The Fluid Body and Aging Well
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I can feel the water of my eternal ocean beckoning to me with sweeps of wave motion… My head disappears under water, my hands become a blur, my ‘body’ is permeable, and my skin no longer wraps around me. I am this water. I am these waves. Emile Conrad.
Fluid is the medium of life. It is our essential force. Each of us begins life in the medium of fluid; every cell is bathed in fluid. Fluid is imprinted in all living forms and it is by exploring ourselves as fluid that we enter into resonance with all life.
Did you know that our bodies are composed of 75% water and so is the surface of the earth? Our bodies are reflective of this, as they are mostly salt water. Our very cell structure is a collection of salty fluid cells. No wonder it feels so good for our bodies to float in the ocean. Swimming or floating in the sea brings our bodies into a fluid state, and there’s a balancing of our systems that brings our heart rate down, hypertension lowers, breathing slows and we come into a dynamic connection with our body’s most significant element. When we swim or float, we are like one of our cells; inside we are salt water and outside we are moving in salt water!
If the body is so fluid it is strange that we feel so solid! We do indeed have structure; the body has a definite anatomy to it but it has emerged from a fluid body that we have forgotten and that still exists within us.
Most of what we call aging is actually just a process of drying out. The soft hydrated muscle of the psoas in particular, (the deep muscle of the centre that allows you to stand upright) dries out and shrinks with the passing of time and through lack of movement. The image I have of my elderly grandmother, bent over and somehow ‘shorter’ each year shows the process of the dry, shrunken psoas. What the psoas and other muscles of the body need is hydrating and deep nourishment, rather than excessive stretching. By moving the body in gentle spirals and waves by working to hydrate and soften the body we may be able to age better.
We see aging as something that will tighten, constrict, deplete and shrink us but perhaps it doesn’t have to be this way. If we remain connected to our fluid bodies, we can age very differently. We can learn to move our bodies in ways that open new pathways, where we learn to discover what feels good for our bodies. Emile Conrad explains this beautifully when she writes:
The primary experience of the organism is a sense of discovery. The moment I can discover, I have no walls. To self-regulate the body needs to shift its program, change the rhythm, slow down, it’s not rest that we need but a slower more responsive system. The body is an ongoing process, we are a living process. When the body is in a state of renewal and not decay - aging is very different. Consider that a fluid system is a more resilient system.
Enjoy this Fluid Body Meditation from Ohana Yoga:
Close your eyes and imagine yourself as a body of water, encapsulated by your skin. Feel the buoyant softness of this internal fluid body. Allow your sense of definition and form to drop away as your hard body skeleton dissolves into the background of your awareness. Allow any sense of restriction tightness or rigidity to fall away. As you descend into your internal waters, feel the pulsation of breath moving you. Feel how impulses travel from your core in ripples and your limbs become fluid projections from your live and vibrant centre.
As you feel your body float into stillness, remember that you are not really still, everything within you is fluent and flowing. As your chest rises, the breath moves through your nose, throat and lungs. It ebbs and flows as evenly and gracefully as waves upon a shore. Back and forth, empty and full, in and out. Inside your heart beats. Your blood pulsates a river of life that connects each cell within you. Blood flows outward, blood flows towards the centre again. Your cells expand and contract. You are alive, you are a wave of motion, nothing within you is truly still. Everything is constantly changing at each moment.
Every sound, every ray of light every breath is an oscillation back and forth. Within your body is a river of change. Allow yourself to move with the water. Sometimes slow like a great river, sometimes quickly like a spring stream, sometimes languishing like a quiet lake, or passionate like the waves of the sea.
Feel the stream of movement moving through you. You are water, the essence of all forms, yet formless. You are the point in which all direction flows and you are the flow.
Slowly now awaken and come back to your breath and your body resting.
