EXERCISE 5: THE INFANT
The integrity of a structure is compromised and perhaps made unsafe, if any portion is degraded or removed. It is the same with a person or ecosystem. The health of people or places increases with the diversity of their expression..
⚘ JESSE WOLF HARDIN
Sometimes it is helpful to make a tape recording of this exercise—just as you did the last one—and play it back. Instead of following the gender pronouns that I use in the exercise, use the correct pronoun for whichever gender you are. If you practice you will find the perfect speed, pitch, and intonation for yourself to listen to.
Sit someplace comfortable. Someplace you won’t be disturbed. Someplace you feel safe and nurtured.
Close your eyes and take some deep breaths. Fill up your lungs as if they were balloons, fill them to bursting. Hold it, hold it, hold it. Then . . . slowly . . . release. As you let out the air in your lungs, let any tension you feel inside you release and flow out with your breath. Do this again . . . several times.
Begin with your toes, then your ankles, your knees. As you exhale each breath let the tension in this part of your body flow out. Do this with each major part of your body, ending with your neck, face, and head.
Now. Imagine the floor or chair under you as two huge, cupped hands holding you. Let yourself relax into them, be held by them. There is no need to hold yourself up; let yourself be supported. Keep breathing and letting any tension in your body go.
See, lying on the floor in front of you, the little baby that you once were. What is the impact on you of seeing this part of you?
Notice everything about the baby. How is she dressed? How does her face look? Happy? Sad? Are her eyes open? Or closed?
Are you happy to see her? Do you feel comfortable seeing her? Does she seem happy to you? Is your baby moving? Is your baby breathing? What is the color of your baby’s skin? Does your baby seem healthy? Or unhealthy? Is she getting enough food to eat?
Notice everything about your baby.
keep breathing
Now. When you are done noticing everything about your baby, reach down (really do this) and pick your baby up. Hold her to your chest as you would hold and cuddle any baby, let her nestle in. Feel what it is like to hold this part of yourself so closely.
Now. Even if you are a man, begin breast-feeding your baby. Allow the food from inside you to flow out and into this most vulnerable part of you. Is a nurturing happening now that has been too long absent? How long has it been since you comforted and took care of this most vulnerable part of yourself?
How do you feel doing this?
Now. As you are holding and feeding your baby, notice: is there anything your baby needs from you? Anything it wants you to do? And, as well, is there anything you need from your baby?
In a little while it will be time to stop. But before you do, is there anything you need to say to your baby? Is there anything else your baby needs from you?
Let yourself be with this experience as long as you want to. Then, when you are finished, look at your baby, allow the caring inside you to flow out and into her until she is filled up with it. And, when you are ready, thank your baby for coming to be with you, and, for now, say goodbye.
How can we expect to understand Nature unless we accept like children these her smallest gifts?
⚘ HENRY DAVID THOREAU
This tiny, vulnerable part of us is one that is often put in the bag of shadow. It is a part of us that is helpless and needs a special kind of food. This part of us is also very important, for it knows how to suckle at the breast of the world, to take that food into itself. And this part of you is very very sensitive to emotional fields and their communications. For this part of you is the one that developed within the electromagnetic field of your mother’s heart. And it knows those fields as intimately as it knows anything.
There [in Nature] I can walk, and recover the lost child that I am without any ringing of a bell.
⚘ HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Infants have no words, as you might have discovered—they perceive in feeling-gestalts—but that is all right, the child you met first knows lots of words. And, if you ask for his or her help, that older child is often willing to act as an interpreter.
You can repeat this exercise, if you wish, with any developmental age you have lived through, from infancy to two, to four, to eight, to adolescence, young adulthood, middle age, and so on. Each has its own intelligence, its own special connection with the world. Developmental stages do not stop at twelve or sixteen; the child naturally grows to forty. . . and to eighty. It is possible to remain filled with feeling and wonder and openness at any age. Each age has its own teachings. Each is a unique developmental stage of a human being’s growth. Each brings special perceptions and capacities that aid in the experience of the human condition.