Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Body Knowledge

One of my favorite sensations I remember from when I was a kid was swimming in a cold pond and then laying down on a hot dry dock in the sun. The feeling of having swum gave me a sensation of inner peace that I have never found any other way, this is what brings me back into the water. One night I was treading water in a cold pond for a long time feeling just my own warmth gushing out of my neck. I loved it. I felt heat all around me while being immersed in the cool. I love cold water on my skin, it helps me know the physical boundaries of where I am, where skin meets water or when walking outside on very cold days, where air meets skin. The YMCA pool is a very warm 83 degrees so I often feel like I am swimming in semi-congealed chicken soup or warm turquoise jello. The water is heavy and yet it's holding me up. The boundaries are blurry.

The body is one big antenna, satellite dish, or what I call a ziti. We pick up signals, stuff flows though us, and zaps us all the time. The conscious mind is continually trying to decipher sensations or ignore them! Our job is to be the ziti and the antenna and serve the flow of energies. When I'm painting a picture my color choices come from my abdomen. When I play my horn I feel low notes in my calves and I shake my legs. Dancing is fun and I have accidentally danced my way into various states of body euphoria. There's a particular sensation that seems to be triggered when I tilt my head back in the height of a dancing froth. It originates in my neck and drops down. Then I get a gigantic slow gut rush up through my abdomen and spine, it feels like the Earth and the sky momentarily exchange places through me, creating what I call a body-gasm. Hey, let's dance! Playing music is swimming in sound. Recently I was watching and listening to a guitar player take a solo at a jam. I had a gut rush from my groin through the top of my head, whoosh. I was startled, but I kept on playing.

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