RE-MEMBERING OURSELVES
THE NATURE OF US writings on the earth community, love, body, embodiment, interconnection, our planetary moment, music - and the creativity and possibilities inherent in being human.
My body remembers a distinct feeling from another time, in another land, a feeling of joyful play, peace with the animals, plants, and the waters. In a tropical world at the edge of the ocean, I and others like me lived side by side with the wild animals with no sense of fear. This cellular memory underlies my life, my love of pure bodily play and being at home in nature. The closest I have experienced to this memory is the north shore of Kauai. I have wondered if it was Lemuria I remember.
As a child I loved to be in water, and took swimming lessons at an early age. I remember loving to swim under water all the way from one end of the pool to the other. Learning to body surf in the Atlantic Ocean, tossed and turned by the waves, thrilled my young self.
In my early thirties, I was offered a ten day movement class by the organizer. I had no idea what was meant by movement. While in my lifetime I had learned to swim, hike, cycle, and run, I thought of these activities as exercise, not movement.
Yet I stumbled upon a new form of movement, in Continuum founder Emilie Conrad’s words, that has developed ways of re-membering ourselves as an organizing process not bound by time, space, or condition.
Emilie’s focus was on the fluid systems of the body, on water—and more specifically how water moves on land within bodies, our human bodies and the bodies of all beings. I learned to feel the body from the inside. It re-awakened memories within me.
This was the most startling one:
On the first day of the class we were doing a gentle breathing exercise. I can’t remember what it was, but we were likely exploring the inner waters of our body through the breath. I noticed my back began breathing on its own, much like the gills of a fish. I told Emilie and she had me come to the center of the class, lay on the floor and everyone watched my back breathe.
(Fish gills are organs that allow fish to breathe underwater. Most fish exchange gases like oxygen and carbon dioxide using gills that are protected under gill covers (operculum) on both sides of the pharynx (throat). From wikipedia)
That night at home when I was attempting to sleep. I was taken on a phylogenetic excursion though the evolutionary history of myself - or humans in general, and I was whirling in information and awe, basically mind-blown. This was my introduction to movement, and I was hooked. It was in this ten days that I also experienced how everything in my past ten years of meditation was happening within my own body, the beginning of really experiencing the body as a microcosm of the whole—embodying the cosmos.
I easily related to the fluid systems of the body, and the resonance with bodies of water found throughout the planet. This fundamental fluidity underlying all movement developed into a lifelong fascination with our interconnectedness.
One of the most important fluids of the body is our cerebrospinal fluid, which underlies this interconnection with all life:
In the womb, the first part of the fetus to develop is the neural tube. From this tube, the spine is manifested downwards, carrying the central nervous system along with it. The central nervous system, which can be thought of as the electrical wires that run the machine that is your body, then branches off to form all the vital organs (that Ganges River analogy begins to make more sense here).
The entirety of this developing central nervous system is immersed in a substance known as the cerebrospinal fluid. In fact, the brain and spinal cord of the growing fetus are both organized around this clear fluid. As adults, we make 450 to 600 milliliters of it (over two and a half cups) per day and have approximately 150 milliliters of cerebrospinal fluid in us at all times.
The cerebrospinal fluid bathes the outside of the brain and the cavities within it, known as ventricles. Then the fluid travels down the hollow central canal of the spinal cord and saturates the outside of the spinal cord too. Although the spinal cord ends at L2 (the second lumbar spinal vertebra), the cerebrospinal fluid continues to move down through to S2 (the second sacral spinal nerve), where the root chakra and the kundalini energy, esoterically speaking, reside.
Although many people . . . have spent most of our lives knowing very little about it, the role of the cerebrospinal fluid is huge. It is a vehicle for the transmission of information to the brain, a transporter of nutrients and hormones to the central nervous system, an instructor of stem cells on whether to proliferate or differentiate, a manager of circadian rhythms, a regulator of appetite, an eliminator of waste, and a shock absorber for the brain, pineal, and pituitary glands.
Among the brain cavities mentioned above is the third ventricle, the exact midline space of the head, which is surrounded by the pituitary gland in front, the pineal gland in the back, and the hypothalamus and thalamus on either side. This third ventricle is called the Crystal Palace by Daoists, the Cave of Brahma in Sanskrit texts, and the Third Eye by Theosophists, and it happens to be filled with cerebrospinal fluid.
On the inner walls of this third ventricle are cilia: slender antennae with receptors to monitor information, light, growth factors, hormones, flow, movement, and vibrations. Through the water experiments performed by the Japanese researcher Masaru Emoto, we know that fluids absorb, store, and transmit energy. We also know that our ancestral cerebrospinal fluid was seawater and that it evolved as a way to receive signals from the environment. Could this mysterious liquid be the fluid conductor of Source energy into our bodies? Could this essence be the Divine spark that allows us to be aware of our beingness?
https://www.theosophical.org/publications/quest-magazine/the-esotericism-of-the-spine-and-the-cerebrospinal-fluid?highlight=WyJ2ZXJ5Il0=
To emphasize one more time:
We also know that our ancestral cerebrospinal fluid was seawater and that it evolved as a way to receive signals from the environment. Could this mysterious liquid be the fluid conductor of Source energy into our bodies? Could this essence be the Divine spark that allows us to be aware of our beingness?
Needless to say, the importance of maintaining the fluidity of our bodies, and especially our spines, is paramount. The cerebrospinal system and the pineal gland are the way back, back to our future selves, to a world of peace and joy. Your body is the link to interconnection with the living cosmos.
Thank you for reading today! I hope more and more of you are retrieving my essays from your spam folder, a month long snafu I don’t understand.
With love,
Sabrina
Please support my work:
Sabrina Page, MA in Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness
You can reach me at sabrinapage@earthlink.net. I assist you in focusing on the deep knowing of your body, aligned with water. earth and all life - embodiment - to support you in living life fully, freely, and fluidly, intertwined with nature. Optimize your self-healing ability and embody presence and love by uncovering the new in yourself.
My background includes having studied meditation, movement, dance, and astrology - with some of the leading individuals in their fields. Sessions are individually tailored to your current needs.
More information is available on my website, sabrinapage.com
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fascinating, thx!
I love the imaging you flesh out for the spinal fluid. It is the land of milk and honey within us! Thank you for sharing this fluid history.