Relax Into Standing – close your eyes
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Bring your attention to your inner volume, the space enclosed by your skin
How do you feel? What is the emotional tone of this moment? How do you sense this in your physical body?
Measure for yourself the distance that you perceive between the inside of the top of your head and the inside of the soles of your feet?
How do you experience this distance?
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Sense your vertical axis – the line that gravity traces through us around which we organise our standing
An imaginary line from top to bottom of your body, dividing left and right, front and back
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Imagine your axis extending down beneath you, inwards towards the centre of the earth, connecting you to its centre
Bring you attention back up this line from the centre of the earth and back through yourself
Now extend your attention upwards as this line projects on out through the atmosphere and beyond
Imagine that this line connects to your own unique star far far above
Imagine the whole length of this line that connects heaven and earth and passes through you
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Bring your attention again to your inner volume, the space enclosed by your skin
How do you feel now? The emotional tone of this moment? The physical sensations that accompany this?
Measure again for yourself the distance you perceive between the inside of the top of your head and the inside of the soles of your feet?
How do you experience this distance now?
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Open your eyes
NOTES
We continually mediate between heaven and earth
Tuning in to gravity in standing calms the mind and releases excess tone throughout the system
I met standing through Contact Improvisation. “This simple practice was preparation for the complex interactions that would arise with a partner.” Steve Paxton, Fall After Newton, 1987
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We can also consider the geological layers that our lines of gravity pass through as we move our attention along them towards earth’s centre 6300km below us
Likewise upwards through the layers of the atmosphere. The edge of space is by definition 100 km. But the atmosphere has no clear end. It just fades out
Humans can exist unaided up to around 4.5km. Other forms of life up to 7-10km
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When standing, all of our lines meet in the centre of the earth
“Sharing common ground” with someone means to be open to communication, no matter how different their point of view
Developing understanding and feeling understood facilitates dialogue and defuses conflict
