What is my relationship with my moving center, as Gurdjieff calls one’s physical body? Why does Gurdjieff say each center has its own brain? [See the last two blogs on feeling center and intellectual center.]
My Relationship to Moving Center
I’ve always thought of myself as a Man #1 primarily centered in my physical self. I grew up horseback riding, swimming, and dancing ballet. But I didn’t have a relationship with my body as a thing that could think for itself—until I started learning movements.
I remember how, in ballet, I had a hard time memorizing the combination of dance steps for my choreographed part. Later, I was introduced to movements, which were designed to be impossible—with different patterns for feet, arms, and head. Impossible if you tried to “get it” with your head, that is.
Trusting my Body
One day I gave up and stopped thinking I had to tell my body what to do. Instead, I began to relax into the rhythm of the foot movement. My body knew how to dance, how to pick up a rhythm. Once that was established, I trusted my feet to learn what they were doing through repetition. As my feet, arms and head learned each part, there was room to work on the next challenge.
Now I know in movements, at least, that my body can think for itself. For example, I don’t always remember the name of a particular movement when told which one we’re going to work on. But when the music starts, my body remembers.
Testing the Theory
A few years ago, I had an interesting experience at a local swimming pool. I hadn’t gone off a diving board for ages. Watching the kids jumping and diving, I began to wonder if I could pull-off my old jackknife. In my youth I had practiced it a lot. But I was in my sixties now. What if I injured myself? What if I made a fool of myself? My inner considering bothered me, more than the notion that I could land wrong and get injured. I decided to work against my inner considering.
FYI, inner considering is the Work Vocabulary word for worrying about what other people think about me. It’s a form of negative imagination, a waste of energy, and only goes to feed my sense of ego.
I waited for the “adult” swim, when few people were in the pool. Focusing my intention and calming my fears, I went for it. Amazingly, my body remembered and executed a pretty good dive and it was fun! And reproducible.
My Take-Away
The body has an intelligence which I need to trust. It can also be self-willed and lazy, so it needs to be trained. My body wants to please, be respected for its own intelligence and work together with the “team”—my thinking, feeling and moving centers.
I like this Roberta! Nice photo of the jackknife!
Thanks. I was quite surprised that my body remembered. But as it turned out, my real “work” was the struggle with letting go of my inner considering, which was all about what everyone at the pool would “think” of me, especially if the dive flopped. Of course then there’s the ego element- what made me think people would even notice? Much less be evaluating? That dive was quite rich in inner work.
For me the intelligence of the moving center is never clearer than when I’m working on a new juggling trick. In the beginning you use your thinking center quite a lot as you learn the trick. You need to observe what is going wrong to get it right and you wind up thinking about it, “Oh, if I just throw it up higher or over to the left or if I spin it faster” and that is how it should be to begin with. Along with that comes a bit of the emotional center as you get frustrated with missing the trick yet again. But when you finally “get it” and the trick is working as it should, your thinking center steps in at the wrong time and says, “Wow! Look at what I’m dong!” and, of course, the trick falls apart. It is when the “I” of the thinking center steps out of the way that your body takes over and accomplishes what the “I” can’t. Good post Roberta! I, nor my body, could even imagine doing a jack knife dive!