Natural mental health (part three)

The Group Experience

We are a social species, our bodies only move relative to others, every thought and feeling has a social cue in the present moment. Emotions act like a tag, as a start and a stop to every thought, at the connection to every other thought. It happens because all sense data passes through the remaining reptilian, then mammalian structures of our ever evolving social brain before reaching the uniquely large human part, the neocortex. Our extra-large cognitive processing capacity grew as a response to the increasing size of human groups.

Natural human groups have a maximum size of around one hundred and fifty, made up of our closest genetic relatives, but with an increasing tendency to break into two from about one hundred. The size of all primate groups is directly related to brain capacity. Whilst the human brain may be capable of recognising thousands of faces, we are limited in the number of people we can feel an emotionally attachment for. We must fear strangers, for our lives depend on the group. In the past our human herd was our only social network and the group dynamics within it our principle concern, and over the better part of two hundred thousand years a collective brain evolved. Grooming - touch - forms the bonds in childhood and maturity. Leadership goes to whoever is the strongest in a particular space at a particular time, the best able automatically volunteer. With such a legacy, who's on your team? You have, in the modern world of constant strangers, perhaps three seconds to decide or feel - we need our instincts. Would you, ‘take point’ for him? Would you want him taking point for you? When you lock-on to the strongest person in a particular environment or situation you know your degree of freedom.

2016 (photo by Nick Hewling)

One should never empathise with the unhealthy. In the context of mental health that often means refusing the anxiety and fear of others. Disgust is the natural emotional response to any danger to health, we might ‘catch’ something physically (infection, disease) or mentally we may learn (copy, imitate) something disabling (fear). The instinctive emotional response of disgust causes us to turn away. Exclusion from our group has a purpose. Ultimately, we leave death behind by walking away, the natural human group moving constantly through a landscape allows nature to reclaim the fallen almost immediately, they do not cross the river - we do.

With the success of the large human group came greater longevity, the need for monogamy and the family unit. Penetrative sex became marriage, non-penetrative sexual activity the search for high compatibility, nature’s fertility test. Extreme genetic closeness repulsed, whilst towards the edge of the natural human group were the individuals with whom one had the greatest possible compatibility. In the modern world we are staggeringly incompetent in mate selection. In mate selection it is points of similarity which attract, it is the person of the opposite sex who appears to you to be the strongest in your group who wins. Our health, living healthily, depends on us recognising and learning from what is healthy in others; the shape of the body seen from behind in movement. Natural groups inherited the instincts of their ancestors to mate in positions where the male is behind the female. Prolonged eye contact is oppositional! The strongest social bonds follow when individuals look out upon the world from the same perspective. So men follow women and women following men. Yet, in natural behaviour it is men who display, whilst women choose. 

The essential pre-condition of all social contact, of all relationships is that those present, feel safe. What we look for in others is the combination of competence and warmth, only then for achievement or the ambition to achieve. Originally all knowledge was shared because everyone learnt the multiple skill sets required for survival. At some point a division of labour began to emerge, possibly building upon different amounts of time committed to child rearing by men and women. Equally, specialisation in tasks may have been driven by technological innovation based on different levels of aptitude or a conscious decision not to share expertise. In time a collective or social consciousness gave way to an emerging ‘self’, a perception of individuals. If orientated to nature, then what others provide will be what you need; therefore it is always your degree of comfort or discomfort with the social activity of food, shelter, rest, warmth, storytelling, dance, song, sex and healing that counts. Modern society, from agriculture onward, has become characterised by de-socialisation and dislocation, an increasing inability for natural group formation.

Healing is a group process too. The roots of shamanic practice have been traced back about forty thousand years so far. It is both the oldest spiritual, and the oldest medical practice known in human cultural evolution. In our migration out of Africa the remains of the trail appear first in central Asia, whether shamanism came out of Africa much earlier, or simply spread back there, is unknown. At heart the focus of practice is not the immediate distress of an individual but that of the community as a whole, its harmony and healing. The fundamental assumption is that everything in the known (visible) universe is alive with a soul or spirit and therefore capable of transformation, whether we feel we understand it or not. Our responsibility is therefore to remember (knowledge) and respect our connection to all the people and things we know.

