Exploring Possibilities with Gil Hedley
/Happy New Year, Somanauts!
I write to you from a tree house cabin surrounded by mossy oaks near White Salmon, WA. I’m on my annual birthday retreat, time to reflect and vision. What I am sharing below I began writing in early November. It is my feelings after listening to Gil Hedley speak in Portland. It was one of the finest experiences of not only the year, but my entire career.
I spent the late afternoon of New Year’s Eve up on the southwest flank of Mount Hood, Wy’east. After a lovely ski tour, the mountain hovered on sky, so gently lit by hues of pinks and purples and innumerable colors without words. It was, of course, obvious to see the mountain showing itself in that way, on that day, as inspiring reflection. It did, a little. But mostly I experienced in myself a feeling of awe, of nameless possibility. And so it is possibility that I am focusing on, and funny, that a similar feeling of possibility was part of what I took away from that magical afternoon with Gil Hedley.
Gil Hedley’s Inquiry: “What is my body?”
On a Monday afternoon in early November, the self-taught fascial explorer (somanuat) and seminarian of the body, Gil Hedley, gave a stunning four-and-a half hour talk. His talk centered around the question – “What is my body?”. The talk plumbed at depths that the question doesn’t immediately reveal. On his website Gil describes his process like this:
“For over 20 years, I have enjoyed the privilege of guiding thousands of ‘Somanauts’ in the exploration of the human form. I created the word “somanaut” to describe those who explore the inner space of the body, and discover there the rich terrain of themselves.”
A brief aside, if you are curious to check out some of Gil's work, his website is phenomenal. Go here for his fresh cadaver dissection videos. These videos contain anatomical knowledge and insight that cannot be found in any book or lecture. They are truly opportunities for your own mind and heart to encounter the body - the power really does come through the video medium.
Gil’s inquiry with the body has taught him about connection, “the rich terrain of ourselves,” and that’s what was explored for the entirety of an out-of-time mid-fall afternoon in downtown Portland. For Gil, it was clear that the ways in which we are connected cannot be separated from the fact of our embodiment. Meaning, inter-relationship is how our body is formed and how it works from macrocosm to microcosm and inter-relationship is how we all interweave with one another – microcosm to macrocosm.
To be completely transparent, I enjoyed watching Gil inhabit his body and his way of presenting as much as the content itself. He was an expression of his content and it was inspiring and gorgeous to witness. He was also hilarious and I was thoroughly inspired by his gift of interweaving humor and reverence throughout his talk. His words emerged from the movement of his body and reflected the poetry of embodied existence. It was as if at each moment he was feeling into the image on the screen—a close-up of a peri-fascial membrane or the door to a sacred feminine temple or his kids skateboarding down the street—and allowed himself to be touched by all he knew and felt about the experience captured therein and then waited for the words to take form in his form. As he moved with the emergent language you could feel his feeling, awe, joy, humility, love, reverence and those feelings became his language and animated his body.
Reflecting on the journey: observing how we study
The whole experience made me reflect on my 17-year journey studying and working with the body. I'm always wanting to understand more about what we are doing when we are working with people, curious about how we are made and how our bodies are phenomenal expressions of nature and how they carry the story of our entire personal and in some ways collective existence.
Gil spoke about having an ‘inventory of curiosities’. Yes! I tell my students they will know they have come upon the right question when they feel pursued by it and simultaneously find themselves pursuing it. It is the right question when it spurs further questions and more curiosities. That's a good place to be. The body is a pretty good canvas for that sort of exploring. Gil was expressing his particular version of curiosity and pursuit of his questions. And, he demonstrated beautifully, that the nature of our question influences what that question can reveal.
When I got started in the field of bodywork, there was very little literature on the fascia. I remember when I first encountered some writing about it, it changed everything for me. I was completely fascinated (I tried to find another word but that pun was the best one) and I haven't stopped endeavoring to understand what it is and how it relates to our experience of the body.
In the beginning, I was mostly alone with these questions. I did regale my patients with what I was learning. But, I didn’t have a rich community of colleagues that I was connected to nor was there yet an international fascia congress or much accessible literature. It is challenging to learn and grow without a community to do it within.
I had no choice but to work with what was at hand. I made a practice of imagining the properties of fascia coming to life under my hands during treatments. I visualized collagen fibers and water in a dance and tried to imagine the extracellular matrix (we didn’t yet have the living images we do now), linking my touch with the whole being there on the table. I tried to find and trace patterns in the tissue that related to what they were experiencing in their body. It was slow going. But, in that way, my practice became a practice.
So, to go from those solitary hours, me and one other person in a little office at the north end of downtown Mt. Shasta, CA to a cavernous ballroom in Portland, OR with a couple hundred people all brought there by their own unique inventory of curiosities was a fulfillment. It came slowly into my awareness over those four plus hours that a circle in the journey had closed for me and something else was opening.
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known . . . “ – Carl Sagan
I think it is important to highlight that Gil is self-taught. He has followed his curiosities and passions and questions. He clearly was able to shake free of the paradigm that says you need the authority of a degree and a specialty to gain knowledge and insight in a field of study. And I think for that reason his insights are novel as he is not beholden to confirming any model. Rather, he is approaching his subject with reverence and awe and his inventory of curiosities and we are the beneficiaries of this beautiful method. I believe it is a method we all can follow, whatever our work is. It is a form of thoughtful, observational and imaginative science which our world so badly needs and is especially relevant in medicine.
I found it pretty hilarious that as I walked out I caught myself thinking that after listening to everything Gil shared, I understood less not more about what it is I do in the clinic or classroom every day. Ha! I realized that some of the models I use to guide my understanding aren’t all that valid. How amazing. And, I thought, well for now I don’t need a model so much. I’ll go back to the beginning and just imagine layers of relationships within and between tissues, the possibility even that there are tissue types and states we have yet to reveal to our mental frameworks, yet the body knows. And if the body knows, then we can touch these as yet unnamed and potent qualities.
Gil shared a little story about his dissection classes. He mentioned that students sometimes ignore his instructions and instead do whatever they want. He commented that this is when he makes new discoveries, and sees that which he couldn't have seen any other way. One of his main points was that our stories (conceptual models) about how we think things are, are just that: stories. His teaching was that we should hold our stories lightly. Yes.
I went into his talk uncertain about what I would take away from it, thinking maybe I'd learn some things that would allow me to make more sense out of what it is that I do all day in clinic. That didn't happen. I actually feel a little less clear about all that now and that's okay. I feel more open to the possibilities that can arise from working from a place of not knowing, holding my story about what I'm doing lightly, and maybe try to put it down altogether.
It is just this open and yet focuses curiosity that is the foundation to our instructional approach in all of our classes. If you are curious to learn hands-on therapies in a fun, engaging and open-hearted environment check out our course schedule here.
Thanks Gil. And thank you to all of you everywhere that ask and follow your own questions about the body and how we all thrive in the living of those questions…
Here's to a year of exploring possibilities!
Michael
