3. Meeting at the Edge

One hot summer day, I was on a hike in the countryside near our lake cottage when I came across an abandoned farm.  There were still chickens scratching through the dust in the yard.  I was later told that the family had loaded everything they could get on their truck and had left for the possibility of a better life.

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As I explored the property, I discovered a dog leaping in the tall grass of a nearby unmowed field as he hunted mice.  When I visited the next day, I spotted him in the farm yard. He barked and growled, warning me off.

I started bringing food every day, setting it down in the farm yard, then backing off until I was far enough away that the dog would eat. Every day I tested the edge of that distance.  It was a tension between us that also functioned as a membrane of communication, delicately speaking to the subtle shifts in our changing relationship.

Tension in my body is that membrane of communication between my sense of self and that something that is, at least for the moment, an ‘other’ in my life.  When I treat tension as a sensory experience it becomes engage-able - I can feel into it - and in the process become more open to the possibility that it can also feel into me.  Which is exactly why I tend to avoid it.

When I sit opposite the dog in the farm yard I am learning to find the edge where the story, as it has always been, might begin to change. To the dog, I am the other in the farm yard, triggering thousands of years of instinct, refined by his experiences in this life. When I come to close, the story of protective response increases. And when I go away it returns to its latent state.

But when I sit at the edge, the membrane of communication begins to affect the story, allowing new information about what is happening in this moment - information that not only affects the story line but also affects the experience of self. Both of our identities are changed as the relationship changes. Our worlds and their story lines change forever. We will have always had that experience. Sounds like a highly powerful experience, this sitting at the edge. And it is, one that I instinctually protect myself against.

We are constantly screening out information as we form our identity. We learn to avoid pain and potential injury. But we also learn to avoid experiences that affect our story about ourselves.  I don’t want to go near interactions where I might dissolve in shame; I avoid the experience of loss of self I might have when I have give myself deeply to a relationship. Sensations associated with story lines I have learned to avoid are screened out.  The person entering the farm yard triggers a script that maintains a stable identity. Sensing more than that can change the script and imperil my sense of who I am.  And as a body centred practitioner, every time I touch another I am entering a landscape that challenges my story.  Unacknowledged, the instinct to protect my self against being affected by the experience of engaging with another will shape the way I bring myself to the touch relationship.

How do I nurture a tolerance for new sensory information in a way that honours my need to maintain my self identity? It turns out it starts with simply noticing myself, just as I am. In a body centred practice that noticing involves observing the field of sensations that contribute to the ground of my identity.

I think of sensations as a disturbance the background flow of consciousness.  When I raise an arm I know it as a sensory event. But sensations also tell me about the quality of the event. Like a fish disturbing the surface of the water, or the wind felt against my skin, I know its impact on my being by how it disturbs my awareness.

How I respond to that sensory event affects my experience of it. When I sit with a sensory event in my body, how much can I let it be what it is? You might want to take a moment to read that sentence again before you go on.

Let me start with myself; your story may differ. In this moment there is a slight ache in my belly - likely related to my digestive challenges. That tension in my throat - shows up here and there all my adult life. That grip in my hand holding the pen I am writing with makes it difficult to form a fluid script.

What happens when I just let them be there? It feels like one of those, “Hello darkness, my old friend…” moments.

Unexpectedly, some things begin to change. My neck untwists from an unnoticed tension. My writing slows to the pace of a child writing her first essay. The ache in my belly begins to differentiate into a multitude of shifts and movements - its own organism of aliveness.

My experience of the interface  begins to change; changes in how I am relating to those initial experiences of ‘otherness’. In experiencing them as they are,  I am somehow affected by them. And these changes in how I am shifts my relationship to them. I am moved to something - a postural reorganization, a change in pacing - that frees the experiences that disturbed my awareness through discomfort to continue on the story of their life.  Which I experience as them becoming more functional.

And there is the rub. This is not a static change to something better. I can’t walk away from the experience with some inner satisfaction that I have done some good in the world of my body. If, in the next moment, I push these interactions to the background - that’s enough ‘paying attention please, it’s time to move on - I begin to feel the reassertion of these same dysfunctions over sensation, movement and posture. And I lose the ‘be with’ connection with the unfolding life of my body. This sensory exploration of ‘what is’ in my body is more than a remedial exercise to fix myself, it is a re-establishment of a broken part of my inner relationship. Any impulse to move on breaks the connection.

So why would I want to move on, to distance myself from my broken inner relationship? This part is probably a no-brainer; we are all doing it all of the time. But let me go through the grisly truth of the matter.

Simply, it feels like it’s all too much to bear.

I’m constantly running away from these parts or myself. Think of it like the disowned dog on the abandoned farm. Wasn’t any room for him on the truck to a new life. I’ve got a pantheon of parts of myself with halting gain, supporting wounds, shrill laughter at inappropriate moments - I could go on…

Each place of broken being has its own distinctive impress on my sensory life; discomforts that are doorways to inner dysfunction that I do my vest to avoid. I distance myself with distractions - the modern phone screen will do nicely, or with frenetic movement like chewing my lip, twist my posture or stopping my breath. When I want to connect to the ground of my inner being I am met wit the cacophony of voice that speak to the places within me t hat I have left behind.  Want to connect to the soul of inner knowing that exists in there somewhere? You’re going to have to get by the guys first. It’s all a bit too much. Or as it turns our, a bit too little. But, with any luck, probably not too late.