Posted on February 18, 2022 by admin

Embodying Presence:

Winter Series Mid-Term Notes

Being: Living in Presence: Three Commitments (from Adyashanti)

Commitment to Stillness as the root of Presence
Commitment to resting in the breathing flow, as both portal and anchor
Commitment to compassion for our humanity and the challenges of the commitments

Becoming: Three Principles of Embodying

Finding and feeling the dynamic field of aliveness as vibration and tone
Discovering/feeling/exploring the Yin and Yang poles of tone as:
weight/lightness, condensing/expanding, flexion tone/extension tone etc.
Finding and resting in balanced tone as a portal to Stillness

Belonging: Living/practicing the four Brahma Viharas in all of our relationships in the world
Loving-kindness, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy, Equanimity

Discover and explore how these three link together in our daily lives. As a personal example, it is an act of loving kindness to myself to do my practice every morning. Part of that practice involves invoking compassion as a way of opening my heart. The breathing is essential in both Embodying and Presence practices. I feel my aliveness being more juicy in the presence of joy. My heart opens more when I can feel others distress and suffering.

Embodying Presence as
a vibrational field, embracing all, from atoms to cells, organs, tissues and the world around us

Becoming as awakening to, and exploring the feeling of, the living, breathing, bio-dynamic presence of the body’s energy field. We will call this organizing field as ‘primary tone‘ as it has a vibrational quality, as in music.

Explore primary tone beginning in the feet at K-1. Climbing the wall, walking, dancing, any way to engage your feet. In skiers tadasana, find the flexion/extension balance through feet, ankles, knees and hips, keeping the pelvis vertical, neither ‘tucking’ nor ‘untucking’, as the body bobs up and down. Let your tail hang freely, like a dog, bird or reptile. Feel the support of Mother Earth as yin/grounding/flexion/condensing, as well as the support of Father Sky as yang/ space / extension/ expansion. Here primary tone connects to the Cosmic support of gravity and boundary-less space.

Explore going in and out of the simple standing forward bend, uttanasana, maintaining the flexion/extension tone balance in the legs and notice how the spine responds. Feel the flexion / extension through the joints as an expanding / condensing throughout the whole body.

Connect K-1 to the pubic bones and then sternum, feeling a lift and support to the yin front body and organs, and repeat the above two explorations.

Explore primary tone as a living, dynamic three dimensional volume, surrounding the three dantien spaces, and linked with the Microcosmic Orbit. Dantien means ‘exlixir field’ and thus implies an energetic vibrancy. Our entry points to the volumes are the three bony cavities, the pelvis, ribs and skull.

In general the tone of the Yin/ front body/ gut body/ torso flexion/ condensing Conception Vessel tends to be to low and the tone of the yang/back body/spinal column/ torso extension/ expanding Governing Vessel, tends to be too high. This may be a pattern that begins in utero (premature birth doesn’t allow the compressive forces that build yin flexor tone) or just from a sedentary lifestyle. Our intention is to explore the state of balance between yin/yang and adjust accordingly.

Our starting points to awaken/strengthen yin front body tone are: The pubic symphysis for the lower dantien, the sternum for the middle, and the birthing crown* at the back of the skull near where the upper occipital bone meets the two parietal bones.

(* This is a term Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen uses. First to differentiate it from the crown chakra at the top of the skull, and also as the point of initiation of the birthing impulse of extension, when the baby begins to emerge from the deep torso flexion of the late womb state.

Ideally for labor, the baby is positioned head-down, facing your back, with the chin tucked to its chest and the back of the head ready to enter the pelvis. This is called cephalic presentation. Most babies settle into this position with the 32nd and 36th week of pregnancy. Other fetal positions for birth include different types of breech (feet down) and occiput posterior position (face up).)

Awakening primary tone through hands, feet and mouth.

While sitting, feel your hands gently and slowly opening and closing around a center point (Pericardium 8), like a bird about to clasp a branch. Feel you whole body responding. With your feet on the floor, feel them creating (yang) that same flexing/condensing and extending/expanding from the soles of the Feet (K-1), and feel the whole body joining in. You can have in dog pose with this, engaging all four limbs. Feel the body receiving the action (Yin) and then feel the hands and feet receiving the action (yin) from the action (yang) of the body (diaphragm, ribs, lungs, abdominal wall etc).

Now find you soft palate at the back of the mouth (you can use your tongue if necessary). Gently open and close your mouth in an expanding/condensing action similar to hands and feet. Relax you jaws and facial muscles to allow this some ease. Now imagine a gentle suckling action at the soft palate with the tongue, like in nursing. Feel you whole gut body responding, feeling the gentle movement. Relax and feel the primary tome throughout the entire body, from head to toes and skin to organs and bone marrow.

