Portals to Possibility

In a difficult moment, sometimes something opens unexpectedly.  What a blessing this can be.  Not that the difficult experience is necessarily a blessing.  It may or may not be.  However, the opening – the discovery of a portal to possibility – can be a blessing.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

In hurt moments we often feel compressed.  Maybe we have hurt feelings or experience a disconnection in one way or another. Whatever the situation, we might feel sadness, fear, anger, shame, or some combination.   If we have an embodiment practice, we might notice stress arising somatically – a tightening somewhere such as the chest, belly, or back. Perhaps we become numb to our emotions or sensations.  We might notice stress in our thinking: either the pace of thinking might pick up, seem internally louder, or the content of our thoughts might feel distressing.  

A powerful contemplation to try on, is:  How do I treat myself when I feel stressed or hurt? 

These internal experiences are a part of the human experience.  Recognizing when we’re stressed is an important step towards discovering how to become responsive to our experience.  Being responsive to our stress does not imply figuring it out alone:  sometimes responsiveness means realizing we need support.   

It feels important to me to acknowledge that the situations I am writing about are within a context of privilege.  For those who are in dangerous situations right now, whether that’s interpersonal, systemically oppressive, in a collective situation like a war or other ongoing emergency, the space to reflect may be much more limited or not possible at all.  

This awareness of our state of stress itself can create an opening.  We often have habitual ways of coping with stress or feelings we find difficult.  These strategies may have been around a long time; perhaps since childhood, or they might even be ancestral patterns.  Stress responses tend to operate under our conscious awareness.  This is not necessarily a bad thing.  Whatever our coping strategies are, they are part of how we made it to this moment.  And what worked for us in the past may not necessarily be how we’d like to consciously choose to respond to stress going forward.  

Pausing to consciously acknowledge our stressful state may help us shift gears and make more contact with our felt experience.  When we have the capacity to compassionately and curiously turn towards how we are in our bodies, breathing, and emotions, we deepen self-contact.  We can potentially learn something about how the sacred life force is moving / not moving through us in that moment.  Shifting our orientation towards our experience can create the possibility of discovery and inner restoration.   What was stuck can move.  What was hidden can come into the light of presence.  What was hurt can be tended to.  What was too much can gradually be included and integrated.  What we've held alone can begin to be shared.  When more of us is included in our wholeness, more becomes possible for us.  

A Riff on Resonance: A Foundational Principle of Healing

 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!

Steadiness and Ease, Yoga Sutras style

The yoga sutras encourage us to cultivate two qualities in order to master yoga. The sanskrit is sthiram and sukham, which is often translated to steadiness and ease.  Cultivating these qualities applies to the physical and internal practice of yoga poses, and can be explored in meditation, and in our lives.  It's interesting to me that some discoveries in neuroscience and psychology about attachment, human development, trauma healing and the nervous system guide us in a similar direction.  

On the physical level, steadiness refers to grounding, to finding a good foundation in the pose from the ground up. Steadiness allows us to sustain, with a quality of strength free of rigidity or force: not going against ourselves in any way.  On a more subtle level steadiness implies self connection - attentive to our minds, and connecting with our hearts, and even deeper with our values, purpose, or soul.  When we are connected with what is essential we may draw upon an innate quality of steadiness, an inner ground of being.  

Ease implies a quality of spaciousness with a kind or compassionate orientation towards our experience.  In this context, ease is about cultivating right effort in our practice - neither forceful nor lackadaisical, either of which will disengage us. Ease isn’t about avoiding;  it’s about a way of being with.  Ease also implies openness to trust our process, or trust life.  Our individual paths of trusting can be quite diverse.  Balancing and savoring the breath supports us with both steadiness and ease.  Cultivating steadiness and ease creates a physical and internal environment where joy and discovery can emerge.  

Info about my weekly online Yoga & Meditation classes

Responding to Fear is Love & the Most Important Step

The most important step is the one beneath our feet. 

I love growth and evolutionary processes.  I named my business Transformation Playground because I like remembering that there are a multitude of ways to return home to ourselves, restore, discover, transform, create and connect.  I like remembering that transforming can be playful!

And, sometimes I get impatient and want to have a different experience, be further along in my journey, or for other people to be different.  In the moments I am not accepting and inhabiting where and how I am right here, right now, fear is present. 

