Fall is slipping in under the lingering rays of summer. A coolness in the air, a few leaves on the ground. I am feeling both, the life and warmth of summer and the coolness of fall.
Reading, I am enjoying learning different ways of being, different ways of experiencing time and space. Our experience of time and space tend to be linear and separate. Oral cultures around the world experience time and space less differentiated and more cyclical, everything coming round again in a constant emergence, grounded in the storied land.
I feel this happening when we relive patterns of being. Situations keep coming round, duplicating opportunities for our past and future to participate in the present. We hold our storied past in our bodies… In our posture, in our own particular twists, our openness, our closedness, our thoughts. We also hold our futures, in a way. Our thoughts, aspirations, our yearning forward, the possibilities we know are there. This all participates in our present story unfolding, and sometimes letting the edges blur in a gradual acceptance, can be healing and integrating in our continuing experience.
On the table in a craniosacral (BCST) session, I’ve noted different layers of a person’s experience processing in the body, beautifully integrating. Or a new and recent trauma opens the door for an old experience to reassert itself and find healing in the present. I am learning to drop the judgement of wondering why a person repeats similar cycles and instead have a gentle curiosity of “what is this person learning?” Or admiring the sheer breadth of exploration this person is capable of. While at the same time honoring the deep pain that may accompany the pattern. More to the point, I’m dropping the judgement I have around my own patterns and learning to explore these patterns with self-compassion and love.
Another fascinating way of watching patterns repeat is to work with babies as a BCST practitioner. Babies are very kinesthetic by nature, and not as likely to stay still on the table for a treatment. Sometimes we have the mother lay down and put the baby tummy to tummy with mom. Often the baby will go through repeating patterns, telling the story of their birth. It’s easy to think the baby has some trauma to work through. Sometimes that is the case, as the baby may at some point in the sequence start to “voice” their story, or even seem a little “stuck” or to move through in various descriptive ways. This may be the first time they have had someone fully present to understand what this experience was like for them.
We are also letting the baby “practice” their patterns in an acknowledged way. Early on, as an embryo develops, there is a slow curving inward like a bean and a slow arcing outward. This pattern repeats over and over through development. In many births, the baby spirals as it negotiates it’s mother’s pelvis, also pushing out with its feet and arcing back at the final stage, leaving the enveloped womb for the enveloping air. For development to continue outside of the womb in a typical fashion, a baby will curl inward to rest, arc outward pulling itself off the floor, spiral as it learns to roll over, and push with its feet as it learns to crawl and later walk. Practicing their patterns is indeed an affirmation of, and participation in, life.
As a result of these sessions, I have heard comments similar to these. “My baby went through huge developmental leaps since last I saw you.” Or “My baby didn’t mind their diaper being changed this time”, a change in environmental sensitization. Or baby might even have a bowel movement before the session is done, when for medical reasons this had not happened in a little while. These results are not promised, but altogether possible. This all points to an internal regulation of fascia, nervous system, and musculoskeletal systems. This can happen when a baby is allowed to practice their patterns in a conscious setting.
From birth, and spring, cycling back to fall, and the Fraser, the beautiful river in the land in which I live.
An ode to the cycles of the land I inhabit:
The river has lowered herself down her banks, emptying into the ocean.
On the sand, I am caught in the interface of summer and fall, stillness between life and death.
The Fraser has come to a halt, a breadth of stillness, waters pausing before the ocean again swells her banks.
Currents flow oceanward as the tide swells back in a never ending cycle of river, ocean, moon and tide.
Cycles within cycles.
Lowering myself in, the water is cold now as it greets my skin, hints of the ocean.
A whole year has come round since last I wrote about grief, loss, and the fall.
I am comforted in this pause, this interface, this time of year.
Photo credit: The Fraser, By Nigel