"The entire purpose of the human brain is to produce movement. Movement is the only way we have of interacting with the world."
~ Daniel M. Wolpert, Zoubin Ghahramani and J. Randall Flanagan, neuorscientists
Even after study and leading movement for more than two decades, reading the words of Wolpert, Ghahramani and Flanagan surprised me with their profundity. The whole point of our brain is movement. And like many profound statements, there is a quality of both “Wow” and “Oh yeah, of course.” This is Part 3 in 5-part series, Movement is the Point on movement qualities and how they support the health and functionality of the body and the brain. You can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
First thing I do when I get out of bed in the morning is stack my pillows in order (firm, soft, firm) with all the pillow cases going in the same direction (open ends to the center, obviously).
I like order. I like organization. I like tidy and tucked in and hospital corners.
In her famous TED Talk, The Power of Vulnerability, Dr. Brené Brown said,
[Y]ou have to understand that I have a bachelor’s in social work, a master’s in social work, and I was getting my Ph.D. in social work, so my entire academic career was surrounded by people who kind of believed in the ‘life’s messy, love it.’ And I’m more of the, ‘life’s messy, clean it up, organize it and put it into a bento box.’
Preach, Brené. I want life in a bento box.
So when life spirals into messiness – which, it always, always does -- I hate it. A lot. Just the word “chaos” sparks anxiety and makes me want to go fold towels into squares.
As a recovering English major, the root meaning of words is often where I go to understand something. But dang, even the word “chaos” is messy. News broadcaster, magazine editor, artist, illustrator, and gay-rights activist, Jok Church said,
Chaos does not mean total disorder. Chaos means a multiplicity of possibilities. Chaos is from the ancient Greek word that means a thing that is birthed from the void. And it was about that which is possible, not about disorder.
Intellectually, I get it – albeit haltingly. Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of scientific study which, as Wikipedia says, holds that,
[within] the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, interconnection, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals and self-organization.
OK sure. Water’s movements are highly complex and not without some consistency. Clouds move chaotically and constantly create new weather patterns. Fire is both wildly destructive and deeply generative.
I basically get how it works in nature and in big systems, but I am neither cloud nor burning star. How do I *live* with chaos in my body and my life when what I *want* is for my squares of tofu to line up and not touch my cucumber salad?
The first time I intentionally moved with chaos was in a 5Rhythms class more than twenty years ago. Instructed to move like boiling water or raging fire, I threw myself into it. I shook myself with all I had. It was a breathtaking amount of energy. But the next morning, my neck was sore from throwing my head around leaving me with a raging headache.
The thing was, I was moving with only one part of chaos.
The late 5Rhythms founder, Gabrielle Roth explained that
the important thing to realize is that chaos has two sides. It has a shadow side, and that's when it's not grounded, and that just is a panic....we're taking in so much information, and we're not grounding it, and we're holding onto it.
It's not passing through us. … We have so much data and … so much to hold on to that it's imperative that we have a practice where we can remember how to let go, that we have a practice that we can remember our feet.
Chaos is, in movement terms, the collision between flow and form, circles and lines, water and fire. It is, as the chaos theory scientists tell us, only *apparent* randomness. When grounded like a conduit, like a lightening rod, we can let chaos move through us rather than getting stuck and exploding in us.
I suspect that I will always stack my pillows and love a bento box. I suspect that chaos will always bring up trepidation in me. And if I can allow chaotic energy to move rather than holding or bracing and letting it get lodged in me, I can be with it without getting hurt.
And etymologically speaking, the Greeks remind me that it is from chaos that the most radically new things are born.