PERSONAL AND PLANETARY SYMPTOMS
Containers, boundaries and protection - the membranous interface between inner and outer worlds
This article will glance at a tiny bit of science and physiology, and offer an experiential practice and questions for enquiry. The physiology helps us to approach the practice in a more specific and focused way. I hope you can stay with me for all of this!
I first found myself reflecting on this theme sometime in the late 1980s / early 1990s. In 1985 the first scientific article (by Shanklin, Farman and Gardiner) was published that alerted us to a human-made hole in the ozone layer and the damage it was causing our climate[i]. This initiated an urgent debate about climate change as there was already an understanding of its importance, and the satellite images of the hole in the ozone layer gave indisputable proof:
the hole in the ozone layer, an invisible shield which absorbs harmful UV rays from the Sun. Without which, complex life on Earth would not exist.[ii]
Fortunately, this wound is now healing, though it’s a slow process. However, some of the consequences of it are still being felt, and there has been additional climate warming because of it. The DNA in both plant and animal cells is damaged by excessive harmful rays, so governments recognised the necessity of taking swift action to stop the use of the CFC chemicals that were causing it.
I was born around three decades before this discovery, when we had no idea how damaging spending lots of time in the sun, unprotected, could be, and how the hole in the ozone layer was greatly increasing the risk of sun damage and skin cancer in later life. My sun-loving nature led me to spend lots of time outdoors, playing as a child, hiking and sunbathing as a teen and young adult – growing up in the north-east of England where sunshine can be very limited, I would be out at every opportunity to soak it up, and now, of course, I have to carefully monitor and occasionally be treated for the skin cancers that have developed as a result: the consequences of our “well-spent youth” as my old school friend calls it – I like the humour and compassion in this re-phrasing! It gives some balance to the grief of no longer being able to freely soak in the Sun’s magnificent warmth and brightness.
During the time the discovery about the ozone layer was seeping into our collective awareness, I was also researching, through both somatic and psychotherapy studies and practice, into the nature of boundaries, the interface between inner and outer. There are many layers where an interface is present within the body and can be either resourcing or debilitating, protective or symptom-causing, depending on the wellbeing or compromised nature of our membranes – cellular, tissue, organ, skin, subtle energetic aura, as well as psychological. The news about the ozone layer presented itself as another layer of membranous boundary, or interface, at the global level.
Having said that the hole in the ozone layer is healing, we know that the Earth’s orbit is now littered with satellites, space stations, man-made junk, and possibly in future, weapons! Have we replaced one man-made problem with another? I imagine an irritated, spikey, metallic-feeling membrane around the whole Earth, which does not sit well with my sense of cellular membranes and skin. My energetic membrane bristles with feelings of irritation and defensiveness.
Let’s turn to our embodied experience to resource a little before enquiring further.
Cellular Membranes, Skin and the ‘membranes’ of the Earth
I like to begin here as these are the places where we clearly define ourselves in relation to others - places of identity, transition and communication between inner and outer, self and other. Each cell, from the perspective of Body-Mind Centering® (which is my foundational somatic movement practice), has its own awareness and presence in the body. The membrane of the cell is a three-layered uniquely intelligent structure - two layers of phospholipid molecules linked by a fluid-filled space between them. It is sometimes likened to the ’brain’ of the cell, as it serves to discern what we need to take in and release in complex ways.[iii]
The health and wellbeing of the cell membrane both determines and reflects much of the health and wellbeing of an organ, tissue, and the body as a whole, as well as our psychological wellbeing. The cell, from the first fertilised cell at conception to each cell of the adult body, is the first place where a sense of self, of ‘I’, emerges, announcing both its individuality and its likeness to every other cell that surrounds it. When the cellular membranes are in good health, they all work together to create health in the whole body. They communicate through the subtle motions of cellular respiration, sending micro-ripples out into the surrounding fluids to ‘whisper’ to other cells; and through the release of chemical messengers, which are also received by other cells.
Likewise, if every citizen in a community experienced good health and wellbeing, I’m sure the community and the nation would thrive more fully.
The skin is also essentially a three-layered organ, epidermis, dermis and hypodermis/subcutaneous layer, with several sub-layers within each. It is highly sensitive, integrally connected with the brain through the network of nerve fibres that run between them. The skin has been called the surface of the brain, and the brain likened to the deepest layer of the skin[iv], so intimately do they work together to receive, process and respond to the constant flow of information passing between the outer world and inner spaces of the body. A true place of communication, transition, healing and expression.