Fear is a big deal, and must be met, felt, respected, and responded to.  Suppressed fear fragments perception and diminishes possibilities and presence.  Another way to say it is, suppressed fear creates absence, and when we are absent, we turn away from connecting to what is.  

Fear is an emotion which provides an important developmental, evolutionary function -- protection and connection.  In early life, when we've crawled or walked as far from our caregivers as we're ready to, fear calls us to reconnect and return to the lap of our caregiver.

As adults, when we're not aware that we're afraid, we can't respond appropriately as it's hard to respond to something we're not directly aware of.  Also, when we're not aware that we are afraid, our capacity for discernment about what's happening in and around us is reduced -- increasing our vulnerability to manipulation or danger. Depending on how our nervous systems cope with fear, we may shut down, avoid what we need to face, or become reactive and more prone to fighting and violence. 

It's important to acknowledge that fear-related trauma responses such as numbing, avoiding, freezing, and shutting down part of our nervous system are intelligent functions to put aside what we are unable to deal with in the moment.  Our nervous systems have evolved to allow us the capacity to hold unprocessed fear until we have the space and support to allow it to move through.  This is amazing!  Seen through this context, the trauma response is not a problem, it's a gift.  (I want to make clear that I'm not saying that whatever caused the trauma was a gift.  Violence, war, racism, neglect, absence, environmental abuse, genocides, abuses of power, etc. are manifestations of separation which must be attended to and restored individually, collectively and globally.)

Seen in this context, fear is not the opposite of love.  Fear is an emotion which is an expression of love:  an emotion of connection and returning home to ourselves.  

Identity as a Verb

I've long been interested in various systems to explore identity, such as yoga, the enneagram, astrology, archetypes, defensive character structures, Myers & Briggs, personas, and ego / essence.  I've found each of these useful.  And, my experience is that each system can become an obstacle if I fixate on a identify definition which I perceive as 'me' or 'not me.'

The ancient tradition of yoga suggests that we may not be who we think we are.  For example, a quote by Ramana Maharshi is: “The question, ‘who am I?’ is not really meant to get an answer, the question ‘who am I?’ is meant to dissolve the questioner.”

What is particularly interesting to me is shifting identity from a noun to a verb.  Verbing identity is a process of exploring how we organize ourselves in a given moment.  Habitual ways of organizing were originally developed in response to something from the past (our past difficulties, early environments, or even ancestral or cultural difficulties).  Habitual, repetitive ways of organizing identity can unconsciously continue to frame our perceptions and eliminate our conscious choice as long as it is invisible to us.  

Inquiry about how we are verbing identity can be through any system, such as the ones I mentioned above in my first sentence, with the intention to use the system as a gateway to understanding how we are relating.  Inquiry in service of what we want for ourselves, connected with somatic presencing, allows an unfolding self-intimacy resulting in new possibilities we can gently move toward as we become aware of them.

How cool is that?!

Recognizing, Witnessing & Healing Trauma

One of the ways we can understand how trauma is manifesting in our world today is to look at ways we separate from one another.  Consider the many conversations that are polarized, on topics such as: politics, COVID-19, religion.  We here in the U.S. +hold many different perspectives and beliefs about our current situations.  Even when we can agree on the current situation, we often polarize on ways to create change. In addition, we tend to believe that we have the right perspective, which leads us to lose curiosity and believe that others are wrong. Among us, we seem to hold quite different ideas of what is in integrity, what is true, and what is just.  

My understanding is that aligning with truth, with justice and with care is an ongoing whole-bodied experience.  We can begin by noticing our experience of body sensations, the state of our nervous system, our emotions and heart openness or closure, our thinking, connection with essence, the divine, and what we hold most dear.  We can witness:  Is our awareness holistic and inclusive of these various aspects of ourselves?  The polarizations in the world tend to exist inside us as well in some form, in the ways we include or exclude aspects of ourselves as well as levels of development.  An additional level of complexity is presence with our whole selves even as we relate with others, and with the systems of our culture.

With all the complexity of relating inside and with others, it’s easy to blame someone else or even ourselves for how we participate or don’t participate in life.  Blame may offer a temporary reprieve from the discomfort of whatever is not working, however since blame does not address the source of an issue, blaming tends to keep issues recycling.  Through witnessing ourselves and the world around us, new possibilities and choices gradually emerge.  Witnessing is a whole-body activity of seeing, feeling, and sensing what is happening, growing our capacity to discover an aligned response which is essentially creative.  From our wholeness and grounded presence, we can turn toward whatever is not working inside or around us, and respond, choose, create, and invite collaboration. 

