Where is UP again?
Where is up and why? Sidenote: what’s it like to take your full height? Yes, I’m looking at you tallies and shorties and basically anyone.
The UP is the critical thing in this work – we are organized from the top down, supported from the ground up. (I heard this in a workshop from Meade Andrews who I believe learned it from Ted Diamond). And even after practicing the AT for nearly 20 (!!!) years, the UP is ALWAYS higher than I think it is.
Tonight, after a couple months off my usual lie-down practice (why? I don’t know) I was reminded of this, and reminded of the true length of my whole spine. By beginning at the space between the ears, behind the eyes, behind the face and inviting in the tiniest bit of ease, I started to connect with the ripple effect of anything on the spine, or even on the whole thing/body/self. That innate snakiness. By letting go at either end of the spine, the spaces in between that might have been holding on have somewhere to let go into.
This is where the support is crucial – the connection and release and rebound through gravity. Otherwise, as a hypermobile human, with all this letting go I could float away or just overdo it. [Also the domes come in for rebound support here, but more on that another day!]
The floor provides feedback, a container to release into and suspend above. And all this with no spirals – who am I today? Ok – but this is because the spirals (nodding no) happen lower in the spine than the nodding yes – better to get that UP going sometimes (although you really, truly can start anywhere).
Knowing where the UP is is really about not KNOWING. No sooner do I ‘find it’ than it changes again, in relationship to each micro-movement, in relationship to the WHOLE and to gravity. But unless I take the time to STOP and sense that easy space, behind the eyes, behind the face, at the top of the spine, I shrink myself. This can add compression, pain, and narrows my experience of my environment and relationships.
This shrinking could be a social construct, those mirror neurons telling me to meet the world as I anticipate it to be. But what if I stay up? And let it come to me?