A shaman is the person chosen by the group (band or village) to act as messenger between the visible, known or understood world, and the invisible, unknown, or as yet unknown - or possibly unknowable, world of the spirit! Therefore in any one moment the shaman may be acting as healer or doctor; using the most fully understood medicinal remedies at the same time as presenting him or herself, verbally and nonverbally through ritual, in such a way as to have the greatest positive psychological effect on all those present. Equally, insofar as he or she is dealing with the unknown or untouchable they may act as priests. It is at this point that the way a community traditionally chooses their shaman is of paramount importance. When a shaman is seeking an apprentice the one fundamental qualification is someone who can access knowledge which is beyond the normal reach of the group. For this reason the person chosen is someone who has survived an experience which would have been expected to kill, physically or mentally, any ‘ordinary’ member community.

When discussing shamanism the convention has evolved to use the languages of central Asia, reflecting the dominance of Russian anthropology in the early 20^th century. ‘Shaman’, comes from the Tungus tribe of Siberia, translating into English as; ‘one who sees in the dark’ or ‘into the darkness’. The shaman looks at the spiritual, the emotional and the physical aspects of what we have come to call an individual’s ‘illness’, yet their explanations and treatments give primacy to the social and environmental dimension. They seek to unblock as well as remove, to retrieve the lost or wounded part following a physical or mental trauma – so that the group may (literally in the case of hunter-gatherer or pastoral nomadic bands) find their balance again and move on together to some other place.

Modern accounts of shamanism still suffer from the assumption that ‘we’ must be practicing healing more effectively than our ancestors did. This is to misunderstand evolution by natural selection, biological or cultural - there is nothing necessarily ‘progressive’ about it. As a consequence the practical medicinal resources and knowledge available to our ancient ancestors tends to get down played, with many taking it for granted that the psychological and spiritual components were all they had. Unfortunately the bias of modern medicine has often been uncritically accepted by many alternative therapists – they too assume that it is only their ability at spiritual connectedness which counts, or needs to count, in any healing process. Archaeologists continue to be surprised by the discovery of bones which healed many years before death; psychiatrists remain blind to the changes in mood, emotion and pain brought about by the rapid nonverbal direct touch interventions of hypnotists.

The shaman is seeking to heal the soul, the source of the energy or power which is lost with illness or distress. They journey to the realms of the spirit in order to be guided by ancestral expertise. It is the human spirit which suffers from fear, loss, grief, abuse or trauma; it takes flight to somewhere else to survive, but at the cost of isolation from others. To bring someone back into the community of others the shaman performs soul retrieval rituals, often localised to specific areas of the body to extract the harmful energy or force. Naturally enough there are also ancestral wounds living on through successive generations, again the shaman’s practice is holistic and doesn’t try to separate mind and body, or the cultural inheritance from the biological (the epigenetic perhaps?) The only question is; what works from the past and what should be let go? When death occurs, they seek to aid the living to accept the transition of the departed to the spirit realm. Beyond the community of ancestors in the spirit world there are also powerful animal allies with whom maintaining a strong connection is also a path to health - the wolves and predatory birds which once patrolled the constantly moving boundaries of our earthly territories.

The shaman creates the scared space for healing and transformation in the face of change by calling on the knowledge of the spirit world, where all possible future outcomes are known because all possible outcomes have occurred to our ancestors in the past. To connect to the spirit world the shaman purposefully alters their state of consciousness whilst creating enough trust and relaxation in the sufferer for them in turn to let go and move to an altered state. The most ancient techniques use focusing on the breath, leading to an awareness of the changing rhythm of the heart, over which is layer the simplest of drumming. The rituals undertaken by shaman from across the world have been found to include the fundamental aspects of meditation, of massage and of yoga. When the recipient emerges from one altered state to another, what change has occurred is visible to all in their behaviour and body language.