Collective trauma makes itself known to us as symptoms of disconnection, polarization, harm, lack of balance, stuckness, and injustice in our societal systems and social norms.  For example, when a child asks a question about why something that doesn’t make sense is the way it is, and we answer, “that’s just how it’s always been,” we are likely touching on a collective trauma symptom.  

To heal, restore wholeness, and create systems that are grounded in integrity and also responsive will likely take many individuals practicing on their own and together to create a body of coherence that can begin to witness our collective issues.  We will need to learn to see to the root of things with wisdom and not blame, so we can create accountability, healing, and systemic change and restoration for people who have been systemically oppressed or systemically oppressive.  

And so we practice…

~~

Introduction to Listening & Subtle Competencies for Healing

I'm offering two free sessions.  Please pre-register to attend either at least one day in advance:   * Thursday, February 4 @ 7pm CST *  Tuesday, February 9 @ 9am CST

Belonging and Relational Structure

In my studies with Thomas Huebl, I am learning about space, energy and structure.  I've studied these qualities through other lenses such as Yoga in the Himalayan tradition and the work of the Hendricks, and always find it interesting to bring in new perspectives.  

Space correlates with being-ness, the root chakra, and the right and space to be here in life. It also connects us with stillness, consciousness and the capacity to witness.  Energy correlates with becoming, learning and evolving, movement up the spine, and movement generally.  There are many aspects of structure such as things that make up the material world and most intimately, our physical body, which is a complex, evolutionary structure.  Structure correlates with the manifestation of life into form, with the horizontal field of connecting with others, and our belonging in life.    

In this post, I want to focus on the structure of belonging, which is the aspect of our relational networks and the ways we are connected with other people, animals, our environment, our planet, and the systems that are part of our lives today.  Examples of systems include governments, voting processes, medical care, money and banking systems, etc. So often when we think of these larger structures which began long before we were born, we feel disconnected from them and see them as something other than ourselves which we cannot impact.  From an energetic point of view, these structures are actually part of us, and we are part of them.  We are always contributing something to the structures of our lives, and they are contributing something to our lives.  (Part of the study of systemic oppression is how the systems we live in impact different groups of people differently, as well as the history and purpose of such differences.)  When we believe we are disconnected, nonessential or helpless related to our relational structures and systems, what we contribute is our absence.  

Absence is a symptom of trauma, and we all carry some trauma.  In other words, we all carry many or fewer symptoms of separation or absence within and around us.  This is not bad, per se, as absence serves a function.  When we or our ancestors were unable to face and deal with something in an integrated way, separation occurred.  When it was too much to process, the human nervous system wisely numbed what was overwhelming and could put our survival or functioning at risk.  Today we can call this absence (or trauma).  

Turning toward our own absence related to the structures around us is the first step toward healing and restoration. What we can (begin to) witness can begin to move, heal, and gradually be reconnected into wholeness.  

Even when we cannot see the results of our participation with the systems around us, our contribution always matters regardless of how small or insignificant it may seem.  Since we are in effect an individual manifestation of life, nature, and of the divine, it is up to us to discover what is our appropriate relation, participation and contribution to the structures in and around us.   

When we discover and enact our unique participation with our relational structures and systems, we contribute to healing our belonging.  Since each being alive in this moment belongs to life, restoring our belonging through right relationship ripples out and contributes to restoring belonging for all of us.  I believe our individual movements to participate and restore right relation with our structures and systems is fundamentally our purpose, each in our own unique way.  

May this year be a year when we all fine-tune our presence so that our unique participation contributes a healing, restorative flow into the structures in our beautiful world. 

Wise Body: Nature's Expression through Us

Sometimes we ask someone, how old are you?  We tend to think of how old our particular body is, and how many years since we were born.  I am 56 years old or 20 years old or 80, etc.  

Another perspective involves taking a longer view.  Our ancestors have been around for about six million years, and the modern form of humans for about 200,000 years.* Each person that is born comes into life at a particular moment in history, and carries the benefits and wisdom developed up to that point.  Our bodies carry the impacts of whatever historical and collective trauma experiences were not yet able to be fully integrated.   We also carry resilience and wisdom and a healing impulse.  Our bodies are an expression of nature through us as individuals. 

