The Heart of Movement 7 - The dragon breathes tonight
This lesson continues the journey into the splendour of your body with an exploration of the airway and the interior interior spaces of your body. We examine the tongue and diaphragm along with the larynx, heart & lung.
I sometimes refer to the tongue as the gate keeper for its role in filtering our experience of life.
Life for humans is often so complex. We have an internal dialogue about everything. Just as the tongue primes our digestive system to receive the food we eat by releasing enzymes, our internal dialogue about what is happening ‘primes’ the rest of the body to respond along the accept/reject scale. What happens within us when we reject what is happening?
If you pay attention to your tongue and throat as our internal chatter goes on you may notice many subtle movements.
The unconditional love demonstrated by dogs is harder to sustain with humans. Does this relate to our body plan? Dogs think of themselves as part of a pack unlike humans who kid themselves they are alone. This dogs soft underbelly is close to the ground and protected by teeth and claws whilst we upright humans with our exposed fronts have nothing to protect ourselves but our wits.
Mitul Gajera Via UnSplash
Daniel Lieberman in his book, ‘The story of the human body’ speaks of a change in the space and angle of the mouth & throat in Homo Sapiens that enabled us to develop a more complicated tongue and possibly a greater capacity for sophisticated speech.
This week we’ll explore our amazing tongue relative to its position in the upper body and to the feeling of being open or closed.
Can we sense experience with our throat and tongue? .. Is there a taste to love and a taste of surprise? Is there a taste in the experience of challenge or acceptance?
Apart from taste there is the experience of the tongues movement. What happens if you hold your tongue rigidly in place? Is it as restrictive as when you rigidly hold your neck or shoulders?
Is it possible to keep the throat and tongue open to what is there now .. rather than responding to judgements about something that probably isn’t there?
Our tongue consists of 8 pairs of extremely sensitive muscles (second only to the eye!) They can each move independently and connect with various structures within the head and throat. It sits on top of the larynx and has a strong fascial connection with the throat, chest, trachea, heart, lungs and diaphragm.
Here are the five extrinsic muscles that connect the tongue to bone. (Shown relative to the temporal & sphenoid bones of the skull and the hyoid bone on top of the larynx)
The three intrinsic muscles sit within the tongue and alter its width, length and depth. The incredible sensitivity of these muscles can alter the shape of our mouth, throat and pharynx to produce the more than 600 languages we speak and the many ways of singing and making expressive sound.
Kazuya Yoshida
What we say makes a difference .. and it’s the internal speech that really shapes the way we feel and function as I hope this story shows -
It was between lockdowns and I was preparing for this terms series .. We were at a concert for a friends birthday. The band were very talented but the sound was terrible. The sound man is a generous soul who does a lot of community events. He’s often overworked, underpaid and impatient with the musically inexperienced. ‘Well, why don’t you just sing more loudly?’ I heard him shout at a nervous performer who requested more reverb.
But not this band. One of them gives masterclasses at guitar festivals. Why was this happening?? Some of our group were sound people too. They surreptitiously walked around to the sound desk while he was away (quite a few times - What is he doing!?!) and made some adjustments. By the second set it had improved.
As you can see my internal dialogue was raging and it seemed to me there was a funny mood all around. Wendy was on a diet that meant she could only have clear spirits. So rather than buy the cheap spirit available at the club she smuggled in an elegant vanilla bottle filled with loveliest vodka. A world weary bar woman with an arm full of glasses cleared our table. ‘A vanilla bottle ..’ she said with a slow shake of her head.
Everyone was irritated and the next song was more of the same. Really, I wanted to be back home working on the new series. As I reminded myself, for the twentieth time, that I don’t really like country music anyway I suddenly became aware of the consequences of all this negative self chatter.
I could feel myself shutting down. It was as if my face, throat and chest were all closing over. My heart felt shrouded. My energy and mood were low. I sat there feeling it all happen and realising my attitude was the problem. With that awareness the cloud of negativity slowly lifted away.
I began to feel open. I relaxed in my throat and chest. My eyes softened and I listened more closely. I breathed in relief and realised that it wasn’t a funny mood all around. It was just the consequences of my negative self talk. The mask was off and I now felt open and ready to connect.
‘Hey this is a good song’, I thought.
Pop Zebra Via UnSplash
Inspiration struck! I took out my phone and wrote -
‘The heart! As a muscle! It’s contribution to the feel and sense of movement and experience! What can we accept? How do we accept or reject experience through the heart, mouth, nose and tongue?’
The core idea of this series was born!
So this lesson goes to the heart of the matter. You’ll explore your ability to open or close at will ( well ok .. with practice .. ) through the sense of the heart and tongue. You’ll be bargaining with the gatekeeper!