23 February

I think these experiences show a couple of important things. Firstly that freedom is always freedom TO do something, not freedom *from* something. Whether it’s gravity or taxes, what some describe as limits or constraints are actually what makes us free. It’s because these astronauts have no relationship with other objects like we do that they don’t have the free functioning we have on Earth. Those relationships set them free. Secondly, these astronauts don’t feel much in their bodies. They say they feel like they’re floating in water. But they have the same amount of ‘gravity’ we do. This is the wow fact I’ve mentioned before - we can’t feel our bodies. What we feel when we think we’re feeling our bodies is the forces generated between our bodies, and other objects. That one wow fact can change your whole life, can you reframe your whole experience so that everything you feel in your ‘body’ - the weight and tensions and sore backs etc. - shifts to become the relationship you have with the Earth and the world around you? Can you take what you think is feelings of your body and start feeling them as forces instead? It shifts your entire experience out into space. You’re as ‘in space’ as these astronauts.