But the shaman is only a facilitator; much restorative practice may be built into the daily activities of the group. Focused and systematic massage increases awareness of the body, its organs, muscles, systems and structures for everyone. Remote stimulation (by someone other) helps in the identification of physical and emotional pain. It feels like a natural equilibrium is being restored. Sensitive and sensitizing, good massage treatment makes you feel safe. It mimics the lost, embodied skills of social grooming. Many of our routine physical movements are unconsciously directed, but have clearly been learnt; therapeutic touch is the fast way to break old patterns and start installing new ones.

Adults are more ‘tense’ than children and have a diminished sense of fun. Just as our eyes are dependent on our hands to confirm reality, they too can be relied upon therapeutically. But massage is not immediately acceptable to everyone in the modern world, if you were not handled agreeably as a child you are unlikely to trust being handled as an adult. But, the body can often massage itself; core muscles compress and release the digestive organs with each deep breath, the slightest movement of limb muscles relieves pressure on nearby veins which maintain circulation, the arms when free to swing, relax back muscles. When tired or unwell, natural body movement becomes depressed, but then the natural massaging of the legs is inhibited by sitting too. Gravity slows circulation at the extremities. There are benefits in both the giving and receiving of massage, and always an immediate emotional pay-off in the rediscovery of the connection between touch and movement. The spinal column is the pivotal structure of all movement, yet we have come to think of the buttocks as a seat rather than the reason we can stand upright for prolonged periods. Crossing the legs undermines the spine and is often accompanied by the forward projection of the head. Muscles are a record of our feelings, yet their tension and release ought to ease stressful situations.

Much of this essay might be described as ‘naturopathy' a harmonious philosophy of life which does not separate mind and body or the individual from their social and physical environment, placing wellbeing within a universal order. A view that nature cannot be 'bettered' and that wisdom which has survived the longest is the most reliable. It invites us to discover how nature finds equilibrium (or homeostasis) in the body; producing vitality, creativity, regeneration and spiritual awareness. If massage can be said to have a practical objective it might be stated as achieving a confident composure without fearfulness. With that, wider ambitions are possible such as the 'rewilding' of an over-civilised society lacking in natural stimulation and strong connections with others. The parts of the body with the greatest numbers of nerve endings are the hands, feet, face and genitals. The more comprehensively these areas are massaged the more connected the recipient feels towards the giver of the massage and the world around them. Grooming is belonging. An Indian head massage; running fingers through the hair and massaging the scalp to relax the mind, boosts the awareness of all the senses. When done well it includes many ‘pressure’ or ‘acupuncture’ points - argument over what connects to what, matters little if all possibilities are covered! Similarly, to judge reflexology on whether a particular area of the foot, the hands, or ears connects directly to particular organs is a distraction, thoroughness is all.

The philosophy known as Tantra emerged as a counter to the asceticism found in traditional Hinduism, it sees sexuality as one route to enlightenment, along with other everyday earthly tasks such as eating, dancing and creative expression. Each commonplace activity is seen as a sacred act in and of itself. Tantra (meaning to manifest, expand, show, weave), maintains that sexual behaviour can expand consciousness; weaving together the male (embodiment of Shiva) and the female (embodiment of Shakti) into a harmonious whole. With the right partner, you revere them as the embodiment of either side of the deity. Sexual energy can create health and be a means to transformation. Sexual experience is a dance, but with no beginning or end, and no goal beyond the present moment; a union between a couple which is meditative, expressive and intimate. Extending arousal with many peaks of ecstasy (which may or may not include orgasm) within a single encounter is the focus, rather than sexual intercourse. Giving pleasure takes precedent. In the first instant it requires making time for each other, creating sacred spaces with an inviting atmosphere. You create ritual to develop intimacy around bathing, massaging, and feeding the other person. You pay attention to the breath of the other; pacing them, maintaining eye contact. Tantra seeks not to judge, but by maximising the simple pleasures of the day-to-day it achieves, counterintuitively, an unstructured and timeless experience. The Tantra approach may well focus on the most mundane but that includes the most fundamental. Of course the most basic of energy must emanate from the base of the spine – the most crucial functions of ‘pissing, shitting and fucking’ should, along with all else, be regulated and awakened by the breath and our core muscles through yoga, meditation and massage.

