Body Notes | The Body Came First

Finding ground in Chaos, finding lightness through movement

This week, while working with patients in my physical therapy practice, I found myself talking again about the extraordinary architecture of the human body. I often use comparisons with the buildings and bridges around us to explain how our bodies work. Think about the millions of dollars, the engineering and calculations that go into creating structures strong enough to carry enormous weight and withstand powerful forces.

And yet, long before anyone drew a blueprint, the human body was already managing weight, gravity, balance, and movement. And not just standing there. Moving!

Our feet provide a foundation, bones carry and distribute weight, joints give us mobility, and our muscles and nervous system continuously make tiny adjustments to keep us upright. We have spent centuries studying the body and learning from nature, applying some of these principles to architecture and engineering. We know an astonishing amount today, and still there is so much we haven't figured out.

What fascinates me is that stability in the human body is never really static. Watch someone walking on uneven ground. Every step requires another adjustment, a shift of weight, a response to something unexpected. Sometimes we wobble. Sometimes we nearly fall. And somehow the body finds another way. Stability isn't necessarily about holding everything firmly in place.

I see this in my work every day, and it keeps showing up in my dance practice, especially in Chaos, one of the five rhythms of 5Rhythms. As the music intensifies and familiar movement patterns begin to fall apart, we may tense up, try harder, or attempt to control what is happening. But what if we stayed curious about our feet instead? What if our connection to the ground allowed us to let go of some of that control?

And then another question arises: when we're grounded, how light can we become? How freely can our arms move, how much space can we inhabit, how far can we expand without losing that connection?

There is another kind of holding that interests me just as much. When life becomes overwhelming, our bodies often respond by tightening, bracing, protecting. And beneath all that physical effort, we may simply be sad, frightened, or tired of holding ourselves together.

I've been listening to She Moves Me by Savanna, a song about our relationship with the Earth. The sadness, tears turning into joy, fear revealing courage, and the tenderness of wanting to kiss the Earth back. It touches something in me that goes beyond the anatomy and biomechanics I work with every day.

Our feet touch the Earth, and the Earth touches us back.

I love that image. We don't have to do anything special to receive the ground's support. We don't have to be particularly strong, balanced, or graceful. We can arrive with whatever we're carrying.

And maybe, from there, we can allow ourselves to be moved.

From my dancing feet to yours,

Bettina-Kira