How Do You Take Flight?

In last month’s newsletter, I prompted you to consider the various ways you meet the ground and how that brings a sense of safety. I want to dive into and expand on that today.

Often, when we meet the ground fully, we find the authentic power we need to push ourselves out of the earth and into the world.

photo by Jordan Christian

After finding ground, my next question to my clients is always: how do you take flight?

Just like children learning to crawl then stand then walk then run, the complexity of our own movement as adults builds when we are able to stay attuned to our foundations.

The ways you are rooted reflect the ways you are able to fly, expand, soar into the world. That is, how you connect to the ground reflects how you run, jump, twirl, and cartwheel.

Below is a movement study of how one grounds to take flight. By working with gravity -- first receiving it and then shaping it -- I find the power to explode out of the ground and into the air in ways that surprise even me. There's a nice cameo of the late, great Sugar Hayes too! (1 minute, 24 seconds)

As some of you know, I'm training to become a certified Infant Developmental Movement Educator (IDME). An IDME is someone who understands the developmental milestones that accompany the first year of life and is able to teach growing babies and their caretakers how to find support in lost or not-yet-discovered movement patterns on their way to walking.

When babies are able to unlock all the movement milestones within that first year, they are set up for more ease and integration throughout their whole moving lifetime. This is not to say that well-moving babies can't grow into less well-moving adults, or that babies who don't work with an IDME can't grow to become strong movers, but it can provide a strong foundation where all of a baby's body parts are moving in relationship to one another.

Last month I was able to join my IDME teachers in the study of embryology and ontogenetics, where we talked about the curiosity feedback loop that inspires babies’ full-body movement.

Grounding brings a felt sense of safety. When we're grounded, we are able to orient to where we are in the world. We can make lateral moves by shifting our weight or rolling.

Once we feel confident with the support of the ground -- our first dance partner -- then we find the strength and power to push ourselves out of the earth and into space. We make level changes by pushing, pulling and reaching.

Safety is required before we can seek out what feels most comfortable in our bodies. Once we do, we bond with that comforting place/position/person.

In the example of a baby, a mother may hold and feed her young in a way that feels safe and comforting. This leads to a bonding between them; they spend time together in this nourishing relationship until Baby has built enough strength and sense of self to get curious about what's beyond their bonded relationship. Her curiosity leads her through space to explore other objects, people, worlds.

I love this relationship between ground and space, between safety and curiosity.

Think about the last time you wanted to get quiet and cozy and burrow under some covers after a long and busy day, week ... or year!

Or when you were ready to bust out of the house that first spring day, when the sun enticed you and the birds beckoned.

We live the curiosity feedback loop throughout our lives, always seeking the balance (or extreme limits) of safety and curiosity.

In movement these two pathways (into the ground and into space) can be explored as flexion and extension.

Flexion is when we gather in around our centers, coming home, grounding into ourselves.

The movement looks like a shortening of the front body and a lengthening of the back body.

Extension is where we expand from our centers into our environment, ready to engage, meeting space as fully as we meet the ground.

The movement looks like an expansion of the front body and an arcing of the back body.

These two work together. The resourcing you receive from the ground is the exact amount of resourcing you will have to meet space.

Now, with your understanding of the curiosity feedback loop, I ask again: how do you take flight?

What are your preferred ways to engage the world?
Hiking, biking, singing, dancing? Conversing one to one or in a large group? City life or country? Cats, dogs or horses?

It doesn't matter how you do it, but how well you balance between them. How you show up for the world (your ability to bond and be curious) is directly related to how you show up for yourself (your sense of safety and comfort).

I often talk on this platform about resourcing yourself through self care, moving slower, resting. And that's because I see a huge deficit of that in our culture and especially in the fitness world.

But self care and grounding is only one piece of the puzzle. Completing the feedback loop is significant integrative work for humans of all ages, but it requires meeting your truth at every turn. Moving outward when ready and resourced; returning home to recover when needed. Knowing the difference between them is an art and a skill — one that we practice in the HomeBody studio every single day.

Try this short movement exploration to get in touch with the balance you hold between moving inward (to safety and comfort) and moving outward (to bonding and curiosity). Notice how your attention and mood changes as your body changes!

Comment Below:

Tell us below how you like to take flight in the world. If you’ve completed the movement exploration above, let us know if it helped you get clearer about it or anything else.