Such processes are both active and passive because they are social. They are active in the sense of being a systematic exercise of the techniques of meditation with the guidance of someone who has already had the experience; passive because ultimately it is a path that allows an individual to surrender to nature, to let go of impediments to awakening. A pathway which gives greater access to the unconscious by setting aside the ‘self’, and so allowing for selfless service within the family, the group and hence a true belonging. There is something we can call a natural mind, but it is part of a collective of brains in natural human groups.

Acknowledgments

Armstrong, K (2000) The Buddha. Blackmore, S (1999) The Meme Machine. Blackmore, S (2011) Zen and the Art of Consciousness. Ekman, P (2007) Emotions Revealed. Fitzgerald, M & Fitzgerald, J (2006) Indian Spirit. Harrison (1994) Teach Yourself Meditation. Mitchell, S (1992) Massage. Navarro, J (2008) What Every Body Is Saying. Finally, I owe much to the support and motivation provided by Leah Bracknell in her occasional blog posts and two DVDs, Yoga and You (2003) and Yoga For Life (2011).

Natural mental health (part two)

Self-Management and the Limits of Individual Action

You get more of what you focus on, and what you focus on is the result of your habits, of trying to reproduce today the world as it was yesterday. Many of our habits are unconscious, but then ninety-nine point nine per cent of the brain’s activity is unconscious. Worse still, it is your unconscious brain which is deciding which tiny amounts of information to put up into consciousness! Your consciousness is there for the new learning which may be required in novel situations, in the face of danger or when an instinctive desire for belonging, for food or for sex is unfulfilled.

Learning evolved as a set of physical craft skills, of body awareness based knowledge - and remains that way despite academics and educationalists thinking they are doing something else. At school most of what you learnt was about your teachers. Human’s great advance has been to take learning by imitation to new heights using the brain’s mirror neurons; observation or demonstration is followed by imitation, then trial and error practice, then more imitation. But most of our learning remains unconscious, indeed we learn faster that way, when we let go of our hopes and desires, allow decisions to make themselves, and just be in the present moment without a conscious 'self'.

8,35  20.7.2016 (photo by Nick Hewling)

Joseph Pilates, in the early part of the twentieth century, was perhaps the first person to attempt to codify a holistic but systematic fitness regime for physical and mental wellbeing. He by all accounts was a bit of a control freak, insisting that his rational, contrived procedures were ‘the one way’, but his approach does make explicit a theme which has occurred through-out the history of health, and feels both natural and fundamental, the idea of ‘core muscles’ or ‘a centre’. In order to become re-orientated to natural body movement it is necessary for a while to stop moving in a reactive way towards our physical surroundings and focus instead on our own bodies, on where muscular movements will start if freed from external influence. Consider too, that all the muscles of the body are really doing is lifting against the resistance of gravity. Watch the breath, consider where involuntary movements begin and end. Then the idea of ‘core muscles’ (around the abdomen, lower back, hips and buttocks) becomes obvious, along with the breath that ultimately powers them! Consciously starting every movement ‘from the hip’ can be a revelation, not just in the feelings it provokes, but in the new orientation you experience towards the natural environment and to other people.

Much of Pilates is there in yoga of course, how could it be otherwise? But in the modern world people come to yoga for varied and individualistic reasons rather than as a necessary collective communal activity. Now, it seems there is no wrong way to do yoga if your intentions are worthy, and what you take away from it psychologically has become an increasingly private concern. Traditionally yoga was never a practice for the attainment of physical beauty, rather it taught that reconnecting with the natural is healthy and what is healthy is beautiful, there is in all of us a brain and body trying to be fit, impeded only by the unnatural. The natural body is perfect, we honour it by exploring the breath and movement which heals and renews. When we move mindfully with the breath we achieve balance and harmony. Yoga endeavours to open a space where the truths of our existence can emerge, it should be transformative. Like any set of skills, practice is everything and the more you put in the more you get out.

