Calling through the Horizon from Standing Position

Calling through the Horizon from Standing Position

Receiving through the Eyes

Duration: Two minutes

Intention:

To feel greater freedom and aliveness by inviting more space into our structure.

Instructions

Look through a window with an open view of the horizon. Or you can just imagine the horizon in front of you as far as you can see. Imagine the horizon coming to you, through your eyes and through the back of your head. Let the horizon in front of you connect with the horizon behind you. Keep your gaze relaxed, without trying to focus your eyes on any- thing. The eyes act as a lens, but the seeing is occurring from the visual cortex, at the back of the head.

If you are finding this a challenge, try it with your eyes closed. Now open your eyes slowly as though you were opening the shutters on a cam- era and just letting in the light.

How can you assess your practice? If you measure yourself against an image of how you think you should look from the outside, you will start compensationally adjusting and thereby perpetuate the violence inherent in this disassociated orientation. It will prove more valuable to sense from the inside.

Do you feel greater freedom, e.g., does the head feel less fixed or held? Do you feel greater aliveness, e.g., more energy, more flow, more connection? You may feel like your head is floating—like a bobble-head doll. You might even notice a change in the position of your head without trying to adjust it muscularly.

Receiving through the Navel

Bring the horizon through your center—just below your navel and out the other side.

Try cupping a hand and placing it on your lower back. Sense the energy overflowing your hand. Now remove your hand but keep sensing the energy flowing through—you can invent an imaginary partner that helps you, and their support can be as real as your imagination is vivid. Another way to think of this exercise is to imagine an ocean in front of you, and you are drawing it through your navel, as if drinking it in through a straw.

Assessing your practice

Do you feel greater freedom, e.g., does the sacrum gently release when you bring the horizon through your center? Do you feel greater aliveness? You may feel like your pelvis is floating on top of your legs.

You might even notice a change in the curvature of your spine or less tension in your legs, back, neck, shoulders.

Receiving through the Heart

Drink in the horizon from as far as you can imagine behind you as it enters through your thoracic spine (at the level of your ribs) and over- flows through your heart and lungs, pouring out your chest wall and kissing back the infinite. Savor the spaciousness you presence by sensing the omni-directional convergence of inexhaustible emptiness and luminosity in embodied mindfulness.

This series' was excerpted from the book, Awakening Somatic Intelligence by Dr. Risa Kaparo. (North Atlantic Books, 2012).

Videos were filmed by Richard Quinn  http://richardquinn.com/