Licensed Teacher Content | October 2006
Educational Feature
By Ann Christiansen & Debbie Rosas
As the most physically challenging stages of the Five Stages of Self-Healing, the architecture of the fourth stage, Standing, can be best taught by adding the quality of play as the transition energy between Crawling and Standing. Use the following guide to lead students into Standing.
Standing is a vertical wave-like flow. This is by far the most challenging posture to sustain and rest in. To maintain comfort adjust your feet so that your spine and knees feel comfortable. Ideally your feet are parallel, with the knees facing forward and either apart or close together to maintain an extended spine that can rise up and out.
Your feet and heels rest comfortably on the floor, if not, adjust them by allowing your feet to turn out and one or both heels to come up and off the floor. In either case you want the spine to extend up and out, with your head, hands and arms free to move up and out, away from the torso and legs.
The eyes look up and out, and follow the hands and arms as they reach up, as if reaching to the heavens. Relax into gravity and let the weight of your body settle into the feet and into the balls of both hip joints. If the spine wants to round over, adjust the feet, keeping one heel up. Use your hands if necessary.
Imagine yourself like a Monkey, animalistic and human. This architecture moves energy from behind and underneath, up along a flexible vertical line. You are energetically grounded down while at the same time up. The architecture of Standing is solid. From this stage, prepare to move confidently up.
When you feel the desire to “Become” anticipate and prepare yourself to dynamically rise up into space onto the two footed base that move about. Standing shifts how you engage with the senses, especially sight. You now look and see more of the world as three-dimensional. Your arms and hands are free to reach out and you personally interact with the world.
Sound with your voice, as if a tree emerging in the forest, singing to the sky the desire to be seen and recognized.