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.  

Changing Perspective - A Story of an Ant & the Sky

When I was about 12, in the summertime I liked to bring my Barbie dolls into the large backyard where my family lived in Oklahoma, and play pretend.  One day, after some time, I got tired of the dolls and became fascinated with an ant crawling in the grass.  I put the dolls down and laid down on my belly to get a closer look at the ant.  The ant and the blade of grass the ant was crawling up and down looked very small.  But when I got closer, it was as if a whole other world opened up around me. 

What must the world look like from the ant's perspective, I wondered.

The very same small blade of grass and mound of dirt seemed much bigger.  I imagined what it might feel like to be an ant, to walk like an ant walks vertically up and down a blade of grass, among many other blades of grass, each many times bigger than I was. I could feel the cool blade of grass beneath my feet, and the warm sun on my back. The air around me moving gently.  It all seemed quite natural and secure to the ant, who continued to move steadily in the direction it was going.  The mound of ground which included all those blades of grass seemed huge.  The distance from where we were to the fenceline, to the house, seemed very far away.  If I were an ant, it would be a lot of work to travel that far.  And the sky...

I rolled over to look at the sky.  The sky, and the vista of space all around us -- me, and the ant, and the blade of grass -- seemed incredibly vast.  I lost track of time, and began to wonder what it would be like to be a cloud.  

What a blissful day it was.  What a feeling of belonging and connection in my environment.  

This experience I had imagining I was an ant opened something in me - a felt sense of interconnection with access to feel the ant and the blade of grass and the cloud and the sky as a part of me, and that I am also a part of.  That was a gift - that was grace.  

Opening our perspective to new vistas that we can experience in our bodies can feel that way - like opening to a whole new world.  

These days, one of the ways I work with people is helping them shift their consciousness.  While there can be complexity to creating conscious shifts mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and relationally, there can also be a kind of simplicity to it with attuned presence.  

I'm grateful for the privilege I had to be free from danger, safe, and with a yard just beyond my back door surrounded by a quiet neighborhood where I could imagine and wonder and just be.  I'm aware not everyone grows up with that kind of access.  

And wherever we are, whatever state of consciousness we currently inhabit, and whatever our background, shifts are possible.  Like the ant, we start where we are. 

Solstice & New Year's Contemplations

 TO KNOW THE DARK BY WENDELL BERRY 

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To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,

and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,

and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

Feel free to explore what comes up for you, whether or not it seems to be a direct answer to the question.  Take what resonates for you, and leave the rest…

Wonder Question:  

How can I connect with and embody the sacred life moving through me and us, which is ever emerging, structuring and re-structuring, and available for to me to express as creativity?

Related to the Solstice / Season of Long Nights here in the Northern Hemisphere:   
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• What healing aspects of light and darkness can you connect with as a resource in your life?

• What supports and sustains you (on a physical, emotional, mental and/or spiritual level)  when you experience times of darkness?
• How are you supported by your past experiences?  What aspects of the past (personal, ancestral or collective) are you presently available and supported to turn toward, for purposes of healing and restoration?  Can you connect to a felt sense of resilience of those who have come before you / us?

The great conjunction, Jupiter & Saturn, occurs in the sign of Aquarius on January 21.  Jupiter will be in this sign for nearly a year, and Saturn will remain here for around 2 1/2 years, so these qualities will remain and ripen for some time...  How do you relate with these qualities in your life:
 
Jupiter – healing, magnification, expansion
Saturn – pruning, grounding, structuring
Aquarius – air, breath, fixed nature, communication justice, balance, the collective

• What part of your life is emerging a whole new way of being for you, going forward? 
• How can you befriend the qualities of Jupiter, Saturn and Aquarius?
• What support, practices, rituals, connections, etc. are important, alive structures for you?  What habits / rituals support you and what need to be pruned or changed?
• How do you integrate to stabilize your expansion?
• What aspects of your life feel resonant personally and with the collective?   Another way to wonder about this is, what are you doing / how are you being collectively that also feels good and replenishing to you personally?

Related to the Gregorian Calendar New Year...
 

• What did you learn in 2020?  What was lovely about it?  Is there anything you will miss?  What awarenesses awakened in you?  What did you learn?  What did you let go of?   What do you appreciate about yourself and your life?  
  
• What qualities do you want to embody, or begin to embody in 2021?  Are there simple steps, practices, or rituals you want to create to support your evolution?

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.

Bridging Past to Future: Facing Racism and Reconnecting with our Hearts

One of the callings of our times is to become a bridge between our past and the future we want.  We become a bridge by cultivating an ongoing connection with what is even as we align our actions with what wants to be born through us.    

Photo by Martin Damboldt from Pexels

Facing 'what is' includes facing how 'what was' still radiates through our current experience.  Unfinished, unprocessed experience is sometimes called karma.  Another name for it is trauma.  Trauma exists in individuals, in families, in the collective, and in the systems of our society.  