To talk of the natural means one must be tapping into ancient knowledge; yoga for example has a recorded history in its various forms of around 3,000 years and perhaps a real history many times longer. Considered in its recorded context, its particular forms of body movement and the emotions they provoke - along with the meditative practices developed and taught by the Buddha that were to grow from it - yoga appears to have been an attempt to cope with the confines of early agricultural society. Restricted by fixed territories and concentrated populations, practitioners developed a ‘personal space’ to try and hang on to, or regain, the physical and psychological freedom that their hunter-gatherer ancestors had possessed as they moved through a landscape. A way to express natural instincts, but which over time became more and more formalised and prescribed by those in authority. 

The power of yoga postures is that they change our emotions minute to minute – any meaning or understanding always follows our emotional response. Movement is creative - just as demonstration followed by imitation, then trial and error, leads to skill. Yoga is perhaps the most easily observable example of the purposeful manipulation of the natural phenomenon of ‘embodiment’, and of the psychological concept of ‘embodied cognition’. Everyone must live with change and uncertainty, making creativity fundamental to our wellbeing. Creating appears to ‘bring something out of nothing’, but is better described as a recombination of elements imitated from others to form a new and temporary uniqueness. The structured movement of yoga follows tried and tested ways of igniting a spark, leading us to look anew at the taken for granted. But equally, changes to our body’s coordination, change our actual physical perspective in a given environment, leading to changes in how we navigate the world. For example, the many variations of Warrior pose and the movement between them highlight the symbolism in posture. The warrior does not flinch from conflict, and in the last resort is willing to turn from flight to fight. (Again, in natural, instinctive nonverbal behaviour the sequence in response to a perceived threat is always; freeze, flight, fight.) The warrior is a strong defender and protector, whether male or female. Our inner warrior survives in us today, although it only emerges under intense stress. Yoga brings it into consciousness in a controlled way. Warrior pose shows us how to function from a position of strength, courage and determination when it is most needed.

Grounded by the non-dominant foot, the placing of the leading foot forces into consciousness how the placing of the feet can cultivate or constrain awareness itself. How we are grounded mediates what any of our senses can sense! Warrior feels as though it is all about preparedness. It resonates with similarities to other martial endeavours, from finding the stance for using a slingshot, to learning to lunge in fencing. Equally, the discipline of achieving level and forward facing hips and pelvis embodies an approach to life itself. The movement from a more gravity-defying posture to a lesser one should be experienced as a mental release as much as a muscular one, whilst a rising movement is powered by the core. But holding a posture through the breath requires commitment and endurance, and thoughts and feelings will crash into consciousness. Simple positive affirmations help to let go of the unwanted and hold on to the desired.

Whilst Warrior is a task focused set of postures moving all the way from preparedness for action to the expression of victory, Cobra opens us up to change and renewal, to reconnection and engagement with our intentions; mental, physical and spiritual. The body movements of yoga can unlock our potential for transforming the emotions that are created in action and reaction. Self-confidence emerges when we have evidence from our own bodies that change is possible, and in turn allows the mind to accept the inevitable uncertainty and brevity of human life. Taking nature as the only possible muse and inspiration, yoga identifies certain postures which evoke similar feelings in whoever practices them. Cobra, is the most fundamental embodiment of what is variously called transformation, renewal, regeneration or rebirth. The shedding of a skin no longer required. Inhale, with a strong image of what is to be achieved. Ask, for the strength and resolve. See, the breath flow and carry intention. Follow the breath as it reaches the core of the diaphragm, of commitment and determination. Here lies fire, the means of transformation, of burning away to release new energy. The breath expands the abdomen towards the ground, connecting to mother earth, nurturing resolve. As you exhale you let go, release fear of change and challenge the burden of anger. Practice the discipline of gesture.

