Last week I led a short, live embodiment practice for Global Somatic Movement Day, an online event hosted by the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association. The image above links to my offering, but you can also view the whole playlist from this special day here).
My offering explored just one cranial nerve (CN5, or the trigeminal nerve) of the 12 that I’ll be teaching in my upcoming online retreat for therapists and counselors.
I was happily sandwiched in between Caryn Heilman, a performance artist who teaches Continuum Movement, and Jamie McHugh, creator of Somatic Expression: Body Wisdom for Modern Minds.
Caryn’s offering had me singing and sending fluid vibrations into my hands. I used those hands to touch my face during my presentation about cranial nerve 5, which innervates sensation at the tip of your tongue and the sides, front, and top of your skull. Its only motor function is to open and close your mouth. Otherwise, it is purely sensory.
Breathing and smiling with Jamie afterwards further enlivened and softened my face. I so rarely feel this soft and open on a Zoom call!
When is the last time you had time to feel your face from the inside out, open and close your lips…without having to say anything?
This is not some obscure, esoteric embodiment practice. This could be a normal, everyday experience: to allow your face to be seen, just as it is. It is the subject of many beautiful poems, one of which is at the end of this post.
Direct experience and words about experience are two totally different things. The former is where learning begins. This shouldn’t be radical, but it is becoming more so day by day. We have to consciously choose to remain alive to our sensate bodies and our inherent biological relationship with all that lives. It’s better for us, and for the planet.
Somatic practice and education have revolutionized the training process for dancers, actors, musicians, and therapists, among just a few professions. Somatic work like the Alexander Technique has made learning and training itself more humane in so many different fields.
Western philosophy has been upended by the recognition that body is not separate from mind, or from nature. Moving bodies are the ground of thought.
Yet – we still talk about mindfulness as if it was something we can will our bodies into with our brains.
My experience, and some research, points to the opposite. Stillness is the most difficult state from which to quiet thoughts. Maybe that’s why meditation practice is grounded there. If you can quiet your mind in stillness, you can do it anywhere!
Somatic movement is a much easier pathway for most people. That’s why many of us love to run and dance and play. Then, we can rest and quiet more easily. I urge you to trust your needs and instincts in this regard! Personally, I have different needs at different times. When I’m teaching, I make room for the different pathways folks might need to take.
Arrived at with ease, stillness is integrated and full of potential for a special kind of insight.
And now, for the poem, to bring my point home.
Cease practice based
On intellectual understanding,
Pursuing words and
Following after speech.
Learn the backward
Step that turns
Your light inward
To illuminate within.
Body and mind of themselves
Will drop away
And your original face will be manifest.
— Dogen