What's it like to contemplate nature and the environment not as out there, but also as in here, and right here as my body and yours?  I find it interesting to note how and when I do feel interconnected and a part of nature, and also when I don't, and to wonder about that seeming gap.  In those moments, am I simply numb to the connection between me, my body, my emotions, and nature?  Are you?  Are we all numb, to some extent?  

Numbing is not wrong.  It's a protective function which is one of the symptoms of trauma.  When something is too overwhelming for our nervous systems to process or was too overwhelming at some point in the recent or distant past, numbing allows a portion of the nervous system to be put aside in a sense, so that functioning can continue.  Discovering how we experience numbing and disconnection from our bodies and from nature is a healing movement, and a foundational step to heal the disconnection and move toward wholeness and integration.   

Integrating and deepening our connection to our bodies is easier together.  You're invited to join me for a yoga class, or an embodiment session, if that resonates for you.  Visit my website for details and information. 

* From an article on University Today.

Yoga as Unity

In the tantric philosophy of yoga, yoga means wholeness, to yoke or join together.  This is distinct from the classical yoga definition which orients to the goal of kaivalya:  to abide in one's soul (and not placing as much value on the more transitory aspects of humanity, such as our bodies, emotions, and thoughts).  

Personally, my practice of yoga and meditation is geared toward the tantric aspect of wholeness and integration, bringing our souls / essential selves fully into our bodies, our relationships, and into the world.  One of the ways we can practice to embody the tantric philosophy of wholeness and interconnectedness, is to join together the different aspects of ourselves. To be human includes how we:

- Inhabit our human bodies

- Befriend and connect with our emotions

- Discover our needs and values

- Honor our vulnerabilities as well as our strengths and gifts 

- Honor the past and how we got here

- Be in touch with love and purpose and light and possibility

- To include the places where we have less development and unconscious patterns, (both personal & collective)

- Open to learning and to witness our impact on others,  

- Align our actions with all these aspects of ourselves in a way that serves our connection, sense of belonging, growth, love, and serves the well-being of all of us.

It's not a small goal, this turning toward wholeness!  Living our yoga is a process not a destination.  Every moment is an invitation to start again.  Unity is a process, and the first step is with our most intimate circle of intimacy - our own selves.

Our practice is quite simple really even as practice includes all aspects of ourselves in some way.  Breath and movement and stillness, sensing and feeling, refining our perception, discovering, and most of all caring for ourselves compassionately. Each of us is an inseparable part of the whole that is comprised of each of us, all other species and nature itself.  We practice to remember, to turn toward the embodiment of this yoga as unity: day by day, moment by moment, breath by breath.

You can find my current classes, and other ways to work with me, here.

Today's meditation journey to stillness, and beyond.

Do you know that experience of feeling crowded on the inside?  Too much stuff going on.... inside, around you....  And, at the same time a strong urge to keep going, keep moving, do this, do that, do more. 

Today my choice is to stop.

Sit here.

Connect. 

Breathe. 

Notice my breath, and the feeling of my body sitting on the couch, one foot curled under, and one hanging down toward the floor.  Learning back.  The sun is shining through the windows, My houseplants seem to be drinking it in, and the shrub outside is moving gently in the breeze.  The heater just kicked on.  An airplane is flying by.  Two cars just drove down the street alongside my home.

Breathe. 

I admire the pretty colors of the room around me. 

Breathe. 

Settle.  With a hand over my heart, I feel my heartbeat.  My exhalation is lengthening.  My jaw just relaxed a bit and my shoulders just dropped down and back. 

Turning toward inner movements, I can feel my body sensations.  My emotions seem to be slowing down and spreading out, a gentle tingling, flowing movement throughout my inner body.  Thoughts seem to be relaxing down and in like my body resting in a hammock. 

mmmmmmmmmmmm
And now what?

Still feeling my inner body, and also seeing the room around me.  Eyes sometimes closing, sometimes opening.  Breathing.

I'm becoming aware of spaciousness around and through me. 

And something else. 

A tinge of heaviness in and through the space.  I'm tired.  It's like looking through a heavy blanket.  Clear, but heavy. 

mmmmmmmmmmmmm
Welcome, welcome.

