This riff on resonance is part of the Healing Circle series I am currently leading. I hope you enjoy it!
Why Resonance?
Resonance practice is about being present with what is in service of healing, relating, and discovering right relationship with our ecosystem and with Nature. Resonating contributes to informing us about what is aligned for us, so we can make choices towards being in alignment with our deeper wisdom and our integrity.
Resonance is connected with right use of our energy / effort. When we are operating from our survival strategies (wounds from our childhood environments which were impacted by previous generations and the wider ecosystemic environment), we are often applying our efforts in ways that are not regenerative. For example, working harder or behaving in specific ways to get needed attention, or to keep the peace, or to prevent unwanted attention, or to make our experience as okay as possible for us as young children. Resonance practice can help us discern these kinds of patterns, so we can feel (resonate) with the outdated functions operating underneath the pattern, which allows us to outgrow the adaptive behaviors which were once so necessary.
Resonance is connected with our resilience and our belonging. As we recognize and somatically connect with the traumatized internal structures of our survival strategies, they can dissolve and our internal home-base rests more in the natural flow of life through us, which is innately resilient and creative. As survival strategies melt, we become more ourselves and feel more connected with our belonging which was here all along, even though it was covered over for some very good reasons. Resonating practice over time leads to powerful shifts.
Resonance, How?
Resonance is connected to embodying - being non-judgmentally present in our bodies; being with the sensations and inner movements we experience. Paradoxically, resonance practice includes that we may sometimes experience parts of our bodies as numb or not easy to sense. A regular meditation practice which focuses on body-sensing can be helpful, as over time we discover that connecting with our bodies is an ever-changing, ever-developing process. Not just because our bodies age, but because our awareness capacities develop and evolve with practice. The more we heal, the more intimately we contact the experience of being alive in our bodies.
Life happens through our bodies. Our bodies are like an orchestral instrument, with life as the movement which vibrates the instrument. At the same time, our bodies are the life movement itself. When we connect somatically, we discover that sensations are moving, and we gradually experience our (inner) bodies more and more as movement.
Earth Sensing and Ancient Time
Intentionally resonating with the Earth and including grounding in our body sensing practice can put us in touch with the consciousness of ancient time. The Earth is much older than we are, and we are interconnected with our planet. We are an expression of the planet. As we deepen our sensing of Earth through our bodies, we tap into resilience and accumulated wisdom. This practice contributes to decolonializing our belief / felt sense of ourselves as separate beings that have to heal and cope and achieve and become all by ourselves. Expanding the experience of embodiment to be more inclusive of the natural world and our ecosystem is healing and restorative. We can learn about movement from resonating with Nature, which has a different texture and quality of movement through our bodies than we may usually experience in daily life.
Edge Awareness
Sensing our bodies as a movement, we become more aware of places in our somatic experience that feel separate from our inner movements – that are frozen, numb, or held apart somehow. We might name this an edge: where some places in us are moving and flowing, and in another place something feels inaccessible, frozen, numb, or held apart.
Our edges are a fertile ground in many ways.
An interesting contemplation practice is to witness what happens for us when we meet an edge. What happens in our bodies, our sensations. What happens emotionally. What happens mentally. What happens in our sense of spaciousness, and in the relational space between ourselves and another.
Each time we grow our development, or something heals, what was previously an edge becomes restored into a movement flow.
To practice resonance as a resilience practice, I invite you to explore connecting with what is moving -- what is flowing -- in your body as your baseline of somatic meditation. This creates a habit to replenish and cultivate resourcing even when approaching a current edge. Through choosing to consciously resonate with what is flowing, we strengthen our agency: our access to conscious choice about when we dive into unpacking what is enfolded in our experience of an edge, and when we don’t dive in in a given moment. Not with an intention to avoid or hide from edges which need our attention, but to dive in when we have the right conditions to do so whenever that’s possible. Sometimes people on a healing path unconsciously pressure themselves to (try to) resolve every edge immediately, one after another after another, without allowing the space needed to rest, to integrate, and to enjoy.
And of course, sometimes life thrusts us into our edges, and in that case, we can claim our agency by discovering how we can relate with our experience. We can resonate with what is happening through the 3 sync meditation so we can attune with sensing, feeling, and witnessing our thinking. We can open to discovering what we need and want. We can intend and open to learning about how to organize ourselves to meet life ife in a compassionate and empowered way, whatever comes.
I invite you to explore and play with resonance, learning about your present capacity to resonate, noticing your edges, and widening your capacity to resonate in more of more of the experiences in your life and ecosystems.
Blessings!
