Unfolding

I’m on my way back from another very inspiring week of the CI teacher training in Freiburg. This time the most insightful aspect emerged around and through the space created by the training, more than from the contents per se. It has do to with why I’m spending so much energy in deepening CI practice—it’s a moment of clarity, which I’d like to articulate in a short reflection.

Before leaving for Freiburg, a student in my Spinoza & Indian Philosophy course in Rotterdam mentioned this quote from the Tai Te Ching (ch. 15):

Who can rest until the moment of action?

The idea stood out to me as particularly clear and almost obvious: genuine action is not the action initiated by the planning mind that seeks to achieve its more or less petty goals. Genuine action is the flowing through you of the way in which the whole system unfolds its own action. This is the idea of the Gīta, but also the surrender discussed by Sri Aurobindo, or the idea of being ‘modes of God’ presented by Spinoza, or the relaxed ‘abiding in emptiness’ of the Buddha. At this point, I’m entirely persuaded that this is ultimately the only kind of action that is worth pursuing. The only question is how?

What became clear during this week is that as you release into the ground, the ground rebounds into you, and that rebound produces motion, which is not planned or directed by the mind but simply flows and unfolds through you. Nothing else is really needed. The joint experience of release & rebound is what could be called ‘earthing’ (see here), and its result could be tentatively called ‘unfolding’. I like this word because it captures two important aspects: (a) it gives a sense of a process that is constantly on-going and never really completed; (b) it includes a sense of 'flowing' without overlapping with the common use of the term of 'flow' in psychology (where te terms denote an experience of balance between challenge and confidence, and the sense of 'being in the zone'). To me 'unfolding' has an element of flow, but it entails something deeper. Most importantly, unfolding cannot be trained directly—precisely because training is something that the mind does, but unfolding does not originate from the mind. However, the mind can be helpful in identifying and working on the elements that hinder the experience of the unfolding.

The first hindrance is tension, namely, the difficulty or blockage in releasing into the ground. In the effort of remaining autonomous, stable, in control, the mind-heart-body system tenses up and tries to operate as an autonomous entity, pretending to cut itself off the ground. Of course, nothing can really cut off the connection between any body and the ground. But a certain degree of tension can make that connection unrecognizable and unavailable in one’s experience.

The second hindrance (closely connected with the first) is asymmetry, namely the limitation in the range of motion that one has at one’s disposal, which manifests as a strong inclination to follow only certain kinesthetic pathways and not others. Habituation, fear, traumas, injuries shape the body in such a way that it will tend to move in certain ways and not in orders. The more restricted the body is in its range of motion, the less room there is for the experience of unfolding.

Since its inception, CI collected (and developed) some basic tools to work on these hindrances and reduce their grip. Tools from contemporary dance (floor work, rolls, etc.) are effective ways of softening the way in which the body moves through gravity, and increasing its range of motion. Experimenting with falling, momentum and disorientation (including lifting, which is a falling upwards) is again helpful to disrupt the ordinary way in which mind-habits pretend to control motion and give priority instead to more pre-reflexive instinctual reactions. However, these are only examples (or perhaps paradigms) for how the hindrances can be countered.

At this moment, it seems to me that the most effective way of cultivating and facilitating CI consists in first making very clear what its core experience is supposed to be (release & rebound, earthing, unfolding). Then invite practitioners to observe what makes this experience unavailable, hard to access, discontinuous, and hence provide tools to work on these issues. The experience per se is naturally available, but the practice consists in making it easily and continuously accessible, clear, effortless. And in an important sense, unfolding is also this practice of allowing flow to emerge little by little. So, unfolding does not only occur at the end, but it happens throughout, varying only in degree and form—it unfolds at all times.

It is very important to recognize, though, that tension and asymmetry are ‘hindrances’ only in a relative sense. There is a degree of tension (vs. release) and kinesthetic asymmetry (vs. full range of motion) that is structural and unavoidable, in the sense that it contributes to define what a certain body is. Having a human body means having certain anatomical limitations, and a certain way of holding up the body together that requires a degree of tension.

Hindrances become such only when they grow in intensity to such a degree to make the experience of unfolding unavailable to consciousness (after all, they can only hide it, never suppress it). Too much tension makes the sense of release invisible. A too restricted range of motion suffocates the sense of rebound. The exploration thus consists in seeking the extent to which the tension can be released and the range of motion increased, while remaining in a given physical structure, in order for the experience of flow to grow in intensity, consistency, and articulation.

