I literally watched the ice crystals blossom on the glass. I was Jack watching multiple bean stalks stretch and reach into the sky. They feathered and connected, the light behind them making the ice-miracle color-lush.
It brought fascia to mind. That is not as arbitrary a thought as it might as first seem. I am reading about fascia. Don’t ask me why. I won’t be able to answer. My reasons are not random, just hard to articulate.
Fascia is the connective tissue of the body. It not only wraps around muscle, organs, and bones, it also embraces every ligament, every joint, every nerve, every artery and vein, every cell of our bodies. Every thing. It is a paradoxical wonder: it is flexible but provides structure, it is soft and loose but provides support. It literally holds our bodies together. It gives us shape. Most amazing of all, it is continuous, a an unbroken tissue-web from the tippy-top of our heads to the farthest molecule of our big toe, from the outermost layer to the innermost core.
When fascia is stressed, it tightens. It grips. It holds down the fort.
It responds to sensory stimuli. It feels. Trauma, physical or psychological, can cause the fascia to lose flexibility; this loss is called “restrictions”. In other words, too much stress makes fascia grip and not let go. The restriction creates an energy eddy that solidifies. A hard spot. A place where toxins congregate.
The good news is that the eddy or restriction can be released – but never through force. Pressure only serves to make the grip tighter. Gentle oppositional touch, fascia yoga, will eventually send the message: you can let go now. Relax. Trust.
I remember watching Koyaanisqasti, the 1982 documentary composed of slow motion and time lapse footage, no spoken words, that explores our relationship with technology and nature. Koyaanisqasti is a Hopi word meaning “life out of balance.” I was awe-struck by the interconnectivity it revealed. We move as one whether we realize it or not. We are not separate from nature or the world in which we live. We are nature. Out of balance with ourselves.
My long lost pal Roger used to say that it is a trick of language that fools us into compartmentalizing our experiences. “When you hurt your toe, it’s not just your toe that is injured; your whole body is injured,” he’d say.
Every “thing” impacts every other “thing”. Separation is an illusion.
The second day. The fascia of the nation is stressed. Hard spots have formed. Our faith in the populace is strained. We tighten our grip. We isolate, circle the wagons and hold down the fort. It is early so we can do little more than shake our heads in disbelief. 77 million of us chose the path of hatred and gross indecency. We fracture. We necessarily emphasize separation, “I am not them.”
And yet, we…The whole body is injured.
Perhaps the fascia has some lessons to teach us about how we might deal with the trauma to our national body: the election of indecency, the elevation of a confederacy of dunces. It certainly provides clues for how we – those of us who did not vote for hatred – might regain a healthy equilibrium. Gentle touch. Send the message to one another, “I am here.” Not only are we more than opposition; we are the carriers of the spark of the ideal of democracy. We are the movement forward. Even though an abomination currently sits at the resolute desk, we are the connective tissue, the shape givers of our nation and of the future.
read Kerri’s blogpost about ICE
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The Direction of Intention 