Now place your hands on the back of your skull, like in sirsasana (head balance), and as the mouth slowly opens , lift the back of the skull very gently opening the top front of the spine at Skull – C-1. Feel that as the mouth closes, the upper back of the neck releases as the skull bone oscillates back over C-1. By learning to feel the back of the skull as a source point of initiating extension/ expansion, as at birth igniting, many/most neck issues can be resolved.

Working with Trauma

Embedded in the primary tonal field of the body are pockets of resistance and holding. These come from psychological and emotional traumas, large and small, as well as injuries. Large traumas usually need the help and support of professionals in the world of psychotherapy, as when the trapped energy is triggered, it can often overwhelm the capacity to stay stable amidst the storm. A trained therapist with a grounded nervous system and stable primary tone can act as an anchor and stabilizer as we learn to navigate out own inner world. this is analogous to a parent helping to stabilize a young child when in a state of overwhelm/meltdown. This is why having a deep connection to Mother Earth and Father Sky is important for adults. We all need support for our challenges.

In working with smaller traumas, we can take support from the Stillness awakened in our meditation practice and the linking our our priamry tome to the Cosmic Fields of Mother Earth/Gravity and Father Sky/Spaciousness . the organism inherently moves toward healing and wholeness, but sometimes this process becomes stuck (dukkha). this is why continous practice is essential in the awakening process

Being, Becoming and Belonging

Posted on February 2, 2021 by admin

I’ve had the title of this post for a while but have been struggling to coherently weave all the pieces together. Then this photo appeared. As the cliche goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Or ten thousand! Being, Becoming and Belonging. Look at the eyes, ears and nose of the deer and imagine how much of the world she is taking in moment to moment!

A four year old boy was playing in the back yard of a house in Virginia and met a friend. He brought his new buddy to the back door because he wanted to invite her in and share a bowl of cereal. His mother, a bit startled at first, had the presence of mind to capture this moment before explaining to her son that the baby deer’s mother was probably worried and that they should take her back to the forest behind the house.

The boy and baby deer radiate pure being: innocent, open and fully present. They are both becoming more aware of their world, of themselves, growing, expanding, opening to new possibilities that life is offering them. And their shared belonging arises because they know, intuitively, that they come from the same tribe, the same community of all beings, sharing aliveness and a gentle, understated but unconditional love. A fleeting moment captured as a message from Wholeness, teaching adults something we may have forgotten.

We all have, at the core of our being, this innocence and unconditional love for life and all of creation. As this is our True Nature, it can never be taken away, but it easily is buried away under layers of thoughts, beliefs, ideologies and other forms of conditioning. Innocence and openness are quickly replaced by mistrust and fear and we lose our way, both individually and collectively.

One of the great challenges on the path of embodied evolutionary awakening is learning how to refine our discriminating intelligence so we can weed out the pathological ideas and beliefs that obscure and inhibit the ongoing unfolding and integration of Being, Becoming and Belonging. The survival of our planet as a source of life and the nurturing of all life forms, including the humans, requires the continued nurturing of these three modes of Divine existence.

Humans are social animals and the need for belonging is a powerful force in our lives. Tribes and communities feed our emotions and emotions provide the energies that move us through all the dimensions of our lives. Emotions are the fuel of becoming and belonging and we are living in a crisis of belonging. The tremendous restrictions on normal social interactions in response to the the Covid virus has greatly exacerbated this crisis, and the acceleration of technological change will keep amping up the pressure long after Covid is gone. But the symptoms have been in plain sight for many many generations.

Far too many human beings find community in social groups based on ‘being against’ members of other groups. Based on fear and isolation, and easily degenerating into hatred, these social groups are driving the ‘collective becoming’ deeper and deeper into pathology and are a hugely destructive force on the planet. The news media and social media platforms, serving as a collective nervous system, support these groups, and easily become infected with lies and misinformation, spreading the infection far and wide.

How did we get here? And where exactly are we? Collectively, and individually, we are stuck in a case of arrested development. Becoming has lost touch with Being and this sends belonging into dysfunction and pathology. This disconnect is the primary definition of the the Sanskrit word duhkah, usually translated as suffering. Duhkha comes from an old Aryan root ‘kha‘, referring to the axle-wheel connection of a chariot. Sukha, easiness, effortless action, freedom, is a wheel that turns smoothly, being becoming and belonging as a single flow. Duhkha refers to a wheel that is stuck or way off center, giving a jarring disconnected ride.

