With the intention of connecting within and writing a morning meditation, I practice exercises to wake up my energy body. I ask me to be present, all of me. Using a Pranic healing exercise, I bounce 100 times in place imagining all my lymph nodes waking up, draining and renewing.
I thump my thymus and other places to connect. I draw my meridians to enhance my internal organs working well. I rub my hands together and feel my energy tingle, and then touch lightly the bottom of each foot, asking for my energy to meet me there, to join me all the way down to my feet. I have to repeat that one several times.
I slow down and listen -- finally words come. Share about finding myself every morning.
Find my mind. Where am I? What am I pondering at the moment?
Find my heart. What a whirlwind weekend living with young kids following their energy, their excitement, their curiosity.
Where is my body? I’m grateful I slept all night. I had a quiet release into unconscious sleep. All my aches and pains, worries and cares, scattered energy releasing into sleep.
A new day. A new chapter. A new opportunity.
We all deal with the weight of our lives. The worries and complex situations with no easy answers. The weight of our communities and world concerns. It’s all real and all very palpable.
I remember participating in a circle of healers, joined together in intention before we break off into subgroups. We imagined a ball of energy into being in the middle of our circle and it grew. A collective presence of love, healing and light. Each of us intending the ball of light to grow into the large space between our circumference. I held my hands out with palms outward. The ball of light had reached giant proportions so as I breathed and waited, my palms could feel the weight of the ball pressing back.
Collectively, with intention, our minds and hearts created a presence only of love and light. It was palpable. The ball was humongous, almost too big to contain. I breathed in steadiness. Our collective intention held the parameters of love, light and healing energy and it became real. I’ve never forgotten the experience.
When I am worried about situations, real situations in my life, they become palpable balls of energy that feel heavy, weighing me down, pulling on my legs and feet like I’m walking through mud. It’s not in my mind. It’s in my energy.
I can change my energy though I may not be able to change the situation. With intention, I can meet myself at the borders of my body and entice my energy to join with my intention.
I gently ask myself, all of me, to be present.
I bounce 100 times in place, not lifting my feet or toes, just gentle bouncing as I imagine my lymph nodes waking up, draining and renewing.
I thump my thymus. I trace my meridians to enhance all my organs are working. I rub my hands together and hold my palms an inch or two apart and feel my tingling energy. I hold my tingling hand to my bare feet until I feel the tingle there, almost like knocking on my door waiting for me to answer. Sometimes I have to knock several times until I arrive, because I know I’m in there. I don’t give up.
I slow down to listen.
I listen to my self-talk. Where am I? What am I pondering at the moment? I breathe in a gentle light and imagine a blackboard filled with worries and concerns, and I erase it. The words may appear again, and with a new breath, I erase it again. This is my moment.
I find my heart. Yes, I’m worried. I breathe knowing I am not alone.
Where is my body? Every time I breathe, I quiet my entire being, calming all, erasing worries, remembering my Higher Self, my Wisdom Self is with me. I access my wisdom through my breath, through my moments of silence, through moments of gentleness.
A new day. A new chapter. A new opportunity.
Participants’ Reflections:
Thank you. That was amazing, beyond amazing. A prescription for how to deal with each day: how to wake up, be centered, find my heart, find my body, find my energy, stay in the present, let go of negative thinking. I was floating by the end of it. When I put my biofeedback device on and started meditating, I was at the most centered and coherent level. Usually I’m in the most incoherent state when I start up. I was in disappointment yesterday. I felt that my message wasn’t heard yesterday about expectancy and expectations and it left me disappointed. I guess I had expectations. This reading relieved that disappointment. What matters to me is that I heard my message, that expectations lead to disappointment. I appreciate the reading today. I’m going to print it out and post it everywhere, build affirmations on this reading today. Thank you.
Thank you. That was wonderful. What happened for me was that I visualized the collective healing ball around all of us. I experienced a collective meditation. I didn’t experience me going off in my head thinking about what you said. I just experienced a moment of togetherness in silence, in the healing, breathing in healing, breathing out healing. The power of the collective was amazing. Thank you.
