Healing, Meaning-Making and Story

Posted on July 27, 2018 by admin

In the last post, I included a link to an article on Non-dual Chinese Medicine and the Chong Mai or thrusting vessel, as there were many aspects raised by the author that intrigued me. One that struck home was his comment on the existential angst ‘fundamental to Western consciousness’. Given the state of the world these days, a certain amount of anxiety is impossible to avoid if you are paying attention. But author Michael Greenberg is referring to something more subtle, and more deeply embedded in the psyche.

Adyashanti, one of my major mentors in the field of awakening has been exploring this Western angst, as he sees it in many of his students (and probably himself earlier on) and has developed a home study course on what he is calling ‘Redemptive Love.’ Adhya gets right to the point: “Unworthiness is the pandemic of Western Culture.” I love this quote as it points to a serious barrier to truly deep awakening. Many years ago I heard of the Dalai Lama responding to a question from a Western student about low self esteem and having no idea what that was. He was puzzled !!! I’m not. I have heard parts of Adya’s course, but now need to really absorb it more deeply as I my own personal angst is demanding attention. This angst can be seen as continually re-occurring disturbances or dissonance in our bio- energy field, so we can make sense of their nature, we may be able to tease out and release many of these patterns.

A common source of this angst/unworthiness are the many unresolved issues of our childhood. Michael Greenberg, cited above, has a book on healing journeys called ‘Braving the Void’, and in the chapter entitled ‘Childhood Terrors’, he states: “While the average adult can control or mask unresolved childhood traumas, as we reach old age these mechanisms can weaken, allowing the hurt of fearful child to reappear. I believe this is why we so often see older people regressing to childhood behaviors and behaving irrationally. It makes sense then to try to come to terms with these fears at a time of life where we have the energy and will to integrate our various contradictory feelings.” My recent PTSD experiences are clearly coming from this dimension.

A more insidious example of childhood trauma is shame. Tara Brach, in her extraordinary book ‘Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of the Buddha” offers this commentary on the same Dalai Lama story I mentioned above. “While all humans feel ashamed of weakness and afraid of rejection, our Western culture is a breeding ground for the kind of shame and self-hatred the Dalai Lama could not comprehend.” This quote comes from the very first chapter, entitled ‘The Trance of Unworthiness”.

From another perspective, this angst can also be fed by a flawed story embedded in the ancestral field through the DNA field our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents etc. Their belief systems around religion, personal value, cultural values and parenting all impact our personal energy fields in the present moment. In Classical Chinese Medicine, the ‘jing’, one of the three treasures is the carrier of our ancestral karma and learning how to nurture the jing can lead to more healing and transformation.

This involves the epigenetic fields and cell biologist Bruce Lipton is a great source for studies and practices. Epigenetics is where we learn about how changing environments, internally and externally, changes the ways in which the genes and DNA are activated. By healing ourselves, we are also healing our lineage/ancestors ‘now’ through the epigenetic DNA fields, and our planet needs lots of healing. We can also employ active dreaming and shamanic journeying to work with the ancestral karma.

Belief systems also manifest in our movements through what we can call ‘meaning making structures. I first encountered the idea of meaning-making as a self-organizing component of our biology in “How Life Moves” by Kevin Frank and Caryn McHose where they describe four structures that underlie how we move through life, and how life moves through us. These include the physical structure of muscles, bones, connective tissue; the perceptual structure where we store patterns of attention that determine how we perceive the world, inwardly and outwardly; the co-ordinating structure where we store learned patterns of movements, small and large that the body can call upon, and use in combinations, when movement is required; and finally, the meaning making structure, where we create stories/ideas/beliefs about ‘what things mean’, and embody those meaning in patterns of movement and also inhibition, where certain movements are ‘not allowed’.

As a simple personal example of these four structures, in my ongoing sax education, the physical structures of my whole body have to engage to facilitate new subtle movements in my fingers, wrists, throat, jaws and diaphragm. The co-ordinative structures have to keep evolving when new note combinations and different fingerings are required. The perceptual structures are being challenged by my sax guru Karl to hear nuances in pitch, rhythm, note lengths and chord harmonies. These are relatively straight forward. But when my meaning making structure is dominated by the inner critic embedded in the ‘story of unworthiness’, which probably extends back generations, there is no joy or delight possible when challenged.

