The Diamond Body Practice Movements
Here you will find descriptions of the most basic form of each of the movements of the Diamond Body Practice. It is important to learn the basic form well, while listening to your body’s comfort, and not adding strain or pain. This is your starting place, or launching pad: from there, there are infinite subtleties and variations that you can discover as the practice comes alive in you.
More variations will be added to these pages from time to time, so please visit occasionally and find out what's new, what might stimulate your own discovery of the mystery of your body's expression of Being.
Scroll through The Movements below.
Salutation of the 4 Centers:
Aligning with Being
The Salutation is the entrance to the space of practice and honors our body as an expression of Being. Being present and intimate with the breath, gesture, and sound invites the alignment of our body with the depth of our Nature. Spending time exploring this movement allows the body's knowing to deepen and inform us about living in this alignment. As well as opening the Diamond Body Practice, you can use this gesture by itself any time to support your sense of alignment and center.
Sun Breath:
Exploring Dimensionality
We can experience the breath as an agent of awareness. Each of us has a familiar body pattern that determines where we feel the movement of breath. It includes a tendency to sense and occupy certain parts of the body and not others. The Sun Breath invites our awareness to expand to include our whole body, welcoming whatever sensations are there and taking us beyond our familiar pattern of awareness.
The Pulses
The pulses are the parts of the practice that actively engage muscle to enliven and bring awareness to specific areas of the body. These parts are the pelvic floor, the diaphragm, and the connection of head to neck. Sometimes referred to as the ‘3 gates,’ these horizontal planes in the body support the major body segments of pelvis/belly, chest/heart, and head. The balance of tone and openness in these areas provide good support, and also a flow of energy between these segments, connecting belly, heart and head.
Pelvic Floor Pulses:
Awakening the Base
The pelvic floor is the strong web of muscles at the base of the pelvis. Its different muscles extend from the pubic bone to tail bone, and between the ‘sit bones.' Collectively they support the organs and soft tissue of the belly and pelvis, and, through the legs, connect the body to the earth.
Belly/Diaphragm Pulses:
Awakening the Core
The respiratory diaphragm is a horizontal, dome-shaped muscle between the rib cage and the belly. It is important in breathing – pulling down as the lungs fill with air, and resting up as the lungs empty. This is both a support for the upper body, and a conduit of energy between the heart and belly centers.
Head/Jaw Pulses:
Awakening the Head Center
The muscles at the base of the head, connecting head to neck are important in supporting the weight of the head and moving the head in its range of movements. This also is where we experience the connection of the head center to the heart center, and mind to body in general. There are different small muscles here, as well as the larger muscles connected to the jaw and tongue.
The Harmony Movements
The next three movements, (Curling and Unfurling, Wholeness and Flow, and the Radiating Star) emphasize the experience of moving the body as a connected whole. At this point, we have explored the sense of alignment, being filled with awareness, and the living pulsation through the vertical column of the body. The harmony movements include these elements, while moving in different ways. They bring an integration that can be taken into the movements of daily life.
Curling & Unfurling:
Harmony Head to Tail
Curling and Unfurling invites our bodies into a natural movement of the spine from flexion or curling into fetal position, into extension or arching the spine. There is value to increasing the range of these movements, and exploring the many places along the way. Moving the spine as a whole, from head to tail brings a sense of harmony through the body, and can be nourishing for the nervous system.
Wholeness & Flow:
Moving as One
This movement is an exploration of the experience of the body moving as a harmonious whole. Though in fact, our body is always one whole, often in life we feel our movement to be segmented, parts moving in isolation, unrelated to the rest. Re-establishing and resting into the felt sense of the inner oneness of the body in motion can be deeply unifying, settling and regulating for the nervous system.
Gesture of Completion
This movement closes the time of formal practice with the same gesture as the Salutation, this time in silence, with the eyes gazing to the horizon. The gesture is an expression of all that the practice has brought about in our embodied experience on this day. It is an honoring, integration and appreciation for the living wisdom that our body is.
Post-Practice Practice
The moment after the Gesture of Completion is a potent time. It is often in the transition from one activity to another that we lose the continuity of our sense of presence, where we tend to return to familiar habits that include some degree of unconsciousness. Just as this gesture includes the consiousness of the fruits of our practice, in our next step, and the next, and the next are opportunities to bring this depth of awareness into our life.
The practice as a whole invites us into an immediacy of experience with our moving body, a welcoming of our embodied experience whatever it might be, that can continue through our day. The practice may have highlighted a limitation, a particular tension pattern that we can continue to attend to, to listen to and to understand. A state of being may have arisen that we can continue to be aware of. At times a particular movement or theme may capture our interest. We may be intrigued by the sun breath, or the pelvic pulses for example, and be drawn to do this through the day. We may be captured by a theme, such as the felt sense of alignment or fullness that can be a touch stone for our sensing practice for a time.
In this way the practice can become a very personal resource to support the continuity of our sensing practice, our listening within our body, and integrating our body wisdom into our inquiry and into living in general.
