Issue #390
Wednesday, January 25, 2023
Embrace Your Inner Space: Your Fluid Beginning
Part 1
by Allie Greene
“There’s nothing wrong with enjoying looking at the surface of the ocean itself, except that when you finally see what goes on under water, you realize that you’ve been missing the whole point of the ocean. Staying on the surface all the time is like going to the circus and staring at the outside of the tent.”
- Dave Barry (Humorist/Author)
Did you know that your body consists of about 70% fluids? You are more fluid than you are structure. About 40% of your weight is intracellular (within the cells) fluid. Another 20% is extracellular, which is everything outside the cells. This includes interstitial (fascia), blood(circulatory), lymph (lymphatic), synovial (skeleton), and cerebrospinal (nervous system). Each of these systems are unique in their quality, energy and purpose but also influence each other and everything else that you are.
What does this have to do with Pilates? Well, let’s dig a little deeper.
For give or take 9 months in utero, your breath is purely fluid and cellular. Fluid is your first source of support and communication. You grew by sensing, feeling and responding your way through your earliest developmental patterns. In your adult body, you still continue to sense, feel, and respond to your relationship to gravity and space. This creates tone. This is your actual foundation of support. How you are in relationship to your support defines your responsive alignment and developmental potential. This is deeply related to your sense of ease, integration and coordination.
It’s starting to connect, isn’t it? Pilates is all about the balance of strength and mobility, and full integration of the body. Joseph Pilates wanted not just better but optimal health for everyone. We know this from reading his book, Return to Life. We don’t have optimal cellular health if we don’t have a responsive, fluid tone. Over-recruiting muscles, pushing through movement, pain, anxiousness, fear, chronic stress, and trauma can create excess tension and guarding patterns. Your body can’t release into the support under you. Finding your relationship to gravity helps soften your tone and let go of habitual motor patterns. This change in tone also down-regulates your nervous system. On the flip side, under-recruiting muscles, fatigue, depression/grief, chronic stress, and trauma can create a heavy, collapsed tone. You can’t reach out into the support around you. Finding your relationship with space helps to lighten your tone. It creates a sense of buoyancy. This change in tone up-regulates your nervous system.
Most of us have a mix of this excess tension and collapse in our body. Returning to and learning how to sense, feel and respond (choice) to our own unique tone creates responsive alignment. We also become empowered to embrace ourselves as the “expert” of our bodies because we learn how to feel ourselves. We begin to value the innate intelligence of our bodies and not just look outside ourselves to be “fixed”. This creates self-agency. This is a main ingredient in healing and optimal health.
The Water Balloon Experience is a beautiful and fun representation. I love this visual and felt experience because it shows both structure and fluid in relationship to each other and gravity and space. This represents our tone. It is a helpful teaching tool for anyone who is not sure of what they should be feeling or “doing.” Start with a “Before” moment. Notice how your physical body is feeling. How about your head space? What thoughts have been in your mind? How about your heart? How are you feeling emotionally today? It’s all connected! I might suggest writing down what you discovered. Now to the practice!
You can visualize the balloon as one of your cells with the intracellular fluid and the membrane. You can explore both external and cellular breath here. Notice how your body gently expands and condenses. Imagine each of your cells doing this. See if you can feel your cells breathe. Notice your tone. Does anything feel tight, guarded? Does anything feel numb, blank or offline?
You can also visualize the balloon as your whole body. You can play with the tone of the balloon and find this same relationship within yourself. Explore gently rocking or rolling. Imagine your fluid flowing to the lowest point creating a foundation of support. See if you can feel this condensing tone on the underside of your body. See if you can feel the expansiveness of the parts of your body that are in relationship to space.
I invite you to roll to a different side of your body. I’m on my side but you could also roll to your belly. Adult Belly Down time is pretty delicious. Notice what, if anything, changes. Always know that you can’t do this wrong. That means there are no right or wrong answers. It is about the experience of deepening your relationship to yourself and growing your sensory palette. The only way to repattern is to have new information. This comes in through our sensory systems. Very often, our propped/collapsed tone is a necessary adaptation. We can cause more difficulty and confusion if we just take it away without understanding it. For a Pilates teacher, this has a direct application to language, cueing and the very real act of being able to hold the space.
Please click on the link to access the video for this practice. I invite you to compare your “Before” to your “After” once you finish this practice.
This next video is a practice of Navel Radiation. I include this practice in my workshops. It is a helpful bridge between our fluid experience and the application of developmental practices to Pilates exercises.
It is also a rolling practice to help us experience our spirals and hydrate our tissues.
And we will leave things there for now. I hope you have enjoyed your experience with your fluid beginnings. Part 2 of this article, which will describe how to take your learnings about Fluid and Navel Radiation practice into the Pilates Ab Prep and Hundred, will follow soon.
To learn more about workshops and classes and be added to my email list, please feel free to reach out to me directly through https://www.somamovementalliegreene.com or my IG and Facebook.
Allie Greene
Allie is a Registered Somatic Movement Educator with the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association. She is a 500 RYT and a NCPT (PMA-CPT) with the Pilates Method Alliance. She has filmed a variety of workshops for teachers with Fusion Pilates EDU and most recently filmed her Move Into Ease Series on Pilates Anytime.
She holds a BA in Sociology and Performing Arts from La Roche University and danced professionally with the Cleveland/San Jose Ballet and Pittsburgh’s LABCO.
She is the owner of Equilibrium Pittsburgh Movement Studio in Pittsburgh, PA and Soma Movement LLC. Her embodied pedagogy is centered around cultivating love, compassion, curiosity, courage and connection through movement. She is currently pursuing her MSW: Direct Practice -Trauma Informed degree.