The Creative Body

I couldn’t say it better myself.  This article by Edward Yu, a Feldenkrais practitioner and tai chi teacher reminds us that it’s not how hard you work, but how smart. Check it out as well as his newbook, The Art of Slowing Down. 

Welcome to the Creative Body, a resource and forum for exploring the intersection between body and mind, movement and possibility, expression and introspection.  Take a tour, post a comment.  If you’d like to submit an article, please send material to lavinia@laviniaplonka.com.

The morning of my birthday, I dreamt I worked in a Parisian parfumerie as a clerk. All the women were delicate, formerly lovely creatures who still dolled up every morning as if to meet a beau. There was a distinctive Umbrellas of Cherbourg vibe to their cheery, twittery chatter as they compared new kinds of make up and exclaimed over hairdos. I felt a deep sadness that so many lives of great promise had ended up in a loop of empty optimism and unfulfilled dreams.

I woke up and screwed my eyes shut to try to sleep longer, “It’s your birthday, dammit, you can sleep in.” But the dream’s heavy atmosphere billowed around my fragile self image as gremlin voices nagged, “Well, how are you any better than those ladies? Do you have an Academy Award? Have you published your novel? Are you a millionaire?”

I looked at the pile of bills, the unpainted floor, the to do list (go to Sam’s Club for brie, pick up cat food, kill the blister beetles, mow the lawn) and fought the urge to just fall to the floor and whine. What had I done to deserve this? This mediocre, ordinary life of petty responsibilities, inconsequential worries (Come on! There’s a war in Afghanistan for goodness’ sake!) and lack of celebrity, or acclaim, or at least wealth.

At my computer were dozens of Happy Birthdays from my Facebook friends. Most were people I never speak to, some I don’t even know. Instead of being moved, my bitter attitude scoffed, “Yeah, it’s so easy to just click on my Wall with Happy Birthday, like they really care.” Then came the E Cards, and my wall began to crumble. Funny cards, sentimental cards, goofy Jacquie Lawson cards. Tears began to well up. And then I saw an email from my mother. She lives in Hospice, dying of ALS. She can’t walk, talk, eat, hold her own head up. She struggles to write every word, using her left hand to push her right hand. Yet somehow, she had communicated with one of the aides there to open her computer and type me a Happy Birthday email. I melted in incoherent sobs. My poor husband Ron, who has witnessed countless breakdowns, just stood there patting me saying, “There, there.”

“Why am I crying?” I cried. He shrugged. “It’s your birthday, you can do what you want.”

“I just don’t understand, what did I do wrong in my life? How is it that Robert Downey Jr. can be arrested for drugs and drinking and still be a multimillion dollar movie star and I try to do the right thing and it gets me nowhere?” Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy Robert Downey Jr. I just suddenly saw that the equation my parents tried to drill into me, “Work hard, be impeccable and you will be rich,” doesn’t always hold true.

“You don’t know,” replied Ron. “Maybe Robert Downey Jr. is still searching for meaning as well. Maybe all that money doesn’t mean much, so he drinks to feel something or to fulfill a lack.” Right.

“So it’s your birthday. What do you want to do?” he asked. I honestly didn’t know. Part of me felt like I should keep working. The list would never be done. Instead, I said, “Let’s go for a hike.” Silently I prayed, “Dear God, or Goddess, please send me a sign. Just any sign that lets me know life is worth living.” As we left, I grabbed a plastic bag. I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be nice to find some chicken mushrooms on my birthday?”

We’ve been experiencing what the newspaper has called “a mild drought.” So hoping for mushrooms of any kind seemed quixotic. But within ten minutes of our hike, spread out on a log as if they were a presentation, was a spectacular row of chicken mushrooms. I stared. I had gotten exactly what I asked for. For the whole rest of the hike, there was not a single mushroom.

It couldn’t have been a clearer message.. Ask for chicken mushrooms. Get chicken mushrooms. It’s like God was sitting up there with folded arms saying, “I’d really like to give you what you want. But you keep sending mixed messages. So I send you a little prosperity, a little adversity. The good and the bad. As soon as you figure out what you REALLY want, I’ll send it Fed Ex, no wait, I’m God, I can just instantaneously make it manifest. Happy Birthday, kiddo.” Needless to say, I’m having chicken mushrooms for my birthday dinner. And I’ve decided I didn’t have an emotional breakdown. It was an emotional breakthrough. What a birthday gift.

I was working with someone recently who had a great deal of back pain. She was lying on her side on the table and I was gently exploring the area where her spine connected to her ribs. “What are you doing” she asked.
“I’m exploring how your ribs move,” I answered.
She shot up and stared at me in disbelief. “My ribs are supposed to move?” She was incredulous. After she calmed down, I assured her that she moved her ribs all the time: bending, reaching, twisting. They do all these marvelous movements without us ever noticing. But when back pain, shoulder pain, even neck pain strikes, we rarely think that it might have something to do with the ribs.

While it’s true that the bones of the ribs can look like a cage, it’s an inaccurate image. Each rib can move in relation to the others, coming together and apart according to the activity. The bars of a cage are immobile. For some people, this “cage” becomes almost like a suit of armor, over protecting parts of the trunk. Emotional trauma often affects breathing and posture, which causes the ribs to seem almost stuck, leading to a vicious cycle of immoblization. My ribs are stiff, my breathing gets shallow. My breathing is shallow, my ribs move less, etc. That’s when the ribs do become prison bars! As student told me a story of a faculty meeting at his school where someone had proposed a program he was uncomfortable with. “I sat there and folded my arms across my chest as I listened to the proposal. I don’t think it’s a habitual posture for me, but as the other teacher talked, I felt myself full of resistance to his idea. All of a sudden I realized that my arms were holding my chest so tightly that I was barely breathing. I put my arms down by my sides and instantly felt more air coming in. As my ability to breathe increased, I was literally better able to take in his idea, let it move around in me.”

A frozen rib cage interferes with freedom of expression. After all, even an exhale is an “expression” of air! In theater there is a saying, “The chest does not lie.” This statement infers that your true emotional state is reflected in the carriage of your chest. Unconsciously, we are both communicating as well as reading others’ emotions in sometimes subtle, but sometimes large shifts in the chest. For the last 200 years, science and medicine insisted that the organs in the torso are merely mechanical devices; pumps and bellows that keep the human machine running. The idea that emotional life is somehow connected to these physiological functions was ridiculed. And yet, we would talk about someone walking around with his chest “puffed up.” Or having a “gut feeling.”

Neurotransmitters have been found in the stomach indicating that a “gut feeling” may be a kind of intelligence that informs the thinking brain. New discoveries in the field of neurocardiology are prompting some to call the heart another brain, the seat of the emotional intelligence. While science may have forgotten, or misunderstood its importance in relation to our body language, our “kinesthetic sense” has always been there for us to see as St. Exupery’s Little Prince once said, “Not just with the eyes, but with the heart.”

Here’s a simple exercise to try. Find a neutral stance. Where do you find your chest right now? Is it forward or back of the plumb line? Is this where your chest is all the time? Walk around a little bit and experiment with the position of your chest. Try expanding it , puffing it out. How does that affect the rest of your walk? How do you feel? Sink your chest in and down, as if you had pushed all the air out of your lungs. Walk around a bit like this and notice what comes up.

When you try an exercise like the above, it is important to give yourself a little time to let the posture sink in. Many people are afraid to experience different postures, especially in the chest, because it interferes with our habitual posture, shaking up our self image. But what a wonderful way to experience not only new options for yourself, but how you might better understand others who carry themselves differently from you.