Try this experiment. First, smile. Not one of those cautious or sly Mona Lisa type smiles, but a real eye squinting chipmunk-cheeked toothy grin. Next, breathe in and out very rapidly, shallow breaths, a couple of times a second, so you can actually hear the wind shuffling back and forth through your mouth. Continue until the breath moves naturally to your belly. You are now probably laughing. If you are not, repeat the experiment in front of a mirror or face to face with a friend. How do you feel? Laughter is good medicine. It’s a free rebirthing session. Lovity is the therapist!
The question mark in the title of this column is not meant to provoke a controversy over the truth of Dr. Rolf’s pithy tenet. Rather, I hope simply to reflect more broadly than we usually might on our general understanding of gravity. Gravity, as Rolfers are well aware, is a matter of great importance. It affects the whole person, body, emotions, intellect, and spirit, not just the body-structure. What doesn’t affect the whole person, after all, if to touch a part is to touch the whole? Gravity shapes our way of being in the world. The moral life itself can be loosely described as our way of being in the world; the ethicist is a student of the moral life. Thus to reflect upon gravity is a matter of concern for ethicist and Rolfer alike. Ethicist and Rolfer are drawn into one another’s spheres of interest by the pull of gravity.
Gravity is like a mighty deity. If one is not in right relationship with this wrathful god, gravity will crush the impious into the ground. This gives “the grave” a whole new meaning. In the war with gravity, it is the place where the losers bury their dead. Yet for those who align with the deity and establish themselves in right relationship with this omnipresent force, there is hope. Gravity reveals its innate power to lift up as well as to crush, to befriend as well as to annihilate. Gravity drops its terrible mask to reveal itself as levity, with an accompanying promise of resurrection. Now we laugh at death, whose sting is lost! The grave is but a joke. Gravity and levity are not distinct and opposing forces; there is no battle between good and evil. Instead, there is only the One. Dualism is the limited perspective characteristic of our physical reality. In the realm of spirit, there is only light and laughter. Gravity does not exist.
We who roam in the field of the earth, however, even after ten sessions, are still subject to the wearying assault of gravity’s force. It can still weigh us down. Many value deeply the gravity of their situation, as if the very severity of life somehow gives it worth. Levity is belittled by the false martyr as a trifle lacking the serious import of a heavy burden wellborn, The earth’s field is a battlefield. The funeral is wrapped with meaning but the wedding mere frivolity, Lent is celebrated for forty days and Baster forgotten after one. Life is shunned for the truth of death, and crucifixes preferred to the empty tomb. Gravity is the therapist, levity the fool.
Now we can imagine, and we all instinctively know, how the client aligned with gravity is the toughest nut of all! For such a one, a little laughter might begin to heal the fear of life. With the onrushing breath the spirit lifts, replacing the rank air of the grave with inspiration. The deep sleep is banished by awakening. The whole body moves as one. It’s harder to be seduced by aggravations when one is laughing! Levity is the therapist. One’s perspectives shift. Mountains are reduced to molehills, and overlooked little things merit our attention. What seemed of great importance is no longer, and the forgotten remembered. The first is made last and the last made first.
This therapist makes burdens light, and in its light all that was hidden is exposed. The king has no clothes-and he looks fine! Seen from this vantage, gravity undressed is neither therapist nor tyrant, and flowers are arrayed as no royalty could dream. Rooted in earth and open to sky, they grow in the light and model the healing impact of alignment with levity. They sprout from apparent ruin, and break into a grin! Gravity and levity distinguish not two opposing forces but our relationship to a single force unnamed. One force, with respect to which we contract and expand, stiffen and move, fall and rise, die and live, fear and love. And while the cynical may gravely state that life is but a joke, the lighthearted know it’s a good joke, and laugh.
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