You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2010.
Since the advent of nuclear physics and the study of the atom, it has become more and more evident that the atomic world is not at all what we expected. The smaller you go the less mass there seems to be. At the macro level of the universe it seems that there’s structure and that objects have mass. Planets, people, cars, trees and so on. But observing the atom suddenly there seems to be hardly any mass at all i.e. there’s hardly anything really solid in the atom. Mostly it’s the nucleus which is made of protons and neutrons that has mass but that’s a small part of the atom, most of which is made of electrons which hardly have any mass at all and show properties of both particle and wave i.e. mass and light. These days the atom is viewed as having an electron cloud around it that has more in common with energy than matter. If you took all of the humans on the planet, and got rid of all of the space within their atoms and just kept the bits that definitely show as matter then you would have the human race reduced down to the size of a sugar lump. Therefore 99.99% of our body is space, not matter. Truly that’s one of the mysteries of modern science. Do we start to experience this as craniosacral therapists when we orient to a very wide perceptual field. Very similar affects seem to be experienced in this state that relate to a lack of matter and a shift towards space and energy. The experience of long tide is the body becoming light in weight and phantom like as if its hardly there as an object of mass at all, and there’s much more similarity with a world made of light energy. As we shift from an orientation to mass to an orientation to light waves, we reveal our dual nature that is held within our very atoms.
The above picture was taken on a recent trip to a game park near Victoria Falls. This atlas (first cervical vertebra) of an elephant is so big you could stick your head through the central hole. What struck me looking at the bone was how familiar the shape was. It is just a scaled up version of a human atlas (a human atlas at the same scale is pictured in the bottom left corner, a human atlas would fit easily into the palm of your hand). In fact, lots of the other bones lying around from the skeleton were easy to identify as they were so similar to human bones. You could even tell that this elephant had some arthritis in its lower spine before it died due to the gnarly, misshapen facet joints and vertebral bodies of the lumbar vertebra.
I was sitting on a train the other day and suddenly into my perceptual field came into strong focus everybody’s bag. They had been there all along I just hadn’t noticed them as anything significant. Maybe it was because the train was full and people were having to deal with their bags that I noticed them as they were moving them into a new position on their shoulders or putting them between their feet or holding them differently. There wasn’t enough room for the bags all of a sudden, just people. Anyway there was a train full of bags glaring at me and it struck me that we are obsessed by bags. Everyone has a bag or two or three and there are shops that sell them and we need them of course for putting things in. It also struck me that everything is a bag. The whole of life, the universe and everything is a bag. And I chuckled to myself when I thought that because it’s true. Chances are that the bags I was looking at contained other bags inside them plus never mind the bags what about us. We are a bag too – a series of bags really. There’s the obvious bag of the skin, that we wear other bags over – trousers, shirts, dresses, they are all body bags, shoes are foot bags, gloves are hand bags! Hats are head bags. It goes on. All clothes are bags therefore. Cars and trains and planes are too. They are metal bags we get in that enfold us. Then there’s the rest of the body which in many ways is a whole series of bags or skins that wrap individual muscles and organs and nerves and bones. And when you think there must be something in these bags that are the real thing and not bags and you start to look at the microscopic side of things you see that there’s wrappings in there too. Each nerve fibre is wrapped, each muscle fibre and then you look even closer and see that they are all made of cells that are bags too. Each cell has a membrane, that’s a bag and in the cell there’s objects (organelles) but when you really look at them they too are cleverly disguised bags wrapped into all kinds of different shapes and then when you get down to the nano level of things you are looking at molecules and atoms and they too have shells that wrap around the nucleus of the atom which is more and more looking like its composed of nothing. So basically I saw a great truth I think, that we carry bags to remind us that the whole universe macro and micro is made of cleverly disguised bags with ultimately nothing in them. All we have to do is get past the bags then we will see what the Buddha saw. Here’s a picture of one of my favourite bags.
In the beginning were three fluid spaces. Out of these spaces coalesced a midline and the midline became the axis for the development of the body and life. We start off our existence as a new cell that reproduces itself to form a mass of cells. When these cells reach a critical mass (32) they create a new form. A fluid filled space that has a skin (trophoblast) and therefore an inner environment (the early yolk sac). This space becomes two spaces (yolk sac and amniotic cavity) around an interface (embryonic disk) and then another space forms around these two (the chorion). And only then does a midline begin to emerge (primitive streak) and eventually become a solid axis (notochord).
Check out the link below for a remarkable adventure in human movement that barely seems possible. The juggler is an American called Michael Moschen who appeared at the Ted convention in 2002 and was a sensation. He basically revealed how his nervous system and muscles can be controlled to produce the most finessed juggling imaginable all framed in an intelligent exploration into the way things move, the way the Universe around us interacts and how we perceive things. What I like about it is the huge effect it has on your nervous system just from watching it. Notice how your system drops into a potency state and how once your nervous system has become entranced the primal midline appears and the ventricles of the brain and chambers of the heart fill with potency and become much more spacious taking your system into a Long Tide state. It’s as if the juggler has enthralled your nervous system so much that it literally drops into a trance. Whenever I want to shift into Long Tide and recuperate I often watch this video.
http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_moschen_juggles_rhythm_and_motion.html
I was walking along the beach front at Brighton, UK the other day (Easter 2010). The Sun was out, it was a weekend and everyone was promenading along the front. The front at Brighton was build by the Royals and is a very wide boulevard of paths and walkways with lots of café’s and stalls. It had been a long winter and suddenly there was a very definite hint of blue skies and warmth, so the English were going mad! Desperate for it. Lots of kids on their skates and skateboards doing tricks, people stripped off and laying in the sun (and it was only 14 degrees!), almost everyone looking happy and laughing.
Steve Haines
Ged Sumner