If my primary interpretation of a challenging situation is that ‘obviously my being is flawed or ‘I am fundamentally unworthy of being whole’, my cellular capacity to respond from its own deep intelligence is compromised. What fascinates me is that I get the absurdity of this belief system intellectually, but that understanding is not penetrating into the biology. In fact, as I dive more deeply into the cellular/biologically driven sub-conscious and unconscious in my embodied practice, more of these strange energy fields are being released into my conscious awareness. My current ‘meaning-making’ model of the flaw in the core ‘meaning-making’ structure is that I am awakening in the DNA field of my Irish Catholic ancestors (with some English pathology as well) and ancestral healing is being requested.

This idea of inherited story opens lots of portals into fun explorations. First of all, it gets us into Dan Siegel’s work on ‘narrative integration, (see The Mindful Brain), where we need a healthy and ever evolving capacity to tell our ‘self-story’ by organizing all of our personal experiences and integrating them into our behavior. Religion and spirituality, and in fact all aspects of culture are transmitted through story. My mentor Thomas Berry, along with Cosmologist Brian Swimme, co-wrote ‘The Universe Story” as a primary story for all humanity in the 21st century, orienting them to the magnificence of creation as everyone’s personal story. I’ve been studying Vedanta for almost 50 years, and Vedanta is all story based. The Bhagavad Gita, a mini story, is embedded in the 1.8 million word “Mahabharata’ one of the greatest epic stories in human history. The Katha Upanishad tells the tale of a young boy calmly confronting Lord Yama, god of death. Vedanta’s overall perspective is that this angst arises because we ‘forget’ our inherent wholeness, or ‘basic goodness’ and just need to be reminded, through teaching.

The Tao’ists believe that the human at birth is placed in the center of the creation process, providing a link between yin and yang, making them naturally connected and relevant. Like the Vedantans, the Taoist view is that our humanity is always an expression of the whole, the macrocosm, the Universe, but because we inhabit a world of constant change, we need to continually ‘re-tune’ ourselves through practice. going out of tune, experiencing imperfections, confusion and doubt are all par for the human course. We just need to learn some skillful means (upayas) to navigate our lives and fully participate in the unfolding of our soul’s journey here on Mother Earth in the early years of the 21st century. We all have a unique contribution to add to the story of our time and place. Discover it and live it fully.

Using the Microcosmic Orbit in Asana: Pt 1

Posted on November 6, 2017 by admin

Boston Workshop Notes: October, 2017
Part 1

When the Tao’ists of old contemplated the night sky, they noticed the way the stars rotated around the north star, especially the constellations Ursa Major (the big dipper) and Casseopeia ( the mythological Greek queen on her throne. They noticed that this macro-cosmic orbit and its repeating cycles were replicated on the earth as lunar and seasonal cycles of weather and the movements of water, wind, soil (annual flooding, bringing fresh topsoil to the deltas) and heat. When they turned their attention inward, they discovered the human body also has cycles and rhythms (as above, so below). The mapping of what is now called the microcosmic or small orbit awakened links to both physiological and emotional health as well as spiritual awakening.

We can use this the mapping of the human energy field in our explorations of embodied wisdom through yoga/asana practice. Yoga begins by refining the capacity to pay attention. In his commentary to Patanjali’s very first sutra, I.1, Vyasa states “yoga is samadhi”; that “samadhi is a natural attribute of the mind-field or chitta”; but not when the mind-field is disturbed, dull or distracted. Only when the mind field is “ekagra” ( one pointed,) or dissolved in stillness is it said to be yoga. The mental alchemy is the transforming the disturbed, dull and distracted mind states to ones of mindful attention, focused attention and dissolved in stillness.

6 Possible Qualities of Attention:

Disturbed, Dull, Distracted, Openly Attentive (Mindfulness), Focused Attentive (Dharana/Dhyana/Samadhi), Dissolved in Stillness/Emptiness/Awareness/Drashtuh Svarupe

Open Attention in Action:

Every moment we are engaged in the world around us is an invitation to mindful attention. Driving a car, having a one on one conversation, being in a group environment such as work, shopping or school; these are opportunities to discover the ‘relational fields’ of overlapping energy where our wounded-ness and creativity can both awaken from a place of love, compassion and wisdom. Here, we meet the world as it is, as it arises moment to moment and the ‘inner and outer’, or, the subjective and objective realms of reality can find integration and the realization of wholeness. Staying present does not mean ignoring past and future, but recognizing they are also arising now. Then we don’t ‘get lost’ or forget, through disturbance, dullness or distraction.

