This is a record of the workshop held over the last weekend.
Blog
on Sunday Workshop 20th July 2014
This weekend’s workshop was based around
the theme of Ebb and Flow.
If you check the dictionary it means ‘a
recurrent pattern of coming and going or decline and re-growth’.
We also looked at the phrase ‘negative
plasticity’ again looking at the dictionary, plasticity in biology means ‘ the
adaptability of an organism to changes in the environment or differences
between it’s various habitats’ or ‘the ability to change and adapt’ so does
that make the definition for negative plasticity ‘not changing’ or does it mean
that nothing changes without a trace of what went before.
All movement involves a simple Ebb and
Flow, an up and down, forward and backward, an in and out (spiral?), some
movements are simple, some complex. All body systems work to this simple
pattern, some involve pumps such as our circulatory system where the heart
pumps blood, the cranial sacral system which involves simple valves, our
digestive system using peristalsis, a simple constriction and relaxation of
muscles to create wave like movements which push the contents through the
system. Our breath relies on a gaseous exchange and our cells exchange
nutrients on a daily basis. Other systems rely upon movement to flow. Our body
loves rhythm and it when this ebb and flow is disrupted we get dis-ease.
It is believed that our fascial body wide
network is a system built upon the principles of biotensegrity. It is
constantly under pressure, and made up of compressive and tensional elements,
balancing to create shape and space, simultaneously separating and connecting
our body’s tissues. These examples of oppositions occurring in the body, in a
rhythm, is in itself recurrent and worth more exploration. Could it be that we
operate on a simple on-off binary system or where movement is involved and
requires direction, a polarity system.
At the workshop we explored movement using
the short sticks, which closed the movement by joining our right and left hand.
This closure made our normal patterns of movement: up and down, back and forth,
in and out, different and so we needed more concentration, by slowing the
movements we created time to listen and pay attention to our body responses. On
the shooting sticks we tuned into the internal fascial dance in order to
maintain balance and we felt our body responding to increased loading and
explored the adaptations being made on a temporary basis by exploring the lock,
load, release, flow sequence.
In discovering our body’s responses we discussed
the responses fascia has to increased or changes in load. We all know that our
body continually renews itself. The speed of renewal slows with age and it has
been shown that even the brain has plasticity, which is the brain’s ability to
change as a result of experience or neuroplasticity.
Our fascia is continuously responding to
our environment and movement patterns and can therefore be said to be plastic
in nature, however does it really completely change or is there always a memory or shadow of the past? Is it like an old building which is refurbished, the original
structure still exists behind and under the shiny new fittings.
Is our body the same, under all the new
fascial network do we find an original or older framework which will sometimes
resurface in some form or other. Or are we all constantly bulldozed and
totally rebuilt as if new? If, as I suspect, it is a mixture of the two, what
form may that resurfacing take? Could it be that the memory left is on an
emotional level rather than a physical one?
Can we have a form of fascial self-remembering.
Take a moment to think about that
statement.------
We looked at the possibility that fascia
holds memory in a past workshop and this notion is just a continuation of the
conversation we have been having with our movement practice in subsequent
workshops and weekly classes.
To my knowledge this question has not been
part of any published research so the only basis we have to go on is our own
experiential data flowing from these classes.
So what becomes of our shadows of memory?
Where is movement memory stored and on what level.
Recent research has identified that when describing fascial
pain as opposed to muscular pain we tend to use emotional words. We noticed
when working in a slow focused or conscious way we seem to access the body’s
interconnectiveness, perhaps through our fascial network. We have defined two
ways of moving as musculated or fascialated movement. We have noticed that when
moving in a fascialated way our emotions are very close to the surface and we
noticed that our language changes to reflect this.
The workshops always reveal more than we
could ever plan for. This is only made possible by the engagement in the
subject by the participants, so our thanks goes to this months group. We hope
you enjoyed it as much as we did.
“Between
the idea
and
the reality.
Between
the motion
and
the act.
Falls
the shadow”
T.S. Elliot
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