Working with my autistic godson Jacob, I watched caregiver Tessa massage him with a big ball as he lay prone on the floor, softly pushing the ball along his back and legs. I thought about that soft pressing bouncing movement and the Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s writings on the body’s fluid systems: cellular, intercellular, blood, lymph, cerebrospinal and synovial. That gentle, pulsing touch was aligned with the intercellular fluid, also known as the tissue pump. The movement of the fluid between the cells actually pulses and massages the muscles and organs.Each kind of fluid has its own rhythm and nature, each can be experientially explored through movement and sound.
Back to the sea and Jacob. As I repeated this big ball massage with Jacob later in the day, I talked to him about the ocean (which he loves) and about feeling the waves through his body, and felt the waves flowing through me too. Touch is about reciprocity – about being touched by what we are touching. I felt that with Jacob, and I felt it that morning floating in the ocean.
Here is a cellular fluid meditation to try: Sit quietly and imagine the fluid in each cell coming home, coming to rest in the body of the cell. From Bonnie, in her extraordinary and timeless book Sensing, Feeling and Action