Center is where the juice is. Center is where freedom lies – from center we have the potential to move in any direction. Center is where we find joy. There is a center to everything, to each and every cell, to our bodies and to the earth. From our own center we are interconnected to the center of everything. Center is where we feel at home and where we feel peace. When we live in our cellular center, we are embodied, knowing our Source on a bodily level, interconnected with all life. From our own center, we connect to the crystalline center of the earth (see link below).

There are two ways I access my center. One is by moving my attention to my belly center or hara. The other is by going directly to the cells and allowing my attention to rest in the center, feeling the stillness at the center. In either way, I access the unlimited support of Source. By resting in stillness I begin to feel the abundant ocean of nourishment that is always available to me. In this quiet place, whatever I need next bubbles up, rejuvenating and freeing me for the next step in my life.

Here is a link to a longer article I recently wrote for Soul Light, a newsletter for visionary activism (http://www.visionarylead.org/articles/embodied_life.htm), in which I talk more about cellular awareness and the embodied life.

And this is a link to a recent NYTimes article on the center of the earth, now thought to be a single giant crystal:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE1D9123DF937A35757C0A963958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print

I am convinced that embodiment is a necessary and crucial next step for our own well-being and that of the world. As we begin to live from the insides of ourselves, we experience the aliveness and ever-changing wonder of our own body, a complex system of inter-relationships in continual dynamic change – an improvisational dance in which each part of the whole is a vital contributing member. We experience our interdependence with our surrounding elemental world, the sunlight, air, water and food through which we thrive. From this inner vantage point we see that the entire world is alive, complex and dynamic, a web of interdependence and mutual exchange. The Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh uses the term “interbeing” to describe our living world of mutuality.

Once I experienced this interdependence through the felt experiences of my body, my worldview and how I moved in the world changed. The swaying of the trees and the flight of the hummingbird began to touch me at a deeper level. I no longer was looking at nature as something outside myself, but feeling her movements within me. The aliveness of the Earth and my ability to communicate with her, to interrelate, became real. As David Suzuki writes, “How you see the world is how you live in it,” and with increasing levels of embodiment, I move through the world and relate in a kinder and more gentle way. I am in dialogue, in an improvisational exchange, with my elemental surroundings and the animals, plants, and humans who live here.

My first experience of intimate contact with the Earth was on a vision quest in 1984. My prayer was to feel the Earth, to know her more fully. On a full moon night, I had climbed up onto a rocky plateau above the valley where my tent was staked, taking my sleeping bag with me. I snuggled into my sleeping bag in the crevice of the rocks, looking up at the Moon illuminating the entire valley and my plateau. As I lay there to my amazement I began to feel cradled and rocked by the Earth, a moving sensation that was unlike anything I had ever experienced. I felt held and protected, soothed and nurtured, at a cellular level. At that moment my worldview changed, and I could no longer experience myself as isolated or alone. I knew that I was in the presence of another living being who was holding me in her field.

This experience was an initiation into the journey of embodiment, a journey that has continued over the past 22 years, an unfolding of feeling and connection with myself and my world. I have become more relaxed and present, as I have learned to become a part of the living dance. Through the richness of my inner body I began to dance, learned to feel my cells and through them the pull of gravity and the joy of levity, falling, leaping, swirling in motion. But most of all, as I continued to open to life, I became a more heartful person, sensitive to the nuances and feelings not only in myself and the natural world, but also with my fellow humans.

In YOGA MIND,BODY AND SPIRIT, Donna Farhi writes, “Every violent impulse begins in a body filled with tension; every failure to reach out to someone in need begins in a body that has forgotten to feel.” When I am connected to my inner world of feeling and sensation, I feel the feelings of those around me, and I am moved to respond or to act, or to witness in compassion. When I am embodied, I live from, and in, a moving web of connection, and my impulses arise from the deep sea of interbeing. What is needed in the moment arises. I am moved and I am the mover, in a co-creative dance of far greater subtlety and magic than I ever could create in my previously unembodied state. This is my wish for planet Earth and those of us here now – the embodied solution – that we embrace our inner depths and discover our interconnection. It begins with the body, but the ripples affect every level of our lives.

