Kinship through Movementpattern
Wisdom of the Body Moving: An Introduction to Body-Mind Centering.
By Linda Hartley
The human body is made up 70% fluid: each living cell consists about 80% water. It is one of the five basic elements essential to all forms of life and out of which life is created. ….
… Where ever water occurs it tends to take on a spherical form. It envelops the whole sphere of the earth, enclosing every object in a thin film. Falling as a drop, water oscillates about a form of a sphere. A sphere is a totality, a whole, and water will always attempt to form an organic whole by joining what is divided and uniting it in a circulation. … The cell itself is essentially spherical in form, following this basic tendency of water, and hence all living matter, to unite its parts into a whole. We can call this a law of nature. A second law of nature that acts upon all matter, organic and inorganic is gravity, which irresistible pulls everything with substance towards the center of the earth, bonding all that is of the earth to her. The interaction of this two tendencies creates movement in the form of a downwards spiraling, Everywhere in nature we can find this spiral form is present: the shell of a snail, the currents of a meandering stream or a flow of air, the bark of a tree, the unfolding leaves around the stem of a plant, or the opening of rose petals.
As the cells of the human fetus multiply and arrange themselves into distinct structures within the body, they also follow this patterning: the striations within bone tissue spiral downwards, enabling the bones to dynamically transfer force of weight into the falling to the earth; muscles wrap around the bones in a continuous network of spiraling movement; the heart itself is a muscle which spirals in and around itself; the fluids of the body, too, flow in currents, waves, and gushes, reflecting all the myriad spiraling forms of nature#s rivers, oceans and waterfalls.
Inorganic matter is bound to obey the law of gravity…. But in the organic world counterforce occurs, a movement upward, which is the force of antigravity or levity, Wherever there is matter that has life, feeling and consciousness, however primitive, there is the possibility of growth and moving upwards or downwards. …. While the earth in which the tree grows will always settle downward with its own weight, the tree itself, having its own life and feelings and responsiveness to the cycles of changes and the environment, will spiral its path in both directions, reaching up towards the light and warmth of the sun as well as down to the source of nourishment in the earth.
As human beings of both matter and spirit or consciousness, we can live and grow and move on the earth through a dynamic interplay of these two forces of gravity and levity, both bonded to the earth and growing upwards to heavens, connecting the two within ourselves through our unique relationship to each. The very structures of our bodies come into form of these spiral patterns of fluid movement.