GRAVITY, WEIGHT, AND THE BRAIN
HOW DO I FEEL MY BRAIN?
I call my favorite exploration to feel my brain, The Glacial Brain. Lie down on your back and make yourself comfortable. Maybe you need a pillow under your knees or knees bent and soles of the feet on the floor to help your lower back, a blanket to keep you warm, a small rolled up towel under your neck – a pillow will be too much for this movement.
Think of a glacier – tons of ice resting on the earth with a thin layer of water underneath moving at a rate of about 20 inches per year. This is a slow glacier. A more typical glacier could move 10 inches a day. Read this exploration and then try it, or read it while doing it and then do it again once you have the movement so you can release thinking about it as you do it.
With your hands feel your skull.
The skull is composed of flat plates of bones that fit together like puzzle pieces lying next to each other (if the puzzle was three dimensional) with the addition of some tissue to hold them together.
The Brain and Spinal Cord.
The frontal cortex is mostly in the forehead. Notice that the bottom level of the brain is mostly at the level of the eyes and ears, except the posterior part which fills the back of the head.
Inside the skull and spinal cord there are three different layers of connective tissue with some fluid between them that help cushion and protect the brain. Can you see the similarity the brain resting on its cushion of fluid inside the supportive surface of the skull and a glacier with some fluid beneath it nestled on the supportive surface of mountains?
As you are lying down, next shift your focus to the weight of your brain resting in the back of your skull. Soften your face – widen the forehead, soften the focus of the eyes, let the cheeks droop, the corners of the mouth release. Feel how gravity shifts your weight towards the back of the skull. Feel the firmness of the skull bones and the weight of the brain matter inside. You are going to let the weight of the brain gently shift inside the skull to one side which will slowly turn your head. Don’t think about it. Stay in the sensation of weight shifting in the back of your brain.
If you start moving from the neck or face or skull you will lose most of the feeling of brain shifting. Recognize if this happens and drop your consciousness back into the weight inside the skull and the slow shifting.
Go slowly like a glacier. Let the weight inside your skull slide slowly, slowly, towards your ear, riding on the cushioning fluid. Let it take you minutes, as many minutes as you need to feel the shifting of weight inside your head. Move as far as it feels comfortable. No strain. It doesn’t matter how far you go. What matters is your experience of the weight of your brain inside your skull slowly shifting the position of the head.
And then slowly, glacially, let the weight of your brain change direction and shift back, bringing your head towards center or midline, your nose towards the ceiling. Then try it towards the other side letting the weight of the brain gently shift along the inside of the skull down towards that side and back to center. Do this as long as you want enjoying being in not thinking mode and in the sensation. Sometimes this can help reorganize tension in the neck and shoulders or shift your breathing. Often it relaxes your frontal brain’s intensity of thinking.
SHIFTING PLACES IN THE BRAIN
Next start thinking about something. Can you feel a shift in your brain forward towards your forehead? Think about something, then let it go intentionally. Shift to feeling in the lower back inside of your skull. Feel how this is not a thinking space. Feel what happens in your eyes and face as you shift into this back of the skull place. Then start thinking about it, naming the experience. Do the sensations in your brain shift? Does your face change, your eye focus change?
SITTING POSITION
Go back to a sitting position. Nerves are sending information from your cells about where you are in space and how you feel to the mid brain which sends it on to the frontal brain, the cortex, for processing. As you are reading this, take a moment to receive information of your experience of sitting or whatever new posture you are in. Instead of thinking about what’s happening, try receiving sensation in the back of the brain without having to name it.
As you are reading this, notice how your body is supported. Where do you touch a surface. Feel the sensation of weight drop into the supporting surfaces. If you are sitting this is your feet and buttocks/back of your thighs. This is not about extra fat or feeling too heavy.
Gravity helps us experience our relationship to the earth and to space through weight. Gravity helps us know where we are and recognize relationships within our bodies. You have been playing with gravity since you were a single cell.
Where is the experience of weight in your body? Is it in the lowest places or is it where you feel more tension or pain or somewhere entirely different? Receive the experience of how the weight of your body rests or pulls away from where you feel supported.
Sometimes when I am intensely thinking I feel weight in my head. Right now I am holding tension in my right lower rib area. I give myself the direction to soften. It enables me to allow myself to relax where I am holding on to my structure (for whatever reason), to soften the holding and release the weight in that area. Releasing the tension that pulls away from gravity drops the weight down towards the ground. I feel a shifting towards the earth. Some parts of my body feel lighter, some weightier.
Lie down.
Feel your body touching the surface beneath you.
Feel the surface beneath you touching you.
Notice the space between the surface and your body.
Trust the surface.
Soften. Let the surface support you.
Drop your weight down. Release.
towards the floor. Feel gravity
travel through you towards
the center of the Earth.
Feel the molten core,
the many layers to the surface,
the density of the planet beneath you.
Feel the space around your body
your weight being pulled
towards the Earth.
Let it be.