Directions of Focused Attention:

Yoga begins when the mind-field is not just brought to the present moment, but can stay there effortlessly. (Otherwise it is distracted.) The complement to mindful attention, a more global state of awareness, is focal attention or dharana/samadhi. Here attention tunes out everything but a very specific information stream or mental process. It may be an algebra problem in your homework. Or a thesis for a paper. Mediation begins with bringing attention to the breathing process. Us somanauts use the ongoing stream of sensations and perceptions coming form the body to both refine attention and also deepen the capacity to feel and know what is happening. What are some of the ‘seeds’ of attention that can help you cultivate one-point awareness?

Outer objective reality: What is happening around you, locally, globally, cosmically? The present moment offers many possibilities, but also many distractions. You need discipline and passion to keep your focus.

Inner subjective reality: Our thought patterns, emotions, prana/qi flow, dreams, and imagination are all possible entry points to cultivate a refined focal attention.

Subjectivity itself: A little more advanced, but Awareness, or any and all words that point to this, such as: Emptiness, Stillness, Silence, Buddha Nature, etc. Attention dissolves into Pure Awareness with no object of attention.

Four Dimensions of Spatial Consciousness

When we use our embodied energy field, as in asana, to harness attention, we have some delightful geometric possibilities to explore. As asana explores our spatial dimension very deeply, we can use geometry 101 as guide. Geometry describes 4 basic spatial dimensions, and we can call ‘Time’ as the 5th

Zero Dimensional: a point, bhindu, ekagra citta, acupuncture ‘cavity’. A point has no length, no height, and no depth. Thus 0 dimensions. It is a highly concentrated state.

One Dimensional: link two points to get a line. It can be straight or curved (arc), bound or unbound. It has length, but no width or depth.

Two Dimensional: close the lines to form surface area: geometrical, ie circle, triangle etc, or irregular. Length and width, no depth.

Three Dimensional: volume: spheres, cubes, pyramids, and many other options: length, width and depth.

Four Dimensional: all of the above, moving and changing in time

Focused Attention on Prana/Qi flow with Microcosmic Orbit (General Principles):

Bringing attention and staying on key points, using imagination to assist with sensation/perception

Linking the points in small arcs/lines through root and/or crown chakras

Bringing attention to the 2 dimensional field dynamics of circles, especially the microcosmic orbit.

Bringing attention and staying on flow through the volume, using the center axis.

Monitoring subjective experience

Resting in Pure Subjectivity (drashtuh svarupe)

Specific Practices While Sitting:

Breathing into the lower dan tien, the lower diamond in the diagram above. Feel the volume of the pelvis up to just below the navel and fill with breath. Feel the pelvic bones moving with the breath like the ribs do. Abdominal breathing (yin/yin, soothing, quieting the mind): fill on in breath, empty on out breath. Reverse abdominal breathing (yang/yin, energizing, activating): empty on in breath, fill on out breath. Explore how different these two are and learn how to apply them in your daily life. Begin and end all Microcosmic orbit practices in the lower da tien. It awakens the cooling yin water element, grounds the energy into Mother Earth, quiets the mind and builds a strong energetic foundation for your life activities.

Refining the points and arcs of the lower dan tien: While sitting, bring your attention to the CV-1 point in the very center of the perineum. Inhale and exhale through this point, feeling it becoming elastic. Stabilize your attention here. Very tiny micro-movements of the sitting bones back and forth can help you find the center. This is the meeting point of all the yin vessels and a key place in the body to awaken.

Then, find CV-6, on the front body, below your navel. Visualize it out in space as well, like on the hula hoop seen below. This will help activate the whole energy field and help the body stay relaxed. Now, inhale into CV-1 and then imagine the exhalation traveling in an arc up to CV-6. Inhale into CV-6, imagine the exhalation traveling in an arc back to CV-1. Or Inhale from CV-1 to CV-6, exhale return. Or inhale from CV-6 to CV-1, exhale return. Then stay with CV-6, inhaling and exhaling for several breaths until you can find and stay with the point. In actuality, you may find yourself in CV-5 or CV-4, which may be easier to feel, for you, but feeling the arc and the end points is all that counts.