Thank you so much. I have a mini-trampoline and I wondered if I should get rid of it. I think I’ll try bouncing on it. When I was a camp counselor, we used to sing a song written and composed by Nan Gibbons: “Calm my eyes, quiet my ears, lengthen my jaw, still my mouth. Feel my heart, beating in inside. I can be still, I can rest, I’m in control of my body.” The kids needed the affirmation because they were told they couldn’t sit still, but this told them they could. They would thump the different parts of their face and chest.
With my biofeedback device, I’ve been concentrating on the sound feedback but I haven’t consciously been doing deep breathing. I totally focused on that today and my normal 68 heart rate was down around 50.
Thank you all. On this same heart wavelength, I’m looking into Heartmath. They have a whole knowledgebase on their website whether I buy the biofeedback device or not. I’ve been practicing heart breathing for the last two days. I tend to skip breathing into my chest. The more I practice the heart breathing, the more at rest I feel and the more I realize how hypervigilant I am for the most part. I’m very hopeful that this exercise will bear fruit.
Thank you so much. I had never heard of bouncing 100 times without lifting your feet and toes. I used the meditation time sitting down. I started out only using my lower legs, and then I consciously worked my way up my body. When I got to my neck, I could feel the vertebrae spreading out. They were lightening up, I heard little cracks as I moved. I could feel when all of me was doing the bouncing. It was surprising that a memory came up of the end-of-grade tests when I was an elementary school teacher. I hated ending the school year with labeling the kids based on the results. To me, our goal was human-to-human contact, not being in these boxes with numbers. Some had scores they liked, others had scores that didn’t reflect who the child was. Outwardly, we would put out smiling faces; inside, we were disappointed. But we always had a talent show on the last day and it brought absolute relief. The creativity, the collaboration, the human-to-human contact, was absolute medicine at that point. It was a strange walk through memory lane, feeling it in ways I wasn’t conscious of at the time as much as I am looking back.
Thank you for everything and what everyone said. I keep contemplating expectations and disappointment. Thea had expectations that our reactions would be different and yet the whole reading was about expectancy. Sometimes we don’t consciously know what our expectations are. But I think they are there unconsciously. I doubt if it was an expressed goal. We’re human, that’s what happens without our really knowing it. Because we are all different, we all look at expectancy differently. It was so wonderful to go back over everything that everyone has said about it. I think everyone is getting a clearer idea of what it is than we had at the beginning. And yet, expectations are so much a part of our lives. And disappointment is so much a part of our lives. It’s going to take a lot of practice to be in expectancy because we slip out of it so easily.
Shirley says: That’s why awareness is really the key. It’s something I work on all the time. I think it’s why I so enjoy greeting you all by name. There’s something deep within that feels heard by being seen. To me, it helps me relax into any expectations and expectancy because I am seen.
I have a long way to go with expectancy. I understand it but it’s a concept that I didn’t have much of an idea about before this group started. I never know what someone is going to say that will ring true for me. Someone yesterday talked about the mother with two kids struggling. That spoke to me. It helped me because it was recognition of what it was like for me as a single parent struggling to raise my kids. There wasn’t time to think of anything else other than surviving. It helped me because I’ve tried different things but I had to stop because I didn’t have the energy and my mind is too busy around dealing with my chronically-ill family member. I gave myself a break. Thank you for what you said today. I tried bouncing as I walked to the refrigerator. It was easy, I could do it. It wasn’t something that was too much or that I didn’t feel like it.
As people spoke this morning, I had an image that this group feels like a spiritual bank and we are the tellers. We all make deposits. Think about the next time you withdraw. Deposits that we all share in. it’s all going into one big bank account that sometimes we have to withdraw from. It’s a co-op.
What you read reminded me of a class I took called yin yoga. It’s all about stretching and holding a stretch. The instructor said some people look like Saran Wrap when they are older, all wrinkled. I’m thinking of doing yin yoga again, doing a stretch and holding it. It feels good.
Thank you for joining us today. I didn’t know what I was talking about so I wrote from what I needed to do to be present. Sometimes opening the window to our inside process, though it’s vulnerable, is welcomed by others because we really have the same thoughts, concerns, worries, struggles, and the joys. It is a bank. Thank you for joining this incubation bank. We’ll be here tomorrow. I see each of you and I appreciate all your presence. I hope you have a gentle day.
Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@magict1911