I discuss parts work and share how you can use this method to work with your different identities or aspects of yourself, for healing, learning and a variety of other purposes. I also discuss how to recognize and work with inner aspects in a way that empowers you entire identity.
Somatic dissolving through posture and movement
I recently picked up the book Become as Supple as a Leopard, which is fascinating book about posture. I’ve picked it up because I’m currently doing a lot of work with my posture in my Kung Fu and Qi Gong studies. I’m paying particular attention to how straight I stand and how I position my back when I am lifting something or otherwise bending over. This is a crucial detail that can effect your physical health and your overall well being.
I’m also continuing to focus on breathing, specifically doing a continuous in and out breath during qi gong, where I breathe in as I move my arms up and breathe out as I move my arms down. While doing this breathing I focus on my lungs and diaphragm, expanding my awareness to fully use the capacity of my organs and in the process dissolve blockages.
The blockages are dissolved by using your awareness. You become aware of the blockage and you place your awareness on it, so that the blockage is gradually dissolved. Your awareness is like a waterfall flowing around the blockage, making it softer and softer until it releases on all levels of your being. While you do this releasing work you can continue doing some type of qi gong practice. The practice I typically do is either Cloud Hands, Heaven and Earth or Gods Playing in the Clouds. Each of these practices brings you into somatic alignment with your body consciousness.
I also like to do this work with standing meditation. When you stand its important to focus your awareness on the alignment of your body with your posture. Your feet should be aligned with each other like two wheels of a car or a train and facing forward. You want arms to hang at your sides comfortable. You want to slightly squat with your hips and pelvic area so that you are “seated” in your posture. Then focus on breathing, drawing the breath in and releasing it out. As you breathe, scan your body with your awareness, starting at the top of your head and slowly going down your body. Keep in mind that the work your doing is a gradual release and it may feel like you are releasing a layer at a time.
Each release of a layer of a blockage also releases with it emotional and mental stresses that are embedded in the body. The human body retains memories of traumatic events and experiences and the best way to release those memories is through this kind of release work. You may not be consciously aware of how embedded the trauma is, but by doing this release work you can gradually loosen it and then dissolve it altogether.
You can do this work through both standing meditation and moving practices. The key is to focus on your breath and specifically on using your breath with standing and movement to help you go deeper and deeper into your body as you work to release the physical, emotional and mental blockages. Eventually you’ll reach a state of great calm and emptiness and you can fully relax into that experience allowing it to lead you to even deeper states of awareness and transcendence.
Saturnic Wisdom and Inner Alchemy
Working with Saturn involves learning how you have limited and bound yourself and invites you to break free of the self-imposed chains as well as the chains others have put on you so you can evolve and grow. I share my own journey around this in relationship to Saturn.
How to Integrate Initiatory Experiences in your everyday life
This previous weekend I went away for a weekend retreat where I went through an initiation process. I can't really share any details about what happened there, as its part of a mystery tradition, but what I can share is that I came into the event as one person and came out of the event as a changed and more grounded person.
That is part of the purpose of initiation. We go into an experience, not knowing what will happen and we are changed by that experience in fundamental ways that we may not even fully understand but that nonetheless become part of our rooted being.
Over the years I've had the fortune to attend other events where I've experienced an initiatory change from who I was, wherein I felt a shift in my state of being. This happens any time you remove yourself from mainstream society and immerse yourself in a different environment physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Some experiences may be more intense and driven than others, but all experiences that take us out of the comfort zone will inevitably bring about change.
The question arises though: How do we integrate that change back into our everyday lives?
What does it mean to have Awareness?
One of the books I’m lately reading is Awareness: the Perils and Opportunities of Reality by Anthony De Mello. It is a book about cultivating awareness but what I find fascinating is that it really brings up a fundamental question of what awareness is, which I think is something we can take for granted. Is awareness being conscious or is it something else? It’s a question I’ve been pondering as I’ve read the book and considered the various insights that it offers.
I can’t say I’ve always been or am the most aware person. I work at being aware, but like anyone else I have my distractions and attachments and other things which get in the way of awareness. A metaphor I’ve seen used elsewhere is the metaphor of red dirt in the water. If you let the dirt settle, it goes to the bottom of the class and the water can seem to be clear (Aware), but if you stir the water the red dirt kicks up and the water becomes muddy. Sometimes I think I got awareness down and then the right circumstance comes up and I see that I ‘ve got attachments and those attachments are showing that I’m not so aware.
What Saturn is teaching me about Truth, Connection and Boundaries
I share my experiences with my Saturn work and how it is effecting my understanding and work with the elements of truth and connection as well as where boundaries fits into all of this.
Elemental Balancing Ritual Connection and Truth Month 3
12-22-2020 Today I started integrating the Sphere of Art work with the Qi gong work I’m doing. I did the sphere of art ritual and then worked with the alchemical substances for the underworld. Then I did the qi gong work and followed up with meditation, where I also mediated the alchemical substances for the underworld. It was an interesting experience because this time I felt the underworld energies mesh with the qi I had cultivated during the qi gong work. There didn’t seem to be any conflict with the connection of the energies, but of course I’ll test this carefully.
I’ve been reading the 48 laws of Power and what strikes me about this book is that I learned these laws from my dad. I doubt he ever read the book, but so far the laws discussed fit his behavior. He knew how to create an air of mystery, when to keep his mouth shut, but also when to make a scene. He was a cypher and I learned a lot of this from observing him. Of course I’ve also learned some of these laws just from my own experiences, but its fascinating to read this book and recognize my missteps (where I didn’t execute the laws successfully) as well as my successes with those same laws. I’m only part way through the book but it is quite illuminating, especially when you are already putting some of those laws in to action.