Gravity

GRAVITY - this basic relation that shapes us during each breath and each movement of our entire life. 

Gravity is the earth’s mass that pulls us down, that keeps us on the ground while we pull the earth as well with our own little weight. From the moment we are born, we are received. Can you sense it?
How is your relation to gravity? 
Do you ever perceive it? 
Do you ever thank it?

I invite you to stand, both feet close together. Feel the pressure in the soles of your feet which tells you that the earth is holding you, pulling you towards her center with exactly the same force she is pulling us, living beings, since millennia. 

Can you open your structure a bit more to gravity? The structure of your bones can guide the force effortlessly. It is spiralling through your skeletal architecture. I invite you to take some time to imagine your skeleton from the lumbricals to the skull. How precise is your inner picture? Where do you have a sensation of your bones? Where are blind areas? We are beings of tensegrity. 

And then- can you open even a bit more to the force of gravity? Can you stand and use less and less of your muscular strength to stay upright?

Feel your feet. There is still the ground supporting you. The earth is moving towards you. Can you welcome it?

Open yourself to gravity! Now! Allow the subtle weight shifts to happen. Feel them in the soles of your feet. In efficient movement the support preceeds the movement. Can you open for the support of gravity? How is your movement in your daily life? How is your support in your daily life?

I invite you to lay down- slowly! Let the weight of your head guide the rest of your body down. Perceive how more and more of your body’s surface is touching the earth’s surface. 

Take time to arrive where your movement comes to a rest. Pause, arrive, rest. Sense how your skin touches the earth’s skin, in  specific places. Arriving is a process. Give it time. Be with it. Where are you now? What is changing in your tissues? In your tone? In the tone of the tissues that are touching the earth? 

Perceive the pressure of your weight in the surfaces that are in touch with the ground. Each cell has an orientation. It will change its tone on its downside in relation to weight and gravity. Each cell knows where down is. Give them time to adapt. Give them time to express their adaptation and absorb the effect it has on your whole body. This reflexive response of the cells is called Tonic Labyrinthin. It’s our first response to life when we are born, when we enter this field of gravity. 

We increase tone where we are in connection with a supporting surface. 

Can you give in even a bit more, yield, sense how you are received. Give in as if you could sink in to the ground like into a beach of sand. 

Can you yield and breathe and sense and not collaps? Yielding happens always in relation, it always happens in a field of support, it always happens in relation to our own center. 

When we collaps we loose our center, for some moments or longer. But sometimes collapsing is the only choice we have. 
Can you allow yourself to yield and breathe and sense until you have enough? Until you reach a point of support? 

Form here I invite you to push. The force will travel from any point of support to the center. Eventually some of your body parts will start to lift from the ground. Observe how the forces travel through your structures, through the skeletal landmarks, supported by the guidance of the fascia and connective tissue and supported by the sliding muscles. Stand up as effortlessly and as lazy and as observing as possible. Find a way up you never used before. 

And here, stand! 
Is there any difference than before?
Is there a difference in the sensations in the body parts that were facing the earth, that were facing the sky? A difference in the relation to the ground? To gravity?

Maybe it is a good moment to thank gravity. 

I open to gravity
which brings me up
if I don’t hold myself up
I can be lifted
the gentlemen moment
when I wait and listen
if you propose me a next step
if you have a place to offer
for my foot to gently
kiss your caring carrying skin

EARTH
I meet you in my feet
you enter me
from the moment I was born
you meet me in my feet
and in my bones
your kisses shape my form and tone
because I was born on your skin
you will never let me down
and I will never forget