Natural spirals of life

  Trees growing in spirals

As we spend so much of our time in man-made environments, from home to office and the car, it’s easy to forget that the natural world is not made of straight lines, but of curves and to be more precise spirals.

If we look at the natural world around us we can see that plants, trees and climbing creepers naturally spiral towards the sun as they grow. Antelope horns, shells of sea creatures and snails are all spiral in form, water drains away in a helical fashion.  Free-falling objects fall in a spiralling motion as do rain drops on a windless day.

  Spiral-nautilus

Our muscles It’s also interesting to note, in ourselves, that with our 500 or so muscles, they are not aligned in straight lines either, and that they overlap, link and work together….in a spiralling way; two spiral arrangements of muscle that mirror each other.  There is indeed a double muscle spiral arangement of muscles that criss-cross our body and co-ordinate together to move and support us.

When we develop habits of stiffening, slouching or stooping, it is extremely unlikely that we do so evenly, but with greater tendency towards one side or another.  We tend to be right handed or left, so muscles become more developed on one side than the other, and the dominant side and spiral of contractions twist us over and round.

  So if we have a stoop, it’s likely that we’re in a twist too; we shorten downwards and in a helical manner.  In order for us to ‘straighten up’ we will need to ‘uncurl’ and undo the spiral. We will indeed uncurl in a helical fashion too, as we spiral upwards unfurling the curl to become evenly balanced and expanded in stature.  But to actually try and physically adjust ourselves and try and ‘do’ this wouldn’t work in practice because we would not manage to calculate the degrees of twist.   Nor is our sensory perception sufficlently finely tuned to sense what is required.  And the change may feel quite strange and even ‘wrong’ as it doesn’t fit with our distorted kinaesthetic sense that has been affected by a lifetime of habit.

The answer is to think of the direction where you want to be.   That is up tall.   In other words, think of ‘up’ being the direction you want to go in, in order to ‘straighten up’ but don’t actually ‘do’ the movement.  So firstly release unnecessary tension by thinking ‘free’; let go of tensions that may be pulling you down, then send your head in that direction….upwards with thoughtful intention, and let your body unfurl itself.  Nature will take care of the rest as we’re ‘designed’ to function in a lengthening and expansive manner.  Avoid pushing up as this will cause stiffness. Just think forward and up and let the wonder of your body do the rest as you unfurl and spiral upwards to your full height and stature.