Issue: March 2010 Newsletter About the Earth and the Sun
This month's winner of £100 School of Movement Medicine workshop voucher
By Roy Freeman
I recently
participated in Susannah's "Fusion" dance workshop in Olten, Switzerland. There we danced our connection to the
great grandmother and great grandfather, the Earth and the Sky/Sun and beyond.
I found many connections new and old, and thank Susannah for a really great two
days of movement that returned me to some deep places in myself.I am a trained natural scientist (a
geophysicist; that is, I study the physical processes of the Earth, things like
Plate Tectonics, earthquakes, and mountain building.
I co-authored the book:
"A Continent Revealed" published by the Cambridge University Press in
1992). Susannah encouraged me to share some of the thoughts and feelings that I
rediscovered during that weekend dance with the readers of this Newsletter.
Here is one real story:
We all know that
we walk on this Earth, we are nourished by her and receive energy from the Sun
that fuels our dance and life movements. As you dance your relationships to
Nature, it perhaps might be inspirational to ask: where did all this Earth come
from? Where does the calcium in my bones, the oxygen I breathe, the iron that
makes my blood red, actually come from? From the Earth, of course. But where
did it come from before that? All these atoms in the Earth, in the air we
breathe, in our bodies, in our blood, all this comes from the stars! Only the
incredible heat generated by the nuclear fusion (!) energy in the center of a
star can "melt or infuse subatomic particles (neutrons, protons,
electrons, quarks and whatever is there) into atoms. The nearest star is of
course "our" Sun. Certainly much of the original material of the
Earth (now in our bodies) came from our Sun, but not all. Since the time the
proto-Earth was gathering together by gravitational attraction, she has been
continually inundated by cosmic dust, tiny meteorites from other stars in all
parts of the universe. This amounts to tons of cosmic material per day! (For my
dissertation, I dissolved limestone from deep-sea sediments and uncovered these
tiny meteorites and took photographs of them with the electron microscope, so I
know they exist!) So when you are breathing, when you are dancing, you are
moving stardust! Think of that. Bring that to your dancer and let it power your
movements. Star medicine in moving human form!
Another story: The
energy from the Sun is not the only reason life exists and is sustained on
Earth. Warmth from the Sun only penetrates a few meters into the Earth's
surface. But if you dig down, go into a cave or in a mine, you quickly notice
that it gets warmer the deeper you go! If it were not for this warmth, the
surface of the Earth would slowly freeze and enter a state of permafrost, the
oceans would be iced over and life as we know it today would not be possible.
But where does this heat come from? The rest of the heat from the fiery melt of
the proto-Earth has been cooling down over the last 5 billion years and is not
enough to heat up the surface of the Earth to the average annual temperature
range 12-18°C needed for life as we know it to survive. The answer is not
simple, but fascinating. It needed a bit of Earth history, atomic physics, and
plate tectonics to figure out and tells an amazing story of how everythings is
interconnected and not only rhythmic but irreversible processes are necessary
for life.It is like this.... oops, I
have got to get moving now and will let you know in later Newsletter!
(A bit about
myself: I lead field trips to rivers and mountains to bring these amazing
slow-moving natural processes into our everyday experience and open up Nature
as one amazing teacher about who we are in the big - and small - sense. For
instance, in southern Switzerland we go to where you can touch the rocks where
the ancient continent of Europe touches (!) the rocks of the ancient continent
of Africa; or to the Pilatus mountain near Lucerne where the limestones tell us
the story of the great rhythmic climate changes (that continue today) and we
can read directly from them how life in the ocean reacted to those changes 100
million years ago. For more information on the excursions, you can visit
www.naturprozesse.com, they are open to everyone! On www.lightofnature.net you can read some
personal thoughts on Paracelsus who wrote around 1540 about the stars in our
blood.)
The views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the School of Movement Medicine.
Roland Wilkinson, Nappers Crossing, Staverton, Devon TQ9 6PD, UK Tel & Fax +44 (0)1803 762255 http://www. schoolofmovementmedicine.com