An excess of involuntary tension dries out the body’s tissues –muscles, connective tissues and bones. When we manage to let go of some of it, they begin to rehydrate.
To follow the invitation to present the results of my research in this area at the 4th Fascia Research Congress involved an effort that proved excessive for my economy. Therefore, I handed the decision whether to go or not over to destiny. I was willing to bring forward my knowledge, my work power, my time and my being but, due to the government decisions that during the last years have impoverished the working population in order to enrich the banks, my income was no longer generating enough cash flow to finance this endeavor. Therefore I decided to employ the Goteo Foundation in order to give the world a venue through which it could provide the means I needed to be able to attend this congress, if it considered it important that I’d go.
Drop by drop (that is the meaning of goteo), people from different parts of the world, people I know and others I don’t, have pooled the means for me to go to Washington next month. I feel deeply grateful and touched. The necessary amount to cover airfare, hotel, congress fees, commissions and taxes was reached in time. Therefore, automatically a second round started with the aim to reach the optimum amount. If that comes together, it will take my poster and me also to the 10th Annual Conference on the Physics, Chemistry and Biology of Water in Bulgaria in October. So, if you feel affinity with the project, it is still possible to contribute drops of cofinanciation in exchange for one of the rewards, and to share it with other people you think might feel affinity with it as well. https://goteo.org/project/cristal-liquido?lang=en
Affinity
After all, it is all about affinity. It was due to affinity that certain substances moved together to form proteins, probably in water, because proteins are hydrophilic, they love water. It was due to affinity that the process went on and the proteins moved together in water to give origin to ever more complex forms of life. Today, millions of years later, new life is still coming into being due to affinity. If you feel it, let it flow. If protein and water want me to go to Bulgaria to describe the kind of relationship between the two which is most becoming for us, they will make sure the means to go will come.
If you feel affinity, due to the simple fact of feeling it, you already open a pathway through which possible means can flow. Even if you have no liquidity at your disposal to make a contribution of money, you contribute the energy of your affinity. Feel your body. More than 70% of its weight is water. Feel the relationship between the weight of your body and the material world. There is a continuous fluctuation in this relationship through the movements of your breathing. If you follow the movement of relaxation that takes place during the exhale, you can give yourself a moment of rest in the very depth of what you are as a living being, and in the material world you are a part of. This rest will make your inhale generous and expand the limits held in place by your pattern of habitual tension, if you also allow space and time for it to happen. Like this, you are already making a valuable contribution to my project.
Letting go the excess of involuntary tension
We are all part of the same world, of the same life. The excess of involuntary tension does not let us appreciate this fact and rest within it. The problem is that we identify with this excess. We believe that this is how we are and that the world is how we perceive it through the filter of this tension. No matter how willing we are to let go of this tension that keeps us trapped in restrictive and sometimes even destructive patterns, deeply rooted in our organism there is fear that we will lose our lives if we let go.
Annie B. Duggan and Janie French, the creators of the Duggan/French Approach (DFA) for Somatic Pattern Recognition developed a physical intervention that helps to let go of this tension in a secure environment. It gives the organism the opportunity to become aware of what it is like to move with less tension and more support, freedom of movement and responsiveness and to examine possible objections psyche might have. A good muscle tone, i.e. involuntary tension in the right measure, keeps us in good shape so that we are able to deal with the affairs the excess of tension kept underneath the threshold of consciousness. Many of them need nothing more than that the message that was retained by the tension be taken in and understood. Some may require a certain action or positioning in relationship to some event in the past, present or future.
DFA sessions offer a safe space where to release the excess of involuntary tension with the help of the physical intervention, to learn to understand the language of the body and to discover what you need to feel well. The tension also is a guide. When the truth is spoken, tension is released; things drop by their own weight.
The traces of history in the body
Children feel in their bodies what adults struggle to keep underneath the threshold of their consciousness through the tension of their muscles. They don’t know what it is they are feeling, or that they are responding to something in their parents’ or grandparents’ body. They feel it in their own, as if it was a part of what they are. Like this, apart from genetic transmission, through sensation transmitted body to body, mind to mind, the traces of history are propagated from generation to generation. On August 21-23 in a workshop in ermie in Barcelona we explore the traces our parents’ and grandparents’ experience left in our bodies. There still are two places open.
Finding the inner compass
There are situations where it becomes necessary to check the course life is taking, be it to make sure you remain on course, to rectify or to change it. When you rest within what you are as a living being and in the material world you are a part of, you can find a compass that allows you to orient in relationship to your own inner experience and the outer world. On September 25-27, the weekend where Catalonia orients to mark the course its people want to follow, we will find our own inner compass during a workshop in ermie, Barcelona. There are still 6 places open.
Relationships in warm waters
The excess of involuntary tension keeps the small “I”, we created under the initial conditions of our lives, trapped in a continuous repetition of the same old dynamics, with different scenery and wardrobe, but always with the same emotional tone, the same results. When you manage to let go just a little bit of the excess, you can recognize the relationships between the different parts of your body and between your body and the environment. So to speak you can give the tissues of your body that have been dried out by the tension a bath in the warm waters of your loving attention and relax and get clean deeply. Literally it will rehydrate your tissues with more oxygenated water to renew the hydration water that has become acid due to the tension. We explore what this does to one’s relationship with oneself and one’s environment in the Midline Institute in Barcelona on November 20-23.
Sharing affinity
Thank you very much for your attention. If you have read on up to this point, it is because you feel affinity with the idea we can manage the piece of the world that is within our reach in a way that fosters communication and mutual help. In relationship with the very depth of what you are as living beings and with the material world you are a part of, small “I” finds its place where it can develop its skills and abilities and life a happy and satisfactory life.
It is a question of practice and of a deliberate decision to do it. I have been practicing for almost 30 years and it has become easy, but still I have to deliberately let go a bit of tension, moment to moment, in order to receive the support of the ground and to feel the connection with the planet and all the living beings that are a part of it just like me. If I don’t do it, the excess of tension separates me from the rest of the world, the effort is very tiring and the general feeling is not very satisfactory. I am never really up to notch of all that needs to be done, nor is anybody else. On the other hand, all of us together… what a wonderful experience!