How can we become ‘unstuck’? How can we alchemically transform duhkah into sukha, the dross of confusion into the gold of awakened being? To transform the collective pathology we must first do the work of investigating and healing our own inner worlds. We need to ‘wake up’ (to our True Nature), ‘grow up’ emotionally, and ‘clean up’ the ingrained traumas and the mess we have made of the environment. To truly move forward we also must make our spiritual practice the most important thing in our lives. As they say in Texas Hold’em poker, we have to ‘go all in’ on spiritual awakening.

An embodied spiritual practice a powerful entry into waking up and growing up. It allows a deepening of insight into how we literally resist the flow of life by creating boundaries, barriers and strategies of control, leading to and perpetuating the toxic emotions of irrational fear and anxiety. By sustaining attention on our inner world of sensations we can actually feel the contractions manifesting at all levels of the tissues, from muscles to fascia to nerves and cells. We feel the resistance to our breath and blood flow, to the peristaltic rhythms of the digestive system and the tension in our sense organs. These barriers, boundaries and resistance can be seen in the collective field as well, manifesting in the behaviors we see in society on a daily basis.

How do we work with these insights? The deepest level of meditation, what Adyashanti calls True Meditation (see below) involves resting as Primordial Awareness and allowing what arises in the mind field to just be. If our attention is held in an open space of love and compassion, the innate cellular intelligence, without the intruding assistance of the ego, will help the knots of resistance find pathways of healthy release. But this is not a beginning level practice because when the conditioning is strong and deeply embedded, letting it just be just often allows the ego-conditioning to hijack our attention. Attention provides more energy, strengthening the conditioning. Where attention goes, energy flows.

By cultivating discriminating intelligence, (viveka in Sanskrit), we learn to differentiate between the deep stillness of Presence, (Purusha in the Yoga Sutras) where all healing takes place, and the transient movements of thought and qi (Prakriti). We discriminate Pure Awareness from the vehicles though which Pure Awareness functions. This leads to a shift in self identity from the transience of the egoic activity to Atman, True Nature, Wholeness, the Tao. When we can learn to align attention to Being, Becoming can find healing. Then our sense of Belonging comes directly from Being, including all, without borders and boundaries.

How do we discover and cultivate discriminating intelligence, As eloquently stated in a modern quip, ‘The mind is a dangerous place. One should not venture in there alone. Dante had the Roman poet Virgil and his angel Beatrice as guides. But with a good map and the support of millennia of spiritual guidance, we can also jump in confidently.

Vedanta/Yoga, Buddhism and Taoism provide us with many refined maps of the inner environment, giving us reference points feel where Being or Spirit is becoming manifest in forms. The Taittiriya Upanishad, one of the source books for the key principles of Vedanta, describes five koshas, interwoven layers or sheaths of embodiment that can either obscure True Nature/ Atman or reveal it. These dimensions of existence can either obscure the light of Being, creating suffering; or they can allow us to live a life of freedom, purpose and celebration. These five nested layers are also linked by a parallel model into three bodies or shariras, which follow very closely the three treasures of Taoism, jing, qi and shen and somewhat similarly to three bodies of the Buddha, the dharmakaya, the sambogyakaya and the nirmanakaya.

What follows is a guide for when you get stuck or lost your meditation practice or your daily life. As an exercise, allow your attention to find and feel the felt sense of these increasingly denser layers of existence. They are usually presented from gross to subtle, from ignorance to awakening, but we are going to start from True Nature and move from most subtle to most tangible. These layers or bodies are vehicles of the Divine that are continually emerging from Ultimate Mystery and sustaining themselves moment to moment. But they need attention and nurturing to bring them more fully into becoming and belonging.

Ultimate Mystery, The Tao, Brahman in Vendanta, the dharmakaya in Buddhism; Inconceiveable, unmanifest: beyond being and non being; beyond light and dark; the infinite source of all that comes into being. Atman, True Nature, Spirit. “Before Abraham was, I am.”

The first emergence of spirit into form, the most subtle layer, is the anandamaya kosha, the body of bliss or great joy. This is also known as the karana sharira or causal body, the sambhoga kaya and is related to the Taoist ‘Shen’ or spirit, the light emanating from the candle. Spirit’s presence in matter, in its purest state is unconditional love, joy and deep compassion, as this week’s viral photo, as anandamaya kosha as you can get, demonstrates. Far more open in children, this effortless being can manifest in an infinite number of ways, from simple open presence to ecstatic trance and everything in between.

