Cycle of fulfillment, how we get our needs met

Cycle of fulfillment, how we get our needs met

How we nourish ourselves and get our needs met

Cycle of fulfillment from Body-Mind Centering:

Yield > push > reach > take hold (grab) > and pull in

Julie Motz' Hands of Life encouraged me to look up several topics I had not explored in depth. One of them was Body-Mind Centering. I bought the big new anthology book and did find one concept strikingly useful for my understanding of how we get our needs met, the cycle of movement behaviors healthy people use to nourish ourself. You can find what I read on pages 48-49 of the large paperback, Exploring Body-Mind Centering.

What follows here is material from pages 48-49, thru my own filter and expanded with my own comments. The technical word for this is paraphrase. Additions I'm not altogether sure of [are in brackets]. Comments always invited.

To understand how the human developmental action cycle functions, watch this cycle in action with any infant child in the crawling stage, before they get interested in walking.

Take a small toy and play with the baby but don't give it to her yet. As the baby begins to become aware of the toy through stimulation of the senses, she yields and takes in the new information, until she can become aware of the toy as best she can without holding it. As "the new thing" comes in, thru her senses, she gathers interest in holding the toy herself.

With the baby on the floor and able to crawl, put the toy that now has her interest in front of her but out of immediate reach. Let's posit: the baby now wants the toy. So she gathers energy and first pushes down into the support of the Earth. She has learned the Earth will push back and propel her towards the toy. This push back from the Earth moves up thru her body, sequencing out her head and tail, giving her the support to acquire the toy.

Let's posit she now looks with awareness at the toy and perhaps also back and forth between you and the toy, to see if acquiring the toy has any "cost" or consequence from your side.

Watch as she reaches out and takes hold of the toy. Feel her simple naked grasp; feel her pulling force, grabbing and pulling the toy towards herself for closer inspection.

Notice now how she yields and softens again to take in more detail from the toy in this close-up encounter. She explores its qualities and "benefits" deciding whether she likes the toy or not. She may decide she likes it and carry it around with her; or, push it away and explore elsewhere.

Whichever end result, our baby has demonstrated the natural progression of

yield > push > reach > take hold [grab] > and pull in.

It is repeated over and over as young ones explores their environment.

...By feeling [curiosity then] desire, and being able to sequence towards completion of her desire, she develops confidence and capacity to get her needs met in the material world.

Some mental-emotional disturbances to this sequence are easy to imagine. Each action in the sequence needs the underlying support of the previous action. Push needs active yield underneath so that it is organic and healthy. If active yield is lacking--meaning tissue tone is too taut or too collapsed--it will cause the push to be too demanding. In this case, we see crawling babies "skid" in their jammies, pushing with their legs and feet but not propelled forward because friction-contact with the floor is miscalculated.

Active yield can be lacking in the form of too weak, muscle tone is applied too weakly, too little effort is applied to pushing. Without healthy push, the capacity to reach out is affected. Humans learn thru repetition and if I don't get to hold what I reach out to grasp too often, a child can lean not go directly for what she wants, or can make incessant attempts at a goal and never be satisfied. Reach needs free-flowing, supported push to reach out fully with support; and yet, not over-reach, not overextend.

Imagine what happens when this sequence is interrupted, in both adults and children. Most often, the actions gets interrupted thru fairly normal circumstances. I worked with one person who had a [the author goes on with an example far afield from the above and then to her own personal experience; again, somewhat distant from the above archetypal pattern.]

What I realize is this cycle of nourishment, is active not only physically, but emotionally and mentally as well ~ bd