Welcome to embodied poetry,
An immersive experience of poetry,
Breath,
Of life,
And deep presence.
We all sometimes get caught up in the impossible throes of perfectionism,
An insatiable need for control,
And the inevitable cycle of stress that comes from this orientation to ourselves and to the world,
Which leaves us feeling overwhelmed,
Exhausted,
Frazzled,
Cynical,
Paralyzed,
Anxious,
Or depressed.
Today on embodied poetry,
We steep in the questions and allow them to begin to open us up to another way of being in ourselves and in our lives,
One that is more connected than our loneliness,
More trusting than our doubts,
And more loving than our fears.
Please sit comfortably or even lie down on your back.
Allow yourself a moment to truly relax and receive an easy breath.
Invite your eyes to close or soften your gaze down your cheeks as you draw your awareness inside.
Lay a hand on your belly.
Receive a breath in and out of the center of you.
Allow yourself to experience the interplay of breath here beneath the palm of your hand.
And allow each breath to soften you,
To ground you,
To center you,
As you allow your tissues to soften,
To open,
To become more receptive.
Continue to feel the breath in your center and receive these words just as you're receiving each breath here in your center.
Contemplations for our great unraveling.
What if we let it all fall apart?
And I do mean all of it.
With every exhale,
Soften just a little bit more.
What if we could just stop trying to hold it all together?
What if we had the courage to shed our ravenous skins of perfection?
Would the wild truth of our innate imperfections be enough?
Maybe something more.
Feel the belly rise and fall.
Notice any sensations that you feel in your body.
Receive a breath in the center and continue to receive these contemplations.
What if we let the walls of our external facade crumble?
What if we relinquished the names of all the self-images that we paste together like a collage to hold ourselves,
Our stories,
And our worthiness up?
What would be left?
What if we threw up our hands and fell to the earth and cried out in surrender?
Would we be weak?
Would we be quitters?
Or would we be carried?
Allow the breath and these words to land and spread like drops of rain in a pond.
What if we discharged the electricity of our thoughts?
What if we released the prisoners of our past?
Would fear overrun?
Would love overcome?
What if we abandoned for once our need to be right?
If we disassembled the comforts and the confines of the boundaries of goodness,
Would we become wrong and bad and trampled by life?
Or would we get a glimpse of something sacred?
Experience the breath rise and fall beneath the palm of your hand.
Now at the bottom of each and every exhale for a moment,
Allow the breath to stand still and relax completely in your core.
Allow the inhale to rise from the belly of the emptiness and the exhale to return you right back to this space between breaths.
What if we stripped down to our bones and then took off even the husk of the breath?
Would we know a deeper truth,
A greater wisdom,
Presence perhaps?
Would we create the space for grace to flow?
Would we get a taste of the vast unfolding infinite?
One day it will all unravel for us.
That is the ultimate gift of this life.
A chance to walk,
Bear and alone to see for ourselves what remains when all this falls away.
But until then,
What if we sat empty and open?
Here in the quiet,
Here beyond our ideas with no more barriers between us.
Would that be too raw,
Too vulnerable,
Too sweet for this life?
Experience the breath rise and fall beneath the palm of your hand.
Allow yourself to notice what you notice and to feel what you feel.
And as you feel ready,
You can breathe a little movement back into your body to allow these questions to turn and unpack themselves inside of you,
Inside of your life,
Inside of your day.
Blink your eyes open.
Notice what it's like to receive the world from this place,
To live into these questions as you move throughout your day.
Thank you for exploring through Embodied Poetry with me.
Finding you love.
