Embodied Listening - Context (Part I)

I’ve been intensively studying with Thomas Huebl, a modern mystic and spiritual teacher, through his online interactive community programs for the last few years.  Learning with Thomas and his community has deepened my meditation practice which began 17 years ago and refined my understanding of subtle anatomy and energetics, contributing both to my inner healing and the way I work with individuals and groups.  Actually, what I’ve learned has impacted every aspect of my life. 

One thing which excites and calls me to action is embodied listening, which sounds simple.  However, listening has many layers.  Listening is impacted by our intention, and dependent on our nervous systems, which we are listening with and through. 

Did you know that when human beings have an experience that cannot be dealt with, the nervous system is wise enough come up with a solution?  Isn’t that amazing?  The nervous system knows how to compartmentalize and shut down a part of itself and store an experience until resources become available to process it through.  This trauma response within our bodies is sometimes looked at as something we’d like to let go of or get rid of, but it’s an intelligent, protective movement to maintain functioning.  To me, the trauma response is an embodiment of love in action, in the form of protection.  And I see embodied listening as love in action too.

The flow of conscious, embodied presence -- which I’m calling embodied listening – provides a healing resonance through which our nervous systems can return to wholeness.  We experience deeper relaxation and grounding which supports spaciousness for integration and continued evolution to occur.  Through embodied listening, what has been fragmented or undigested can be welcomed back into wholeness and the movement of life. 

I believe the world needs us to listen.  To ourselves.  To others.  To the spaces between us.  To our hearts.  To our pasts.  To our planet.  To all creatures.  To our systems.  To our pain.  To our possibilities.  To our future, and the future of our children’s children. 

I intend to write more about embodied listening, what that means to me, what I think the implications are, and creative ways I feel called to share and explore with others who are interested. 

Warm blessings,

Rhonda

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.

Writing to Bridge the Gap: Little Soldier

Marching through the world

Pushing on
Moving on
Marching on
Carrying on

Like a little soldier

-- too young to be a soldier --

but a soldier none-the-less

who does what must be done.

Openness to Learning

In my work with people, I appreciate openness to learning:  the courage to open, to include what one is feeling, wanting, needing, mourning, longing for, and so on.  Openness to learning requires cultivating a friendly relationship with self and with how things are right now. 

When we bring awareness deeply to our healing, growth, and evolution, we find the principle in action:  Life wants to live.  Whatever we’re doing, we’re doing for a reason, conscious or unconscious.  We find that all our inner activities, conscious and unconscious, are movements toward enhancing, protecting and preserving life.  Even the inner movements we might label as destructive or deadening, such as defensiveness, criticism, or avoidance, are at some level our best (conscious or unconscious attempt) to live or at least to be ok.  When we can meet our inner movements and tendencies and patterns with a level of curiosity to discover, "what function is this serving?" we will discover an interesting answer.  Perhaps avoidance is a "play dead" tendency we developed much earlier in our lives when we weren't capable of addressing a difficult situation.  Perhaps criticism or defensiveness created enough emotional distance to protect our hearts from hurting, etc.  By befriending what is happening, we can discover the function it (we) are fulfilling, and in doing so, we can open to new ways to meet our needs. What once was helpful may no longer be so, and in fact may be causing us (and others) to suffer now. Through courageous openness to learning, we mature and outgrow old ways of coping, through connecting with them.  Within connection that is curious and open, new insights emerge. 

Openness to learning is a life-changing and courageous quality!

Life Dances Through Us - How can we participate with that movement?

Life is a dance.

It might be more accurate to say life dances.  Dance isn't something we do.  Dance is something we are.

When we dance, we connect with a field of movement.  We don't just move, we can connect with the fundamental way life moves, births, blooms, changes, dies, transforms, pauses, pulses, creates, discovers, and blooms again.

We aren't the first to dance, and we won't be the last.  Even if humanity extinguishes itself, life will still be dancing on this planet.

A favorite contemplative wondering is:  How can I join the dance of my own body, my own heart, my own calling, my own life?

When we align with life in that way, we can co-create tectonic shifts in our lives and world.

Reactivity - a meaningful portal to change

One of my activities in 2019 was taking a class organized by the St. Louis YWCA based on the book Witnessing Whiteness, by Shelly Tochluk.  We were a group of 20 white people exploring together the history of whiteness, how and why it began, the unearned privilege that goes along with it, and a beginning discovery of what’s next.  The experience clarified my understanding of myself and the world I live in, and also deepened my understanding of the origins and structure of systemic power abuses, which do not occur accidentally.

To dismantle structural systems of power abuse and domination, I believe that in addition to actions we take in the world, we need to turn toward the places within ourselves where we’ve internalized those systems. In other words, we need to turn towards the personal and collective trauma which resides within each of us: the places where we react instead of respond.  We need to bring our presence and curiosity to the  places in our bodies and nervous systems where a part of us remains stuck or frozen, which, when unconscious, lead to us either unconsciously acting out of power abuse or enabling it to continue to us or around us.