Speaking of ecstatic trance, in my early days of my spiritual awakening I was blessed to live on the same block in Boston as the Ramakrishna Vedanta Society. In 1971 I began my studies with Swami Sarvagatananda on the Bhagavad Gita, and the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (I still have my copy!) and was introduced to the possibilities of the world of mystic ecstasy though devotional or bhakti yoga.

(Gadadhar was Sri Ramakrishna’s given name.) ” At the age of six or seven Gadadhar had his first experience of spiritual ecstasy. One day in June or July, when he was walking along a narrow path between paddy-fields, eating puffed rice that he carried in a basket. he looked up at the sky and saw a beautiful, dark thundercloud. As it spread, rapidly enveloping the whole sky, a flight of snow white cranes passed in front of it. The beauty of the contrast overwhelmed the boy. He fell to the ground, unconscious, and the puffed rice went in all directions. Some villagers found him and carried him home in their arms. Galadhar later said that in that state he had experienced an indescribable joy”. In his later years, Ramakrishna explored many other religions though his vast open heart, demonstrating that they all lead to the same awakening.

May we all blessed to discover and re-inhabit such innocence, openness and freedom. For this Divine Love to fully operate in the world, it needs Divine intelligence and thus the next layer emerges. The rest of the koshas to come comprise the nirmanakaya, the body of Buddhas incarnation.

This next three koshas, comprise the suksha sharira, or subtle/energy body, the flame of the candle. The first is the vijnanamaya kosha, the sheath of intelligence and wisdom, also known as the buddhi. The Buddha was the one whose buddhi had fully awakened. Here the foundation is openness or presence and is the source of insight and cosmic vision, integrating infinite wisdom with the infinite compassion of the anandamaya kosha .

The Sanskrit word Mahat refers to the Intelligence of the Whole or the Universal Mind, and the vijnanmaya kosha is the link that opens to Mahat, allowing inherent wisdom of the Universe to manifest in the individual, so they may realize wholeness while still immersed in the ever-changing flow of an individual life. An awakened and integrated vijnanamaya kosha guides all of our daily decisions and actions from a place of wisdom and compassion and meditation practice strengthens this.

A living being wanting to survive and thrive in a complex world has a lot of information to process. This is handled by the manomaya kosha, the center layer of both the three subtle body koshas and the five koshas of the whole model. This sheath of mental activity or manas is highly complex vehicle of consciousness with its own inner levels to handle its differing functions and it is here that problems can arise.

Its first and primary function is to receive and organize information coming through the five outer sense organs and the inner senses of proprioception, kinesthesia and relational mirroring. Each sense has its information stream that can be cultivated through sustained attention. A musician trains their ears, a body worker their sense of touch, a chef their sense of taste and smell, and so on. We all use these to one degree or another and in meditation we are looking to open all the sensory portals so we may more fully take in the richness of the world. Dan Siegel’s ‘Wheel of Awareness meditation explore these information streams in a profound way. The sense organs and sensory perception are highly important in mediation and daily life is the information streaming is always in the present moment.

The manomaya kosha also records, stores and releases memories, activates imagination, and interprets our experiences by giving them meaning. These mental activities are also available for noticing in meditation, and in time, throughout our daily activities as well. Through learned memory, the manomaya kosha unconsciously facilitates habitual actions and in its more unconscious modes, it carries ideas, beliefs, myths and prejudices from our collective past that continue to shape our perception, thinking and behavior. Because of its capacities to operate unconsciously, this level of the manomaya kosha is where we all get stuck, affecting our perceptions, beliefs and behaviors.

Where I keep getting tripped up is in the habits I have encoded in meaning making process of mind. In my own personal practice, as I discover, or uncover places of resistance and holding, my first immediate reaction is fear. At the meaning making level, the unconscious interprets resistance as scary and dangerous and immediately triggers three possible actions: push it back into the unconscious and hope it goes away; run away from it through some form of distraction; or begin to wrestle it to regain control. Some of these patterns are part of a freeze response to some form of danger, real or imagined, but all in all, these are dysfunctional emotional patterns.

When my actions and perceptions become stuck in the manomaya kosha, a fear-contraction/fear-avoidance emotional feedback loop becomes established that is cut off from the level of intelligence, allowing no new information can get through. My noticing this, of course, is coming from the vijnanamaya kosha and the beginning of the healing, because it is no longer unconscious. This is still very challenging because the unconscious conditioning still has karmic emotional momentum

Too make it even more ‘interesting’, my self identity has also become entangled in the meaning making response. It is not just that my body/mind believes there is danger where none is present, but that it is my fault and that is because there is something inherently wrong with me. Shame and or spiritual terror are some of the wonderful gifts of my Irish Catholic DNA patterning. (There are also many good ones, such as my ease in connecting to the mystical world.) From the anandamaya kosha I can find compassion and from the vijnanamaya kosha some cosmic insight and context (so that is where that shit is coming from!), so I can patiently sit with the process and healing continues.

