This meditation draws heavily from Amanda Blake of Embright Organization and the field of somatics. Much as we would know we can rely on the support of a strong mature tree, this mediation uses the imagery of learning how to lean back and rest upon the tree of our spine.
Continue reading Sitting Meditation- Leaning Into the Tree of Our Spine [3.27.24]
We come back again to safety, connection and respect this week– this time with inquiry questions to consider these qualities for yourself. Consider a time in your life where you know something about these 3 qualities, some place with a palpable sense of these qualities. What is that felt sense of being met in this … Continue reading Safety, Connection and Respect Inquiry Practice [3.14.24]
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.
Just as sunlight, water and soil are basic nutrients for plant life well-being, safety, connection and respect are basic nutrients for our own human well-being. In this sharing we explore how we might offer this kind of nourishment towards our own selves in order to be more available for meeting these needs in our world.
Continue reading Basic Nourishment of Safety, Connection and Respect
This meditation considers how opening in the direction of safety, connection and respect is useful in our formal practice.
This week we explore inquiries around the challenges that arise in practice and what skillful ways we might be learning to work with them.
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
Chenoos are Native American mythological angry monsters. Looking at a Chenoo story from Joseph Bruchac is a beautiful lesson in how we might use mindfulness to meet both our anger and fear.
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 was an opportunity for an inquiry exercise to explore the intersection of mindfulness practice, spirituality and prayer. This includes how Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem, Call Me By My True Name, might be considered as a prayer.
Continue reading Mindfulness, Spirituality, and Prayer [1.31.24]