the body étude
Lie flat on your back and close your eyes. Lay in a position you would choose when you want to fall asleep
Imagine yourself lying in a crater. you are just regaining consciousness, but you don’t know who or where you are. You have been here for an unknown length of time—perhaps minutes, perhaps centuries. You are a billion year old meteor fallen to earth. You can’t remember how it happened or even when. Take a deep breath in, and a deep breath out. Repeat. Think of all the years you have travelled. With every exhale, release a million years of history. Let yourself settle into the weight of your existence.
Notice how your body feels. Feel how the floor is slowly adjusting its temperature to your body. How is gravity treating you? Can you feel the weight of your head, your hands, your legs? Listen to the sounds around you, are they loud or gentle? Do you recognize them? Do they feel familiar or are they strange?
Begin moving the fingers of one hand. Imagine fine sand beneath them. Draw patterns, lines, symbols—traces of your history left behind on the crater floor. Allow your fingers to awaken before engaging your whole hand. Expand the movement, making larger drawings with your wrist, your forearm, your elbow. Move with curiosity, as though this is the first time you are discovering your own ability to shape the world.
Let the movement spread to your other hand, your feet, your legs. Explore the floor with your body, mapping it, marking it. Feel the textures beneath you—solid, grainy, smooth, uneven. Are you sinking into the earth, or rising from it?
Move your feet and your legs, try to create new drawings in the same way. Maybe it’s the same shape, or a repeating pattern.
Move one hand towards your own body. Continue creating drawings on your own body. Trace the contours of your skin, your clothing, as if discovering them for the first time. Feel their texture. Each texture is a new landscape, take your time exploring surface, every curve, every ridge. Each time you feel a new texture, slow down your movement to really feel the detail. Let your movement grow. Shift your weight. Roll to one side, then the other. Feel your spine adjust. Your body is waking up.
Let the desire to rise emerge naturally. Maybe it begins with a shift in the pelvis, a rotation of the shoulders, a lift of the head. Keep one hand on your body as you transition upward. When you are ready, bring yourself to standing.
Now open your eyes and see yourself. Look at your own body as if you are seeing it for the first time. Look at your limbs, your torso, your hands, your feet. Imagine yourself covered in meteor dust.
Shake off the dust. Start small: the hands, the wrists, the elbows. Let the movement expand. Shake your shoulders, your hips, your legs. Maybe you jump, maybe you spin. Loosen every part of yourself, as if shedding the weight of time.
Stand still. Feel the echoes of movement settling in your body.
Listen to your heartbeat. Feel the air on your skin.
Take a deep breath in. And a deeper breath out.