Now some stored traumas can carry a huge energetic charge of repressed energy and the guidance of a trained trauma facilitator may be necessary to help guide the nervous system through the resolution of these trapped energy loops. Working with my friend Caryn McHose over the years in Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing has been very helpful in safely navigating the stored traumas triggered in my psyche over the last few years. I am very grateful to have had her support and guidance. Now the pockets and places of resistance are minor and I can see them and the habituated reactions more clearly. They are still annoying and sometimes scary, but even those are conditioned reactions I can laugh with, some of the time.

The manomaya kosha is intinmately linked to the next kosha (and the densest level of the energy body), the pranamaya kosha, the sheath of prana. The pranamaya kosha has its own levels, from the subtle cellular activity all the way to the energies that move us through space. Here we find the most tangible manifestations of our emotions, our autonomic nervous system. The ‘stress response’ and the ‘relaxation response’ are easy to track, as we feel ‘wound up’, hot under the collar, or uptight’ under stress and chill, cool and calm when relaxed. We can feel quiet or depressed, aroused or agitated; too much energy (rajas), not enough energy (tamas), or ‘just right’ (sattva).

The breathing is the entry point into the pranamaya kosha and in the beginning, we allow the breath to keep letting go, to keep expanding and softening, noticing how various postures can facilitate this. When we link the vijnanamaya kosha to the manomaya kosha and pranamaya kosha, the three sheaths begin to operate as a single dynamic intelligence. Integration continues the healing as the light of the anandamaya kosha shines through all the layers. The pranamaya kosha can be explored in a more advanced way through pranayama practice, but it is important to note that ultimately we are looking to drop all efforts to control the flow of the life force, which is why pranayama is approached with caution.

The final sheath is the anamaya kosha, the sheath composed of food. This body of weight and mass, solid and measurable, is also known as the sthula sharira or gross body and corresponds to the wax of the candle. Gravity awakens this sheath through our felt sense of weight and lightness. In people who are ‘living in their heads’, this sheath is unconscious and the body is approached from thought. “Can you feel that?” ” I think so!”

As the anandamaya kosha awakens, bringing light into the density of matter, the whole Universe becomes our body. We realize Being as the source, becoming as the evolutionary journey of the Cosmos, belonging to life and all of creation, and Ultimate Mystery, The Tao. We feel the aliveness flowing through our body/minds moment to moment, from the micro-phase quantum levels emerging as quarks and electrons, to the macro-phase powers of gravity as Mother Earth dances with the sun, moon, stars and other galaxies. We come to know that Universe action is the source of all of our actions, all manifestations of creation, all emerging from an infinite unknowable spaciousness. The ultimate source of our body/mind is unbounded spaciousness. Ultimate Belonging is communion with all of existence, our Cosmic family.

Being: I am; Presence; The infinite Now; fundamental existence: ‘is-ness’. Before I am becomes ‘I am this’ or ‘I am that’, there is just ‘I am’, Unchanging, Unlimited, Aware and Awake. Resting in Stillness, resting as Stillness, resting as True Nature.

Becoming: Growth and decay; evolution; learning, changing; continuously transforming; transience, flow. Body changing, mind changing, citta vrttis, weather and politics and more.

Belonging: inter-being; sharing, relating, linking, joining, supporting, nurturing, communing.
“I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.” Grouch Marx

Adyashanti on True Meditation

True meditation has no direction or goal. It is pure wordless surrender, pure silent prayer. All methods aiming at achieving a certain state of mind are limited, impermanent, and conditioned. Fascination with states leads only to bondage and dependency. True meditation is abidance as primordial awareness.

True meditation appears in consciousness spontaneously when awareness is not being manipulated or controlled. When you first start to meditate, you notice that attention is often being held captive by focus on some object: on thoughts, bodily sensations, emotions, memories, sounds, etc. This is because the mind is conditioned to focus and contract upon objects. Then the mind compulsively interprets and tries to control what it is aware of (the object) in a mechanical and distorted way. It begins to draw conclusions and make assumptions according to past conditioning.

In true meditation all objects (thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, etc.) are left to their natural functioning. This means that no effort should be made to focus on, manipulate, control, or suppress any object of awareness. In true meditation the emphasis is on being awareness; not on being aware of objects, but on resting as primordial awareness itself. Primordial awareness is the source in which all objects arise and subside.

