original post June 20, 2014

Pondering Question: Where in my body systems do I experience “premature cognitive commitment” that limits me?

I heard the phrase a week ago on Deepak Chopra’s audio cd: “Quantum Healing.” Every cell in the body, based on its experiences, is capable of making a commitment to behavior that it continues to replicate even when environmental circumstances have changed. This question tumbled unattended in the back of my mind as I traveled to Berkeley, CA for a four-day workshop on Basic Neurocellular Patterns with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, founder of the School for Body Mind Centering.

One story of Inquiry/Observation

The lightening flash of thought, two perspectives combined like top and bottom of a jagged lightening strike, lasted less than 6 seconds yet left behind charged air that reverberated inside the stillness of my cellular frame of mind. The strike caught me unawares, mid-stride as it were in an internal descent into deepening relaxation.

The flash came late afternoon in day two of the Neurocellular Patterns workshop. We had spent several hours exploring the “vibration” of cells, the “pulsing” of movement in and out of the cell, and “sponging” undulations of fluids traveling through our bodies to our exterior. All of this exploring took place in the context of a groundwork laid in the previous 1 ½ days that invited explicit perception of space within ourselves and in the room of fellow students. My own circumstances included connections with fellow BMC practitioners who were welcoming and where my husband, Dudley, in a gesture of support for my increasing involvement with my BMC studies, accompanied me on the trip to CA.

At the moment of lightening I was gentle swaying, sitting on a large physioball, aware of delicious ease. Breath and internal rhythms rocked me without effort. A half hour earlier my explorations began with perception of imbalance, as if I held more inside each cell, inside the outlines of my skin, than I let flow outward. Lying on the floor I stretched and waved my arms in the air as if they were long ribbons rippling in dance. I rolled front to back in drawn out sequences as I imagined room inside me for each organ to sequence like slippery dominoes against its neighbor. Now I felt balanced, satiated.

And then the thoughts: “There isn’t room for you in BMC, no one really wants what you have to offer.” “Dudley won’t want you like this.” The lightening bolt of judgmental rejection hit the ground of my body. Cleaved time into before and after. My swaying stopped. Deliciousness evaporated, replaced by dry wariness. Tentativeness dropped my arms to my sides. Conscious thoughts hollered down into the cavern of my body, “Not true. I am held. There is invitation to come forth.” But the charge left by lightening silenced my body hearing. Inside I am the dull sheen of steel, opaque and impenetrable.

Who or what is in charge of a screen that can come down so fast? Who is the voice objecting to open ease? I am still curious about those questions. Undoubtedly I’ll get another chance to see them in action. But for now, I did find greater peace the day following that has lasted.

I found it in part by talking with Dudley the next morning about how deeply I appreciate the contact I make with myself in the explorations Bonnie offers. The discomfort of ease turning to steel excites me in its raw truthfulness. I can’t see clearly where my life is going in form even while I know what’s next is more outflow than my previous habits and lifecycle supported. Can our relationship hold these wanderings of self? While I talk I sense my words and feelings absorbed into him, held safe in a nest. My exterior doesn’t show the vulnerability I feel so I name it, my sensation of pressure on the underneath layer of skin, an impulse to flee, to retract. I hold steady, sense the barest infusion of fluid kindness coming like groundwater into sand.

A few hours later I am again in a class exploration, following the path of inward impulses without conscious agenda. I’m not leading with questions, trusting instead that my self has its own story to weave based on everything absorbed in the past three days. I witness without naming. In the space of solar plexus I perceive myself drop, as if my insides are a toddler sitting on her bottom and sliding down a step, a jarring vibration wiggling upward as contact is made with the hard surface. It comes a second time. New territory. I’ve landed someplace filled with light and enough time to never hurry.