I am not an expert on the energy body. I only know what I’ve experienced and learned from energy professionals working on me, and I find it interesting. My energy body is maybe halfway present in my physical body, mostly down to my thighs. In other words, my energy tends to live half in my body and half out.
I’m not surprised since living in the body requires courage and patience. It’s hard being human. I find it amazing I can fully function half in and half out. I’m amazed at the thought that most people are half in and half out.
Back in the late 80’s, I was fully into panic-attack land, experiencing panic attacks and had to learn to manage them so I could manage myself in public, in private, in life.
I went through significant periods of time when I would awaken in a panic attack having a dream that sent me over the edge. Panic attacks are alarming enough while awake, but when they are triggered by a dream, they left me feeling broken and victimized. As I sought help, and navigated through that time, I learned I was processing inner pain, inner turmoil and core beliefs based on childhood trauma and fear.
Forty years later, I’m still coaxing myself back into my body down to my feet. I’ve learned some facts about feeling safe, feeling stable and being present. Life deals harsh lessons, and I can easily double and triple the harshness by adding pain and fear with my mind.
Staying present with myself is not just a concept. It’s a physical feeling. I’ve understood the idea of grounding myself for years and years, and can easily talk a good grounding visualization. The key, however, is feeling the practice, not just visualizing it.
I am a great visualizer going through the motions to ground my body to center myself. However, going through the motions is not the same as actually feeling the experience.
I’ve been practicing grounding recently with several exercises we have talked about before. I gently hold my Oh My God points with my thumbs on my temples and my fingers on my forehead. I relax into this position focusing on my breath and wait. I wait for a sensation I feel in my fingers. Like a subtle pulse. The pulse does come. It takes practice. I am worth the wait.
I liken the experience to gazing at a blade of grass. I focus closer and see so much more than the grass. I feel the solidness of the ground and how the grass is rooted in the soil. I sense the life around the grass with slight movements of insect life, the wind, wetness, sensation. That’s the focus I bring to my fingertips. I become present to my fingertips.
The other exercise is using a stainless-steel spoon with the intention of rubbing it gently with awareness on the bottom of my foot. It’s cold at first. My intention is to feel the heat of my body warm up the spoon, giving me a physical sensation that my energy is all the way through my body, enough so it heats up the spoon. A feeling exercise that brings me present in my body down to my feet.
The process of opening to feeling present in my body is a process. It takes time, gentleness, kindness and patience.
Throughout my day I feel my feet. I am mindful to the sensation of my feet in my shoes, on the floor, on the earth, holding me up as I live my life learning my lessons. This is the lesson of mindfulness as I live present in my body.
Breathe, relax and feel;
take time to slow down
the pace of life. Watch the
rise and fall of moods, the
birth and death of dreams.
Feelings and sensations
seem so real, yet
they shift like changing clouds,
and flow with the
high tide out to sea again.
Allow it all to be,
no need to grasp
or push away. Present
with each moment,
the whole of you,
body, mind and soul,
open to receive.
Participants’ Reflections:
Thank you for this. As you spoke, I refrained from putting my fingers on my forehead. During the meditation, I gave myself permission to do that. I never tried that before. It was tremendous in how it brought me into myself. As an enneagram 2, I tend to be so other-oriented. I started with the higher pressure and lightened it. The effect of that was an image of gently opening doors, like other options or paths. That was wild. I’ve never rubbed a spoon on my foot before and someday I’ll try that. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much. I love focusing on energy. It’s one of the many topics we have explored over these 500 days of how energy works in our bodies. Over the last two weeks, I’ve been so off-center from the constant itch and pain of poison ivy. It’s been hard to focus on my energy and energy healing. I feel more human today, and I appreciate the reminder. I spent the meditation time focusing on being in a coherent heart state. I feel relaxed and more centered finally. Thank you.
