Somatic Geographies

Fire  

a woman can’t survive
by her own breath
alone
she must know
the voices of mountains
she must recognize
the foreverness of blue sky
she must flow
with the elusive
bodies
of night winds
who will take her
into herself

look at me
i am not a separate woman
i am a continuance
of blue sky
i am the throat
of the mountains
a night wind
who burns
with every breath
she takes

Joy Harjo

Somewhere in my core, I have an immovable knowing that I am not a separate woman. I am part of the whole, breathing continuance. And yet everything around me socially and culturally has been teaching me otherwise my entire life. 

I find solace in earlier times and knowings. To the ancients of East Asian medicine, our bodies are vast rolling landscapes of consciousness, topographies of spirit. 

Searching beyond just our physicality, these ancients knew that wilder worlds roam and rule within us, that there is deep time in our minerals, primordial stone in our bones, ancestral bonfires in our hearts, and mycelial kingdoms thriving in our darkest soils. 

Earth body. Human body. Bodies intermingling, meshing inner realms with outer landscapes. When we listen deeper and allow ourselves to be informed by the land, carbon cycles, sun, moon, and gods of weather, we might learn a little about flowing with all of life. Never static, ever shifting. The Five Elements according to East Asian traditions (meaning Wood- Fire- Earth- Metal- Water), are old, primal powers that are not simply theoretical. They do not live in dusty books or in the minds of scholars, existing somewhere entirely outside of us, but instead are made animate through us living them into being. 

Strangely, I know only bits and pieces about the humans who first contemplated and created Five Element philosophy. I know they were farmers, people of place and belonging. I know they were observers, able to sit still with the turning of the stars and the shadows passing on the wall. I know time meant something different then. I know they made a lot of room for the mystery of things and that they liked poetry, koan, and riddle. I know they honored the alchemical, the edge states, the trickster, the Kokopelli’s and Loki’s of the world. I know that in their watching, they discovered some basic truths, some cosmic laws that still hold relevant today.

While our world is clearly (and rapidly) changing and people fret over seasonal imperfections- too much or too little rain, hot spells, sudden cold, crop pestilence- in the vast nature of things, the movement through the cycle of seasons is always as it should be. The turning of the wheel ultimately reflects order, regulation, and harmony. As we are in the dying part of the cycle, we are called to honor the “perfection in this intricate, paradoxical, life-giving, and magnificent cycle.” (p116, The Tao of Trauma).

The acupuncture meridians and points reflect the way in which the ancient Chinese knew there was no separation between the microcosm of our human body and the macrocosm of the larger cosmic body. What a gift to be left this brilliant bodymap to guide us in balancing the deeper, functional relationships within. As my teacher Lori Dechar describes, “each point is a poem made up of flesh, muscle, tendon, nerve, word, image, soul, emptiness and a bit of starlight. Like a haiku, each point comes to life again and again, a singular event, a moment in time, an awakening to beauty, a unique new possibility.” (p.261, Kigo).

To modern people, the traditions of East Asian medicine conjure up images of needles put in strange places and bumper stickers of yin-yang symbols. What most do not realize is that in their highest state, acupuncture points chosen with reverence and intention, have the potential to restore a memory of our original nature. Every point, when used in the correct context with the correct timing, has the ability to evoke some aspect of our potential that has been buried or forgotten as a result of life’s habituations. They have the ability to restore some lost aspect of our fullest, brightest self-expression. 

With time and experience, I have found that the points come alive and talk to us. Each point has an individual spirit, a greater intent, a gift to share. Larger concepts of virtue, growth, destiny, and transformation are expressed in various ways through the names and imagery of the points, as we follow our evolution through the stages and phases of the Tao. 

As desperate as we are to scientifically dissect the nature of acupuncture points, they do not exist within the domain of one layer or anatomical structure. The same way that we can not separate the river, from the riverbed and the rain and the ocean, so to the points weave and overlap between and uphold a complicated relationship between the nerves, muscles, tendons, blood vessels, lymph, and bones, and higher consciousness pathways.

If there is an overarching theme in the point names, I would say it is about currents. Words like “well, stream, river, pool, and sea,” such as Supreme Rushing and Returning Current, guide the major channels and remind us that flow is life. Other primary themes include: 

• Earth: mountains, valleys, gutters, ditches, and mounds such as Joining Valleys and Yin Mound Spring.
• Human creations/buildings: courtyards, palaces, storehouses, and mansions such as Listening Palace and Palace of Essence
• Thresholds: gates, joining places, and meeting points such as Gate of Destiny and Hundred Meetings.
• Path changes: places where things split or are crooked such as Veering Passage and Broken Sequence. 

On a psycho-spiritual level, there are also:

• Points that deeply ground and settle us into the bone house of ourselves such as Great Esteem, Penetrating Within, and Room of Will.
• Points that clear old stories, old patterns, old debris, old ghosts such as the group of 13 Ghost points.
• Points that break up phlegmatic inertia such as Abundant Splendor and Earth Motivator.
• Points that move unmovable grief such as Cloud Gate and Supreme Abyss. 
• Points that unbind the heart such as Dove Tail and Great Enveloping.
• Points that bridge the earthly and cosmic such as Celestial Pivot, Utmost Source, and Hundred Meetings.

Those ancient philosophers left us riddles buried in mountains and I am spending my life on a treasure hunt. Ironically, we don’t always know if the poetic name of each acupuncture point was translated perfectly or imperfectly or if we have captured the true intended meaning. Thousands of years later, we are left to play with these points, to create relationships, and to make our own interpretations through our own experiences. 

Admittedly, I am grateful for how the great mystery of things has an essential place here, leaving ample room for humility and curiosity. I hope to bring this curiosity forward every time I touch the joining of tendons at a knee or the gentle curve of a wrist bone (or the other endless beautiful bodily landscapes). Instead of just seeing flesh, I hope to feel the coming together of rushing streams or the rise of a small rocky mountain under my fingertips. I hope to always know these somatic geographies. Human body. Earth body. May we continually come home to ourselves. 

“...blending our skin with the rain-rippled surface of rivers, mingling our ears with the thunder and the thrumming of frogs, and our eyes with the molten sky. Feeling the polyrhythmic pulse of this place- this huge windswept body of water and stone. This vexed being in whose flesh we’re entangled. Becoming earth. Becoming animal. Becoming, in this manner, fully human.” David Abram