The Heart of Movement 10 - The channel of heavenly earth

This last of the Heart of Movement lesson series will probably free your ribcage quite a bit. 

You’ll be exploring the idea of your heart as a funnel between ‘heaven’ & ‘earth’. 

The ‘pelvis’ uses the rest of your body to sense the ground and move within the force of gravity. It smells and tastes both the earth & the ground of being. 

The ‘head’ uses the rest of your body to sense & move through the source of gravity. It sees, hears, feels & organises your orientation in space & the field of gravity. 

There have been five concepts from this term that I have been finding quite useful. 

The first is the contribution that the cardio vascular system makes to your felt sense of being. You have 100,000 kilometres of blood vessels that deliver blood, remove waste & ferry nutrients, antibodies, electrolytes & heat to every cell in your body. 

You are a tubular structure. The liquid that rhythmically circulates through you is influenced by the way you think, feel, move & act ..

The second idea is that by listening to your pulse whilst considering the systems of your body - the senses, your breathing, the shape and movement of your skeleton & the sense of pressure within the cylinder of your body - you gain a new perspective on your inner experience ..

Dennis Wojtkiewicz - via Pinterest

These last three have transformed my sense of the bodily experience of anxiety. I think they are interesting things to give more to.

The third idea was sensing the airway. It’s that space behind the tongue - from the top of the back of your nose through the throat and larynx to the top of your heart. 

The back of the tongue, the soft palate & the muscles of the pharynx & larynx are innervated by the vagus nerve. By tuning in you’ll become more familiar with the sensation of those structures being relaxed.

Fred Netter via Google

The fourth was sensing the space behind the heart - the posterior mediastinum - where you find the airway & the arch of the aorta. All the structures around that airway have a strong connection to the systems that regulate the sympathetic & parasympathetic nervous system. Sensing the back of my heart & it’s connection to the space of the airway has enabled me to relax when I feel the onset of stress. 

The fifth idea is that by sensing your elbows through your ribcage to your pelvis.. & the knees through your pelvis & ribcage to your head makes it easier to be centred.

The elbows & knees channel force out from the head, neck & torso. Sensing their relationship makes it much easier to be centred in awkward situations ..

Kulli Kittus via UnSplash

So you may get into a few awkward positions with this lesson but if you consider how the pelvis supports your upper body from below & how your head aligns & orients your body from above you may find a way to make it easy.

The edited versions of this terms lessons can be found on the online lessons page of my website if you’d like to explore some of those earlier concepts. 

Next term I’ll develop this theme of the elbows & knees into an exploration of the way you use your arms and hands & your feet and legs. You’ll be examining the building blocks of inspired action.

Simone Hutsch Via UnSplash