But a pose freezes a moment and real targets move. In reality the body should be in constant movement and we evolved to find solitary practice of anything stressful. It’s in the way you move; it is your body’s coordination and orientation to others in an environment which enables you to navigate the world. Your body shapes your mind, how you move determines how you feel. Around us is change and we must reality check constantly and recalibrate our routine behaviour and responses in order to belong. The faster you can move, the faster you can learn; the more you can calibrate your body, the more accurate your knowledge, the more likely you are to hit the target (your aims and objectives). Mental distress is so much a desire to avoid the present, of stopping behaving naturally. Yet we increase our speed and efficiency in life often by letting go, which feels like slowing down and seeing more, of increased stillness. We know we are ‘in the moment’ when we feel balance, symmetry, comfort and confidence. Being there, means there is no difference between the self and what’s going on around us - the world of others and things.

Nonverbally we can experience each moment in terms of a continuum from comfort to discomfort; of fear, or the lack of it. I see someone in the distance approaching, their gait identifies them as a stranger or someone familiar, but also their degree of balance, health and competence. As they come closer I am aware of the need to freeze, to take flight or to fight. The need for ‘personal space’ (proxemics) sets real boundaries. I turn towards in liking, or away in dislike. The direction in which my dominant foot points gives a reliable indication as to whether I would rather be elsewhere or am happy to stay. But all this is context until we are close enough to read the face.

Facial expressions reveal universal emotions plus individual variation. Emotions are overwhelmingly displayed on the face, of everyone - supported to varying degrees by tone of voice, and some body movement. Forty-three muscles, up to ten thousand possible expressions, about a third of which are expressed emotions. The repeated making of an emotional facial expression will lead to the persistence of that emotion, inducing changes in mood. It is in the act of making the expression, in response to another human, that the emotion is felt. What is personal, is specific to the context an individual finds themselves in, and is always a variation built upon the structure of universal emotional expression. What remains uncertain is the extent to which emotion can be said to be made in the moment that you physically feel the shape of your face change, how much felt emotion is cued by others, how much effective communication depends on correctly learning what you are feeling, being able to communicate it to others, and make a correct interpretation of what others are showing you. Put another way, the windows through which we can understand another’s mental distress, the extent to which we can be said to ‘have empathy’ (feel what others feel) are; the facial expressions of emotion, the tone of voice, plus some supporting cues found in the gestures which support them. But when it comes to meaning, to what a particular emotion refers to, then gestures display their principal role - and that is to support language.

We are a social species and our greatest desire is to belong, this is the context when considering all motivation or intention which proceeds action. If society (parents, siblings, peers, school, work, community) was the cause of the way you turned out, and it almost certainly was, then the chances of it helping you change your emotional education is practically zero! But you don't have the answers otherwise you wouldn't have got into such a mess. Neither do your friends or your partners - it was their similarity to you which attracted you to them. The only way out, is to find the few people who represent excellence, those who have the life you want, and to model them.

There is a hierarchy to our senses; from the most fundamental but least conscious, to the most conscious but overused; from smell, taste and touch to sound and vision. From a state approaching hibernation to the highest levels of self-awareness, they may take as little as ten minutes a day to bring back into consciousness, or they may take a lifetime! It is usually assumed that sight and sound are dominant but this is only so amongst the small amount of sensations which we can be conscious of in any one moment. Equally, touch is thought to be hugely powerful because of its ability to suddenly appear and seem to overwhelm conscious emotions and thought. But most action is unconsciously pursued by the massively unconscious brain; here smell, taste and touch dominate our navigation of the world without our being aware of them. Each day we must coordinate and then re-orientate our bodies and minds to both the environment of others as much as to the natural environment, allowing us to navigate the world. It begins as individual practice, but then becomes social. If we use the breath and core muscles to activate the hierarchy of senses then upon waking, smell, taste and touch are actioned before we are conscious of sound and vision. Body movement can be conceived in terms of three basic postures, lying, squatting and walking, with all else a movement between them.

