AFTER SWIMMING

LONDON FIELDS LIDO: 5.6.07 1.30 p.M



Area of containment. (Cranium) Back of neck, upper spine: sides of jaw.

Engages with gravity into downward pull of the Sacrum: Hara (lower abdomen) allowing for uprightness.

The gage between the two, always constantly held in order to engage with gravitational force, closes, until the two form an horizontal alignment which allows body to release from gravity.

If in water this would be a floating up so that one is lying vertically on the water's surface. The chest is engaged and fills creating this flotation. This is the natural point of total ease in the body through which Hara: Sacrum can be reinvigorated.

This floating is also the flying reflex in babies when thrown up in the air and caught again: they naturally extend their limbs outwards.

All subsequent contact with gravity through walking, sitting and the sustained attention and focus that this implies for consciousness and awakeness actually depends on this former ability to engage with the lateral, through stimulation/release to the back of the neck (Cerebellum).

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When the pressure is removed the body correspondingly falls back down into the vertical. To the degree that the pressure is re-applied, so again the body floats up- initially from the upper spine and lastly at the Hara: Sacrum which carries effortlessly up the legs and feet and is then sustained as the chest is engaged.

Speech can consequently be sustained through this circuit of engagement. Speech is not a solitary skill, it is the repercussion of points of impact as this creates a circuit which puts into alliance corresponding elements of the body, first in flotation, then in verticality.

It is pressure: containment in one place (Back of Cranium) which allows release and a breathing aeration in another location. The two are intimately connected as if the containment of possible movements; i.e., "Holding" in one area gives rise to free flow or articulated movement or expansion through breath somewhere else.

Like putting pressure on the chest to spur it into self-monitoring cycles of breath.

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With K. the withholding of breath into short bursts which are released as a staggering action, cuts out the cycles of engagement and is connected to the Hara: Sacrum and Cranium alignment being disengaged. It manifests as a dissipation of impetus.

This is why he bends over with his tail-end in the air and his head to the ground. It is a primary rocking which could re-engage but is stilled into an autistic holding pattern outside of a more fundamental holding or engagement/contact of an area that would re-initiate alignment throughout, allowing for a feedback system to establish.

Working with K. then is working with the tangible pieces of this pattern in order to share and extend its trajectory through bodily conversation- rocking, swinging, lifting, rolling and through this to locate and sustain momentary pause-gaps in this cycle. These pause-gaps map out in real-time actions particular locations on the body- around the Cranium, Sacrum, Hara, chest, upper back, ankles. These become turning points and in a sense describable the working pattern of the body in relation to a wider set of environmental influences. They are thresholds through which this pattern completes itself. They are axiomatic allowing the movement to become generative and self-sustaining. This happens when it is open to dialogue and the constant re-alignment that this brings.