Being grounded, means pushing into belly and sternum and rooting in pelvis, and the we can push the head up.
This is learned. It's not a pre program. A huge part of the brain loves/ needs/ organizes around this.
Grounding is for real, until you can into outer space, and the phrase "spaced out," hints at more than might meet the feet.
Recently in a class I was taking, a comment about being grounded came up, and the suggestion was given that this could be accomplished by sensing the genitals. I thought this nonsense, and want to go about showing how simple "grounded" is.
My prior intro, which delays the meat of the posting, is now at the end.
like a modern novel, or something.
Sensing one's genitals roots us in the sexual yum yum hum hum
of existence, but it doesn't ground us.
The human brain comes out of the birth canal at one fifth its
final size.
A huge amount of what the baby and her brain learn and
expand the first two years is movement,
and it's always movement in gravity,
which means learning to connect to gravity
and how pushing down with the belly allows the head to
lift to vertical that's crucial,
and that's part of learning to be "grounded."
To roll over, by pushing down here, and moving there, again, more connection to "ground"
And then crawling: standing on four limbs in crawling is a super duper
understanding of gravity and the ground in two hands, two wrist,
two shoulders, two hips, two knees. Our hands push into the ground, that holds the head and chest up. Our knees push into the ground, and that hold the butt up. As we crawl, we push backward into the ground to go forward.
no understanding of the ground: no crawling.
In fact, to those wanting to "get more grounded," crawling has a lot
to recommend itself.
As does walking barefoot on the good old Earth.
Grounding can be seen thru the lens of the four parts of One Taste,
mainly these three:
Simplicity:
the ground is the ground. Unless you are in space,
you are attracted to the Earth. It's pulling. You're pushing.
Where? Notice.
which is
Attention:
If sitting now, are hands and feet pressing down into something,
which is pushing back up?
Which side of your pelvis is most pressing down?
Are you leaning back? Then your back is being used as a foot,
which is a shitty use of the back, except when lying down.
The two sitz/ sit bones are good feet substitutes.
Leaning back, in primitive / survival conditions is an invitation: kill me.
Connection:
If standing, which part of the foot is connected to Earth, or to your shoe or sock
and how does that connection snake/ connect up through your skeleton to your head,
with the eyes and ears and the top?
Sitting, same: pelvic bones to butt flesh to clothes to chair to chair legs to floor, to ......
And up, pelvic to sacrum to spine to ribs, the shoulder blades and head
And so on
And the last guy:
Desire:
Well, desire to sit up straight can be a conditioned/ finishing school kind of thing,
and it can make you better on horses, if you need to attract an upper class mate,
or stand taller if you want to look better as a breeding partner,
and
there is this desire:
to not be dead
so it's like this:
conditioned sitting up straight: make others happy/ get approval
sit up to be able to move quickly: an inner happiness, freedom, vitality and survival thing
it's pretty deep,
but without grounding,
in the way of the world of most of humanity over most
of its existence: we get taken down
No grounding,
we get killed,
And there it goes:
no big limbic party fun
ah....
there's where the desire can have a lot of fun,
not just in survival,
but moving toward the object of our desire
let's walk across the room to the one who turns you on....
every step is pressing back into the ground
to push through all your skeleton to
move your forward
simple shit
key to being alive
and attention can get finer and finer:
stand:
put weight on insides, outside of feet.
one inside, one outside.
mainly one foot.
mainly one foot and the big toe
mainly one foot and the ring toe
two feet and the toes of one foot and the heels of the other
sound familiar, this increasing of mindfulness by
attending to the details
sure
good
happy week
happy fall as fall in Austin
happy falling into grace
and now
and ground
and desire
where ever you are
Chris
the original start:
I have a friend, a male friend,
with whom friendship is getting deeper and deeper.
We regularly say I love you.
It's a pants on kind of love, and deep, deep,
friendship to the core, to the mud, to the blood,
and
one
reason it's so strong is that I can occasionally tell him:
"I love you and you don't know what you're talking about."
(This you may recognize from Moonrise Kingdom,
which I've seen 3 times, which you can guess how much
I like. And this is perhaps my favorite line,
"I love you and you don't know what you are talking about.")
The recent not knowing was a cute and radically upbeat
idea of being grounded,
which was to sense one's genitals.
No.
Sensing one's genitals roots us in the sexual yum yum hum hum
of existence, but it doesn't ground us.
The human brain comes out of the birth canal at one fifth its
final size.
