Week 2: Day 7 – Science
“You translate everything, whether physical, mental or spiritual, into muscular tension” FM Alexander, Teaching Aphorisms #115
I was a very average student at school. Sitting in a noisy classroom, listening to one voice after another telling me things I had not asked to hear, was tiring.
One subject I loved was Physics. I still remember the surprise of getting the top score for girls in my year when I was about thirteen. I enjoyed the experiments and the way they helped the world make sense. My enthusiasm ended when I discovered you could not take Physics without Chemistry at O‑level, and Chemistry and I were not friends.
Even so, a few scientific ideas have stayed with me over the years. They have helped me understand what Alexander was pointing to long before I had the words or embodied experience for it. I wish I could remember who first explained them to me, as I like to give credit where it’s due, but my brain does not retrieve that information today.
Last week I was working with a client, I will call her Sophie. She has a pattern familiar to many of us: a slight pulling up her head away from her chest, she lifts her chin a tad, and her lower back a little tight. I was trying to help her recognise the support of the floor, so she could allow the floor to send her up. And suddenly a bit of school physics floated up: for every force there is an equal and opposite force.
I looked it up for you, thank you NASA.gov :
Newton’s Third Law: Action & Reaction
His third law states that for every action (force) in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction. If object A exerts a force on object B, object B also exerts an equal and opposite force on object A.
Newton’s Laws of Motion – Glenn Research Center – NASA
Our body has a certain weight pressing/resting down into the ground, the ground gives back an equal and opposite force that pushes us up. This is known as the ground reaction force. I sometimes imagine the ground not wanting a Lucy shaped dent in it. To keep the ground surface wholeness, it pushes back just enough to send me away from it. I stay whole, and so does the ground.
This helps me understand that it is not my effort that sends me upright. It is agreeing with gravity that allows me to agree with the natural upward force too.
Then I found myself talking about what happens inside every cell when it is compressed. In simple terms, every cell wants to be whole. If a neighbouring cell squashes it, the squashed cell pushes back to restore its own shape. This is not metaphor — it is real biology. Cell membranes have elasticity, and living tissue has what scientists call tensegrity: a structural principle in which compression and tension are continuously balanced so that the whole system maintains its integrity and its shape. Each cell has a kind of built-in wholeness. It wants its space. It wants its fullness.
These ideas help me understand that our work is not to do posture or do breathing or do movement. Our work is to create a better environment for nature to do its thing.
When we stand on the ground, we do not need to collapse into a puddle of porridge, and we do not need to hold ourselves upright stiff with effort either.
Instead, if we can get out of the way of the ground reaction force and allow down and up to meet in us both at the same time, then we are harnessing natural energy, rather than using our own, or resisting what we are given. “Gravity and radiance, down and up”, as my teacher Joan Diamond used to say. “Rest in the up.”
And if each cell wants its fullness, then I can rest a little more fully too. Not by stretching or scrunching, but by simply allowing space. Directing myself up away from down, head away from feet, left away from right, my front away from my back. Just thoughts. Simple wishes. These agree with nature.
My school education in physics stopped at age fourteen, but this is my current understanding and I live these truths and share them every day. So I hope Sophie got a little taste of resting in the down and resting in the up at the same time. If so, she can save her energy for something else she wants to do, like yoga, gardening or walking.
Do these ideas help you at all? I would love to hear your thoughts or questions.
If you want to explore these ideas in your own body, join my lunchtime class in Hathersage on Tuesday or book a private session, in person or online. You will get feedback and nuanced guidance from moment to moment lucy@lucyascham.com
I look forward to seeing you,
Lucy