I love simple, profound experiences of my body.  One of these is wholeness.  In moving I recognize that my head doesn’t fall off, my bones don’t crumble, and my fluids stay contained.  I am physically whole no matter what position I put myself in.  This seems obvious, of course, but it’s worth some deep consideration when it comes to living as a body.  I for one don’t always feel whole, and it can help to come back to the experience physically.  In my last post, Naked Contact Dance, I spoke about the deep pleasure of integrity in a social context:   Integrating longings I had been ashamed of into my behavior revealed wholeness through time.  It is the same on the physical plane of the body.  By recognizing the inherent connectedness of my parts I recognize the wholeness that’s already here.

The basis for our physical wholeness is tensegrity, or tensional integrity.  In tensegrity networks there is systemic tension (our connective tissues), and local compression (our bones).  This structure is self-contained and can be in any relationship to the environment.  This contrasts with almost any building, which would crumble, lose pieces, and displace its contents if turned on its side.  Tensegrity structures, like us, stay whole.  Compared to last week’s film this video may be a bit dry, but perhaps that’s a relief for some of you.  The implications are no less impactful than dancing together naked.  The more deeply I grok tensegrity the more whole I feel in my body.