Bowspring technique: reflection

I attended 3 classes with Fiona Gordon, a dance pedagogue who teaches Bowspring technique. Hereunder are some insights:

Day 1

I feel a springy quality and a real vibrancy inside. My pathways are clear and I feel a resilience and strength coming from my back. Opening the solar plexus, expressivity flowing outwards and around. Everything seems to come and wrap within and without. A warmth within and no sense of exhaustion from the muscles, but more of a deep inner work of gaining new biotensegral awareness. Fluid but in a structural and integral way, with wrapping and bowy directions rather than lines expanding outward in space. The finger tips are not reaching away from the center (center to periphery relationship),  this way it feels like spreading the energy outward and relying on the outside to get energy from. But keeping the soft curves of the fingers feels like there is a constant regeneration of energy, flowing in beautiful intrinsic patterns meshing the inside/outside.

I thought we were talking about spirals, but the layering of spirals from inner layers to outer layers resemble more like wrapping in and out in a spiralling way.

Roundness and curviness of the bones. Curvature, natural shapes are not straight.

Day 2:

Working on the ribs.

How do I feel this biotensegrity: I don’t go into the collapsing, neither the holding or fixing, but into a movement that in itself gives a sense of recoil. No need to go to the end of the movement, the movement in itsef is the process and the work.

Notes and corrections for me: when traditional gather-collect, I tend to collapse chest and head in the collect. But by keeping the shape, I feel more gliding within the tissues, and I feel I give a direction to the fascia.

The bow: using S curves.

Structures: swim and recoil in that structure, no collapse.

 

Day 3:

Expansive heart: open the ribcage in all directions: pull on the T-shirt, sideways and down, back and front, front and up. Keep sit bones back and high.

Loading spring: difference with conventional navel radiation or space projection (reaching space through the finger tips). Center-periphery relationship: can always go further although we don’t get till the end of the reach so we feel the biotensegral structure.

In the past I used to call Biotensegral structures floating structures, like floating bridges. But the floating aspect seems to me to indicate a low resistance.

It is shifting the traditional understanding of navel radiation, flexion, extension, almost finding the elasticity and variation of multidimensional structures within this navel radiation. (can go into twists, diagonals, be applied to yoga structures such as Trikonasana….)

In CI, we also use the biotensegral structure in a rigid but adaptable way: The helix keeps the same shape, the body has to adapt and reconfigure within itself to keep the shape. Even though it doesn’t look like it, but it requires a lot of work and body awareness: splitting the focus between maintaining the shape, not giving into gravity, giving and changing directions, changing inner tonicity.

 This is about using the body intelligence to figure out this physical enigma.

Maybe going towards the very end of the extension: we tend to forget all other dimensions.

Loading feels like not only re-cycling the energy but regenerating it. At the end I feel a deep inner work but not a muscle exhaustion or soreness. It keeps the whole body working at all time.

Posture: after floating ribs, I feel my ribcage more alive, which gives more insight into postural fault: I feel the forward collapse of my lower cervical spine, at the junction with the upper vertical.