Between the sky and the earth…

10.2.2025

Here I am again in my second week of writing. I would have never thought that already I start over thinking..what shall I write, so that it is interesting? I have practically spent 45 minutes thinking, and doing things in my room,which prevent me from writing. 

After selecting the photos for today’s blog I finally managed to put my pelvis on this chair. My room is full with the winter sun, although it was frozen outside today, the sun came out and birds have been chirping all the way my walk with Gigi. Today I got up at 6, then found myself walking up the forest’s path at around 7:10. The trees majestically greeted me as I took permission to enter, thanking them as always for loving us, protecting us, seeing us and accepting us.

I have to confess that I do this each time I enter a forest. But this forest here is where I live. It is not a big one but it has charming parts, and it also has 4 enormous fields around which one can admire the sky and the earth. As I walk the different paths, I also use this intimate moment to talk with them, I tell them my thoughts, my troubles… and as a matter of fact also all the things I wish(ed) to say but haven’t (yet). They are my faithful confidants. 

As I speak to them in no particular order, blabbering whatever comes to my mind or occupies my soul…  they sometimes have to express something back. So occasionally I get a “oh silly you”, or “now now don’t pity yourself”, “oh dear still in the same stupid spot?”They even take time to answer my questions… “We have been telling you for centuries what to do and you still cannot hear it, unfortunately it is not only you dearest, but your whole tribe that is mostly ignorant and stupid. They could make life so much easier and more enjoyable but somehow you all become prisoners of your minds, your thoughts, your habits, your will…”

Yes yes they are extremely honest,  you would be surprised what kind of truths they are able to hit you with, if you had the time to listen of course.

When I listen to them, sometimes they sound like this to my ears:

https://open.spotify.com/track/4iaHrLFIkqFkgLqV9KfOaQ?si=b37c0cc18c0047c2

if you want to find out more about this amazing pianist and his album:

Coming back to this morning… walking through the trees and watching the eye of the sun peeking from behind the trunks, I reach the opening.. the fields where I finally feel I am between earth and sky!

The fields up there are frozen. but the sky is above me and the earth right here.  It is a lovely feeling this morning. And as Gigi is digging a hole in the slowly thawing earth, I contemplate the landscape, taking in the vastness of the space,  the colours and the temperature, the smells carried by the wind to my frozen nose. And my thoughts start drifting to this noon… when I will be finally sitting here after writing this blog… continuing my work on the Manual. But before I continue about my process, here is one vision of the field this morning.

What have I done so far? Well not much on paper I am afraid, but a lot in thoughts. I have been re-copying the old notes of how I would like this book to be shaped. Somehow I feel my notes are solid, like the earth, but I still have to work on the space above it, so they can transform into sentences, images, thoughts, movements that take us to the sky….

The idea is that I would like to make an interesting manual, or handbook…inspired by the I-Ching. I would like it to be in no particular order, that is not necessarily from a beginning to an end. A manual that is in sections, even creating a circular feeling,  which serves like a map to the layers of landscapes of body and movement. Landscapes that change as the facilitator moves on their path.

I had mentioned before that this path sometimes is very lonely. Accompanying others in the discovery of their movements,  and what all this brings, can be a lonelying experience. Why? you say?

Well I as a facilitator accompany someone, and through our dialogue that person discovers the treasures inside of their being, they go deep, reveal in their own time, and blossom in front of me being their witness all along. And of course them going deep makes me go deep into myself too. Each time, session after session, person after person I go to the depths in me which resonate with theirs.  But I am not accompanied. And at some moments this deep loneliness kicks in.

Inside of my memory of the mind, body and all sensations,  I have this kind of source, where a map can magically come to the surface, or an idea of what to say flows, words emerge that move the other person… 

So I would love to create the manual in such a way that a facilitator could at any moment open it, and be inspired for that moment, and connect their experience and thoughts to that information which they read… maybe even further search in the book to find suitable exercises, or ideas for exercises.

The work is always the same, we always walk the same path,  however each day the way we perceive that path changes.  Just like the forest and the fields I walk in every morning with Gigi.  That place where the three fields meet and the sky covers us from above… Everyday there is a different light, or a different position of the grass, changed by the wind, the snow, rain or frost.

When I start my work I also move along the same path, I always start on the floor and see how I feel at that very moment. How do I feel the floor, what is the mood of my muscles? How fast or slow is my mind?.. And I give myself time to land, to land there into that moment.

Coming back to this manual/handbook or even a little book of inspiration, I would like to design a content and structure that accompanies the reader,  and that gives the reader some moments to reflect, or even try out.

Having said all that, today I will very concretely re-organize all the notes that have been already categorized by Zeynep (yes here she is again…  she is assisting me in the creation of this book, and meticulously does everything I ask her to. So precious!)

Today I am planning to go over them again, just like I walk the same path in the mornings, and will open my spirit and my inner sources to be inspired, to find the colours, and the tones my words describe and I will play around with the papers, grouping and regrouping them until I find some kind of movement in the structure.

Yes,  I would like this book to have movement inside, so that the reader feels inspired to turn the pages to their contempt, and travel through the lines as they wish…  and from there make their map of movement for the day.

But there is another reason why I would like to finish this manual… With every group that I work with I learn something… everything that I have found out in this path is coming from my lived experience. There is nothing that I thought of, and did not try, work on or embody, before I transmit it to the other.

It is so easy to forget. And I do forget. And I know that the words in this work (that is Somatic Dialogue) are an important part of the method. As I am also transmitting my proper experience and knowledge to other professionals, I wouldn’t like my words to be diluted, or come out of focus or distant from their source. Therefore I would like to put them onto paper, so that they can serve me and my colleagues as sources of inspiration,  in the ‘purest’ way they can be.

As I work more and more with this method I named Somatic Dialogue, I trust more my body than only my intellectual memory. And therefore I would love to finish this book. 

However, today is a day where all plans somehow change costumes… I was intending and I drifted… And just a while ago my dear colleague Güneş sent me a message that everything she intended to do today didn't work out…  Well Güneş, let’s look out into the light created by today’s sun and continue making our steps, one after the other….

Here I go diving into my notes and the regrouping dance! (and listening to Bach through the body of Emmauel Despax.

Love must B