Unshakable - Feeling The Strength Of Your Body

Alright,

Then go ahead and take this time to settle in.

And if you have something in your hands,

Put it down.

If you have glasses on,

You can take those off.

Just take a breath.

If you'd like to close your eyes or cast them downward.

And give yourself the opportunity to arrive in this place and time.

And whatever's brought you here,

Whatever activities,

People,

Events,

Places,

Just experience them one last time in your mind's eye and your visceral body.

And with appreciation,

Let them go so that you can fall fully into this moment and into yourself.

And bringing your awareness to your breathing,

To the air that flows in and out in this regular rhythm without any effort.

Just observe.

Feel your chest expand and contract.

And lightly notice that you both breathe and are breathed at the same time.

That dance.

Kaki Simo when dancing with the universe.

And allow then your awareness to expand beyond that breath to the rest of your body.

And notice where your attention goes first.

And wherever you land,

Spend some time,

Some love and appreciation.

Noting the gifts that this part of your body offers you every day.

And then bring your awareness,

Allow it to flow downward through your feet into the deep earth,

The rich soil,

Through the roots,

Down into the heat in the center of this planet.

Feeling that energy source that birthed every one of us.

And note that you are carried by this ground,

By this planet.

Feel your connection through the earth,

Through the soles of your feet as part of and not apart from.

Part of this earth.

Part of this space.

Part of nature.

Part of all that is.

And in feeling your feet on the ground and that strength and stability that our earth offers us,

Allow yourself to spend some moments with your feet.

With the surface of your feet that lays on the ground,

Grounds you.

The bones of your feet and the ankle that allow you to articulate each step from heel to toe as you walk the earth.

And feel the connection that your feet offer you to this world in a very practical way.

And perhaps appreciation or love of your feet and all that they do in this moment and every other moment.

And bring your awareness then from your feet up into your lower legs,

Your shins and calves,

Into your knees and your thighs,

Your femurs,

The bones,

The muscle,

The tissue,

The cartilage.

Just feel into your legs the length of them,

The circumference of each part of your leg.

Appreciate how the muscles contract and expand to allow you to walk,

Run,

Sit.

All the things you do in your daily life from dancing to loving.

Feel how your legs and the articulation of the joints,

Just your knees alone,

How they support that forward movement in the sitting,

In the standing.

And as you feel into your legs,

Feel also your breath,

That your awareness of your legs and your feet.

Do not let you lose sight and sense of your breath and your experience of being.

And bring now your awareness farther up into your pelvic girdle where your thighs,

Your femurs join into the largest bones you have,

Into your pelvic girdle,

The hip joint.

And feel into your abdomen,

Into your sex,

Into all the area of your largest muscle groups,

Your largest bones,

And feel the strength,

The base of your core.

Truly your seat of physical power.

And feel the pleasure that this part of your body brings you.

Remember the momentum that this part powers in your walking in every daily activity that you have.

And again,

Appreciation,

Recognition for all the goodness and the awareness,

All the functions.

And then coming up,

Allow your awareness to circle and permeate through your abdomen and your torso and the vital organs,

The soft tissue,

The digestion,

All of the again functions that these organs allow you to live.

And without your daily attention,

How they continue to contract,

Expand,

Pump,

Flow,

Work for you,

For your life.

And in that torso with your heart pumping that blood,

Feel the rib cage expand and contract with the air flowing in and out of the lungs as they so easily take in oxygen and convert it into everything you need.

And feel the wholeness of your torso.

From sacrum to collarbone,

Just recognize the strength of your core from inside to out.

And bring your awareness to your back,

To your spine,

Starting at your sacrum,

Your tailbone sacrum up through every vertebra and up through your neck.

And sense the delicacy and the strength of your neck,

Of your throat,

The seat of your voice,

Your ability to swallow,

The articulation of your head through the vertical,

Through the vertebra in your neck,

A tilt of the head,

A nod,

Bending to kiss,

Everything your neck allows you.

And from your head and neck,

Notice from your shoulders moving downward,

Your upper arm,

Your elbow,

Your forearm,

The length of your arms,

The strength of your arms,

The lightness,

The ability to move through space,

Perhaps with dancing,

Hugging a loved one,

Carrying something,

Holding a child.

And feel the strength,

The tenderness that your arms offer you to experience.

And then recognize the beauty of your wrists and your hands,

The multiple bones involved in the articulation of every slight movement of each finger and the wrist itself.

