Session with M- In lightness and rain

There was something easy and light in M today as if he began the work of clearing, opening, recirculating; letting pass through even as me and the learning assistant were lifting him down on to the mat. This sense that he hit the ground running so to speak; and that this has nothing to do with the fact that he began the session lying on his back as always felt palpable. This running, circulating, dissipating and clearing is a state of mind and it runs right through the body; is the work of the body and is the reverb that opens a portal between minds and body which are one when in on-going transformation. The idea catches in like a living image; a growing tree; a flourishing from within to without and in again. This folding back and forth so that the outside boundary dissipates and stretches out and the inner core moves out to become the boundary -a porous skin- that then also dissipates whilst also folding inwards. This is the synergy of stretching and releasing- a concertina push and pull that in its rhythmic hum is effortless- like waves. The imagery that I come up with when working with M in this state is about the ripples in water, the warm honey collecting and dissipating through his body beginning in the belly and reaching out into the tendrils of his arms and legs, hands and feet and this imagery spoken is then received to inform both movement and stillness in M who  takes it  into himself thereby clarifying the pattern still further.

M almost from the first moment was indicating this need- a vital need- to stretch out his arms wide to either side and  slightly above his shoulders over his head. His fingers were active and individuated, like pulsar undulations of  the ribbed structure of a leaf or a fishes' fin or the feathers of a bird. I felt that his arms.hands were in some medium -like water or air-  and that they were structured and made sensitive by the natural resistance of the atmosphere to their probing and thrust. I was drawn to the spaces between his ribs at the sides of his body and  to supporting and creating a stable anchorage in the pit of his arm especially to begin with on his right side. This created a sense of deep rest and relief in M. It led into my  supporting his shoulder, sternum, neck and throat and later to delicately holding areas on his face around his eyes, the sides of his nose and the back of his ears  by cupping these areas with my open palm This deep support allowed him to further release congestion and a blocked heavy feeling in his chest- to literally cough it up and discharge it as vocal utterances- somewhere between  anguish and concern that then became a mark of exuberance- an exclamation loud and clear.

There was this inquisitiveness that reached back through into the visceral depth of M's body and out again into his face and into the growing sensitivity of his eyes and ears and the vocal range of his voice strengthening in each moment. All was a reaching through- a thrusting outwards- a catapult unfolding as if from a central core that when released showed itself in one single evocation. This was a reverie, a reverberation, borne from an atmosphere of  in-dwelling in the moment of each showing. He and I and the ground below and the air above were operating as one single synergy; a give and take of explosive energy contained and pulsed according to tiny degrees of resistance so that there was a sense of holding and containment that was nevertheless living; vibrant; adaptive- sensible. This then was a conscious state yet borne out of the depths of pre-conscious pre-verbal feeling-states and affects in the rhythmic patterning and the incidental shapes that these gave rise to.

It felt to be like being on the brink of a wave- of a falling and catching in- just at the tipping point when there is nothing to do but let go with a sense that this will not be oblivion but a giving into a pattern that is already doing itself. To get this pattern effortlessly is to release into the movement and to rest on the wave of stillness within and without.

So I felt myself primed by M into the imagery and stories as I was primed into this patterning of unfolding. One became the other and both were different levels of the same process; one of falling and catching; of expansion and enfolding over and over again.

I simply dwelt more obviously in the patterns and predispositions of M's body-mind rippling in and out like following the veins of a living system- a river whose banks are already cut and so where the movement is already invited to shape still further this groove. In this sense the mark and the mark- maker were inseparable- simply the outside and the inside of one tendency. M invited me into this pulse and it became a living pulse- a celebration in which I could sense this boy smiling through even where the smile was not evidently there on his face. Yet there was this glancing back and marking of a dance in which I witnessed him and he witnessed me witnessing him and allowed for this to happen.

I sung a song about being awake in the light and dark, in the sea and in the sky. The story about the tree, the nest, the eggs, the chicks and the song- heard and sung down below in the playground by children, was re-told in summary form yet in full; the full life-trajectory. There has recently been the introduction into this story- called into being by M's readiness to engage in real spoken dialogue in his silent imagining- of a girl age 5 with blond hair and blue eyes; a shy girl whom M persuades to also sing her  sweet feint version of the song and whom he supports in this first singing;  stays alongside- convincing her quietly of her own worth. Once seen and heard in this way she asks M to sing back his version of the song- his deep belly song that comes out of his ten years of age and the far more ancient reverberation of the great tree above him. He does so and she listens; witnesses this telling along with all the other children. Yet it is  first the girl and M who share this soft-spoken dialogue in which they attend to one another in a delicate and nuanced way and so become a bridge into the external world of  the young excitable children who otherwise would  disrupt the showing and telling in this quick-to-startle pair.

In the middle of this telling a door slams and M jolts. I weave this into the story and we wait together as he settles.

The last part of the session becomes more about integrating body-awareness as a  reverb of the story's image; a tree with all its parts growing and integrated, sprouting up and out and enfolding back into the centre- in the nest; the belly.

We go into the silent listening  part where I stay with M but quietly so that we both are noticing the sounds without and within. I look back again at M's face; it is totally different as is his entire body, open and rippling, as if being touched and stroked by the light coming into the window through the leaves of the tree. There is this infinite softness and openness- as if all sound and light and touch were being received and apportioned just in this apt moment and then the next- so that there is infinite room and time for everything to be held and received.

I am drawn to a strong connection around his heart in relation to mine. I am stroking open this area from the centre to the sternum along the arms and fingers and back around into his chest in small encircling movements with my finger tips. I talk through M's body as this open expectant receiver- like the tree that accepts the wind and bends/adapts to it. I see the quietness and  maturity of this ten year old boy. I have a welling up of feeling which I hold in this sensitivity of shared perception. I tell him that it was been so enriching to witness him growing up and coming into his body and his sensibility-  into waking up . Sometimes his eyes look back at me  momentarily, flashing blue and then closing again. He is in this attentive easy state between wakefulness and precociousness integration.

I rest in this state with him but hold the space for his arrival and retreat in pulsations and waves that ebb and flow.

I am touched by his beauty; the beauty of his fully emerging awareness in every moment.

A moment later I talk through the end of the session preempting together with him the sequence where he sits up before returning to his chair. I say that since his body is light and active today I will carry him on my own to the chair because  I feel that he will  allow this and lighten into this return together with me, helping me. He in fact does do this. But once upright his body begins to contract as if imploding in slow motion and the exquisite muscle tone and alertness is fused into the body of a disabled child  being fitted into a wheelchair once again. Yet even in this limp contraction, there is a re-growth at the same time as if for every collapsed cell or muscle fibre there is a re-rooting outwards somewhere else- between imagination and somatic inhabiting- between the gaseous and the material matter that are filtered through and through and never do exist independently.

I explain that we will meet for three more sessions and then there will be the summer break and then I will return to work with him again. I say I will see him next Tuesday. I take his hand and say if you are happy for me to come next Tuesday please squeeze my hand. He does in fact squeeze my hand; how much this is a direct answer to this specific question matters not so much. The feeling of his on-going presence through his breath in relation to each adaptive state that we form together through out the session; this is of deeper significance. It is a shared reverie- an atmosphere of the song sung together; a holding space that breathes and that is self-living- self-generative;  the hope in a life that is living itself and living the world too. This is joy.