As you gently relax into awareness, into listening, the mind’s compulsive contraction around objects will fade. Silence of being will come more clearly into consciousness as a welcoming to rest and abide. An attitude of open receptivity, free of any goal or anticipation, will facilitate the presence of silence and stillness to be revealed as your natural condition.

As you rest into stillness more profoundly, awareness becomes free of the mind’s compulsive control, contractions, and identifications. Awareness naturally returns to its non-state of absolute unmanifest potential, the silent abyss beyond all knowing.

Stable Loving Presence

Posted on April 24, 2017 by admin

Notes From the workshop at Bija Yoga in San Francisco, April, 2017, and more…

1 Intention and Attention
2 Forest and Trees
3 Lines and Circles
4 Living in Three Dimensions

Intention and Attention

Intention and attention are the twins that help us remain rooted in the present moment. Of course, we have to begin with the intention to stay awake and present. From there we attend to whatever it is that will help us realize this intention. The interplay between intention and attention will show up anywhere and anytime we find ourselves looking to go deeper into our soul journey. Stable Loving Presence is a term I am using to help organize the focus of our intentional and attentional possibilities as we continue our work to heal ourselves, human culture and our planet.

What is our intention for this class, this moment, this lifetime? Every moment, if we are staying awake, we get to choose our intention. We have no control over what may arise, in our minds or in life, but we do have the capacity to respond to whatever arises from the spacious, open present moment and not from conditioned habit. If we want to be a vehicle of sanity and kindness in an insane world, we need the intention to choose the open spaciousness of love over contracted and unconscious fear as our base for responding to the moment, every moment. If this is our life’s intention, we need to explore just what this means. When fear, or any of its related emotions such as anxiety, anger, shame and others, arises, as they will, over and over, day after day, what determines how we respond? We have to be paying attention to find out!

In general, habit rules our responses. A common reaction to difficulty or unpleasantness is to shut down/contract our heart center as a means of self defense. These challenges can come from the outer world, or from within the depths of our own psyches. We all carry many lifetimes of psychic and emotional wounds and we have ‘learned’ to ‘close down’ to keep from revisiting the old ones, or being wounded again. Unfortunately, as we all learn sooner or later, this strategy does not work in the long run. Closing down perpetuates a sense of separation, and this alienation from wholeness, and aspects of ourselves, is the true source of our suffering. We might call this the major spiritual disease of our times. Somatically, we feel this as contracted restricted energy.

Option two is to embody the negative emotion and get lost in it. We become the anger, anxiety or fear and the fullness of our world collapses. Our strengths and resources for dealing sanely with the moment become forgotten in the unconscious passion. This is happening collectively all over the planet, as people bond with others lost in similar fears and anxieties and act out in violence and stupidity. In both of these choices, we have lost the space of the present moment.

Option three is to stay present, open and alert, holding some level of spaciousness, wisdom and compassion, even as fear, in any of its variations, arises. If necessary, we respond to the demands of the moment, as best possible, with compassion for ourselves and others, and as much wisdom as we can summon, and keep going, moment by moment. This requires a certain level of emotional and spiritual strength, cultivated through practice. A spiritual practice involves stabilizing an awakened loving presence, so just physical exercise or mental training will not be sufficient. And this practice primarily involves paying attention.

When we have as our primary intention in life to cultivate stable loving presence, every moment of our lives offers a chance to practice. We are not limited to the yoga mat or meditation cushion. And every moment we get to start anew, to be a beginner in life, hopefully recognizing that we are children in this practice, still learning and prone to mistakes. But we have to be paying full attention to what is actually arising. Most of the time we pay just enough attention to get by, but most of our mental energy is engaged in our habitual ‘lost in thought mode’. The more we practice staying fully present, the easier it gets. Of course, the spiritual irony is that stable loving presence is our natural state; we just seem to have forgotten and have become lost in our own delusions of self, in all of its stories.

Through practice, or grace, the awakening from our delusion slowly emerges, but even if a major spiritual shift has not yet taken place, we all have access to the present moment and can practice staying present. “Being steady with mindfulness as an anchor for all the changes we go through is the way we practice forbearance. And you can employ this same method anywhere and anytime: just pay close attention to the detail of what is going on internally and externally. Don’t flinch, don’t run away. Trust what happens. Take your stand there.”