Thank you for your reading today and the poem. About the energy, I’ve been focusing on that as well. I discovered the butterfly hug this morning. It made such a difference for me. I experience tinnitus since I had a fall a few years ago, and I search for all kinds of things that can help alleviate it. I read about the vagus nerve and how it encourages the parasympathetic nervous system. It said laughter would help, so I laughed this morning, and it really energetically lifted me and actually helped the ringing in my ear. It seems so simple that it’s easy to discount.
Thank you and to everyone who has spoken. I’ve been thinking about the announcement about the group stopping. I was surprised by the announcement and at the same time as I began to sit with it, I realized there was a part of me already thinking about ending my participation in the group. Not making a commitment to do so but it was thoughts that were beginning to emerge. I was already looking at what my needs are in relation to being part of the group. Then I thought that I’m not okay and I’m not worthy. I reflected on where those core beliefs began in my childhood. I was perceived as demanding and stubborn as a kid. What was I expressing that I wasn’t aware of? I looked at it from another side—I was very frightened because my mother was ill but not perceived as ill. She was up and about and no one said she was ill, but she was. She was given a short life expectancy when I was born. Those things were never discussed but they were communicated in an energetic way and not spoken of in a clear way. So I got it. I saw the behaviors I have taken in as core beliefs about myself. I looked at that in a tender, caring way, creating a gestalt about it. That was my experience during the meditation.
Shirley says: That was powerful. The power of self-reflection. If we are really honest with ourselves, like you just demonstrated, it is so helpful and it moves us along. It gives us more information. Thank you for sharing that.
I hope other people share this same way. That people in the group share as a reading what they learned from this incubator, what new skills you’ve developed, new ways you treat yourself. I would love if people submitted writings like that. We share what we’ve learned. It’s a great way to do closure, to see where we are, what we’ve learned, how we are going to move forward in our own lives. That would be powerful for each of us to do. We have the next few weeks to share this with each other. We’ve all learned a lot from each other. I want to hear more about where you are in your life and what it means to you that you were here and where you are going to go with this.
Shirley says: It reminds me of silent retreats. We have an orientation, then the body of the retreat, and then we come back for closure. We talk and process about our experience. It’s so important. It’s like making jello: it’s all mixed up, then it marries, and in the end, it’s set.
One of the things the group has done for me is seeing everyday life in a new context. I will never look at a doorway the same way again. I’ve now had experiences of doing every-day activities and gaining valuable lessons as I do them.
Shirley says: That’s the value of reflection. It’s about everything that happens in life holds a lesson. We start with the doorways. I can stay more present with someone in pain now because I see the bigger picture. I couldn’t do that before. There is a lesson in everything. It is a profound way of living. It’s something I aspire to. It’s a process. As someone said yesterday, this group may transition, but it is not over. We’ have each embodied changes, whether we’ve spoken or not, that we will move forward with. It’s the ripple effect as we change and our changes affect the world around us. Just because I won’t be speaking every day, it doesn’t mean you can’t have incredible experiences within your own reflection and own process of learning.
There is such richness in the sharing. I will miss the verbalization because I have an ability to meditate and ability to reflect, but often my emergence comes in when I verbalize it because it’s not clear until I try to verbalize it. That’s something I have appreciated about everybody here. So thank you.
Shirley says: It speaks to the power of writing. Thea teaches writing classes virtually on how to write with authenticity from the deep voice within, creating a channel to write it down on paper so that you can understand more clearly the concepts that mull about in our hearts and minds. The Universal truths. We are all gifted with our wisdom. It is profound to see the wisdom that has come out of this group.
Thank you all for being present. I encourage you all to explore your presence, to be in your bodies, to feel what it feels like to have your feet planted on this Earth and to hold the mindfulness of what that feels like. Sometimes it’s a scary process, and we have to be gentle with ourselves. There’s a reason we are half-in and half-out of our bodies. With that, I encourage you to be gentle with yourselves, to ask questions if you need clarity, seek support from the community. As we go about our day, just know that you are not alone.