Transplanting a Honey Locust tree that had grown too near the house, I discovered once again how deep a tree can thrust its main root. At two and half feet, I hadn’t come close to the end. I either had to dig down past the foundation to the earth’s mantle, or sever the root right there. I chose the latter course.

The tree appears to be doing fine, and no doubt is busy growing its taproot down into new earth. But it started me wondering. We know trees as they appear, trunk and limbs and leaves, but that’s only half of the story. There is as much or more happening below the surface.

And I wondered how similar we are to trees. We have a head which sits on top, with eyes, ears, mouth and skin, senses which glean the shape and texture of the world around us; and underneath, a body which functions below our awareness, autonomous, independent, and living in a very different way.

Above the ground a tree bathes in sunlight, breathes the air, sways with the wind, moans in thunderstorms. Below the surface, the roots live surrounded by soil holding the nutrients which formed it, doing quite another sort of work.

Like trees, we live in two places at once. Our bodies are wedded to the earth, even though we can move freely over the surface. Our head is like the visible part of a tree, the body lives underneath awareness. When our feet connect with the earth, it’s as if our tap root can reach down to the well of our underground aquifer.

The domain of the body takes care of breathing, sleeping, digesting, building muscle, but is also a deep reservoir of thought and feeling that we touch only in hypnosis, dreams, or deep trances.

Science is only beginning to understand how much the body accomplishes below the conscious level to make the entirety of a human being.

Tor Norretranders, in his fascinating book The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size, describes an experiment in which subjects were asked to move, say, an arm. They could indicate (through ingenious methods precise to the millisecond) exactly when they decided to move it. Meanwhile, electrodes attached to the same motor function area in the brain indicated when the arm movement actually occurred.

The researchers found to their amazement that the body consistently began the motion a half-second before the subject thought about making it!

It is as if the body says to the head, “Look, I just saw a lion beginning its fatal charge toward us. Since you were busy, I’ve already started our feet moving. Just thought I’d let you know.” The body initiates the action; the head just watches the movie.

Yoga, tai chi, and other practices stress the importance of bare feet touching earth, or at least floor. (Preferably wood floors ~ from trees!) Grounding ourselves puts us in touch with the hidden part of our body that is the true source of our ability to interact with the world. I know for me, when I’m feeling too “up in the air”, ethereal, out of touch, it is standing rooted to the ground which balances me. Brings me down to, and deep into, the soil that made me.

Tired and sweaty, my shoes caked in dirt, I stand beside the newly planted Honey Locust, my hands clasping the slender trunk. Eyes closed, I send my thoughts down to where our two bodies are already growing their roots deep, deep into the nourishing mother core.

In my poem “The Body” I give voice to these ideas:

The Body

My body knows exactly what I need.
I awaken with the dawn and we ride,
me and my marvelously competent young steed.

On his brow the sweat will soon appear
as I put him through his paces in the field.
He knows the course much better than the I

which believes it is the all of me will likely ever know.
I let him lead while I loosely hold the reins
for when I interfere it leads to falls.

Galloping to task he is awesome to behold,
ever-present in a way I’ve never mastered.
Soon the wood is chopped, water carried.

At dusk it’s to the barn, a bowl of oats,
a glass of red, some reading, conversation
then the two of us repair to stable bed.

This is when he truly shows his worth
for in the subtle light his bones display
to my vision all that we are made of:

moons, pixies, frogs and trees, toy soldiers,
puddles, mushrooms, tangled up in stardust
held aloft by innocence and awe.

All these things and many more besides
toss and tumble ‘round us in the dark
as the two of us enfold and mesh

and honor what we are to one another.
While we dream in the quietude of slumber,
high above our head we build tomorrow’s

constellation on the sable velvet
of the sky, where pips of light display
the shape of all we’ll soon become.

When dawn arrives to paint the world in bliss,
we celebrate each other in what may be the
body’s finest flower—a satisfying poem such as this.