on liminality and the practice of teaching
The process of somatic learning (or embodiment) takes place in a liminal space of the inner and outer awareness. The re-patterning, or unlearning of habitual modes that do not support us fully any longer, is a specific dance of untying knots that have held the idea of stable self in place. Some new perception arises, and releases me from being solely tethered in the past. The self momentarily arrives into the present moment of experiencing itself. These experiences can be life changing, and/or leave lasting impressions on our body-mind, functioning as compasses, as light houses, as anchors. There is a lot of beauty in those moments. However, a common mistake is to consider those experiences as “the work”, or perhaps as “the answer”. Next time the experience will be something else. The self flickers on, challenging our tendency to want to hold on to something solid, final and repeatable.
One of my favourite (yes, and most repeated at that) metaphors is not to mistake the finger for the moon. My words are the finger, but the moon is beyond all that. The words arise from my experience of having witnessed and felt the light of the moon shimmering on the surface of a water. They arise from being touched and moved by that experience. But they are not the moon. The moon remains always slightly out of sight. But as my own body recognises the ripples of that experience, something is being set in motion in the relational field with the students. I navigate in that field, barefoot and blind together with others, sensing the blades of grass, the sharp edges of rocks and sticks, following the gravitational pull of the moon.
And suddenly, the light borrowed from the blazing sun, fills us all. It seeps into the crevices and folds of my fluid being. The I is not separate from the moon.
It never was.
The light of the day eventually arrives. The moon is swallowed back into the vastness of the sky.
My task is to keep walking, to keep walking, to keep walking.
Satu Palokangas © 2024