Practice begins with a willingness to be curious and turn towards our own reactivity: to notice when we’re afraid and lashing out in contempt, running away, defending, freezing inside, avoiding or stonewalling.  The first step of noticing our reactivity is easier than it may seem:

In what interactions does your heart pound? Your pulse rate begin to rise or significantly slow? When do you notice yourself planning your response instead of listening? Closing down to possibilities? Endlessly replaying mentally what you wish had been your response? Or fantasizing about another reality? These are some (not all) signifiers of reactivity, which is a wake-up call to embodied presence.  

One of the ways the roots of our reactivity stay hidden from awareness is thinking something like, “In this instance my reactivity is justified because the problem is in the other (person, gender, group, etc.)”   There may be a need to focus on the other, and we may indeed need to take external actions.

However, since abandoning our own inner process doesn’t lead to anything new, innovative, connecting, or healing, we also need to turn within.

Practicing open, curious mind; compassionate heart; and grounded actions / willingness aligns our minds, hearts and bodies, empowers us, and orients us with shared power.  Regular practice makes it easier to notice a drift, so we can cultivate curiosity and turn toward what is happening within us instead.  It’s important to remind ourselves that reactivity and shutting down is part of a coping system:  actually it’s most likely a protection that was beneficial at an earlier stage of development.  One of my teachers, Thomas Huebl, calls these behaviors “childhood heroes.”  I like that because it reminds me that the path is to turn towards what is happening within me not with blame or harshness for my reactivity, but with compassion and curiosity to  enable learning and another possibility to emerge.  This moves me into facing, discovery, relating and responding (relationship and response-ability) which is the ground of dismantling systems of oppression and moving into empowerment and shared power instead.  One step at a time!

As we complete 2019 and move into 2020 - a new day, year and decade, my intention for myself and wish for all of us is turning towards our reactivity with curiosity and compassion to discovery new possibilities that honor the life flowing through each us, and honor our interconnection with all beings. 

Blessings to you and Happy New Year!

Rhonda

P.S.  Join me for my Embodied Integrity Playshop Series - 3 months beginning January 17.  

Details here.  

About Time, Solstice and Love

In her article about the great turning, Joanna Macy writes, "The Great Turning is a name for the essential adventure of our time: the shift from the Industrial Growth Society to a life-sustaining civilization."

I'm intrigued by processes.  And how a big process such as the one Joanna Macy writes about is composed of many smaller, more intimate and detailed processes, which include the personal level, and even the moment to moment level.  Then I wonder, how am I called to participate within myself, with others and with larger communities? 


I notice when I focus on the whole process, sometimes I feel overwhelmed.  When I locate myself in this moment, include the personal processes of my life AND the intersections with larger cultural movements, I feel excited!

Also, I am fascinated by nature's movements, such as the rhythm cycles of a breath, a day, the moon, and the seasons.  Winter Solstice is one of my favorite times of the year.  I imagine Nature inviting me to embrace darkness, stillness, contemplation, and 'just being-ness', so that I can attune, realign, complete, and discover what is now, and also what wants to emerge through me.  So that I can remember...

We are interconnected (and sometimes we forget).  We are whole and the universe lives inside us.  We individuals make up a larger collective, of families, communities, cultures, nature, and our world.

We are called (and sometimes we don't or can't hear it).  Our personal evolution calls us.  Nature and our climate call us.  Trauma and our personal, familial, and cultural hurts call us.  Inequities call us.  Justice calls us.  Our hearts call us.  Spirit calls us.  Time calls us.  The future calls us.  Loves calls us.

For years, many of us have heeded the call to heal, transform, grow, and work on ourselves and our relationships.  Many have stepped into activist roles to turn the tide toward values such as compassion, justice, truth, love, balance, and sustainability.

And this continues.....  challenging times, with a hurt environment, climate change, species disappearing, racial injustice, genocide, social challenges and abuses of power will require us to inhabit our wholeness, mature ourselves, and show up to face what's happening, respond, and contribute to creative next steps aligned with what matters most.

Aligning with our personal timing, or essence pace, is an aspect of embodiment.  The circles of the seasons, cycles of the moon, rhythms of light and darkness, and movements of our breath delineate our experience of time.  When we harmonize our individual essence pace with the larger movements of nature and the universe, we feel supported, with the wind is at our backs, as if life is being conducted through us, as us.

As we enter into the Solstice, I'm wishing you joy, peace, fulfillment and ongoing discovery.  Also Happy Holidays in whatever ways you choose to celebrate.

with love,
Rhonda


P.S.

I've created a few events in the next several weeks which resonate with what I'm experiencing, what I have to offer, and what I feel called to step into and share:

I'm delighted to have met Sophia Alexander through my connection with the Thomas Huebl community recently, and to be collaborating with her to co-lead a Solstice Gathering tomorrow evening, as well as an event on January 11.

I'm excited to be offering Embodiment Playshops, and have put together a series of three beginning January 17.  The Embodied Integrity Playshops are my own version of what I've learned from the Hendricks, Thomas Huebl, and my own life experience and practice, including healing trauma.  They include movement, play, meditation, wholeness / interconnection within ourselves, as well as refining our alignment with our hearts, our purpose, calling, and generously expressing and sharing in our lives.

Let me know if you have any questions.