Repeat the above practice, this time going from CV-1 to GV-4 at the back body, exploring one point at a time, traveling back and forth, etc.

Repeat the practice connecting the four points of the thrusting vessel (Chong Mai) as shown above, CV-1, CV-12, CV-22 and GV-20, tracking up and down. This is the chakra line, or mid-line of the body and traces its origin, along with the Conception vessel (Ren Mai) and Governing Vessel (Du Mai), to the earliest moments in embryological development. Pause at each point for several breaths so it becomes familiar and easier to find. Remember, an acupuncture ‘point’ is actually a ‘cavity or cave’, meaning the action takes place in empty space, both outside and inside the body.

Four Point Breathing: Connect CV-1, CV-6, CV-12 and GV-4 in a square or diamond shape. In Tao’ism, 4 is implies a whole cycle, such as the annual (four seasons,) or daily (midnight, sunrise, noon and sunset.) Or connect CV-1, CV-17, GV-20 and GV-9, (root, crown and heart). Be creative.

Specific Practices While Standing:

Activating K-1:

Once we are on our feet, we want to integrate the limbs with our Micr-cosmic orbit. (Ideally the limbs are engaged while sitting, but it is easier to find them standing.) In tasasana, find the K-1 points on the soles of the feet and engage them. Kidneys are the most yin of the yin organs, governing the water element, so feel them linking to CV-1, the seat of the yin and feel the support coming into the pelvic floor, and the whole micro-cosmic orbit.

Finding Planes (two dimensions): Using the support of the legs, feel the micro-cosmic orbit as a surface bisecting the body into right and left. Fill in the space inside the circle with attention/energy/light/qi, and let your body feel a part of the disc. Soften the tissue and let it respond. In this plane, try bending forward slowly and returning, tadasana-uttanasana-tadasana and feel how the body responds. Does it contract along the yang/back or collapse along the yin/front? Beginners collapse the front. Intermediate students contract the back to prevent the collapse of the front. Use the field of energy created by the plane/energy disc to keep both the front and back body open and vibrant (sattvic). Minimize, as best possible, or course, the collapsing/tamasic and contracting/rajasic habits.

Using the information coming from any of your favorite poses, create your own personal map of the micro-cosmic orbit. Mine has some major gaps. If I use a clock as an image, with GV-20 at 12 and CV-1 at 6, 1 – 5 at the back, 7 – 11 at the front, I have pie shaped blockages between 2 and 3 and 10 and 11 in my energy field, and in the flesh. I try to open them up, and back they go into dullness and confusion. It’s a process.

Correct action will bring up places where your energy field is blocked. the challenge is to meet these with patience, wisdom, lightness, and with what Pema Chodron calls ‘discomfort resilience’. Awakening is not about eliminating problems, but seeing them as opportunities to deepen your compassion and wisdom.

Another way to work with clock is to take points opposite each other and work with them simultaneously. 12 and 6 give us crown and root chakras, or GV-20 and CV-1. Feel the yang energy pushing them away from each other while the yin energy is pulling them together. If I rotate the whole circle 2 hours, I can create a similar polarity with CV-17 and GV-4, or GV-9 and CV-6. This links front and back, upper and lower, yin and yang. You can also be the minute hand moving in a circle through the points. Explore both clockwise and counterclockwise directions. Make up your own ways to play with this.

Lateral Plane: If we rotate the orbit (clock) 90 degrees we find ourselves in the lateral plane. Crown and root chakras, GV-20 and CV-1 still involved, but we are no longer on the micro-cosmic orbit. Here we can activate points on the Gall Bladder Meridian on the side body with our fish body poses like trikonasana and ardha chandrasana.

According to Daniel Keown in ‘the Spark in the Machine, the gall bladder is the organ that governs the lymphatic system, a key aspect of the fluid body.

In part two of this post, we will see how the gall bladder points can also be used to give us our sense of volume when we add the girdle or belt vessel (dai mai) and offer some insight on how these ‘vessels’ relate to the organs and meridians. In part three, we will look at how all of this fits into the Tao’st view of spiritual evolution.

