Why Somatics are a powerful tool for community building
I've come to think of the study of ligaments and their continuity through the connective tissue as more and more important in this time in our society. In community it is about our ability to connect within ourselves and from there out into the world in trust - so we can play and work together.
These visco- elastic networks of communication through vibrational ligamentous tissue fibers, which are multi-layered, multi directional connections let each part of our body know when any other part of the whole organism is pulling or moving. We learn the ability to create consent , coordinate and move forward into action - together. The whole of our sinew's connection is like multiple hammocks cradling, swaying and connecting, including our organs.
This streaming transition from interoception ( feeling / knowing self) to proprioception (knowing where we are in space as well as the relationship of our body and limbs to each other) leads us to active relationship forming and reforming in the World. Somatic Body study embodyourlife.com can offer pathways to expereience this in our own bodies,and in movement with others.
Not only can we discover aliveness in our tensegrity, our inner guiding strength, we can also learn how to connect into the web of community.
Our vocal cords are ligaments. Just as they create sound - all of our ligaments together tune and act as a radio receiver and sender of vibrations in relation to our environment, nature, objects and people. Take a moment to meditate in this RESONANCE.
Our ligaments, being the closest tissue connecting the bones, hold us in each joint in a snug embrace, which gives us the experience of support: Great modeling on how to be held and received in family, in trust!
If we are indeed in alignment: balancing our bones in the joints in relationship to gravity, then they are most able to experience free motion in a tensegritous structure. If however we are off-balance or in holding patterns, have stickiness or scar tissue then our ligaments are preoccupied and stressed holding against gravity - so we are not able to access the full freedom of our tensegritous ligament arrangement. We perceive this loss of freedom often as resistance or numbness and can result in anger, frustration and loneliness.
As we free ourselves or return to a functioning structure we are able to notice that these muscles ligaments and connective tissue layers actually create space in our joints , less pressure, ( for example in the disks - now freed of the weight) and more resilience .
What I have not yet mentioned is that in order to enter into the ligamentous system it is most helpful to be very directed, & precise. So find the origin and insertion of some specific fibers of a ligament (many ligaments have fibers going in many directions or fanning out or crossing each other yet they have the same name), zoom in with your touch: clarify and activate these particular fibers , let them grow out of the bone tissue through the spirilic fibers elastically into the next bone. Allow them to flow - become fluid, melt into the motion, your fingers are following the unwinding and encouraging connection of the whole.
I see people trying to jump over this crucial step and try to immediatly connect to the whole, but I encourage you to connect deeply to very specific fibers and create an honest connection, to nurture that clarity of intention to the surrounding fibers, and from their spread throught the whole organism!
Tuning into our ligaments brings us into inner balance & to the aliveness of our constantly moving and interrelating architecture