Do you rush through the day without checking in with your experience of life, your experience within? Do the days lead to weeks and years of being out of touch with your own needs and feelings? Are dissatisfaction, burnout and health being sacrificed as you continue to "push through"?
Constant movement, change, focus and drive can challenge your ability to be grounded, embodied and fully present to your needs. If you are living on autopilot, this will have a dramatic impact on your health, comfort and nourishment, as well as your relationships. What really suffers is your relationship with your true Self, and most certainly your creativity and life force energy. Fortunately you can unwind the numbness and choose to step into embodiment with very little effort. I use a simple technique to help bring presence to what is occurring within at any given moment. It's beyond listening to the breath and deep breathing (though this can certainly be valuable for the nervous system). I use a "three level check-in" process to immediately name the experiences arriving within. In this embodiment practice, you human experience is divided into four levels: mental body, emotional body and physical body. The fourth level includes the spiritual body. The spiritual body upholds the other three bodies. The Vedic koshas correlate to these "four bodies" and Ayurveda corroborates, since it also speaks to these four "bodies" as well. We can also use this tracking process in conjunction with Jyotish. As you track your inner landscape, you are literally tracking the effects of the planets on your physiology. There are multiple reasons why a Four Level Check-in is valuable for health and well being as well as for deepening one's ability to increase resiliency and thriving. First, let's take it for a spin and experience the mechanics of it. 1) Whatever you are doing right now, hit the pause button and bring your attention inward. It may help to close your eyes, but this isn't necessary. You may be sitting, standing or walking, but bring your attention to the now regardless of what is happening around you. 2) Notice the physical body. What is coming to you? What is the physical body sharing with you? Be present to images, colors, words, expressions and shapes that arise. 3) Notice the emotional body. What is coming to you? What is the emotional body sharing with you? Be present to images, colors, words, expressions and shapes that arise. 4) Notice the mental body. What is coming to you? What is the mental body sharing with you? Be present to images, colors, words, expressions and shapes that arise. 5) Notice the spiritual body. What is coming to you? What is the spiritual body sharing with you? Be present to images, colors, words, expressions and shapes that arise. This level of awareness is the most nuanced. Sometimes it's available, other times it is not. Create a space for listening nonetheless. Use this check-in practice at least once a day to do an "audit" of your inner landscape. As you track your physical body, you are tracking the Sun and Saturn and often Mars- which give awareness of sensation in the body. As you track the emotional body, you are tracking the Moon and often Venus. Tracking the mental body arrives through Mercury. The spiritual body is connected to the Sun as well as Jupiter. Mars and Venus support these bodies in subtle ways, while Rahu and Ketu intensify the experiences arriving. Your four level check-in findings can be written down and used at another time. You can take these findings into a creative process by moving your words, creating a poem from them, drawing an image, or turning them into a song etc. This keeps your bodies alive, potent and moving. It can also help you deepen the identification process- which is so vital for creating life change. Use your inner experiences and harvest from them further; move them, transform them, change them through an intentional art making process. But if nothing else, create space for these feelings, allow them to be with you and be present to the experience of your inner landscape. This presence alone can be immensely valuable. Far too often people gloss over feelings, physical body sensations and the potency of the inner landscape- cutting and pasting over these vital messages. Everyone wears numerous masks just to get through each day, week, year. But when you take time to stop what you are doing and notice how you are unconsciously being, you have the opportunity to arrive into the now. The potency of life is in the moments of now. Here you can listen intently to your feelings and inner experiences. Here you gain an opportunity for more depth and awareness within your life. It is through pausing and listening that you can more clearly and courageously attend to your own needs, use healthy boundaries, and create a life that is more in harmony with joy, nourishment, thriving and satisfaction. This is the power of the present moment and being in the now, being embodied. Never miss a Creative Ritual, sign up for my weekly newsletter. Want more Creative Rituals? See my current virtual workshop offerings here.
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Expansion and Contraction: The Ribcase
The planets are charged, poised and ready for take off during this next waxing cycle. Can you feel the expansion taking place within you and your life? In your relationships and desires? This is a perfect opportunity to work with the rib case and our experience of expansion and contraction. Using this theme of expansion and contraction, we will work specifically with the ribcase in this Creative Ritual. The ribcase provides protection for the body's vital organs- heart and lungs specifically. Every breath we take is connected to opening and expansion as well as letting go, releasing and contracting. The breath is the greatest metaphor for boundaries, and it's no mistake that the lungs literally provide us with the ability to live and "take in life" as well. Our ribcase is the protective case that houses these sacred physical tools of the body that allow us to expand and contract our life. When we work with the ribcase, we can explore these themes more intentionally, while letting the body direct our experience. Start standing or lying down. Begin by bringing your attention to your breath. What is the quality of your breath on the inhale and exhale. Do you feel the breath staying in your chest or moving into your belly? Don't try to force this to change. We are just being a witness to "what is" right now. Continue this focus for a few minutes, then add another body part to this open and close momentum that starts in your chest. As you expand on the inhale, let another body part become involved. As you exhale let the body relax and surrender to a neutral. Rise and fall. Open and close. Expand contract. Continue working with these expressions and notice what other body parts naturally join. Let the body move like a wave in harmony with the breath. Use a time frame of 20 minutes for this ribcase/breath exploration. Then come to your drawing pad and do a 10 minute sketch of your experience. A "snap shot" of your embodiment process. What colors arrive? What textures? What types of lines and shape? Give a title to this piece then answer the harvesting questions below. Harvesting Questions: If my ribcase could speak, what would it say to me? What am I opening to? What am I closing to? What am I expanding towards? Where am I contracting? Where am I letting in life force? Where am I resisting life force? What does my ribcase need? Never miss a Creative Ritual, sign up for my weekly newsletter. Want more Creative Rituals? See my current virtual workshop offerings here. With multiple planets colliding energetically as well as lunar and solar eclipses happening during this waning Moon cycle, we are each feeling the intensity in our own way on an internal level. As is the macrocosm, so is the microcosm and vice versa. Each informs the other. Inner to outer and outer to inner. It is here at this intersection that we are given an opportunity. Using the physical body as an entry point into the exploration of our surroundings and then seeing what arrives on an internal level can be very informative. In the Tamalpa Life Art Process (TLAP) as well as in Paolo Knill's unique Expressive Art Therapy teachings, we see landscape work as a very intentional resource for self development. For me, landscape work has been very foundational this past year and has helped me experience my needs for stability and support more effectively.