Touching the ground we are aware of temperature and humidity, the dampness or dryness of flora and fauna. On our skin we can feel light and shade, and the wind. The felt temperature on the surface of the skin is the main filter for what is put up into consciousness upon waking. Throughout the day we are moving through different states of consciousness, sometimes by deliberately focusing, more often as the result of sudden external influences. Our brains and bodies evolved in a landscape, a visual topography and an emotional one. Our natural measure of time is distance. Our focus is one we can see, the current horizon, and we can orientate to any fixed point upon it taking the path of least resistance. The sun is our guide; whilst washing at dawn and paying salutation it is the fresh water that is sacred, not the river. When we start to walk, we walk with nature. Stillness in the mind is not the same as being motionless in the body, being in the moment is an ambling pace most of the time; slow enough to observe, fast enough not to be depressed by gravity. I have purpose; my goal is the horizon I see today. My actions should not be a fixed set of routines and habits but a series of moving targets to be hit moment to moment, hour to hour and day by day. Our ancestors hit moving targets with a bow and arrow whilst in motion themselves, using more skill than is required of us today - there is nothing necessarily progressive about evolution.  

When we move; from the core muscles, from the hip, and walk; follow the sun, turn towards what or who we like, turn away from what or who we dislike; stress should be a distance from us, whilst relaxation ought to come with closeness. Moving from the hip we calibrate our movements with our emotional responses. Let go. We orientate ourselves to others to invoke social interaction, for our prime motivations to action, our ‘get up and go’, our passions and desires, come from and are directed towards others, rather than from a goal that a 'self' can have.

Darcey and I (teaser two)

It all started about ten years ago when I first saw Darcey Bussell being interviewed on television. Somehow she looked and behaved differently from the people around her - the interviewer, his studio ‘posse’ and, from what I could see of them, the audience. I realised within a couple of minutes it wasn’t her star status, or the voice. It was something to do with her being a dancer, clearly she was the fittest person in the room, possibly the entire country! She was thin, but in the best sense of the word, having a very high muscle-to-fat ratio - as shown by the inevitable clip of her doing one of her high jumps. Then it occurred to me, it was more to do with the combination of body movement and what her face was doing.

She smiled a lot. Okay, so this was a chat show, but these smiles were so frequent, big and with a lot of laughter involving the whole body, joyful and child-like, innocence? No, she may have looked twenty-one, but she was in her mid-thirties at the time, married with two kids and the best in the world at what she did.

The word that seemed to fit was ‘natural’, as in her manner when being interviewed, not in the highly contrived and stylised dance of European ballet. But then upon her retirement a few years later she took up other forms of dance and learnt very quickly to perform at a high level.

No, the person I was looking at in that first interview was very fit, mentally relaxed as well as physically, confident enough to be herself, yet she stuck-out like a saw thumb because - she was so happy!

Darcey’s only recorded brush with mental health problems has been the depression she experienced when she stopped being a ballerina, but before she took up other forms of dance. She was being a housewife, doing no high intensity physical exercise, and had lost an audience. But it turned out to be dance itself, for when she went back to attending classes: ‘As soon as I was moving. I was happy’.

Darcey displays more ‘Duchenne smiles’ (a full smile, which moves up the face starting with the raising of the sides of the mouth, followed by the cheeks, and finally the skin around the eyes) than anyone I’ve ever seen. Like dance, smiles are gravity-defying. The thought first occurred to me that happiness itself might be gravity-defying behaviour!

A while after that television interview I became aware of Darcey’s use of Pilates and eventually acquired her book and DVD. Her version is somewhat modified from the original ‘system’ devised by Joseph Pilates in the early part of the 20^th century. He by all accounts was a bit of a control freak, insisting that his rational, contrived procedures were the way to physical fitness for all. However, reading about him it struck me that one theme within his approach is indeed natural and fundamental – the idea of ‘core muscles’ or ‘a center’.

