Our Feet Sing Our Heart Songs

December 18, 2024

My middle child Sam was born in April 1995. As a spring baby, they had opportunities to lay on the ground outside, early in life. I have a vivid memory of them laying on their back under a maple tree in the back yard. The tree was just beginning to leaf out with fresh green leaves, and Sam was reaching with delight with arms and legs as they sang to the light dancing in the leaves. It was an example for me, witnessing how all our limbs are equally expressive of our hearts’ longings and songs, early in life.

As we age, as we rely on our legs to support us, as we engage more with our culture which prioritizes moving quickly, being productive, and disengaging from the earth, we often lose this nuanced expressivity in our feet, legs and toes. Additionally, we may lose the important electromagnetic grounding that the earth provides for our resonant hearts, through our feet and legs.

In a class I took with Continuum Teacher Ellen Cohen last March, she shared a 2007 quote from Emilie Conrad, the founder of Continuum, “The spine is an antenna for many worlds. It can regenerate itself by un-differentiating.” Since hearing these words of Emilie, I have been in an inquiry; what other parts of me have capacity to be antennae? My heart? My bones? My hands, feet, eyes? And, as antennae, what am I transmitting, and also, what am I receiving?

As our electronic devices are more ubiquitous throughout our days, as they often capture our attention, how might we be more mindful about what our resonant systems are receiving? What might this exploration into what we are taking in and transmitting teach us about how we are in relationship with the earth, sky, trees, and all creatures? Fundamentally, how can our feet recover their capacity to root us into the support of gravity and the earth? What is the capacity of our feet to be antennae that emit, receive, and express our heart songs?

Below is a written description of a ten-minute practice to explore:
Begin seated in a firm comfortable chair, with your feet on the ground or floor. Bring awareness to your whole body, and to your breath wherever it is easiest for you to sense it. Let your awareness be open and global, sensing your whole being. In Continuum practice this is called open attention (OA).

Invite several audible whispered “Hah” breaths as you exhale.

Press the bones of one foot into the floor - get specific with each toe, the ball of your foot, your heel, the inside border as best you can, as well as the outside of the length your foot.

Come back to neutral, to OA. What feels alive just now?

Repeat on the other side, and arrive back in OA, breathe and sense your body.

Bring your hands to your heart, and as you “Hum” into your heart, simultaneously push with one foot in slow motion, pouring your weight into the opposite side of your body.  

Now do this with your other foot. Imagine yourself as a wave in the midst of a large body of water, where the waves rise and fall, powerful with gentle undulations. Here you are slowly rocking your body, your entire being, including your heart.

When you are ready, return to OA.

In whatever way is comfortable, place both hands on one of your feet, perhaps crossing that leg over the other, and offer 5-8 “Jacques Breaths/Sounds” (on the exhale, alternate between the soft ji sound of Jacques, and the zzzz sounds like those of a buzzing bee) into that foot. Offer the sounds to all of the many bones of that foot.

Come home to OA, and harvest the effects of that sounding into your whole being. What is alive in you now?

You might go back to the gentle rocking here, with the Hah breath, or the humming, hands on your lap or on your heart.

Return to OA.

Repeat the offering of the Jacques sounds into the other foot.

Come back to OA.

Repeat the slow rocking, with whatever sounds arrive. Bring your awareness to what is currently living in your heart, or perhaps in your thinking as well. Let all of it pour down your body and into the earth. Open your awareness to what the earth is transmitting to you - the warmth in her molten core, the waters moving everywhere, from tiny aquifers to creeks, rivers and oceans, the wisdom of the stones, so ancient and solid, the nourishment of breath, so generously shared with us by the trees, the space that lives between all the subatomic particles that make up all we perceive as solid.

Take some time to savor whatever this slowing down and attending to yourself offers you right now.