The Braided Body
Jul 08, 2018
A cord of two or three strands is not easily broken. It’s a deep saying I heard once. It has meaning on different levels, but I actually want to talk about the surface level; the strength of the cord. A cord, or a rope, gets its strength from the smaller cords, strands, or fibers that are woven or braided together. If you’re a rope aficionado, you know there are different types of ropes that are put together in different ways, but the point is, a rope gets its strength from the multiple fibers coming together as one. It is in the unity of the construction that yields the strength and usefulness of the rope. If the rope becomes unbraided, unwoven, or the fibers somehow get separated out from the whole, the rope becomes weaker and more vulnerable.
But all is not lost. The rope can be restored - If the rope is a simple braided rope. The easiest way to restore it’s strength is to braid it or tie it back together.
The human body is much the same as the rope. It is designed to be braided, woven or tied together to form one whole, strong and useful being. Our body is really one big X that is tied together by a series of smaller X’s woven in and around each other. Like the rope, to keep the X tied together well, we need to apply tension or stress to the X. In other words, we need to use our body as it was designed; we need to move. If we don’t move as we are designed to move, we become “unraveled” and lose our strength, durability, and usefulness. Fortunately, like the unbraided rope, if we find ourselves unraveled, we can tie ourselves back together.
How do we do this? The easiest and fastest way is to engage in the Three Pillars of Human Movement. I guess in this illustration, they may be best described as the Three Cords of Human Movement. Anyway, they are
- Breathe properly with your diaphragm, keeping your tongue on the roof of your mouth.
- Activating your vestibular system, by using your eyes and moving your head.
- Engaging in your gait pattern, whether by rolling, rocking, crawling, walking, running
These three things, when woven together, are what make us whole in body. They tie our physical bodies together. And in truth, they actually help to weave our bodies together with our mind and spirit as well. But weaving the body with the mind and spirit is a different rope analogy and even a different type of rope (kern-mantle), and like I said, I’m going to keep this more surface level truth...
Anyway, the human body is meant to be in unity with itself. It is in this unity that its strength and resiliency is found. This unity is created through the Three Cords of Movement (for this illustration, I still like Pillars...) being woven together, strengthening the nervous system and the series of X’s throughout the body. It is in this unity that the body is not easily broken.
Not easily broken.
Sometimes breaks still happen, even in the well braided body. But here is the beauty in that. The body is made to weave itself back together. The body is made heal. Like the rope that needs mending and re-braiding, the body too, can be mended through its movement design. Sometimes this re-braiding is not without scars or memories. But yet sometimes it is with a new, deeper type of strength that it would have never had had the injury not happened. Either way, the body is made to heal, to be woven together, again and again if need be.
You are meant to be strong.
You are meant to be not easily broken.
But even if you break, you are meant to be strong yet again.
Hold on to that. Knowing it makes the mending process stronger, from the inside out...
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