How deep are your roots?

I like to think we are all familiar with how plants and trees grow roots nice and deep into the soil in order to have the stability and strength to grow up nice and tall.  (Check out the amazing root lengths in this article!  Okay, I can’t resist, here’s one to see just how amazing these can be:)

This strength, stability, suppleness, lengthened flexibility, is also available and waiting to be fully present within our own bodies.

Today I worked with a client on this length, of finding the rooting of his legs deep into his core.  He was having the sensation that when he extended his legs out in front of him (footwork with leg springs, while lying supine), they seemed disconnected, loose and uncontrolled, unrooted.  With pressure from me as feedback and from the springs, he could find a portion of that connectedness, but only a portion.

We moved then into imagery, seeing his pelvis as the ground, legs as the tree trunks, his feet as the leaves and top branches, and then where does his root system grow to?  Did his legs just root only into his pelvis?

That idea did not give him enough connectedness in his femur to pelvis joint to feel in control.

When he took the image and expanded the roots, took them deep inside and up through his core, along his spine and up to his ribs, he could find it.

He found his rootedness.  He found the place where his legs didn’t fall off of him when extended.  He could reach his legs out to their fullest length and still be strong and settled with his pelvis, with the weight of his legs supported from deep within and not hanging willy nilly off of him.

We are living systems of connected and connective tissues.  We can root ourselves in all kind of ways.  The legs can root into our core, as we did here.  The arms can root into the shoulders and through there into the ribs.  Our neck roots down the entire length of our spine into our sacrum.  Our torso roots through our legs into the ground.

The additional beauty of rooting?  It does not lock us in place.  Roots are flexible and strongly supportive.  They keep us grounded and connected yet also allow for us to explore the full range of our mobility.  They lengthen, grow and shift to our needs, in the moment and long-term.

So go on, get rooted, and you will then discover just how much you can fly!