Anchoring our belly centres to the earth's centre

In this class, we continue exploring how we can orient ourselves to navigate spherical space through anchoring our belly centres to the centre of the earth in our attention – and how initiating movement from our contact with the earth can support the practice of reading our movement as a shapeshifting of our entire inner volume.

In standing we explore how we can move our belly centres in all directions from the belly centre itself, from the soles of our feet and altogether. This leads us into rounding and arching, side-bending and twisting.

On the floor, we explore rounding and arching in both a different orientation to gravity and contact with the earth. Again learning how to initiate the movements from our interaction with the skin of the earth.

Returning to standing with the task of shapeshifting out way up without pushing down into the earth. Once standing, we apply what we have learned to walking.

…

00:00:00 – Arriving in walking

Sensing the air we move through and the support of the earth as we walk

Bringing our attention to our belly centres – recognisinbg its constant connection to the centre of the earth

Reading our walking as a change shape of inner volume

Noticing how we feel – meaning both the emotional tone of our experience of being here and what we sense of being here – in this studio and in our body

00:04:45 – Standing Explorations and Walking

Listening to ourselves standing – sensing weight and support flowing through our structure in opposite directions

Extending our attention along the line connecting the centre of our belly centre to the centre of the earth upwards towards an imaginary star above

…

Exploring the asymmetry of preparing to take a step – shifting our axis from side to side – then zeroing in on what we sense as the middle using sensation in the present moment

…

Turning around our centre axis – initiating from the eyes, from the foot we turn away from, from the foot we turn towards, from everything together

Turning the same distance each time so the exploration is directed towards the quality of the movement – more and more effortless – rather than faster or further

Rotating the arms around themselves to initiate the turning – walking as a double helix, contralateral rather than homolateral

…

Playing with the image of support like water flowing up from the centre of the earth, through us and out through the top of the head – becoming a human fountain

Exploring how we can float up one hand/arm upwards at a time, then both together – shaping the flow of support out through the fingertips

…

Moving the belly centre forwards and back through our interaction with the feet – pushing back through the heels to extend us forwards into a gentle arch, pushing through the toes to round us back

Moving the belly centre side to side from the feet

…

Folding and unfolding – discovering how to unfold without pushing down into the earth – reshaping the upward flow of support rather than levering ourselves up from it

Stepping with the belly centre – the feet interacting with the floor to create the impulse for the whole of ourselves to shift – travelling across the earth without bruising it

00:51:45 – Floor work

Sensing our inner volume and how we balance on the earth behind us – allowing our asymmetries to be there

…

Playing with the image of the breath like a wave through an internal sea – sensing how the ripples reach all the way to the edges of ourselves

…

Lying on our side: the skyward arm standing in front of the chest – choosing a vertebra and moving it away from the standing arm – sensing how this starts to round us

Trying with different vertebrae – each initiation point creating a different expereince and shape of rounding

Playing with the opposite – moving the spine a little towards the standing arm – the beginning of arching

…

Discovering how the rounding can be created not from the relationship of arm to vertebra, but from the interaction of our skin with the skin of the earth – the arm on the floor, the side of the shoulder, the side of the pelvis, the outside of the thigh

Sensing the support flowing up from the earth and passing out through the skyward side of us

01:12:35 – Returning to standing and walking

Sensing the connection of our belly centre to the centre of the earth – rolling a little from side to side then rising up from the floor without pushing down

Reframing our experience of this as a shapeshifting of our entire inner volume – the pressure on the floor moves and changes of course, but we move without levering ourselves up from the earth – separating ourselves into parts and separating ourselves from the earth and air

Re-tuning our centre axis to the line of gravity – reinhabiting the image of the human fountain

Shifting the belly centre through the soles of the feet – sensing the friction between the skin of the foot and the skin of the earth

Folding and unfolding without pushing down to unfold up

Stepping forward with one foot, then the other – moving the belly centre, taking the flow of support with us – walking with the earth rather than apart from it

…

Playing with the shape of our attentional fields – inside the skin, into the earth, into the air