The Mother Stones

Nature, Embodiment and the Impact of Childhood Expression on Meaningful Movement

They were the size of ostrich eggs, smooth and round. And moving, always moving. That first step down to the beach from the path in front of my parents’ home betrayed the fact that, despite appearances, this was not solid ground. It was a gauntlet, a log rolling game waiting to initiate its chosen ones. 

‘“How well do you want to know me?” the stones ask as they give way again and again. “How well do you want to know yourself?”

I was eight years old when my feet first touched these stones that tell the story of my childhood. By the end of that first island summer, and after what must have been a hundred passes over the beach, I had become an expert stone walker. My child’s body, agile and responsive, learned the dance of the stones quickly so that in time I was no longer stepping on them so much as skating my way across them. Their movement had become my movement, our rhythms one. 

Beyond the stone gauntlet lay the relative safety of a stretch of sandstone. Unlike the ostrich stones, this was solid (though often covered in seaweed!) and other-worldly. With the tide just right, this moonscape offered up the most exquisite rock jumping, an activity we kids eagerly awaited most Summer nights. So special was the rock jumping tide that we would stop everything we were doing at that moment to rush down to the beach when it arrived. The sun often sat low in the sky as the rocks were slowly consumed by the sea. On a deck somewhere close by, a parent or grandparent kept an eye on us as we raced the moon’s pull on the ocean, coated in salt, sweat and sand from the day’s adventures. It was a kind of bliss expressed through movement.

There is simply no place on this earth my body knows better than this 30-meter stretch of coastline, no feeling more familiar than the give of those round rocks under my feet. Over forty years later my body still intuits the distance from one moon-stone mound to the next, the same anxiety bubbling up as the advancing tide makes each dry landing more ambitious than the last.

My body remembers without remembering.

This is because I am of this place. This particular stretch of sea and shoreline raised me. Perhaps more than my own mother and father. It formed me, molding the expression of my essence. It comforted me, the waves lapping at the shore somehow infusing their whispers of truth into the deepest parts of my being; I would always be ok.

Coming of age on the island made it so movement was integrated into my days through play and exploration.The stones were a pivotal part of that. Like so many children, I experienced this movement as organic, natural. No separation existed, only a full immersion of being through imagination and the exploration of the elements around me.

My friend and I, scrambling across the stones in order to be at the helm of an impossibly luxurious cruise ship with its various driftwood controls and seaweed decor.

Two teenagers, spending all day dragging log after log from every corner of the beach in order to build the neighbourhood’s most unsinkable battle raft.

My father and I, pulling our row boat across my beloved stones at dusk, marking the end of another grand fishing expedition. (A prized salmon catch would accompany us home on occasion but most often we would arrive empty handed and down a lure or two).

I watched the log structures change each year as they were rearranged by the winter storms; however, the stones remained in place, steadfast in their teachings, unrelenting in their instability. Their hollow knocking under foot was a soundtrack of my youth, singing to me of my own divinity, reminding me that through my body I express my soul.

The stones provide the blueprint for meaningful movement.

The embodied memories of this time are what I channel even as I am participating in the seemingly mundane activity of “exercising”. And while it’s considerably more challenging as an adult to lose myself completely in movement the way I used to as a curious child, I am satisfied by the fleeting moments. I am grateful for the brief respite from our complex world and the burden of reconciling my place within it. 

 I still use my imagination all the time.

Shadow boxing in my living room, my jab cross combos prepare me for a fast approaching title bout in the ring. I move energy and mountains with my roundhouse kicks.

On my Peleton, I am sometimes a charming, Instagram- famous instructor taking folks through their 80’s deep cuts class and regaling them with stories about slow dancing in the gymnasium with my middle school crush.

Out on the trails, my imagination has me farther from civilisation than I actually am. Time stamps blur as I dial into each foot fall or pedal stroke, listening deeply to the language of the trees and taking in the medicine of the raven’s call. 

I am reminded in these moments of the ancient origins of movement and the magic I carry through the motion of my body. 

This is the beauty of intention in movement with the use of the stones' teachings as guidance. The creation of even fleeting moments of immersion are enough to spark the joy that calls me back to it time and again. 

This is also the gift of divestment, from a fitness culture narrative that imprinted onto me as a young woman. This narrative sent no invitation to joy or expression but instead made VIP party guests of only punishment and control.

I am grateful for these teachings from so long ago. Grateful that I was able to find my way back to them after decades of disorder. And I am most grateful for a body still capable of finding its way across that special stretch of beach even if my arms are splayed out to the side for balance more so than they ever were in my youth.   

As for the stones, they continue their vigil. Lying in wait for the next unsuspecting seeker who finds themselves suddenly thrown off balance and ready to hear two simple and timeless questions.

How well do you want to know me?

How well do you want to know yourself?