And then the curving of your fingers and the straightening of them allow you to grasp,

To hold,

To write,

To do art,

Play music,

All the things that bring you joy.

And recognize the miracle of just your arms and hands,

The articulation from tickling to stroking,

To holding firmly something heavy,

What's involved in those simple movements every time we do them.

And then drawing your awareness from your hands up through your arms and neck into your head,

The very top of your vertebra sit in the center of your skull.

And appreciate this beautiful center of information,

Computation that takes place actually throughout the entire body.

It's a thinking body.

It's a feeling body.

And yet your brain has a function that's beautiful.

Your eyes to see,

Your nose to smell,

Your mouth to taste and nourish,

Your ears to hear,

Protect and offer joy.

And even your hair,

The scalp,

The sensations involved,

Just brushing your hair,

Stroking your eyes,

Blowing your nose,

Biting into a strawberry,

Listening to the sound of a creek,

The miracle of even one sense.

And experience then allow your awareness to expand to the whole body,

The beauty,

The aliveness from toe to head and then know your energy expands out to the universe,

Out to the sky,

The stars and beyond.

And that as a physical being you are beautifully a conduit and simply a conduit as you also are the entire universe,

Both and.

And as you perhaps hear words as I speak,

Allow yourself to unhook from the words and just feel yourself as that being of energy connected to everything below and above,

Within and without.

And from this beingness you draw your strength,

You live your love and you shine your light.

And bring your awareness now again to your breath as your chest expands and contracts,

Rises and falls,

Opens and releases each breath.

And again feel your weight and volume of your physical being.

And perhaps not with this next breath or the one thereafter but slowly bring yourself back into this place and space and time.

And then you are invited to open your eyes.

And welcome back.

As we know the circumstances of our times are unprecedented and in grappling with what is normal and healthy and what we know to be true and upright,

Aligned for ourselves and our world around us,

Finding a way to integrate that knowing into circumstances that feel so out of alignment.

What ways,

What tools,

What awarenesses can we hold and practice in order to walk through this seeming chaos and how can we do that for ourselves and for each other?

And anchoring within the physical body and the spiritual and celestial part of ourselves is a wonderful way to do that so as not to spin off into the intellect and the thoughts and the information,

The mazma around us.

Love that and I,

One of the things I,

Only one of the things that I love about coming together here is the realness to,

And it's often a cry in the wind in our world today,

To say wait a minute,

Where are we in this situation right now when people spin off in all the circumstances and it's all happening and we can talk about all of it and to be the voice that says and we're here right now and how can I be with you right now and how can I love myself and you right here?

And to make that real,

You know,

It reminds me of a study that happened slightly tangential but not really at Stanford around bullying and it was a grad class that was studying bullying in children and they were,

These groups were assigned to go to different tables during a meal time outside and just be part of the conversation and whenever somebody started gossiping or speaking poorly of someone,

They would note how other people engaged and what they came to understand is that the conversation would spin upward in more or less taking somebody apart unless and until only one person said one sentence.

If somebody just said something like,

I kind of enjoy Joe,

That's all it took and the whole ad attitude changed,

The whole conversation,

Yeah actually he's not that bad and it just flipped the whole thing.

It didn't take a huge force of energy to stop the conversation.

It took a very simple statement of only one person and so I think of that in our engagement in that practice of being here wherever we are and being real,

Right,

And not buying into what you're calling the hypernormal of being real and saying and where's the love in this and how is this bringing us forward this conversation and what can we do about the plastic bags or what can we do about the violence on the street?

What action can I take here and now and being that voice.

All right,

Then I'd like to share with you a poem from Rumi going celestial and physical at the same time.

I am dust particles in sunlight.

I am the round sun.

To the bits of dust I say stay.

To the sun keep moving.

I am morning mist and the breathing of evening.

I am wind in the top of a grove and surf on the cliff.

Mast,

Rudder,

Helmsman,

And keel.

I am also the coral reef they found her on.

I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches.

Silence,

Thought,

And voice.

The musical air coming through a flute.

A spark off a stone.

A flickering in metal.

Both candle and the moth crazy around it.

Rose and the nightingale lost in the fragrance.

I am all orders of being.

The circling galaxy.

The evolutionary intelligence.

The lift and the falling away.

What is and what isn't.

You who know Jalaluddin.

You the one and all say who I am.

Say I am you.

So that's my sharing for today.

My friends,

I wish you a beautiful continuation of your time.

Be well.

Stay healthy.

Be well.