The book I am reading (not just in the sense of taking in the words but reading in the sense of being nourished and expanded by) is ‘Thirty-two words for field’ by Manchan Magan. That the Irish language is based on an embedded non-dual understanding of the interconnectedness of everything resonates, both with my ancestral DNA and my chosen philosophical lens. The sound of words themselves has influence on in the world, through vibration and perhaps memory. The multiple meanings and subtle variations of words pointing to very different things or experiences has me reflecting on the way language can bring light to the essence, rasa, or energetic embodied experience of that thing.
This has me thinking. We need more words for the act of reading and we need more words for our embodied experience.
This morning as I was practicing, sensing and responding to tension in my psoas, the deep hip flexor muscle in the front of the spine, I wondered if we might create words for different types of psoas tension. We would need a lot of them as I think about it.
The psoas is powerfully used when physically working hard, whether it be pushing a wheel barrow full of wood up the driveway, deadlifting 70kg, picking up a child, or running to catch the bus. The psoas is also integral to breath, impacted by diaphragm restriction, and responsive to autonomic nervous system states. I have heard, and believe, that the psoas carries memory of events past and I wonder if perhaps that includes intergenerational memory as I have felt that to be true for me.
So, this psoas tension, to be respected and responded to with care invites us to consider the source of tension. For example, if my deadlifting 80kg instead of 70kg (true story) this week has brought tension I can ease in and out of stretches and engage the psoas when lengthened to free range of movement and let go of the grip. If I have experienced loss, as happened this week with a friend’s horse staying with us becomes suddenly unwell and passes away, I meet this psoas tension with deep and wide breaths allowing the sadness and fear to be honoured and felt and to recognise that it is tied to other losses and sadnesses.
Our practice then is not a one size fits all thing. Psoas tension is not just psoas tension, it is an embodied story. The recorded classes offered on the Aligned Living Tasmania platform are experienced by you, presumably most often alone, and the way you engage with them is always an opportunity to deeply listen and to modify, breathe into, move in and out of, pause, skip, riff off. Let’s create more words to meet our varied and changing experience.
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