Open to read: the responsive body
It is remarkable that those who regularly practice meditation are reported to have smoother fascia. Fascia is connective tissue, running in waves throughout our whole body in deep and more superficial layers. It means things get to stay together, but also glide against each other. Fascia is necessary. Yet it varies in the degrees to which it is more responsive, making movement easy, or to the degrees where it is more held, making movement less easy. Like so many materials, it is transformable, mutable through changing conditions.
In movement terms, what constitutes 'open'? Smooth, pliant fascia, lubricated joints, being adaptable to a range of stimuli, having access to full range of motion and dynamics. Translate that into aspects of simply 'being', we're looking at the actuality of responding, choosing to respond, adapting to a change in an environment and other people, or even simply surviving.
We need to expand out a bit, put this act of opening in relation to something, someone or somewhere. Being open or closed, as an end point, is subjective. Even when we explore an act of opening or closing in a particular context, it is still governed by the margins and colours inherent and unexpected in that context. The flower opens towards the light, but it needs water and good soil for that growth to proceed.
We open in order to grow. This could be to take in new information or new sensory stimulus. The flower opens to reveal its centre so the bees can be received. Opening implies change, primarily the change in the state of the thing or person opening, a change in the quality of the body’s tissues, and secondly in its relationship to its environment. However, the degree of change is on a personal continuum, or personal scale.
Opening is useful, actuated through change and simultaneously activating change, and when manifested through the immediacy of the body, change is sure-fire. But then, closing is also useful. From the perspective of survival, we resist, literally recoil, back away before we go with or advance, where there is shape change in the body’s core. It is important to acknowledge this reflex.
In order to resist, we open a small way in order to perceive something, then 'know' to recoil, though this 'knowing' is at such a deep layer it can hardly be considered 'knowing' in cognitive way. This is the information of the tissues and their vast intelligence. If we accepted everything we encountered, we would be subject to imminent death through lack of discernment. Closing off then, is necessary. Exploring harmony between open-ness and closed-ness seems to be the game. Closing off, turning inwards for reflection, digestion and consolidation are equally valid parts of the growth and learning process.
Actively open could mean awareness, the capacity for empathy or a high degree of perception of the environment. Being open to perceive, however, doesn't necessarily lead to less prejudice or acceptance, but perception of things 'different' to you - in mass, velocity, quality - can still be included as part of a shared landscape.
Being actively closed could refer to high levels of muscular tension, stubbornness, or even deliberately ignoring or not seeing the position of another. But beware of associating closing with negativity.
If we return to the materiality of the body and its many kinds of tissue, some muscular tension (or tone) is needed to protect as well as to move. A lot of muscular holding could be considered a container, a physical barrier between me and you, as well as a shell protecting, defending even, the contents. Necessary then, in times of trauma and recovery.
Greater pliancy in the body isn't a direct route to an increase in the ability to include and accept others, but maybe it helps. Whilst also overly simplistic, this notion is highly difficult to begin to measure. The appearance of being open may not be the same thing as being open; how you perceive yourself may not be as others see you and physical manifestations of open-ness continue to exist on a continuum. How we transition from open to closing, or closed to opening does not have a set speed or even a necessary linear progression: it is sometimes subtle, imperceptible. But working from the perspective of the body and the senses, this transition can be more tangible.
Let us return to the importance of taking account of personal continuums as relative in exploring the notion of 'open'. Granted, there are a multitude of versions of open. Perhaps closing off withdraws the attention to the environment, retreating to no longer notice sounds, smells and light. This could be a kind of numbing, where tissue is held tight or where it loses so much tone it is limp: either way, information cannot easily travel through. Perhaps, though, closing off from the outer is in order to open to an inner landscape. This is opening attention towards meditation or to imagination.
Smooth fascia, as supportive of a state of being open to receive, transmit, connect and exchange, allows movement impulses felt from within and without to travel through the body. We could be seen as constantly in a process of opening or closing: towards, away, inward, outward.
Alexandra Baybutt
For more of Alexandra's work visit: http://alexandrabaybutt.wordpress.com/
