really depends. Let's say–who's the drone? Maybe the drone is the micro and the rest of the sound is the macro. Maybe the drone–and maybe it's the reverse. You can use whatever kind of metaphor works for you but there's so many layers of things happening
and you can shift your awareness from one to another, right?
We've taken in a dance with the whole neighborhood but now I'm just dancing with my skin. What happens when I'm dancing with my skin? And my awareness is dancing with my skin?
Sometimes we really think of the skin from the outside surface but what's it like on the inside surface of my skin, inside my body? So, inside my body there's my skin then underneath that is the superficial fascia. What's it feel like under there between those two layers? And maybe it's just my imagination that's sensing into those layers. Can I feel them in my whole body?
Hmmmmmm. Alive and awake, awake inside, awake to myself not necessarily awake to the outer world but awake to my inner experience, awake to my relationship with myself.
It's interesting because I work with dancers, and I do a lot of moving meditation for dancers, because they've spent their whole life feeling into their body. So to become the body in this dynamic interrelated way is delicious and so much fun.
It could be threatening if people haven't done it before. And if they've really objectified their body, if their body is something else, it might be a little threatening for a while. But for people who've spent their whole lifetime in there, and you start to bring your awareness in and feel these different things, it's very delicious.
And then the other thing is to bring the embodiment to the meditating people. Like okay, you've learned how to go in and you've learned how to be responsible. How can you go in and bring it to life? It's like you take the light inside and just shine it all around, what's moving? What's bubbling up? Yummy. I love that.