Remember:

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

(Chapter 1, Tao te Ching, by Lao T’zu, translated by Stephen Mitchell)

Yin and Yang: Double Action in Action

Posted on August 18, 2017 by admin

On the left we have our basic micro-cosmic orbit energetic pattern; two half circles joining to create a whole, with a diameter extending from root to crown, yin to yang. (Almost equal halves: the back circle, the yang governing vessel is slightly longer than the front, yin conception vessel. The meeting points are at the mouth and anus, the two ends of the gut body. How interesting! It is said that at birth, when a baby first opens her mouth to breathe, the circuit opens. The general practice is then to keep the energy field connected through all of the challenges of life.)

There are key points along the circle that we can focus on and bring energy to in order to active the whole, and we can link the points by moving our attention from point to point, using the breath. We can link the yin points to feel and find the conception vessel, or the yang points to find the governing vessel (GV-1 is just in front of the coccyx, on the other side of the anus from CV-1. We can also explore them as yin yang pairs such as GV-4 and CV-6, CV-17 and GV-9, or CV-1 and GV-20. The governing vessel nurtures the six yang channels and organs, while the conception vessel does the same for the yin channels and organs. This this circuit integrates the whole.

When we can hold yin and yang simultaneously, we have a ‘double action’. There may be waxing/waning as during movement, or staying stable, but yin and yang are always (when healthy) both dynamically engaged. (There are many more points of the governing and conception vessels that are used in acupuncture treatments. The ones on the diagram have been chosen by my teacher’s teacher, Jeffrey Yuen, to be of special importance in integrating the micro-cosmic orbit, which supports all the channels, and thus all the points. This is link offers an excellent introduction to Jeffrey’s cosmic level insight in teaching Chinese Medicine. )

The acupuncture points (actually they are cavities, but it is much easier to bring your attention to a point rather than a cavity) are accessed through the skin, but their effects extend into the body, as well as into the energetic field surrounding the body. This allows us to visualize the larger circle as demonstrated by the hula hoop. Points CV-12 and CV-17 can be found at the center line of the body, along the thrusting vessel, even though they are listed as being on the front. Ultimately and ideally, all points are energized and energy flows freely in both directions around the circle, and up and down the center line. Reality tells us that energy gets sluggish in some places and overactive in others, so helping remediate this is a practice.

The micro-cosmic orbit is a sagittal plane circle and can be very helpful in guiding our movements in and out of forward and backbends. This is the foundational action in all of B.K.S. Iyengars poses.

In paschimottanasana, he first activates the yang-back body-governing vessel as the yin/front body/conception vessel yields and opens, front and back acting as a single whole. The front tends to collapse in going forward, so this awakening alleviates that. Then he completes the pose by transitioning, smoothly reversing yin and yang, front and back, releasing the yang back body governing vessel to create a deep yin forward bend. The movements in and out are a dynamic double action. When staying in the pose, the double action remains as energy flow as the physical body remains still.

Check out ‘Light on Yoga’ and you will see all his forward bends are shown this way. For a bonus, check out this youtube clip featuring Iyengar at the ripe old age of 59, when he was in his prime. This is what fully integrated embodiment looks like! Pay special attention to the expanding and condensing of his body, in the transitions, but also when he completes the poses.)

lf I go from tadasana to uttanasana and back again, I can create a similar field where I imagine the circle turning like a wheel, half way in one direction to get down, and the reverse to come back. Down the front and up the back to go down, down the back and up the front to come up. This is movement. I can also, in tadasana or any pose for that matter, without moving physically, move the energy in the same pattern, as if the hula hoop moves, but I don’t. I can also do both at the same time, if I just move the energy. The circles pass through each other and I can complete both circles over and over, just using imagination, attention and breath or qi. This is a double action. Two apparently opposite actions, working together to create a dynamic field of energized presence. I can do a similar double action transitioning in or out, or remaining in any pose. This sustains the pose in a dynamic field to minimize holding/contracting and collapse.

We also have a lateral plane circle that helps give us a three dimensional sense of embodiment. The common points are root and crown and the diameter, but now we have points on the sides of the body (our lateral line) to explore. This is the trikonasana circle or fish body. Balancing all points on the circle in both directions is the goal. I tend to collapse the underside, so I pay extra attention here, from inner back heel rooting into the ground all the way through the inner ear and beyond to keep the lateral circle open. Right and left are another yin/yang pair that communicate back and forth moment to moment, in transition, or in satying in the pose. Once I’ve landed in trikonasana and remain there for a while, I can explore the microcosmic orbit to stabilize front and back as well. The same principle operates in all of the lateral poses such as parsvakonasana, ardha chandrasana and anantasana and more.

