Solving through movement
Wow! Even as somatic explorers we tend to avoid really really allowing our body to engage and grapple with an issue to eventually solve it. The body moving process is different than the planning mind. It has a different rhythm and engagement -- it's rough and tumbly or scribbly; it has pauses and accelerations; multiple attempts and diversions -- maybe a nap! -- it’s honest, good effort.
I'm just coming out of an exhilarating Muscle module. I've been teaching BMC and SomaticBODY training for the last 25 years. Muscles are at the core of movement; and most of the brain developed to refine movement and thus our ability to act in the world. As I'm teaching and watching the students grapple with developmental movement and the awesome challenges of embodiment, well: I got it. I got it again and so fully what it means to be alive in motion.
Those sliding fibers -- so free -- the muscle spindles at constant beck and call, maneuvering the ship/ the tone, action, timing, the titins like silver threads keeping the myosin fibers floating between the actin fibers, the myosin heads gripping and releasing, like sticky matchstick heads, gluing, igniting, holding and releasing....
I began to wonder, is movement itself a team effort?. When we stick to solving things with movement, we recruit our own muscle agency. And, embryologically our muscles recruited each other.
Did you know that as the first embryonic pre-muscle cells swim out toward the limb, they begin to transform and then they team up with 3 other cells to create a team cell? Well muscles have a team of nuclei in one cell. They stick, then bind, then open up their membranes to each other. Once some of these are created, 4 other younger myotomes saddle up next to these multi-nucleated cells, become inspired, learn and easily create more of these muscle cells.
This team thing became a subtheme: doing it better together, getting together to get things movin'
There is another moment in embryology where we have multi- nucleated cells: During implantation a ravenous blastocyst rapidly grows into the uterine wall, eating and corroding its way in (lets face it: the mother is fine: she has prepared what amounts to football fields of nutrition for an egg that is still smaller than a rice kernel when it arrives.) These cells are syncytium cells and as the Syncytiotrophoblast, these cells invade the area making way, breaking down maternal cells. Because they bind together, becoming one, they are an effective barrier and filter: neither the mom nor the baby react to each other as foreign dna would. These are the same cells that become the placenta.
Back to the world of babies and students, jumbling around busily, napping, crying, trying to put things on other things or take them out of things.... they are not thinking ahead: Can this be done? They are not defeated in their mind.
They are happily putting their muscles into the tasks at hand: pushing or pulling or tapping or grabbing...as we all just kept moving arms, reaching for the ground and spiral-gigging our legs in all kinds of alternate ways, our hearts opened, we became turned on to the task with no goal but the aliveness/ ecstatic moment when our own movement just comes back to give us more energy, more of our life, more of ourselves, the legs flying, arms aching, hands ready.
The fact is, movement is a TEAM and the experience of movement itself is a team effort. Embryologically, we created multi-nucleated cells. There is the synchronization of muscle fibers, muslce groups and all the muscles in the body. We cannot be alone if we are moving. This is a metaphor that contridicts the western mindset that we are all alone and that people can do things better on their own. In fact, in the most crucial moments, the body creates teams.