Forbearance is another word for equanimity, (Yoga Sutras) samatvam, (Bhagavad Gita) or emotional resilience (Pema Chodron) . Zen priest and poet Norman Fischer, writing in his fascinating book ‘Sailing Home” is describing basic Zen practice, but the mindfulness he discusses is the root of all spiritual practices. In the body, notice that while fear or anxiety contracts the energy, you can slow that process down moment by moment, if you hold presence. The fear dos not go away necessarily, and if there is trauma associated, there will be a lot of work to hold presence, but you can do this. Keep you intention clear and your attention sharp.

‘Sailing Home‘ is also a book about stories, both personal and collective, and how we can use them wisely, without ever confusing them for absolute Truth. Our spiritual journey parallels that of Odysseus on his great journey. We never know when one of the many hidden places in our unconscious, triggered by life experience, is going to jump out and create trouble. Emotional stability and resilience is a very important skill to cultivate. I am using the expression ‘stable loving presence’ as it captures the three qualities of ground, heart and openness that are the key for this resilience.

Our somatic explorations in yoga will show how we can embody and nurture stable loving presence, (SLP), through diligent, careful practice. ‘Sthira sukham asanam‘, Patanjali’s description of asana is also a description of stable loving presence. Krishna, in chapter 2 of the Bhagavad Gita, calls this ‘sthitha prajna’, stable wisdom. SLP requires the brain to surrender to the heart, the entire body to deeply ground into Mother Earth, and hours and years of practice. Patanjali offers abhyasah, as the very first practice in the Yoga Sutras.

I-13 tatra sthitau yatno’bhyasah
Practice leads to stable healthy mind states and stillness.

I-14 sa tu dirgha-kala-nairantarya-satkarasevito drdha-bhumih
Stability of mind requires continuous practice, over a long period of time, without interruption, and with an attitude of devotion and love.

Deeply ingrained habits do not go away overnight, whether in an individual or a society. The neuronal connections can be strongly wired, especially if they have been repeated over and over. Laying down new neural pathways and weakening old ones take time and patience. The intention to sustain devotion and love are required to make sure the new pathways are healthy and not dysfunctional. It is quite easy to react to an unhealthy pattern by creating another unhealthy one. “”I hate myself for having all this judgment,” is a common thought/vrtti. Learning to gently and compassionately see the thought and recognize it for what it is requires discipline and patience. This then leads to the process of letting it go. This is vairagyam, described in sutra I-15. There are many vrttis floating about the mind field that are triggers for suffering. Vairagyam is sustaining a healthy and alert immune system for the mind.

Forest and Trees

We will look at what this means in life, as well as how our asana explorations can deepen the openness of our heart and the stability of our grounding. Remember to balance the view of the forest with the details of the trees in your practice. Obsessing over detail (trees) never allows you to rest in the openness of the present moment. For those of us trained in the Iyengar system, it is easy to get seduced by the endless pursuit of perfection. In the world of form there is always one more adjustment, one more instruction to remember, one more prop, one more nuance to notice. To be stuck here is the sign of a restless mind. In any asana, just choose a few points to awaken, using an energetic pattern to anchor your attention and integrate the flow, and then step back and ‘be’. If and when you become distracted, repeat the cycle. (For more detail on this way of practicing, see Samyama in Asana pt1) and pt 2.) Notice the incredible richness of the whole forest and the vast unbounded stillness at the core of our being waiting to be seen.

Getting lost in detail is a problem but to never notice the subtle possibilities available in refinement is also a great loss. Asana practice has been trivialized by most of modern culture. It is seen as a fancy exercise to complement your Pilates or spin classes, or some simple practices to get you ready for the ‘real’ yoga. To experience asana as a spiritual practice is to see asana as the whole expression of spirit in matter. How are you embodying wholeness, wisdom, compassion and delight in your organs, cells fluids, structures, moment by moment, 24/7/365? Can you feel a deep resonance in your cells with every form in the cosmos, from stars to starfish, as they embody the same depth of cosmic creativity as you? If so, you are beginning to get a sense of asana.

Practice: Roots and Stability

Sit in any comfortable position, preferably with a slight lift to get your pelvis off the floor. Feel tall without effort. Relax the breathing and feel the heart soft, open and relaxed. Rest here momentarily, softening the facial muscles and sense organs.

Now bring your attention to the bottom of the pelvic bones and feel the contact there. Roll very slightly forward and backward on the bridge or ramus between the pubic bones and sitting bones until you find the balance point where you feel a natural effortless lifting coming up from the base of the pose. Stay here without too much effort. There will be a very subtle natural oscillation as the body uses flow to remain stable. When you feel the ‘grounded’ state of the body, there will be no urge to do anything. The body and mind can rest.

