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Writer's pictureJuan Calixto

Ripples from the middle

Notes of practice




“For what the center brings

Must obviously be

That with remains to the end

And was there from eternity”


~Goethe


Note of practice


One of the most challenging and awkward poses that I practice is the “flat face”(prone 3D breathing @hansa.wellness ) is literally, that, a prone shavasana with the face flat on the floor.


I found this position extremely difficult at first, thinking (fearing) that my nose is going to break, and feeling a bit anxious about the discomfort of the posture, but then after a bit, it all settles, slowly and subtly. Is a sudden encounter with the intimacy of my breath, that I can feel so close, and from which I can recognise my midline, an anchor to my attention.


I pictured the image first, as I feel it on the front side, it cuts my body in half, from the bridge of the nose, the manubrium, the xiphoid and the pubic symphysis.


Then it goes deep, to the centre, from the crown of my head, the throat, behind the heart, caressing the spine from the inside, and elongating my legs beyond its reach.


I know it may sound a bit too much… but I find in this pose easy access to my interoceptive sense, to tune my body and practice, indulging in a somatic experience, where I can define an axis, from where I can move from, and from where I can support the movement itself.


From the centre comes the potential of spin, as an expression of vitality, from the centre we can contact our pols, integrate our extremities, and identify the cross-link patterns, and spiral dynamics, that orchestrate balance and coordination.


The middle is a medium of connection, and so, a source of regeneration, an effect that ripples throughout the body, healing its borders.


The midline is a: middle, centre, axis, and anchor; Is an Origen, a seed from where to grow, organising our transitions to the end, to get to that place, from where to start again and again.


Like the poem, The Trees by Philip Larking: “like the tree that yearly tricks us looking new, Is it that they are born again, And we grow old? No, they die too, Is written down in rings of grain. (yet, still from they thresh) In fullgrown thickness every May. Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.




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