Floating is our earliest bodily memory. One of my first aerial teachers, Shelly reminded me that we all come from an aquatic origin - in the womb. This is a shared human experience. When we float in the hammock it can be a surprise to experience emotional resurfacing of deep body memory or sensations of incredible peace. Emotion comes from the root meaning ‘in-motion’, as we move in certain ways, we connect with different developmental experiences, some conscious, but many are unconscious. The many layers of who we are can slowly be known to us as we befriend emotion and sensation, understand it and acknowledge it passing. Below I share a floating meditation that you can use for yourself or your students in the aerial hammock seated poses of 'Womb' or 'Saddle'

Womb:

If it is comfortable for your neck allow your head to find the support of the pillar in front of you.

Close your eyes, return to the presence of breath. In this quiet and private place let your body curve into the in the gentle arms of the hammock. In the womb, Our spines begin as a single C-shaped curve. In AGY this pose is known as womb. A place where there is no past, no future, no space, no time, no doing…only being.

With your next release of breath witness all the events up to this point so far spiral up and out of your consciousness and be absorbed in this present moment. Feel where your limbs are held, the weight of them, the temperature of your skin.

Allow the return of a deep memory of peace and fulfillment. A memory of your aquatic origin.

In our first 3 weeks of existence in the womb we are completely fluid, there are no vessels to contain us, only an ebb and flow of circulation. As we form our brain and spinal cord become encased in pockets of fluid, as do all our organs and every cell of our bodies.

Feeling the ebb and flow now of your natural rhythm of breath imagine this quality of fluidity permeating your whole body.

Gradually bring awareness to the skin on the back of your body and feel the lungs expanding here as you inhale…..on your next inhalation let this breath fill you and bring you up to sitting.

Saddle sit:

Find a vertical position as though you have a golden thread drawing you upward from the top back corner of the skull. Let all natural curves of the spine are present, slightly moving inward in your low back, curving gently outward in your mid back and moving inward again in your cervical spine

Allow your gaze to turn toward the cheek bones or the space between the eyebrows.

Experience Breath as a River:

Visualise the breath moving up and down… from the hip bones, through the pelvis, the length of the spine, the center of the neck and head to the top of the skull. Imagine this continuously with no control and bypassing no areas of the journey. Watch the air flow like a stream of water, flowing over any kinks or stuck areas and softening and dissolving them.

Abdominal Breath

Ocean Breath x 5 with finger mudra (inhale open/exhale close)