Again, drawing from the field of Somatics’ understanding that an inner sense of safety, connection and respect are foundational for our well-being, we use the body as a focus in cultivating these qualities within ourselves.
This meditation considers how opening in the direction of safety, connection and respect is useful in our formal practice.
Your hand opens and closes, and opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings. -Rumi
Continue reading Sitting Meditation- Openings and Closings: Greeting it All
From the Tao Te Ching, translated by Ursula LeGuin: …Hard and easy complete each other long and short shape each other high and low depend on each other note invoice make the music together before and after follow each other… The things of this world exist, they are; you can’t refuse them.
Continue reading Sitting Meditation- Hard and Easy Complete Each Other
Today’s sitting practice includes a body scan Informed deeply by wisdom and kindness for what’s here.
Continue reading Sitting Mediation- Body Scan with Wisdom and Kindness [1.31.24]
This practice is about greeting what is here, not trying to force ourselves into what we think should be here instead. What does that look like for you?
Continue reading Sitting Meditation- Acknowledging the Whole Moment [1.24.24]
Bringing curiosity to whatever happens: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, … Continue reading Sitting Meditation- What’s Here?
This is an opportunity to practice being receptive to your own being. Koshin Paley Ellison: Being receptive is essentially being open to learning from everything. Some people hear this and are frightened. Others hear it and are excited … But true receptivity is a lot harder than it seems. And yet, if you can stay … Continue reading Sitting Meditation- Receptivity [1.10.24]
In this sit, we open to exploring all of what’s here in this moment, not just the often very small story of “who we are vs who should be…”
Continue reading Sitting Meditation- Respecting Our Wholeness
We can learn to use a practice of skillful pendulation in our sitting practice, and in the whole our life as a means of grounding with challenge. This is a practice of flowing with a natural movement of coming and going, contraction and release, breathing in and breathing out, tides moving in and out, day … Continue reading Sitting Meditation- Pendulation, a Natural Rhythm of Life