Moreover, since unfolding is something to be noticed and acknowledged more than something to be 'done', the sharpness of awareness is essential to access this experience. In this respect, I find that in CI there can be a paradoxical relation with 'performance'. Moving from a 19th century romantic approach, performance can be seen as the display of a certain virtuosity of someone for an observing audience (think about Franz Liszt who invented the piano recital). Put this idea aside. Consider the 'round robin': CI practitioner starts in a circle and then enter in a more or less regulated way the space, improvising there, and from time to time returning to the circle. For me, this is an embodied representation of the idea of 'field of consciousness' theorized by William James. The circle concentrates attention and awareness into the space, like a burning glass. The 'performance' is not dualistically divided between audience and virtuosi, but rather structured along the dynamics of witness and mover (Purusha watching the dance of Pakrti, to use the old Indian metaphor). The attention of the witness supports the attention of the mover, and the movement of the mover captures and concentrates the attention of the witness. As the roles change and alternate throughout the format, they also convey the non-dual relation between attention and its unfolding contents. In this sense, the performative aspect of CI can be an integral component and tool to enhance the (collective and shared) experience of unfolding.

This exploration is the ‘practice’—a paradoxical practice, again, through which the mind can be used to deactivate its own way of constraining and controlling kinesthetic experience (“underminding” it, see here). This is the practice of CI I’m interested in. I personally do not care for dance, and even less I care for ‘getting CI right’. I also don’t care for CI per se (in the same way in which I don't care for being a Buddhist). What I am interested in is a way to cultivate this experience of the unfolding. Formal contemplative practices are effective for that, but often they work mostly at the mental and emotional level, leaving the body behind. Sri Aurobindo saw this, especially in his last years, and rightly recognized that the way towards full surrender goes through an inner transformation of the body itself (or rather of the embodied mind-heart system). Maybe (and hopefully) there are other ways to the unfolding, but that’s not so relevant for me at this moment. Nature/Life has always many ways of moving in the same direction. What’s relevant is to explore how a certain way can be developed and perfected.

In CI, the unfolding is definitely the ‘improvisational’ part, while the practice of cultivating release & rebound is done through ‘contact’ (with the ground, and with other beings). Since the element of contact is not only physical (two bodies or physical surfaces touching) but also emotional (two living beings having to come to terms with each other), CI addresses simultaneously body and heart, physical and ‘energetic’ aspects (and rightly so, since hindrances are present in both). We need to learn who to ‘roll’ on another body, but also how to ‘listen’ to another sentient creature and their aliveness. The two dimensions are entangled.

Based on my experience so far, I would say that this understanding of CI is not majoritarian. At least based on how I have observed people ‘practicing’ CI at jams, workshops, and classes, it seems to me that they often see it in diverse ways, ranging from a certain ‘dance form’ to an acrobatic exercise, to a way of healing a ‘touch starvation’ condition, up to a different playground for seeking more or less sexualized intimate relations. As always in nature, there is a certain ‘fuzziness’ around the appearance of a thing (there are no two oak trees that look exactly the same). However, in my understanding, what I have described (the idea of CI as a means of flowing) is what would define an ’advance’ form of practice—meaning, a practice that matured to the point of letting go of all the other restrictions that limit its scope. Seeking a ‘dance form’ is a restriction, likewise performing an ‘acrobatic’ move, or having to heal wounds, or seeking partners. These are all restrictions that limit the sort of action that is possible in CI (and in most case reduce it to the habitual mental action that we are used to). In this sense, when the first generation of CI practitioners focused their research on the physical experience of gravity, they were rightly pointing at the (s)core of what the ‘advanced’ version of CI can be. Yet, it also seems to me that as the practice matures, all these restrictions are progressively eroded and melt away in the process of practicing itself, leaving more and more clear the experience of unfolding as the only priority worth pursuing.

This does not even require that an ‘advanced’ CI practice can unfold only among ‘advanced’ practitioners. In fact, the more one is ‘advanced’ the less restricted or dependent they are on the skills and abilities of those with whom they share the practice. If one needs only a certain kind of partner in order ‘to do’ certain things, that’s a clear restriction. Being able to experience unfolding in any situation, with any body is the landmark of genuine proficiency and virtuosity.