Working on the Dog

I love taking my dog for a walk. It's our time to connect, explore and enjoy a short journey. I use this time to keep my human brain active by watching Cali walk. My eyes are first drawn to the contra lateral movement of her spine. The spiraling, zig-zag of movement that makes her belly swing from side to side as if unattached to the hind legs or shoulders. I am always thrown into baffling amazement when I scan down to her hips and watch three-dimensionality expressed. Every axis of space is occupied by a rhythmic, precise movement that somehow does not belong to the rest of the dog. Yet here she is walking beside me tung flapping in the wind, lips pulled back resembling a smile, eyes squinting in the sun. Now, the Cali-Girl's head..... Sometimes it bounces up and down, other times it is perfectly still. The stillness does not denote the fact that the rest of the dog is moving in so many directions at once, spirals, zig-zags, prancing legs, sauntering shoulders, whipping tail, heaving chest. Cali's movement is non inhibited, coordinated perception. She is just being. Totally unaware or concerned with how she looks, weather she is doing it right, good enough or not, successful enough, etc. Freedom. 

This has taught me how to watch humans walk with more precision. We move with a lot more restriction than most dogs. We hold ourselves still in many parts of our bodies. Men don't sway there hips. Women don't lift there chests. Our hips move in as many axis of space as my dog but we choose one over the others and commit to it as if this were the law of survival. If I dare to mimic what it is that I am seeing on the streets I have to pull myself in very tight, rigid, erect, tucked under, collapsed. And when I do this I can feel that I am using a lot of my energy reserve. I can feel that my body is not in harmony with my environment. And if I remain in this restriction for any length of time my mind begins to become rigid as well. I am a little less forgiving. I find myself reacting to things that I do not wish to pay mind to. Stress adheres to me instead of deflecting off of me. 

Is this what most of the world lives in on a daily basis?