As the oceans swell with rising temperatures…I wonder about my body, our bodies whose functions and form are underlain by fluidity.
So many of the stories I hear in the biodynamic craniosacral setting tell of chronic inflammations in the system, particularly in the gut but also in other viscera, in the joints and the tissues.
Disabling conditions like asthma, inflammatory bowel diseases, cancer, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and other auto-immune diseases, allergies… have increased exponentially in the last few decades.
Inflammation is our immune system’s defense mechanism against harmful pathogens such as toxic compounds and other stimuli. It confines and protects an area from further infection and allows for healing and restoration to take place.
It becomes chronic when it gets out of control.
Interestingly we are often told it is because of our stressful lifestyles (all this cortisol!), our diet etc… and the onus is on us, individually, to change and become better.
But what if it were the actual system we live in that was faulty? What if it were the consequences of the devastating exploitation and pollution of our life-sustaining home planet that led to this spiralling of chronic inflammatory illnesses?
Of course we can do what we can individually but what if we were also to look at the much bigger picture and address the root causes of these problems from an ecological standpoint?
The fact that I perceive Earth as a complex living organism will not come as a surprise to those familiar with this blog.
I see the Earth’s waterways and extensive fluid spaces as mirrored in our bodies’ liquid cellular complexity with the capillaries, veins, arteries …acting as messengers and carriers of vitality and aliveness in the whole system.
If the Earth’s pathways of aliveness and potency are damaged and destroyed beyond repair how could it not impact on our health, on our bodies?
I borrow this world view from indigenous wisdom. This was ours too as once upon a time we were all indigenous in our ways of living and relating to our home planet, our great Mother.
As Peruvian indigenous ceremonial leader and teacher Arkan Lushwalla says beautifully of our Earth ancestral connection, ”She is made of everything we are made of. We look like our mother.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzI08RxzTrE&feature=youtu.be)
And one of the major elements we share is water. I would surmise that our paleolithic and neolithic indigenous ancestry knew far more about its sacred nature and gifts than we do as they relied far more on their inner powers of perception, their spiritual and imaginal intuition and were held holistically by their great Mother in a way that a salmon is held and transported by the water it migrates in.
They were at one with their surroundings... and so are we.
Yes we are, even if we view our existences through the illusory prism of a societal story of separation, we cannot help but be in intimate physiological contact with all that touches us.
Just like the Earth’s delicately thin layer of protection, the atmosphere, our skin is but a membranous veil, a liminal space which breathes a sensuous osmosis with Earth’s air and water, with Sun’s heat.
Water is the life carrier in many ancient traditions. We know thanks to embryological research that life itself comes from water, the organisational/embryological force that generates life at conception is a fluid expression.
As Frankly Sills, one of the founders of biodynamic craniosacral therapy explains, ”the vast forces of life manifest in the fluids to generate life and form. So, water in our context is essential for life, and the way water functions is extraordinary.
“There's been various research on water that Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, who did research on quantum fields organizing life -and also did research on fluid in the body- discovered that fluids in the body form liquid crystalline matrices so that the fluids in the body are not separate water molecules but are bound together within and throughout the body in a crystalline matrix, especially when they meet tissue and connective tissue where the connective tissue-field is unified within the unified fluid-field. So, rather than having separate water molecules, they're all bound together in a beautiful liquid crystal matrix -which is quite extraordinary.” from an Overview of Craniosacral Biodynamics, Karuna Institute, 2017, https://vimeo.com/244857727
It is thanks to and through this “extraordinary liquid crystal matrix” that everything within us is interconnected but it is also the reason why we interface with what surrounds us.
On a more mundane but nevertheless striking level, don’t you find it intriguing that the past few years saw the rise to international fame of turmeric as a major anti inflammatory spice and the growth of alkalinity as an indicator of health in our systems while temperatures rose, oceans swelled and acidified?
Everything, every living cell on this planet is interconnected.
How could a breakdown of the air and water cycles as well as soaring heat not directly and indirectly affect our health?
In my opinion many of our individual ailments are due in some shape or form to this systemic breakdown.
Time to shift the onus from the individual to the collective and take responsibility together as a whole species if true restoration, healing and lasting change are to happen.
In a craniosacral treatment I often perceive a return to wholeness and the revelation of what we call primary respiration, this expression of health in a system, as a huge ocean wave powerfully unfurling and clearing, cleansing all in its wake.
It is time to widen our perceptual awareness to a much bigger field of perception to manifest and hold a swell of potent, healing wholeness for Earth's and our sake.
