In Cine­so­mat­ics, we work with the body on mul­ti­ple levels beyond just its phys­i­cal appear­ance. Through “feel­ing-based aware­ness” or “felt-sense”, we can see arche­types, mytho­log­i­cal pat­terns, and sub­con­scious psy­cho­so­mat­ic con­fig­u­ra­tions in the body. These reveal an incred­i­ble rich­ness and depth of data about our­selves and the client in ways ratio­nal, heady analy­sis com­plete­ly misses.

One of the fun­da­men­tal things we look at in the body is polar­i­ty.

We can assess how the person has con­fig­ured their inter­nal poles both sta­t­i­cal­ly and through movement.

What is polar­i­ty and its rel­e­vance to this work and the body?

Our body oper­ates in 3D via polar­i­ty. This means that move­ment hap­pens in time and space through the rela­tion­ship of opposites.

Tense, release. Open, close. Up, down. Left, right. Hard, soft. Neg­a­tive, pos­i­tive. Male, female. Etc.

In tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese phi­los­o­phy, these are referred to as “yin and yang”. In modern times, we often say “male-female”, “mas­cu­line-fem­i­nine” in the West.

Note: It’s not about men and women or gender. Hyper­sen­si­tiv­i­ty to these words points to under­ly­ing dis­tor­tions (that often show in the body), and inhibits access to resources fun­da­men­tal to the oper­a­tion of the uni­verse. The words matter a lot less than the con­cepts and sym­bols they point to.

Our ner­vous system itself is set up this way as we see the two hemi­spheres of the brain. We have the ‘linear, log­i­cal’ side (left), and the ‘non-linear, cre­ative’ side (right). The fas­ci­nat­ing thing about that is we are con­tralat­er­al: mean­ing that the hemi­spheres con­trol the OPPO­SITE side of the body. So the right hemi­sphere man­i­fests on the left side, and the left brain man­i­fests on the right.

In the human body, this polar­i­ty appears as top(m)-bottom(f), right(m)-left(f), and back(m)-front(f).

How we relate to these cor­re­spond­ing aspects of mas­cu­line and fem­i­nine in our minds, man­i­fest in the phys­i­cal body.

  • Our rela­tion­ship with the fem­i­nine, our mother, and the intuitive/creative realms show on the yin sides.
  • Our rela­tion­ship with the mas­cu­line, our father, and the logical/linear realms show on the yang sides.

Is this overly sim­pli­fy­ing modern sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing? Absolute­ly. How­ev­er, it pro­vides a highly accu­rate and observ­able frame­work for heal­ing and devel­op­ment. Under­stand­ing this allows us to see how these sto­ries and rela­tion­ships man­i­fest in our lives, through how they are expressed through our bodies.

These uncon­scious pat­terns run our lives, busi­ness, and rela­tion­ships at the deep­est levels, and arise from core mytho­log­i­cal arche­types of con­scious­ness. Being able to see these dynam­ics allows you to pen­e­trate the pat­terns and make new choic­es of how to move and manage energy.

Using Cine­so­mat­ics, we can iden­ti­fy and shift these pat­terns and rela­tion­ships in the body and their man­i­fes­ta­tions in our prac­ti­cal, every­day lives.