In order to become re-orientated to natural body movement it is necessary for a while to stop moving in a reactive way towards our physical surroundings and focus instead on our own bodies, on where muscular movements will start if freed from external influence. Consider too, that all the muscles of the body are really doing is lifting against the resistance of gravity. Watch the breath, consider where involuntary movements begin and end. Then the idea of ‘core muscles’ (around the abdomen, lower back, hips and buttocks) becomes obvious, along with the breath that ultimately powers them!

Consciously starting every movement ‘from the hip’ can be a revelation, not just in the feelings it provokes, but in the new orientation you experience towards the natural environment and to other people.

But to talk of the natural, means one must be tapping into much more ancient knowledge, and some readers may already be shouting: ‘Hey! Yoga encompasses all that - and it’s been around for at least three thousand years!’

Yoga, considered in its historical context, with its particular forms of body movement, the thoughts and emotions they provoke, along with the meditative practices developed and taught by the Buddha which grew from it, was I believe an attempt to cope with the confines of early agricultural society. Restricted by fixed territories and concentrated populations, practitioners developed a ‘personal space’ to try and hang on to, or regain, the physical and psychological freedom that their hunter-gatherer ancestors had possessed as they moved through a landscape. A way to express natural instincts, but which over time became more and more formalised and prescribed by those in authority.

In the more recent past however the physical practice of yoga has become accessible to all, whilst what you take from it psychologically has become an increasingly private concern. I take inspiration and motivation from the DVDs and occasional writings of Leah Bracknell.

  

But modelling excellence, let alone claiming something as natural and therefore the best, has gone out of fashion, become very politically incorrect and for many with a stake in the health and equality industries, highly discriminatory. The kind of ‘fitness’ displayed by Darcey and Leah is, in the contemporary world, exceptional - but the scientific evidence suggests it was the norm for our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors. They were tall, ‘lean and mean’ and exceptionally fit in a world of scarcity, whilst we lack health in a world of abundance. Much of that science will be discussed in future blog posts, but consider for a moment that much of the personal conflict we feel about physical fitness, health and diet, may be because genetically our brains and bodies still want to be like this modern hunter-gatherer, of Spanish and Native American descent, photographed on a California beach…

Don't kneel, squat! (teaser 1)

Isn’t kneeling the most ridiculous body position to get yourself into? It’s a situation of extreme vulnerability which I doubt our pre-agricultural ancestors used other than to briefly pivot from lying to squatting and vice versa.

It’s a favourite strategy of those wishing to assert an authority they don’t naturally have to place their victim in a kneeling position, and those with no remaining self-respect will use it to beg. It has become common in the modern era to kneel in order to pray to a sky god and to give oral sex. (In the very recent past much effort has gone into making bed technology more comfortable for other sexual positions involving kneeling!)

The modified position of ‘sitting on one’s heals’ with or without the addition of a cushion is much favoured by mediators. Indeed tolerance of the pain involved in using it for countless hours is thought virtuous in and of itself! The most pathetic sight of all is the older (or overweight) person kneeling to do some practical task because they can no longer squat and then taking a long time to get on their feet afterwards.

My advice is to never stop squatting (many times a day) and if you have - start again. If it seems unnecessary in your daily living then throw out the vacuum cleaner in favour of the dustpan and brush. It was once a common site to see miners squat for long periods even when not at work!

If you want dramatic evidence of it’s virtues then squat to take a shit, you’ll be amazed how easy it is to empty your bowels quickly at a time and place of your own choosing.

The key to squatting for long periods is that it’s not a stationary position at all, you’re meant to be doing a task involving constant small movements, pivoting on the balls of the feet and adjusting your height. It’s a lot more flexible than kneeling.

In nature squatting not only facilitates all sorts of physical tasks it also allows you to hide to some degree, shelter better, make a more accurate assessment of odours (human or otherwise) and provokes an entirely different set of emotions from the supplication and submission of kneeling.

If a time comes when I can no longer squat, you have permission to shoot me! And when it comes to giving head, if your legs get tired or you fear for your balance, place your shield arm around the trunk of the tree she’s leaning against…

Author selfie!