When we meditate, we may concentrate on an experience such as feeling breath at the tips of our nostrils, or the silent repetition of a mantra, or visualizing a symbol, etc. That then becomes a “home” for our awareness. Our mind will naturally wander; it’s restless. But we have a home to return to. The point of home is not that we never leave it, but that, in having a home, we have a place to return to, a center, in this case, for our awareness.
When we do bodywork, this center, this home is our “interface.” My mind centers on the place where I am contacting the person with my hand, forearm, knuckle, my stretch. And, naturally, my attention will wander. But I keep returning to that place.
Ida Rolf spoke of bodies so often being “randomly” organized; since people acquire posture and movements habits with virtually no education. People are mostly bodily illiterate. This is also the case for our minds. For all of us, our minds are more or less “randomly” organized, bouncing from one thought to another to an emotion to a sensation and back and forth. It’s wild!
But when we meditate, when we do bodywork at interface, we amplify our experience of being healthily organized in our minds. When we have this concept and practice of working at interface, of being dependably present, our clients feel more trusting and therefore more free to let go from inside out.
Meanwhile we, therapists, become healthier because in the every day practice of centering, as if we were singing a song we deeply know and love, we deepen our own skill and joy in the ability to be more at peace and more at home in our world.