I perceive the body as a microcosm of all this. I believe the body’s polyrhythm [complex of rhythms] is a key to health, to flow. I hear the rhythms of the internal body as a kind of orchestra. It doesn’t all play in the same time or tone. I tune into this orchestra and try give a kick-start to sluggish bits, parts which have forgotten their distinctive charge.

Trauma and authoritarianism block these tunes, force unity and stagnation. Normally, if given its sense of rightness and strength in itself, the body knows how to function well. The organs like to hear their differences next to each other, take delight in their complexities. When all parts know themselves, it really comprises an extraordinary, self-generating, sustaining tune.

We stop breathing under trauma, in the face of death, or under fear. And like a Great Chain of Whispers, our children carry the burden of our Not Breathing. Full Breath is a great key to full healing, not just for our generation, but also the next. This is why River Junction Curly‘s phrase is so very beautiful–his insistence that everything has life, breath, power, speech: he is speaking from an understanding that everything is equal, everything needs the respect to fully be. When this is the situation, true cooperation is a possibility. When it is not, there is a reduction, a wearing-down, a bitterness, a compromise. Do we want to live with bitterness, or with full-throated expressions of joy?