Exquisite Pulse

After some time lying down alongside the shoreline recently, really close to the water’s edge in a secluded rocky bay,  I sat up and peered into the sea. 

Gently pulsating there was a pink jellyfish.  So close. 

Moving even closer, I could see her movement was created by some meeting between the momentum of lapping waves and her own pulse.  As though sea and jelly form had been together for so long that they had taken on each other’s ways.  A marriage of wave and pulse.

A few days before I was reading about pulsation in ‘Basic Neurocellular patterns’, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s book about developmental movement, so it was really cool to see the example she used when talking about pulsation, up close and alive.  I recently found myself painting something which turned out to be jellyfish too, and also found these beautiful sculptures at a local fiesta.

As embryos, pulsation happened in the first month of our life, as fluids and membranes moved together to form our shape.  The pulse of our circulation began and our heart beat from about 5 weeks old.   

Pulsation is one of our first movements.  We pulse throughout our whole lives, from our heart to our guts, to our brains, we are pulsating creatures. 

In movement and rest we can feel this inner pulse.  We could give it our careful attention if we like, turn our ear inwards.

The word exquisite is rooted in the words ‘to inquire’, ‘to seek’ and ‘to carefully select’.  So by carefully seeking and inquiring into our own pulse, could we feel our own exquisite nature?  A kind of precise, intrinsic beauty of our life, experienced though the felt sense.

Exquisite not only in our moments of triumph and glory, success and poise, but exquisite to our core, in our awkwardness and hesitation too.  Exquisiteness in the very pulse of our life.