I imagine that as we become increasingly aware of our interconnection and interdependence on the Earth, creative solutions will occur to us, solutions that will help us create a peaceful world and healthier environment. In the improv world, whether improv theater or dance, participants learn to support one another, to go with what is happening. And, of course, the more embodied one is, the more easily this comes. Innovation and surprising creativity emerge from moving in mutual connection and support. As an improvisational dancer, I have learned to trust the impulses that emerge from within, and I watch myself in wonder as my movement unfolds in new and delightful ways. This same principle occurs in my writing, as ideas develop during the act of writing, emerging from the inner sea of creativity, shaping the writing in ways I had not imagined. Yet is is always a co-creative process, at any moment I can reject an impulse or save the idea for another time. When I am connected to the inner depths of my being, creativity is boundless, each moment a creative arising and falling, an improvisational adventure, true play. I experience the true nature of reality, an ongoing dance of becoming, with myriad possibilities in each moment.

Why has awakening been so difficult for most of us? I believe it is because our religions and spirituality have overlooked the body, or perceived the body as something dangerous to be controlled. In reality the body, and more specifically the inner body, is the portal to the direct experience of the divine. The body is the living temple, and our own awareness is the key to the temple. Rather than tremendous discipline and effort, embodiment – and awakening – require curiousity and the willingness to explore who you truly are. One of my teachers, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, wrote of embodiment in a handout on The Embodiment Process:

“Embodiment is the awareness of the cells of themselves. It is a direct experience. There are no intermediary steps or translations. There is no guide. There is no witness. There is the fully known consciousness of the experienced moment initiated from the cells themselves. In this instance, the brain is the last to know. There is complete knowing. There is peaceful comprehension. Out of this embodiment process emerges feeling, thinking, witnessing, understanding. The source of this process is love.”

We carry within us the ability to be aware of the cellular level of our body. We began as a single cell, and one of the easiest ways to begin is to imagine that we are once again that single cell. To simply begin to breathe as a single cell, allowing your attention to reside within your body, just experiencing the rising and falling of the breath. Imagine the skin of your body as the membrane of the cell, allowing the inside and the outside to connect through the porous membrane of the skin. When your thoughts take you away, simply come back to the feeling of being a single cell when you realize you have gone away, without judging or blaming yourself. Just reside in the comfort of that cellular space, and be open to what occurs. After some time has passed, include in your awareness that there are many cells, billions of cells, all breathing in this same way.

This simple exercise helps me bring my attention back within my own body, and this is the beginning of emodiment, to come to know ourselves from within. The body is the doorway to our true nature.

As we become conscious of the inner body – organs and glands, how our blood and fluids move, the feeling of the cells, and the way our energy is moving through us – all of this creates a tremendous support for our daily lives. Instead of living on the surface of the body, somewhat unconsciously using and reusing our muscles, perhaps forcing the body beyond what feels good, basically dominating or controlling our own matter, there is another way, one of partnership, cooperation and deep listening to what we truly need.

For years my right hip would ache, especially at night, and after trying many modalities, I began to investigate more deeply, guiding my attention to be with the sensation. I noticed how there was so much energy tied up in that area, longing to be released into gravity. The sciatica that accompanied my right hip pain, running down the out side of my right leg, seemed to be released by pulling on my toes or letting my leg hang freely.

As I learned more about my center of gravity, the hara area a few inches below my navel, I saw that I was not normally centered, but rather pulling to the right of center, overusing my right side. Gradually I began to see that this pulling to the right was related to my pushing myself from my individual will, rather than working in cooperation with the whole of myself, including the deeper parts of my body. This pulling to the right also threw me out of my vertical alignment, so I couldn’t take advantage of the flow of gravity and levity, the natural support of feeling our connection to the Earth’s field.

While we are always held by gravity, it is only when we become aware of its affect on us that we can begin to align with it and consciously use that support in all our endeavors. Most of us are habitually moving from effort, fighting gravity, which wears us down overtime. There is another way, the joy of effortlessness, moving in alignment with our inner flow. Our everyday activities, or our athletic endeavors, then become rejuvenating and renewing, and we slow our aging process. I learned so much from that aching right hip, and to this day, when it returns, I know it is that voice from within, urging me to realign. The inner body is a door way to our inner self, helping us to redirect our energies and discover the deeper layers of who we are.

