Cante-Ista: Core Principles Deep Dive
The older we get, the more people we meet that have a different understanding of the world from our own. How does that come about? How can we live in the same place, see the same things and yet have a very different understanding of what everything is. When does it start to get different? And knowing why, how can we use that knowledge to help us navigate our existence? In this deep dive, we take a closer look at one of my favorite phrases from the Lakota Native Americans: Čhaŋté Ištá / Chun-tay ee-shdah / Cante Ista (original/pronunciation/modern) and how it can help understand what the English language is unable to express.
Most of our worldly understanding is acquired without our choice from the moment we are born. It is passed onto us by our society: from our parents, family members, relatives and friends, authority figures from schools to churches to government bodies. The ideas that are passed on, when successful, hook our attention, and when our attention has been hooked enough times it forms into our belief. When we believe it, it becomes our reality. The idea could be as simple as your name, what is right or wrong, and ever growing in complexity as our minds begin to filter out/in languages and patterns we see. Most ideas come to us with judgements already attached to them, based on the experience of the one that gives it to us from when they first acquired it or later reinforced.
The further in life we get, the more opportunities we have to change those beliefs. We encounter more and more with different sets of beliefs than our own. But at the same time, our ability to change becomes increasingly more difficult. Our beliefs can become so concrete and our attention so refined that we are less capable of distinguishing what is our belief and what is actually happening. We become limited in our abilities to appreciate different points of view, different collective experiences, different trains of thoughts/beliefs. This is where the limitation of the English language is seen, as we have no way to say or describe what it is like to experience something without also passing it through our beliefs, our judgements, our reality as we have learned to believe it is. We can borrow the wisdom of the Lakota Native Americans with Cante Ista - a phrase that means "the single eye of the heart."
The language of the heart is a spiritual language that doesn’t always translate into words but rather a combination of what we see, feel and experience. Beyond the physical form, the heart is a metaphorical place for spiritual and esoteric connection, of connections that have depth of meaning, of wisdom and of importance. In the English language, we use the phrases "know it by heart," "from the bottom of my heart" and "the heart of the matter" to express the depth of this connection. Just like the heart feels "the heart of the matter," the eye too simply sees what has happened, without passing judgment of good or bad. A single eye implies no alternative dimensions to the vision. Thus, the implication of the phrase is the practice of experiencing a moment of life fully conscious and present in the moment. It is a practice of viewing the full value of an experience before altering it with judgments or beliefs. It is having compassion for the existence of the experience, a compassion that allows us to honor the relationship of the moment that is shared and affecting more than just our own existence. Honoring and respecting this relationship grants us the opportunity of responsibility, of taking ownership of how we experience it and recognizing its effect beyond us. It is a beautiful way to live.
The way this affects my work and the way I have incorporated this as my core principle is by allowing each session to have the space to develop. Although your body may be similar, there are many ways it can be different session to session. I believe it is part of my job to be open to recognizing those differences and then to adjust my work accordingly to fit the needs of your body in the moment. To this aim, it does not help to have a cookie cutter protocol, or to consider previous discoveries too heavily. Your body is not a "low back problem," for example. Body history is important but so is seeing what is presently happening.
With the viewpoint of "cante ista," I free myself to find new links and patterns every time we work together. This may be one of the reasons why my work is interpreted as intelligent and why many have pointed out how attentive the work feels. On the flip side, my task is to also view your body's experience as separate from my own, even if my own experience may have been similar in the past, but also to draw upon my knowledge of human anatomy and kinesiology to help guide my hands and my theories.
PS: To delve further into this topic, I encourage you to read "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz, a Toltec (Aztec) nagual (shaman).