As a meditation, exploration and practice, I can zero in on any region of the body and refine the double action. We will use the pelvic floor as it holds the seat of the yin, the root chakra, and is the foundation for all postures. The two circles are shown as they cross at the pelvic floor. Imagine this is a bowl, so the lines are curved and the center point drops down (into the page from the reader’s perspective) creating a coccyx instead of the sacrum as one of the 4 cardinal points. Now we also have four quadrants or volumes to explore. (This is similar to the image shown in Bonnie’s video clip in the previous post.)

On the micro-cosmic orbit, in a forward bending action, or coming out of a backbend, (untucking) , the energy runs from pubic bone to coccyx, but if I a not careful, the energy may get stuck and I will just compress the front two quadrants. In a backbending action, or coming out of a forward bend, the energy runs from the pubis to the coccyx (tucking). My weakness will be to just close the back two quadrants and block the energy there.

Before I move into a pose, I can energetically move the coccyx and pubis together and apart, making the energy line connecting them longer or stronger. Or I can do both at the same time, as a double action. Try these now as you are sitting reading this. To help get a feel for how the double action energy manifests in the tissue, Imagine either compressing a spring as it pushes back, or stretching thera-band as it offers resistance. Feel the dynamic charge of energy. You can modulate the intensity. Start strong and then back off until the the energy is very clear but subtle. Locate the intersection point and make sure it is centered. If you feel adventurous, add CV-6 and GV-4 to create longer arcs of energy. Imagine the whole circles as you focus on the lower bowl. Feel CV-6 and GV-4 parallel to the ground and CV-1 at absolute center. As this becomes stable, your ability to sit lightly will increase tremendously.

Hip Remediation:

I have been working with some issues in my right hip for several years now thanks to some unfortunate encounters with ice dams and window wells my last winter in Arlington. What has been most helpful is to bring this double action I feel on the microcosmic orbit first into my spine/pelvis and then into the hip joints. In what ever hip-opening pose I am working with, I first monitor the 4 orquadrants of the pelvic floor, noticing which quadrants are compressed or overstretched. Because the legs attach to the pelvis, they affect the pelvic floor and vice versa. My right rear quadrant of the pelvic floor is the major culprit in my hip challenge, and I can connect that to the other three to help provide support in releasing.

Now imagine each hip joint has four quadrants in the same plane as the pelvic floor and monitor those. When seated, the pelvis is now 90 degrees to the femurs and I now have a second floor to add to the four rooms of the first (pelvic) floor. Instead of four quadrants, I now have eight volumes or spaces. These are composed of the yin and yang pairs of each combination of the three directions: lower front right, lower front left, upper front right, etc. Ramanand calls the upper front rooms the tops of the groins, from the acetabula up the illium, and the bottom front rooms, the bottom of the groins, from the acetabula to the sitting bones.There are four more spaces at the back of the hips as well.

To bend forward moving from the pelvis, whether sitting or standing, what I want to do is open the bottom of the groins, from the acetabulum to the sitting bones, and the bottom back hips as well, and release into this space.In coming out of a forward bend, which is the same actions as going into a backbend, I want to open the upper stories, front and back. In backbends, lengthening the tail is very useful in keeping the upper back space from contracting.

If I truly want to ‘open’ the hip joint and engage all eight spaces, I can simultaneously, energetically roll the head of the femur in the opposite direction of the acetabulum. In a forward bend, the acetabulum untucks (pubis to coccyx, down the front and up the back) while the femur ‘tucks’ coccyx to pubis, down the back and up the front. This is bringing the microcosmic orbit into the action of bones and flesh. This is creating a double action with the femur head and the acetabulum, paralleling the double action of the microcosmic orbit through the pelvic floor.

In supta padangusthasana like poses, the femur head of the lifting leg moves around the socket, but the energetic action is the same as uttanasana. The femur head feels as if it were ‘tucking’ while the socket continues to untuck. When the motion is complete, I sustain the double action energetically to melt the joint. Start with the micro-cosmic orbit to engage the whole. Focus in on the four quadrants of the pelvic floor, and then add the upper and lower spaces. Then focus even more closely on the actions of the femurs and acetabula. When you find a sense of balance, rest in the infinite space that feeds the yin and yang. This is dynamic somatic meditation in action.