One collective trauma that I am facing into every day is racism.  

Racism isn't just a word.  It's a code (as all words are) which carries the energetic legacy of trauma which is woven into the very foundations of our systems for hundreds of years.* 

I've been actively learning about whiteness for only about a year, and I'm not an expert.  Writing about my current perception of whiteness and racism (even as I'm still learning) is part of my response to the collective trauma of whiteness, or what the author, Resmaa Menakem calls white body supremacy.  

One of the things that keeps racism going is for people who are systemically in the oppressor role (that's me, with skin known in our world today as white) to not see, feel or take action related to the dehumanizing violence that was perpetrated and became embedded in our systems and the world around us. We told cultural stories that racial violence was over or mostly over, but it isn't.    

I'm turning towards it every day.  

Lifting a veil of unconsciousness and facing systemic oppression and violence is painful. The seduction of continuing to not know, not feel, and not respond to the cultural domination system we were born into is strong.  We are all woven into racist systems and for many of us, our participation and enabling remains unconscious.  Even as we wake up to face, the tendency for us to become overwhelmed, shut down, or otherwise disconnect is powerful.  

My experience is becoming conscious of the water we are swimming in is an ongoing process.  We may see it but not feel it.  Face part of it but not all of it.  Bame others.  Feel but remain unable to respond and take action.  Get overwhelmed.  And so on.      

When abuse of power is occurring, it's healthy to see, feel, and respond to what's actually happening.  Even though facing it is painful and often confusing, the waking up process reconnects us to our natural grounding, to the beauty of our own hearts, and to the natural resources of life.  We re- align with our inner compass, and with the best of our humanity.  We become both the bridge to what is possible, as well as the people who walk over the bridge into an equitable future, one step at a time.  

*"400 Years of Inequality is a diverse coalition of organizations and individuals calling on everyone - families, friends, communities, institutions - to plan their own solemn observance of 1619, learn about their own stories and local places, and organize for a more just and equal future." They are "dedicated to dismantling structural inequality and building strong, healthy communities."  - 400 Years of Inequality website 

  

Nurture Your Inner Garden of Spaciousness with 4-Sync Meditation

Within us, we each have the potential to access an inner garden of spaciousness.  

How are you . . . 

- caring for your vitality, health and physical relaxation?

- befriending your emotions which may be stimulated by all that's going on in the world every day? 

- tending and clearing your mind, focusing on what's important and what's yours to do? 

- touching deeper meaning and resource? 

In these difficult times, it's more important than ever to replenish the inner resources you need to show up and in the world as in invitation for peace, connection and creativity.

Transformation Playground - Guided Meditations on Sound Cloud

Embodied Integrity

Embodied integrity practices begin with cultivating presence.

Presence starts with body sensations – inhabiting our bodies and sensing in and through our embodied experience.

Presence deepens as we attune with and include subtle energetic movements within our embodied awareness.

Presence deepens as we notice our thoughts, and feel their energetic tone and impact on our experience.

Presence integrates as we progress in our capacity to include physical, emotional, and mental dimensions within our awareness, and easily shift attention among these three areas.

Presence expands with a sense of spaciousness.

Spaciousness opens up our capacity to bridge past and future and to begin to digest past, unresolved experiences which allows new possibilities to emerge.

Spaciousness opens up our capacity to relate with others, and to attune with their experiences whether they are similar or different than ours.

Spaciousness allows us to notice the impact of our behaviors.

Spaciousness allows us to sense cultural dynamics which we are a part of and which are a part of us.

Join me to practice presence:

* Wed, Oct 9 - Big Leap Bridge Online Class (zoom)

* Fri, Oct 18 - Embodiment Playshop at the St. Louis Wellness Center

Infinite Connection

Connection to ourselves, and all that we are as human beings is an infinite journey.  Whenever we look into an aspect of ourselves and begin to refine our awareness, more and more details become available to us:  there is infinite depth.  As we continue to grow and adapt to the world which is also changing and growing, we discover infinite breadth.  And since our body-mind systems have an innate potential to restore and heal, we are continually re-weaving as we deepen our practice!  Factor in relating with the beings around us, who are also on their own evolving journeys, and we begin to get a sense of the scope of discovery that is possible.  In this exploration, as we explore and learn and understand more, and we also expand a sense of how much more remains unknown to us. 

Meeting the unknown, we practice grounding ourselves in curiosity and openness to discovery.  At first, this seems risky.  Yet as we continue on this path, we begin to be touched by beauty, which supports a sense of softening, acceptance, compassion which leads us to an embodied experience of love.  Not love as a concept, but love as an energy, a way of being, which unfolds itself in mysterious ways. 

Art - Source Unknown