CREATING FLOW: Connecting To Our Fluid Nature
12/17/2008 - By MariOsa mariosa
my son, demonstrating flow
This article was written for a local publication to help make the connection of how important flowing movement is.
CREATING FLOW: Connecting To Our Fluid Nature
By MariOsa
Most of my life I have been involved in some movement form or another. Starting at a young age, I studied tap dance, and baton twirling. Then in my mid 20’s I studied Ballet, Karate, running, and aerobic dance. Although I loved being physical there was something that I secretly did that gave me more satisfaction than I ever received from any movement modality I has studied. Secretly, I danced. Sometimes I danced five or six hours a day. Actually, I put on the music and it danced me. Movement vocabulary came out of all parts of my brain and I began to notice the secrets hidden from us by a society and religions that reinforced our linear, patterned minds and bodies. Repetitious movements belong to a world of mechanical ways and controlled thinking. But these are not the ways of our organic nature, which is fluid. We are 80% water and the planet is 80% water.
As I danced and allowed the music to move through me in a non-judgmental way I began to see patterns of a magnificent flowing nature. Endless movement patterns emerged within me that created a delicious experience of myself. Yes, some were linear, but always evolving and moving into wavelike forms. The secrets also emerged. These were the times that I felt most at one with myself. These sensual motions were leading me to a more holistic experience of being in my own body.
All the things I learned about movement only lead to more structure, which created more separation from myself and others, not more connection to my own energy in motion. Energy in motion equals E-motion, which when healthy, is experienced as a wave pattern of coming into and releasing from form.
In the late 80’s I became pregnant and was very attracted to the idea of water birthing. The medical event that our country had made out of birthing seemed mechanical, linear, and not the living, breathing organic process that felt right to me. So with a midwife and a few friends I proceeded, in what I now say, was the experience of resonance with my and my baby’s fluid nature. Never was it more apparent to me just how oceanic we are. From the water world that he had been immersed in for nine months my son floated out effortlessly into warm dark waters. He was still connected to the umbilical cord. There was no trauma, no bright lights, and no sterility of mind, body, or spirit.
Years later, during my Somatic Movement and Pilates training, the visual of my baby floating with his umbilical cord still connected entered into my awareness. The training I was receiving was totally connected to emanating movement from my center, my core, both physically and energetically. The path of movement is like the ripple effect that occurs when a pebble is dropped into still water. It ripples outward.
I could apply these understandings of movement as a reflection of mind and I began to see the importance of the center both in my mind and body. I began to understand very clearly that whenever I moved from my outer limbs or my mind first I would be off balance.
HOW TO EXPRESS FLUIDITY
Our fluid systems are the transportation systems of the body. The major fluids are cellular, intercellular, blood, lymph, synovial, and cerebral spinal. Each of these fluids has its own unique ways of expressing attitudinally. But overall, fluids are systems of liquidity of movement and mind. They are the dynamics of flow between rest and activity. So the first level of connection may be merely finding that same dynamic within your own wavelike breath. Sense the rise and fall of your chest and notice the brief rest in between. Then allow more of your body to reflect this wavelike pattern. Continue to focus on the center, your core and let the ripples of movement move outward to your spine, then arms and legs. Visualize a pebble dropped into a pond around your navel, breath, and allow the ripples to radiate stress outward until it leaves your body feeling more fluid, softer.
Over the many years of finding my own luminous fluidity I noticed my inner fluid nature was deeply attuned to music of an ambient nature. I would simply allow it to take me inward and without judgment flow movement. Later, I combined this with water whenever I could. I would use a floatation device around my waist and allow the music to move me. When I would go to the ocean, I would lie in the shallow water near the shore and let the waves pull me in and out along the rippled sand bottom.
During these times of increased tension and anxiety we will need to seek balance daily to avoid the hardening that causes aggressive drive based on fear. We will need to know how to allow the softening on both the inner mental and outer physical level. We can achieve this by understanding the wave, the fluid nature of liquids. This is where we will find flow, openness to communication, playfulness, creativity, and acceptance of change. This, as I have experienced it, is the path to higher ground.