The Earth can be considered to have several layers of encircling ‘membranes’ too, essentially:
- the Crust is the rocky outer layer
- this is largely covered with soil, stone, sand, and coral reefs (coral being in fact a sea city of tiny animals)
- the ocean, and the vegetation that covers much of the land and ocean floor
- the atmosphere, which is made up of several layers of gases, including the ozone layer we looked at earlier.
If you like you can take a few minutes to try this simple practice to bring awareness and nurturing to your skin and cellular membranes:
A Practice – Touching Membranes
Lightly scan through your body and see if there is a place that is calling for a little contact or attention. Or simply choose the surface of one arm. Approaching slowly, as if coming to touch a young baby’s head perhaps, bring one hand to rest on this place, very gently.
Craniosacral Therapy teacher Michael Kern has used the image of making contact as if trying not to break the skin on the surface of a drop of water – it’s that delicate, so that you give space for the tissues beneath your hand to breathe and can feel any responses that might be happening.
Can you notice whether your awareness is primarily in the hand that is touching or the place being touched, or perhaps even the space between them? See if you can shift your focus in and out, then maybe come to rest with it evenly balanced between them.
Then simply rest in this connection for a few minutes, as long as you wish, and allow any sensations, feelings, images or thoughts that arise.
Now invite your attention to settle beneath the surface, just a little way in or deeper inside, wherever you are drawn. Imagine one single cell, visualise it as an essentially spherical structure (though they develop into various shapes and sizes, they maintain the essential nature of a contained sphere).
Imagine that the oh-so-delicate touch of your hand is now resting very lightly over the membrane of this visualised cell. Don’t disturb its integrity; allow it space to breathe and move; be receptive to anything at all you might sense, feel, imagine or discover.
After a while you might realise that you are actually contacting the cell, feeling its presence within you. You might sense some of its neighbours, all of them pulsing to the subtle rhythm of internal cellular respiration. Do they feel connected to each other, in easy communication, or are they feeling a little isolated? This might tell you something about your own sense of personal space and boundaries.
Rest here for a few more minutes. There is nothing to do, nowhere to go. Simply be as present to your cells, to yourself, as you can be in this moment.
As you gently bring your awareness back to the surface of your skin, then release your hand from the contact, notice anything you are feeling or anything you discovered about yourself. Write some notes or draw in your journal if you like.
If this practice feels accessible and resourcing in some way, you might like to make it a regular daily or weekly practice. It can support rest, relaxation and recuperation, as well as revealing insights.
An Enquiry into Symptoms
When you feel ready to go further, take a moment to reflect, and make notes if you wish, on any symptoms your skin might be experiencing, as a temporary condition now, or an ongoing recurring issue – it could be as simple as dryness, itchiness, those wrinkles you haven’t got used to yet. Try not to reach for conventional labels – eczema, for example – but describe what you actually experience in terms of sensation, movement, image, colour, sound, energy – whatever comes up for you.
You can enquire – is there some resonance within Nature and Earth where you are aware of similar symptoms to your own? Are you drawn to a specific place on the Earth, or a layer that feels symptomatic in a way similar to your own symptoms? For example, a dry and cracked skin might feel resonant with a dried-out riverbed after a drought.
Pleased don’t feel you have to answer these questions directly. Rather hold them lightly, let them inhabit you for a while and see what might arise. There is no right answer; they are here to help open your awareness to ways that your symptoms might be in resonance with the planet, the ways that you participate. Your own personal place within the whole of Nature.
If you do find some correlation, maybe you can discover something within the Earth’s capacity to heal itself, when allowed to, that would help your own healing; or perhaps your own healing journey sheds some light on something you would like to do to support healing of the Earth.
There is more to say about psychological boundaries and the Collective Body but I will save that for a later post. If you engage with the practice or the enquiry and would like to share any insights you have in the Comments, I would love to see them.
To finish, here is a short poem by Warsan Shire:
later that nightI held an atlas in my lapran my fingers across the whole worldand whisperedwhere does it hurt?It answeredeverywhereeverywhereeverywhereWarsan Shire
[i] https://www.ukri.org/who-we-are/how-we-are-doing/research-outcomes-and-impact/nerc/the-story-behind-the-discovery-of-the-ozone-hole/
[ii] Ibid
[iii] If you are interested, I write in much more detail about both cell and skin in my first book Wisdom of the Body Moving, and the most recent, Embodied Spirit, Conscious Earth. See https://www.lindahartley.co.uk/publications.html
[iv] Job’s Body, Deane Juhan
Thank you for reading and maybe exploring a little. I look forward to connecting again soon.
Linda
For you Beverley -
‘Let the beauty we love
Be what we do
There are a hundred ways
To kneel and kiss the ground’
- Kabir
Thank you so much Patty. I'm very new here but enjoying the threads of connection with kindred spirits.