I notice spaciousness again.  The heavy inner blanket thing is dissolving.
mmmmmmmmmm

I feel a light something, which I'll call clarity, and has a kind of a sparkle to it. 
Welcome, welcome. 

Ahhhh, stillness. 

A sense of an anchor, a magnetic sensation, connecting the base of my body down toward the center of the earth.  Simultaneously, an opening, tingly funnel sensation upward, above the crown of my head. 

mmmmmmmmm
I'll rest here a while.

Now a dullness, emerging around and through my lower body.  hmmmmmm
Welcome, welcome.

Eventual dissolution and awareness of that central magnetic channel.

Turning toward vastness, opening into the infinite.
hmmmmmmm, What is calling me?  What wants my attention?

Fire.  I had an image of fire, and the thought of the fires in Australia.
Now grief, a heavy heart.
Welcome, welcome.  I will host this experience too, as best I can, as I do whatever comes into my awareness when I'm meditating...
My jaw is tightening.
Breathing.

I feel angry.
Welcome, welcome.

I'm noticing that central channel, a a sense of spaciousness.

Now, to close, time for gratitude.
Thank you breath.
Thank you body.
Thank you emotions.
Thank you mind. 
Thank you essence.
Thank you spirit.
Thank you awareness.
Thank you understanding.
Thank you compassion.
Thank you what I don't understand.
Thank you mystery.
Thank you now.
Thank you past.
Thank you future.
Thank you life.
Thank you beauty.
Thank you joy.
Thank you reader.

I appreciate you sharing my meditation with me today.

Life is a Dance

Trauma is life energy that freezes, holds, or stops moving when faced with a situation that our autonomic nervous system (an automatic physiological response) classifies as life threatening.  This action protects -- or attempts to protect -- us.

While life exists, the possibility of healing exists too. 

Like springtime after a long, cold winter, the buds of life bloom again, and for those who are willing, the possibility of healing exists.

Just like the seasons, life is always moving. 

When we feel emotional pain that has a disproportionate intensity to it, we are contacting the energy that once couldn't move through.

Life wants to connect.

Emotional pain is a funny thing.  So often it's not about what we think it's about, although that doesn't make the experience of hurting any less real.  The emotional energies within long to be presenced, held in compassionate awareness.  We humans are wired to connect with ourselves and each other.

We are made of compassionate awareness.

However entrenched or stuck we may be, with compassionate, connected support, gradually the trauma re-emerges to be felt through, allowing the energy to move again.

Movements of Healing -- Choose Your Verb(s):
meeting how you are,
listening,
connecting,
participating with,
breathing,
feel-thinking,
loving,
creating,
collaborating,
expressing in a non-linear way through art, vocal expression
and dancing.  I saved the best for last.

The next class is October 10, 2019.

Schedule for upcoming Transformation Playground Dance Classes

Gateway to Presence

​​Awareness is a gateway into presence, deepening our availability and engagement with life.

The practice of bringing awareness to our wholly bodies allows us to relate with what we are noticing. In any given moment, a rich tapestry of experiences within is pulsating with life beneath our habitual routines, just waiting to be noticed, discovered, and appreciated.

Neglect, abandonment, rejection - the wounds that so many of us carry and try to avoid - can begin to be healed when we practice wholly embodied presence.

The irony is that welcoming our experiences into presence is inherently pleasurable, even as the sensations and feelings we've been avoiding may be painful.

It's like bodybuilding -- but for consciousness!  In the love-gym of our hearts, we lift awareness which at first is heavy with entrenched habits and dusty remnants of past losses.  Through diligent practice, we bring awareness to meet inner experience, which impatient of waiting and hungry for presence, shout, "Yes, choose me!  I want attention!"

Bonus presence (conscious community) supports the process, as often it is easier, especially at first, to receive embodied presence from another than it is to create new pathways of wholly presence alone.

The eventual payoff? A strong inner presence muscle which can pleasurably welcome a greater range of experiences in a moment and be sustained for longer and longer durations, creating inner spaciousness which shimmers with new possibilities and wholeness that shines like deep wells through our eyes, resonates the sound of our voices, and pours through our pores.  If that sounds too good to be true, sometimes it is!  That is on a good day -- a moment of relaxed oneness within ourselves and with the river of life.  On other days we start again at the complete beginning, disheveled and askew, since like snakes we shed old skin so we can grow and emerge into fresh new versions of ourselves.