The 'Ground'

To paraphrase an adage, writing about Partner Flow is like doing math about wine tasting. It exists unto itself and while metaphors and similes can scratch the surface, it must be experienced through its own channels to be felt.


For as heady as I can get about it, Partner Flow, and movement in general, has at its core nothing to do with the mind. Which really calls out those of us who live in our heads, revealed in awkwardness and uncertainty in movements. The brain can't consciously control everything we do, especially in new movements, although it might try. At its best moments, in dance the brain is merely seeing the body move, sensing its dynamic motions and stepping in only to the degree that any moment may call for- to redirect from an obstacle, to take care of our own bodies, to engage in a set of intentions for any particular encounter.

Personal Groundedness...
I've come to see the term 'being grounded' as referring to an internal connection with the part of myself that does not change. As long as I am alive I still have breath and so I can always remember my breathing and ground myself with that. That very awareness alone has helped me focus when things got hairy. 

There are elements from which the rest of me is derived- my values, my beliefs, my connectedness. The deeper I develop these aspects of myself, the more 'grounded' I feel. From an unshakeable sense of self, fearless acts can arise. Its funny that the very act of developing the ego can help dissolve it. The more solid I feel in who I am the less threatened I feel by the way the world can be. And interestingly, the more receptive I find myself being to approaching preconceptions that my identity might be hanging to. If my sense of self is not rooted in myself then I will always be bound to the whims of wherever the sense of self is being derived. (But I digress and will continue that road in the future).

'Grounded' Awareness...

I've come to understand an awareness as being 'grounded' when it is connected to one's actual experience. Spiritual epiphanies are the ones that don't come through reading the bible, they come when one literally has a physically palpable experience that shakes them from their worldview or at least gives a sufficiently solid understanding to base one's awareness. Eating chocolate is an entire universe away from reading about it. Which method would have you most convincingly recommending the chocolate experience to someone else? The purely intellectual will never garner the passion that direct experience can. 

The awarenesses we take from any particular experience allows us to make higher level claims, abstracting the awareness into a perspective that moves beyond the original experience. This can be a negative if there isn't an awareness that the perspective is merely that, and not an actual reflection of the real world. But it is positive when it permits us deeper access to an awareness. The nature of the abstraction will define the individual. Examples of some heavy duty abstractions: the yin/yang symbol, the cross, astrology, all of science, Poor Richards Almanac by Benjamin Franklin ("Do what you ought, and not what you please").

To be grounded is to be at that place where the rubber meets the road, the place where life is happening. Me and my perception of reality meet at this interface. The more connected I am to my self and my experience, the fewer filters I carry to obscure the layers of meaning in any experience, the better I can work with whatever a multi- faceted reality has in store.

So there's 'groundedness in oneself' and 'groundedness of awareness'. So far its been the grounded awarenesses that have been the leading cause of my consciousness momentum. You feel it and therefore can confidently abstract. And then action follows. 

The ground between two people...

We create, communicate, and translate abstractions of our experience to another, who passes the communication through their own systems. Considering the levels of filters that exist between two people, its amazing we can transmit and receive as much as we do. 

In order to have true communication, there has to be a ground between two people. That can include language, shared experience, shared beliefs. Without this people might have no capacity to understand each other in any way...

The physical aspect of groundedness...
Goundedness connotes physical connection to the ground. Stabilizing. Anchoring. If I were to walk onto an inner-tube floating in a pool, I'd quickly discover its ungroundedness. The same inner-tube on land would have a measure of groundedness- it would yield a bit, but it has the actual ground to keep it from at least bobbing around, giving me more to stabilize myself with.

A grounded person can hold another on their shoulders whereas an ungrounded person might struggle against their imbalance.

Someone who is said to be grounded feels like a person who is solid, and thus someone from whom we can 'anchor'. We might feel that they are dependable, that we have a sense of who they are. We feel more comfortable building our own structures on the foundation that they create. In a co-worker this might look like someone who has a track record in their area of expertise- I might feel comfortable depending on their part in a project in order for my part to be worthwhile. A grounded person possesses a solidity of balance or character or purpose. The level of risk I might be willing to take is directly connected to my feeling of the groundedness of whomever I am working with.


And, as ever, the very nature of the groundedness maintains and fuels itself- the experiential connectedness to something be it one's center of balance, or the firm footing beneathe one's feet, or one's connection to their deeper purpose has one engaging those things even more, further solidifying the awareness. These experiences emanate from a person connected to their core. You can feel when you're in the presence of a solidly grounded individual. And conversely, a skittish person who avoids eye contact or someone who can never make rent are perhaps not people someone can rest themeslves or their commitments.

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So there we have a look at the idea of 'the ground'. I'll be referring to it as this blog progresses....

Where do you find your ground? What grounds you?