Is there somewhere in the world that is not owned, not claimed by anyone?
I wonder about this as I’m walking through a magnificently alive forest in Southern Belgium, near Orval.
I see beautiful oaks, ash, beech trees marked in red with numbers and shudder at the thought that they will soon be slaughtered; in the same manner as marked sheep, tagged cattle etc…commodified living entities feeding our habits and lifestyle.
I see birds flying above and breathe a sigh of relief. At least they are somewhat spared, the air cannot be as easily claimed as a piece of land, or so it seems.
But their habitat, their feeding grounds are constantly affected by our goings on and our ill notions of control.
When I listen and tune in to birds and their frequencies, their many songs, I am reminded of the perceptual fields in craniosacral therapy.
As I widen my field of perception, I include more sounds while remaining centred in my being, present to the near and far, the here and away.
Similarly, when I see I can decide on my catchment area, my aperture as well as my zoom lens.
I play with my sensory windows.
I spot a spider’s thread and think of this arachnid, how still she can stand on her web, and how fast she moves as soon as she senses a presence getting closer because it fills the air through which she feels, it alters her felt sense of the air around her: her field of perception is interfered with.
Have you ever looked at the blur between two branches? It is as if the air were sinewed and fluid, like looking at the surface of a pond and seeing subtle currents grazing the surface.
I would argue that the air has tensegrity, just like a spider’s web, the stem of a flower, the branch of a tree, and our fascia system, our connective tissue…
Tensegrity, that fluid flexible tension is everywhere in nature. It is the tensile quality of the underlying connective holding force at the heart of atoms and molecules.
It is also present in the sensory realm. As I travel in time and space with my perceptual awareness I realise that my perception itself is applying the principles of tensegrity, connecting the here and there, the before and after, the now and over there.
Even the words I speak, like a spider’s silk threads, emissions of sounds on an air wave, “cells” of air in motion, that can travel with clarity, force and precision or with a whisper.
And so with touch, contact. This amazingly expansive fluidity and its accompanying cohesive force is what I have learned to love through practicing craniosacral therapy.
Sitting with the still, connective presence of a spider and settling into a wide awareness field I can hone in on the particular, the specific as well as the whole.
Tuning in to the surrounding sound and land scapes while deeply rooted and holding the subtle, the potent reconnecting, re-cognising at play within this body my hands contact and listen to.
How can we fail to see that all is interconnected so beautifully, so magnificently?
All that surrounds and makes us is underlaid, held together by this fluid biotensegrity.
Attempting to own or control the living matter actually breaks up the world wide web of life and goes against the very heart, the very core of our supportive, interconnected foundation as co-creative species on Earth.
"...when you really see the truth of things, you realise life is a net where all forms of life are connected. This net is the only thing that is important. Indigenous people always feel and express gratitude for being part of this net of life," says Manari Ushigua, from the Sapara tribe of Ecuador.
