Part One: Journey into Embodied Mindfulness

This week's post is the first in a seven-part series of excerpts from our soon to be released companion video to the book, Awakening Somatic Intelligence: The Art & Practice of Embodied Mindfulness:

"Hello.  I feel so grateful to share this journey into embodied mindfulness with you.

In this video series, you will learn how to engage your innate Somatic Intelligence, feeling and sensing from the inside-out to transform pain stress, trauma and aging.

All living things, even a single celled organism, or a plant, are continually growing, responding, moving - becoming.

They are designed to respond to the environment around them, as well as to their own internal needs.

You too are designed to tune in and learn from your inner sensing system. Most of us lost this capacity as we were socialized. Much of what we learn about ourselves we learn from external sources. We learn that we have only five senses - all for gathering external data. In reality, we have an unlimited capacity to receive from within and to shape our own experience.

This video series is divided into sections.  Some provide a conceptual framework.  Others introduce and demonstrate somatic mediations, while others guide you through experiments that support the integration of somatic intelligence into every aspect of living. I encourage you to watch the practices first, before going back and trying them yourselves.

In volume one you will learn how to breathe with a new awareness --  in such a way that everything inside you move.

You will learn to differentiate the movement of each of your respiratory diaphragms, freeing your bones to float in the sea of soft tissue. I think of this as "gravity surfing."

Using your breath you will be able to elongate your spine and open all your joints, so your bones float freely extending on the waves of your breath.

We practice this process while sitting and lying on the ground in volume two, we extend this practice to sitting on balls and chairs,  while standing and walking, learning to fluidly change plains between these positions.

This practice is a wonderful opportunity to shift the way you approach learning and movement, no pushing to achieve an idea, no strain or struggle with the somatic meditations.   Trust yourself to open and learn at your own pace and tune in to the beauty and wonder of the living system that is you.

As my beloved yoga teacher, Vanda Scaravelli, often said; 'you must start with beauty and no ambition.'

Lets begin joyously."

How do you journey into embodied mindfulness?