Bones & Autumn

Bones, Autumn, Poetry

Autumn

When the leaves fall from the trees in Autumn I typically thinking of them landing on the ground and of being warmly received by the earth. A shedding, a letting go. This Autumn, I’ve been reflecting more on branch itself - of being stripped back to the bare bones of the tree. A delayaring of these superfluous leaves. Getting back to what’s important. I was reminded of the Mary Oliver poem entitled ‘Autumn’.

Don’t you imagine the leaves dream now
how comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of the air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees, especially those with
mossy hollows, are beginning to look for

the birds that will come—six, a dozen—to sleep
inside their bodies?

I like the idea that the leaves are somehow tired of the ‘endless freshets of wind’ and the ‘nothingness of the air’. I think I’ve always thought of them as quite enjoying being blown about a bit (and of course thats probably too true). That the trees want to provide stability, support, a home for the birds to come to.

Bones

It made me think of how in massage we often work with muscle. A tutor of mine referred to muscle as ‘neurotic’ which made me laugh. He meant it in the senes that muscle is changeable - one minute it’s too tense, too loose, not quite… ‘right’. A little like the winds perhaps it can change seemingly on a whim. This is of course what makes it often so wonderful to work with- and has such room for possibility and change - just like the air around us too.

Bones are less changeable than muscle. They are solid, structural. They offer protection. The ribcage protecting the heart and lungs, the skull protecting the brain. Of course they also offer the potential for dynamic movement too.

~ Unlike muscle they have a hardness, a rigidity and a form to them that gives them a clarity. They have less of a ‘doing’, action orientated energy like muscles do - they are there, quite quiet in the background, being moved. Being.

~ And whilst there is this clarity, fundementality about bones they are very much alive. They aren’t just rigid, non moving things. Of course there is a genetic factor to how long or short our bones will be. But they also adapt and respond to diet, exercise, lifestyle and emotional changes. They are accommodating - they form and grow around the softer tissues, rather than forcing the softer tissues like blood vessels etc to grow through them.

~They are dynamic sites of death and rebirth. The osteoblast cells forming new bone cells and osteclasts removing older inner layers to make space for new ones.

~They are also fundamental to our very being - far beyond structure and protection - the bone marrow being the site that produces both red and white blood cells. They are an amazing mix of organic and inorganic matter - something alive and something dead very present and fundamental to each other. This makes me think of grief again and how in TCM this is the emotion most associated with Autumn and the wild, aliveness of grief that I touched upon a few weeks ago.

~ Most interestingly to me, they are a critical source of energy - a major storehouse of the body’s supply of calcium and phosphorous. Phosphorous in “particular is necessary for the renewal of our supplies of ATP - the gasoline which powers almost all metabolic functions” (Job’s Body, Deane Juhan).

~ Bones might be the things that outlast us long after we are gone. They carry imprints of the softer aspects of ourselves. They are quite ancient and mysterious things that we revere.

Bones and The Emotional Body

~ There is a deepness to bone. And we know this, don’t we, in terms of how we speak about the body.

“I feel it in my bones” - Our instinctive nature, somehting we know, deep down, to be true - this feels quite unthinking, much more bodily?

“Bare bones/Stripped to the bone” - something vulnerable and exposing, or shedding what isn’t important?

“Close to the bone” - personal, deep, getting to the heart of the matter

“Make no bones about” - to speak plainly, with clarity

“Spineless” - if you are spineless you don’t stand up for what you know to be true. You collapse or go with the flow of what other people say/want.

A wonderful technique in Biodynamic Massage is to gently make contact with bone. It can help us come into contact with a deep aliveness - a little less thinking, doing and a little more ‘being’. With our internal strength. A little more connected perhaps to do that deeper inner knowing - something more simple but no less alive - fundamental.

When we are in contact with the clarity and presence of our bones - with what we ‘know’ deep inside - we may often feel a little more joy, a little more connection and harmony.

In Yoga I know this to be true too, - an alignment of the bones in different poses can feel weightless, effortless, alive. The energy changes.

I also realised recently that I’ve been standing with my left foot slightly turned out - for goodness knows how long. This isn’t necessarily a ‘bad’ way to stand but by bringing my bones a little more in alignment with each other I was able to really feel the strength of my skeleton. It gave me a sense of being supported from within by a strength in my bones - less susceptible to the winds of change or to the moods of those around me? Less pulled from pillar to post perhaps? Truer in my stance, more rooted in this very volataile world we are living in.

It reminded me of one my favourite poems…

Now I understand that there are two melodies playing,
one below the other, one easier to hear, the other

lower, steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard
yet always present.

When all other things seem lively and real,
this one fades. Yet the notes of it

touch as gently as fingertips, as the sound
of the names laid over each child at birth.

I want to stay in that music without striving or cover.
If the truth of our lives is what it is playing,

the telling is so soft
that this mortal time, this irrevocable change,

becomes beautiful. I stop and stop again
to hear the second music.

I hear the children in the yard, a train, then birds.
All this is in it and will be gone. I set my ear to it as I would to a heart.

by Annie Lighthart

Autumn can be a time of letting go. Of shedding what we don’t need. Of not hoarding or consuming or acquiring more and more. Realising what isn’t for us or composting, recycling what was to make something new. It can bring us back to the bare bones of what is important, slowing us down enough, becoming quiet and still enough to hear the second music.