As I moved, I felt my fascia wrapping the insides of my legs. I progressed up my body; my organs and muscles were encased in sacks of rounded fascia arcing out from a central crease like a fountain. Bursting out. then curving around. The centerline felt like a blade. Clean. It felt as if I was perceiving very early embryonic structure––a time when the body is beginning to make differentiated elements, forming bilateral pieces from the central column.

This was exploratory. Afterward, as I let my body go on her own, a wealth of completely new movement ideas and shapes came out––things I’ve never before come upon. A rare, new treasure-strewn cove.

Dunya in front of a painting by Janet Morgan
photo: Janet Morgan

Practice: Shadow & Light
Stand, sit, or lie down.
Close your eyes.
Imagine a line down the center of your body.
Put one side of the body into shadow and the other in light.
Move the lit side of the body watching, with your inner gaze, the lit side.

I’ve repeatedly taught several practices this past month that I find myself running through, like a laundry list, as I do my own work. Shadow & Light is one of these. This practice––who can’t relate to their differences? We all have them, are are trained into them––is easily-grasped territory. It was a pleasure to see students fall quickly into absorbing personal work.

Its charms and powers grow in me as I explore my body through it. My right side is so battered: paralysis, organ removal, repetitive injury––all on the right side. When I close my eyes to feel and inwardly see this side, she is murky and monstrous. Yet she has power. Perhaps rage, really. I’m just starting to pay closer attention. Her time is now. I think her pain-body (She has one all to herself?) can be healed. My bilateral contrast is interesting––the left is quite content. She is pleased, fluid, connected.

Now, I know that all my tissues intertwine; bilateral movement focus is arbitrary, not how I’m actually stitched together. But the imaginary line down the middle produces two diferently perceived interior people. So when I say that my ‘pain body’ is mostly on the right side and not on the left (no political pun intended, though actually…), it sounds bizarre.

On page 116 in Skin of Glass I write about discovering that the latter stages of in-utero fetal assymetry (from being increasingly crowded inside the womb) have set spiraling spine patterns in place before birth. This is one possible root of my bilateral imbalance. Then pile up the scar tissue and revised neural networking from collection injuries and surgeries and, voila, a Frankensteinetta is made! My lovely Frankensteinetta.