Our Portal Back Home to the Garden (AHCW)

Our Portal Back Home to the Garden

• The Body Will Present Its Bill
• What if what is there feels like it is too much?
• Might not feel useful to come into body, without doing it in a gradual way
• When we don't have sufficient resources to be mindful and stable, that is the risk, to feel the same raw terror of what we felt before
• In order to become embodied, we need to cultivate resources
• calm nervous system
• The unlived life that is there, that we are afraid to feel, needs to be lived to healed.
• must be gradual and intelligent about how we come into the body
• "What happens if we don't pay attention to what's in the body? The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body and although we can repress it we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, and conceptions confused, and our bodies tricked with medication. But some day, our body will present its bill. For it is as incorruptible as a child, who still whole in spirit, will accept no compromises or excuses. And it will not stop tormenting us until we stop evading the truth."
• There is no true healing or full experience of freedom, until we come into the body
• Resourcing When Fear is Intense (Case Study)
• Woman trying to come into body, and feeling agitation
• Exploring her past and patterns
• Feeling loss of soul
• In therapy or meditation: What gives you sense of comfort, safety, connection, love? What does work?
• Had allies, that made her feel safe when thought of, being surrounded
• Visualized how it felt
• Became a practice. 
• The more to where your attention goes, energy flows
• The more you practice, the more you create neuro pathways that give you access
• Practice to feel getting embodied 
• start in safe places
• The ocean: The feelings in her body were waves, but she was big enough
• Sit in the feeling, and was filled with "warm luminous light"
• the pathway is through

Allow

By Danna Faulds

There is no controlling life.

Try corralling a lightning bolt,

containing a tornado.  Dam a

stream and it will create a new

channel.  Resist, and the tide

will sweep you off your feet.

Allow, and grace will carry

you to higher ground.  The only

safety lies in letting it all in –

the wild and the weak; fear,

fantasies, failures and success.

When loss rips off the doors of

the heart, or sadness veils your

vision with despair, practice

becomes simply bearing the truth.

In the choice to let go of your

known way of being, the whole

world is revealed to your new eyes.

• First Fruit of Re-Embodiment: Living More fully (with practice)
• Aliveness (1)
• Full embodiment means facing the truth in our bodies
• Fearless Heart
• Fear lives in the body, but possible to bring presence to that fear & discover a heart space that is larger. 
• Ways to prepare for mindfulness (instead of directly diving in)
• Breathing (coherence breathing). Activate the parasympathetic (reduces fear) and deactivate the sympathetic
• long slow breathing, equal matched in breath and equal matched out breathing, no pause in between
• Hand on your heart, and hand on your belly. There are nero cells in your heart that are activated during stress and respond to the pressure and warmth of our touch.
• More effective if combined with nurturing thoughts
• Walk in nature
•  Activates the parasympathetic
• RAIN first, or gradually before RAIN. Body is the portal
• When we honor and tend to the body in a present way, we actually increase our level of vitality and aliveness
• Eduardo Galeano: 

"The church says, the body is a sin. Science says, the body is a machine. The body says, 'I am a fiesta.'"

• Second Fruit: Opening to Our Tender Heart
• Becoming tender (2)
• Heart becomes a sensitive place after that aliveness. 
• i.e. Love others, but don't actually feel loving.
• it is there, it is what we are - but they don't feel they are inhabiting it
• The more we are in a virtual reality, the more we leave ourselves - we end up not trusting ourselves 
• example of parent feeling more judging and worrisome of daughter, rather than loving her.
• Presence with helps us open up to the space where we can be tender and loving (rather then worried and anxious).
• Third Fruit: Realization of Freedom
• Wisdom, seeing what is true (3)
• When we are in any way controlling, we are one step removed and not experiencing reality.
• Experiencing the space, and the awareness and love that fills that space
• "Buddha nature" "Christ consciousness"
• The illusion is we have to wait (or make some excuse). The reality is any moment we can come back and sense that presence and that space.
• Practice: Tasting the Fruits of Embodied Presence 
• Relax, soften the eyes, drop shoulders
• Senses awake
• Notice is changing, nothing is holding still
• Sense to feel what is is like to surrender and open to the changing flow. Let it happen.
• Fill the space with the light of awareness
• Bring living, awake awareness to level of the heart
• Sense unconditional accepting presence (fearless heart)
• Feel prayer of the heart, may we each be blessed to come home. To this aliveness, and into the awareness. Loving awareness that is really our essence. May we live from loving awareness. 
• Prayer:
• May this loving awareness be inhabited, expressed in a way that brings peace to our world.

My Notes:

The quote about not coming into the body, is so huge for me. I've avoided this for far too long. Self-aversions. One after the other. It has felt like it is "too much" many many times. I think what I would do is just distract myself, numb myself in some way, or re-traumatize myself. Finding gradual resources is so key, especially during difficult times. 

In the second section, I enjoy the reminder about practicing and the neuro pathways created. Its a constant practice. The case study example was really good, the idea of "allies" to think of sounds like a great idea to try. The poem "Allow" - "allow, and grace will carry you to higher ground." 

Fruits of embodiment in a quick summary. Feeling aliveness, being tender with it, and seeking what is true. 

Loved the prayer at the end of the meditation too. This is how we can come back. Coming back to living fully.. be embodied, allow, be kind, and see the wisdom.