Now let your attention drop into the lower abdomen, (dharana), several inches above the bottom of the pelvis, where the center of gravity of the body is located, and keep your attention here, (dhyana). Feel the breath expanding and condensing from this lower body center. Feel the brain resting and the heart open and floating above your stable base. Sit quietly and allow the body to rest in its center, its own stillness, (samadhi). Feel stable loving presence as a living vibrant state. Practice this every day. Start with 5 minutes, work up to 30 or 40.

When ready, transition to standing. Keep your attention in the lower body center with relaxed breathing. Feel tall and light. Notice that now your feet are your roots. Like the pelvic bones, roll slightly forward and backward until you find a place of balance. Although not necessary, slightly bending the knees might make it easier to feel your feet.

Now locate the points noted to the left. In Chinese medicine, these are the first points on the kidney meridian, known as K-1 or the bubbling spring. Here is where the earth element and the water element meet and these points are crucial in elegant and powerful movements of the body.

Technically, acupuncture points are actually cavities into which the point of the acupuncture needle is inserted, so this may help you imagine the K-1 as spaces. In athletics, ‘being on your toes’ means ‘be alert and ready to move in any direction’. When the K-1s are awake through both feeling and action, the body is relaxed and alert, stable and open. From the abdomen, breath into these points, charging them with sensitivity and alertness. Connect them to your soft open heart, feel the dynamic presence and you are now embodying stable loving presence.

Activate them further by walking and moving about the room, using the K-1 spaces as the brain of the movements. Change directions by pressing the floor at differing angles and feel how the whole body responds. Then return to tadasana and feel the breath connecting the feet and the entire body. Feel the inner stillness amidst the aliveness. We have the opportunity to cultivate stable loving presence with every step we take. How many of us walk unconsciously through life?

Take this practice into the world. The easiest is to be in nature, where every step can be nurtured by the grace of Mother Earth, if we are paying attention. From your feet, feel the trees, the rocks or mountains, the sand at the beach. Through your soft open heart take in the grace of all that surrounds you. The more time you spend in this state, the easier it is to sustain or rediscover it. (Hebb’s Axiom)

Continuing this practice in the human realm is a bit more challenging, as the collective human energy field is pretty traumatized. Practice with friends. Family members offer many delightful/frustrating/painful challenges to staying in loving presence.

Openness and Boundaries

As we bring our practice into the world, it is very important to understand that loving presence does not preclude the need for and skill in using flexible boundaries. As much as I love being in nature, I keep my distance from rattle snakes and poison oak. Although too much sun or too much cold and dampness is not conducive to good health, and I avoid those states whenever possible, my loving presence doesn’t take these personally. I realize that I can differentiate the needs of this individual organism, me, and act accordingly, without creating a feeling of separateness from wholeness.

The same is true in the realm of human relationships. Ideally, healthy parenting teaches us how to deeply and lovingly bond with another, and also how to clearly differentiate ourselves from all others. Our own authenticity is essential for soul health and a key component to this is learning how to set strong and yet flexible, and even dissolvable boundaries in our relationships.

Strengthening Our Ground.

Moment to moment practice in life helps stabilize our SLP. In asana, we can use the postures to also deepen and strengthen the nervous system’s potential to be strong, stable and open. Come back to tadasana, with the feet awake and the lower abdominal area breathing easily. To release some of the tension held in region of the pelvis and hip joints, to unlock the root chakra, and further ease the breath in the center of gravity, we can explore the effects of the standing poses. Tadasana allows us to feel our legs and feet as an extension of our root chakra and deeply bond with the gravitational field and Mother Earth. We now can discover how the other standing poses can liberate our tail energy and create a tri-furcated muladhara, where the two legs and a long imaginary tail give you three energy vectors to help create stronger grounding and more space and freedom. Click here to read more.

Lines and Circles

Hidden in tadasana is the horizontal circle seen here in a gyroscope. We can see the spinal axis or chakra line in the center. In the gyroscope, or any spinning top, the rotation gives stability to the vertical energy. This fundamental energetic pattern of the cosmos is seen in the solar system and the Milky Way Galaxy, both spiralic systems with a central axis. The rotation creates an expanding pull known as centrifugal force which tends to expand the circle. A complementary centripetal force gathers energy back to the center to sustain a balance and contain the energy. We can use twisting poses mentioned in the standing pose article referenced above to find this energetic field in our own bodies.

Living in Three Dimensions

If we take asana to the next level, we begin to feel our three dimensional being extends out into the cosmos in all directions, intersecting with layers and levels of reality we may never have noticed. Please click here for more on this.

Stay awake, grounded and openhearted and let life flow through you. Be the vehicle of social and spiritual change by living this, as best you can, moment to moment.

Emaho!