Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Part Five: Practice as Chrysalis

This week's post is the fifth 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.



"You can use the Somatic Learning practices to hold the field, like a chrysalis, for you to unravel, from one state into another … letting go of our dualistic orientation of the observer and observed, to enter into a non-dual realm of pure presencing. This practice is a portal into vast, unbounded spaciousness.  At the same time, You can receive the structure of your practice as an embrace, a container where you can feel safe enough to enfold into a more fluid state and drink in the deliciousness of being fully alive.

In the same way that the chrysalis supports a caterpillar’s metamorphosis from one state of being into another, and a womb allows an embryo to grow into a fetus bathed within the amniotic landscape, your Somatic Learning practice can womb you, so that you can give birth to yourself as the embodiment of the vast, unlimited consciousness that is your birthright.

I want to speak to you, dear viewer, about how to best receive this practice. Employing your will in an effort to achieve some predetermined goal or image turns your determination against you, perpetuating a subtle kind of violence. Our belief that we need to fix or improve ourselves reflects our identification with a very limited image of who we are. If we could see ourselves as source, then we would not feel the need to fix or improve ourselves. We would simply want to live the fullest expression of what we really are, unmediated by limiting beliefs and images."

Friday, October 12, 2012

Part Four: Leisure as a Practice in Detachment to Time

This week's post is the fourth 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.



"When we engage our somatic intelligence, we awaken to our true nature as the embodiment of luminosity and spaciousness.   This awakened mode of perception dispels the curse of mis-identification with image/object bound experience.  You are already home, expressing in the world all the juiciness of this ecstatic union with the beloved. 

Let’s begin by exploring how we relate to the idea of “practice” to enter into  dimensions of experience unlike anything you have ever done before.

Your practice is the time you create for yourself to give birth slowly. It is an embodiment of leisure, or timelessness, the way you detach from the pressurized field of time. 

As my friend, Brother David Steindl-Rast defines it: “Leisure is the expression of detachment with regard to time.” He goes on to say that “leisure … is not the privilege of those who can afford to take time; it is the virtue of those who give to everything they do the time it deserves to take.” 

This is one of the best descriptions of practice I’ve heard."