April 17th Place visit: attention to movement
As I was walking to my place, I realized that I was moving faster than normal. When I got to my place, I looked down at the ground with my eyes shut. I noticed my breath was fast from walking here and that it could also be due to stress. I started to move around. My first impulse was to stretch my neck. After thinking about it, I realized it was because that was where I was carrying all the tension. Then I shook out one leg at a time and stretched my back. As I was doing all of these movements, I realized that they are movements I have gathered as I grew. Each movement was from a different part of my past. I shook my leg from all the years of running and stretching my back from stress and where my tension is usually held. Humans are creatures of habits. During my whole place visit I did not do a move I had not done before. This was not intentional but yet that is what happened. I did moves that I felt comfortable doing. The moves I did were ones to help me feel better. Each move was specific to helping relieve some pain or pinch. My brain also picked up on the fact that other people could see me and therefore I would be scared to try a new move out. I did what was comfortable and what my brain thought was safe. As I was doing my movements, I realized I started to do my cool down stretches that I did in high school for cross country. Again, when I was not told what to do, I went back to what I had done in the past. At the end of my palace visit I felt calmer and relaxed. I realized that this is how I felt after a run or yoga and that I just did a similar thing for my body. Although I was not told what to do, my body knew what would help me.
February 28th: attention to bone
I started my visit sitting down with my shoes off and messaged my feet. I let my feet touch the ground and feel the cool dirt. I started this visit walking around with my shoes on but at the end took them off to really feel the ground below me. As I was walking around, I realized that the shoes gave me disconnection to the earth. It was something in between me and the earth below me. I felt the roots under my feet and the different Leafs and stones. I realized that my bones are the things that weigh me down to the ground. I felt every little bone in my feet when I was messaging them and how complex this one foot was. I started to think about how many bones there are and how they add on to each other to hold me up. My bones are all interconnected and it made me think about the trees and how they have roots deep that hold them, and their body stands strong with the branches. The roots to the trees like my bones, they are both grounding. This visit was a bit different than normal because I walked around for it, and it made me see the place differently. Both me and the trees are living and growing and sometimes it is hard for me to see the trees as living as well. I am now more aware of my bones and how they support me. As I walked over the soil I thought back to the reading when it said that soil is 99 percent of weathered rocks and caused by movement of the earth. There is so much history in the soil I walk on every day. Thinking about all of this makes me feel so small and new to this world.