Rules, Answers, Knowledge
A fantastic book on my Influenced by list is Lila by Robert Pirsig. He introduced me to a wonderful way of thinking about the world, by seeing that there are two types of realities, static and dynamic.
A static reality you could think of as your home, your job, the need to eat, the sun rising, the night, the seasons. None of these are permanently static but in general they stay the same and we can count on them.
Dynamic realities can be trips, vacations, visits to friends, a new job, a new house, an unexpected bumping into an old acquaintance. These are things that are more spontaneous, change frequently, usually more exciting or fun.
Both realities are important and some of our personal struggles may be born out of imbalances there. We deal directly with that in our Static/Dyanmic Workshop, but for now, I want to point out why LIB is a balanced process of both static and Dynamic.
Our body is a fairly static reality, in that we wake up to it every day, basically look and act a certain way. Apart from that though, it is clearly dynamic, changing daily, aging, and cycling through various states and conditions. The LIB process starts with the body programs, where we learn a process of listening and responding to whatever our body is telling us that day. The process is mainly static. You can rely on needing to breathe and calm your breathing every single time you show up to notice what’s being said. What you find can have some static to it, with our chronic tension patterns, but it is also very dynamic depending on what we may have done that day, or eaten, or how much stress we have. Some days we will struggle to even notice the breath and attempt the process. Some days we will never even think of it.
Why it’s important to mention this is that because of the process itself, your more static patterns will be changing, sometimes daily, sometimes more slowly. If the process gave you specific answers to apply, rules to adhere to, a piece of static knowledge to cling to, you would continue using it long after it was relevant or valuable. In order to achieve the best in well-being, the process we use must have this balance inherent to it, so that our results will also be born of the balance. A process that we can rely on, and we can rely on it to change with us constantly as we change and grow.
Ida Rolf says, we “must be able to be comfortable with phenomena which are always shifting, always moving…. When you come right down to it that wisdom of insecurity explains (it), it’s the body’s need for quick adaptation.”
Life in the Body believes that you don’t have to become a rolfer, or pilates instructor, or chiropractor in order to embody that balance of dynamic and static realities in your body. That balance is inherent in is, and only once it is lost do we struggle to remember or believe it ever happened or could ever be again.
It can be. It should be. And it shouldn’t be a commodity only accessible to those with time, money and circumstance to be able to achieve it. It should be something that can be done by anyone, anywhere for a few moments here and there or a set period. It should be dynamic in when and how it can be applied, and static in that it gets noticeable results everytime you set your mind to doing it.
I believe LIB encompasses all of that, you can come find out for yourself, as always with no risk.