Lately I have been feeling an increasingly direct connection with the cells of my body. Many years ago I had begun using the mantra “love” with my cells, gently saying this word over and over again. When I do this I feel an excitement in my cells, a joyful jumping to attention, as if they love being directly contacted. More recently in the womens’ group we have been exploring the pull of gravity on the cells, feeling how we are directly connected to the Earth through her gravitational pull on each cell. We lie on our back at first, then on each side, and eventually on the belly, feeling how we are held in the Earth’s gravitational embrace. Surrendering to this pull, soon there is an upward force, as if the waters within us are rising in joy – the force of levity.

Often now, I have been returning to a feeling of the cells floating in an ocean of love, the love arising though the cells and forming them, then everything dissolving back into that ocean, again and again the rhythm of the breath entwined with this arising and falling. My body is then this arising and falling, the ocean of love creating and re-creating my existence.

When this feeling is with me in everyday activity, I function easily, with great buoyancy and joy. When I am working on an individual’s body through bodywork, sometimes I feel how the cells move under my fingertips, longing to feel this contact. I see the awareness of the cells as the interface of form and space, or mystery, and as my attention learns to live there, I create more easily and let go with less attachment, seeing myself as THIS DANCE instead of solid and unmoving.

In our womens’ group we have been focusing on the hara, the belly center, and even more specifically, at the very center of the hara – the tant tien – where one can feel what has been called “the rhythm of the primordial force” by Kaneko Shoseki (see the appendix of Durckheim’s HARA, p.193). The tant tien is the center of gravity in our bodies, approximately two fingers below the navel, deep in the center of the belly. By focusing our attention on this center, we have been experiencing the rhythm of the universe flowing through us. It is the feeling of being breathed and nourished, being held and supported, by the Mother of us all. It is the feeling of connecting to Source, of being interconnected with all that moves, yet blossoming as a true individual, supported by the whole.

We have been exploring how the tant tien is energetically connected to the foot through the talus bone, where the tibia and fibula, the lower leg bones, meet the foot. When we walk with attention in our center, the weight of the body falls through the talus bone, and then 50% is distrbuted to the calcaneous (the heel), while the rest moves forward through the metatarsals. This feels deliciously supportive, as well as deeply connected to the Earth, as the tant tien has the same vibratory rhythm as the center of the Earth.

While dancing with this awareness of center, I have felt my body as a sacred temple, perfectly supported by the bones of the feet, like a cathedral on bedrock. This level of support allows me to feel my inner space geometrically, as if I am moving deeper into the temple through a series of sacred rooms.

Rhythm is fundamental to our nature, from the beat of our heart to the cycles of the moon, we exist in a universe of rhythmic creation. By feeling deeply into our bodies, the rhythmic ground of our being becomes tangible. Entraining to the rhythm of the Earth, we feel ourselves part of a living body, a moving whole that is ever evolving. We discover our rhythmic connection to the primordial energies or archetypes that are fundamental to our world, universal principles such as compassion, wisdom, grace and love. Through the integration of these archetypal rhythms, we experience being aligned and relaxed, feeling the interconnection of body, heart, and soul.

Held patterns dissolve, giving way to new rhythms. Rhythm shapes matter – the body actually shifts shape as this alignment occurs. When the body is aligned with, and nourished from, the heart and soul, rhythms of rejuvenation arise from the inside out. Held patterns dissolve, giving way to new rhythms of beauty, grace and ease. We find ourselves aware of our anatomy in the here and now – our body in the present moment – pulsing in polyrhythmic aliveness. We begin to hear the rhythms of our soul, feeling the effortless nature of aligning with the intent of our soul. As Rumi says, when we do things from our soul, we feel a river moving in us, a joy.

We learn to listen to the constant rhythmic movements within us, discovering that all relationship is based on the interconnection of rhythmic patterns. Our relationship with the Earth, our friends and families, and our communities are created and sustained through complex rhythms.

We shape our world through the motion of our bodies, the rhythmic patterns of movement that we continuously create. We are how we move. Through awareness and intention, we develop mindfulness of our movement patterns, aligning the soul’s intent with the hara and heart, consciously co-creating with the archetypal energies of our world.