Start where you are. Yes, right here and right now. You may wish to begin with a three level check-in to start your navigation process. Scan the mental body and note the experience, images, shapes, words that come to mind. Do the same with emotional body and physical body. This is step number one in self tracking. The next step is to start moving. Use your immediate environment to inform your physical movement. Are you sitting, standing or walking? How are you moving and why? How does the immediate environment (chair, floor, wall, window ledge, desk, sidewalk, trees etc) inform your physical movements? What body parts are you utilizing, not utilizing? What body parts seem to be your default? Work with themes of resistance, push and pull, repetition and pause/hold. Make sure the breath is always moving you and moving through you. Let the breath initiate the movement in other words. Your homework for the next two weeks is using the "landscape exploration" practice regularly. Take it outside on a walk in the woods or through a park. Take it into your office space and work with the local environment and any furniture or walls present. This doesn't have to be a long and lengthy practice, even 5 to 10 minutes can be highly informative. Keep working with themes that arrive and patterns that emerge and build off of them each time you start your "landscape exploration". Harvest your experiences and three level check ins and look for patterns and themes that emerge. Remember: work with what is present. Harvesting Questions: What body part am I working with right now? What is it telling me about the landscape and my environment? How is my body/parts connecting to the available surface? How is my body/parts working with the space in the environment? How can the immediate environment inform my movements? How do my mental/emotional bodies show up in my movements with the environment? How does the environment appear to interact with my mental/emotional bodies? In what ways does the external environment inform my internal landscape? Vice versa? What themes arrive? What body parts continue to be relied upon as I move through the landscape? What resources and insights do the environment and surfaces offer me? What feelings surface? What sensations arrive? Connect with me and my Creative Rituals here. With Navaratri starting this new waxing Moon phase, it's appropriate to cultivate our relationship with the warrior goddess Self. Navaratri begins with three days dedicated to Durga- a fierce and powerful goddess known for winning countless battles against evil forces. Lakshmi and Saraswati have their own strengths and powers, overcoming difficulties in multi faceted ways.
The warrior god/goddess Self is within each of us, though we may not have noticed. This hard and soft being within often doesn't get a chance to fully express itself. The warrior Self is always complex, arrives when needed, hides if necessary, and can remain voiceless, expressionless, unless tended to, acknowledged and nurtured. Part 1: Come to your drawing pad. Choose a medium that strikes you. Is it paint, craypas, pen and pencil, or maybe even collage or clay instead? Use the harvesting questions to prompt your inner inquiry as you arrive at bringing your warrior out from your hidden depths. Let the colors, textures, shapes and images speak to the feelings of this warrior goddess. Take 30 minutes for this piece. Harvesting Questions: What does my warrior have to say? Is he/she/it connected to certain body part(s)? What parts are the most fierce, most alive? What colors does your warrior embody? What does its soft side say? Does it have a flowing side? Nurturing side? Brave side? Vulnerable side? How do the change in seasons effect this warrior? What does your warrior ask of you? What does it need? Circle ten words that strike you most from your writing. Part 2: Look at your image. Pick one element of your art piece- a color, texture, shape, etc. Stand while closing your eyes and envision this element- then begin to move your body. Move this element of your drawing; bring it alive in your body. Move with the shape, color, texture etc. Where is it expressed in your body? How is your body reacting? What sensations, feelings, emotions come up? Your warrior has many sides to it. You are letting one of these come through you. If any of your words come to mind from your writing, say them aloud. Speak, move, embody this part of your Self; cultivate your relationship with this internal energy. Let this last 5 to 10 minutes. Come to stillness. Ask your image one more time if it has anything to tell you. Listen carefully. The new Moon is upon us this week. As we empty our cups and let go of the last cycle, we are given the opportunity for creating something new and cultivating renewal.
Mandalas are my preferred activity for both new Moon and full Moon as they symbolize wholeness, a sacred container, and unlimited creative potential. Use the pelvis this week as your somatic entry point. Move hips from side to side and in circles; notice the connection to the lower half of the body and the upper half. Note the nearness to the belly. Pelvis helps us work on vulnerability, giving/receiving, creation/creating and fulfillment. Bring presence to your body with complete breaths and fluidity of your movements. If you did last week's CE Activity, look at your garden as a prompt for this activity. Come to your drawing pad and draw a circle. On the outside of the circle write down the pieces of life you are discarding, that aren't working, that need to be let go of; pieces that aren't bringing you harmony and joy. The inside of the circle is where you are free to create what you are moving towards. What fills your circle? What do you need right now? What are you making space for in your life? Harvesting questions: What am I filling my Self with? What am I emptying my Self of? What am I letting flow towards me? What am I moving away from? What space am I creating for spring? What is there no longer space for in my life? |
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