Tag Archives: sensation

Expand your patterns of awareness so that more life can unfold for your appreciation

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Yesterday I shared the 12 states of attention … useful tools in Biodynamic Meditation and in life.

It helps to notice your own patterns of awareness and expand beyond them, as well as appreciate them.

You may notice that some people are primarily visual. Some are primarily externally oriented. Some are drawn more to details.

You can cultivate the states you are not so familiar with, and you will have more attentional flexibility … a key factor in appreciating life.

And … there’s always more.

This morning I’m focusing on another aspect of attention that’s important in meditation and in life, and that is … waiting.

When you bring your attention to your central energy channel, in order to sense the Tide ascending and descending, you will usually need to wait for the sensation of internal motion to make itself known.

Then you may sense something, but it isn’t clear, and you wait some more for it to clarify.

It’s a process of inquiry…of being curious and deciding to investigate by bringing your attention there…and waiting for indications of the Tide to be felt.

This is patience. This is allowing. This is staying with.

This is life, unfolding for your awareness.

Photo taken by Louise Thayer, Happy Dog Ranch. (Thanks, Louise!)

We are exploring what we’re exploring with ~ Gabrielle Roth

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Yesterday I wrote about discovering the Tide in you.

It may take a few efforts to discover the sensation that ascends and descends in your central energy channel.

That sensation forms the basis of our inherent healing process, aka swirliness.

It’s there, working for us, maintaining life, all of the time, in various forms: Tide, stillpoints, swirliness.

The founder of this lineage called it Primary Respiration.

Bio (life) + dynamic (power).

It was pouring rain during this morning’s Biodynamic Meditation.

Like the solid sound of hard rain, my meditation felt solid and full.

Breathing, ajna chakra, Tide, sit bones, radiance at my face, abdomen, cranium.

A sensation I’ve occasionally felt before, of something like pressure on my body.

This time, pressure surrounding my cranium.

Is it shaping me somehow? Is it trying to get inside me?

Mystery.

Photo from Big Bend National Park: Rio Grande. Mexico on left, Texas on right.

Sensing the Tide in your own body

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I’ve heard from a few people who are following these posts.

Louise, whom I’ve studied Craniosacral Biodynamics with, feels the Tide whenever she tunes in, which is frequently. ❤️

Helene, a dear friend who is a long-time bellydancer and yogi and deeply embodied, commented that she wants to experience these things I’ve been writing about. ❤️

Denise meditates along with me! ❤️

First, some clarification. I write about experiencing my chakras a lot. I’ve been a yogi since 1982. They are part of how I experience my anatomy.

Knowledge of the chakras is not required in learning Craniosacral Biodynamics, although it may be helpful.

Same with Biodynamic Meditation. Not required but helpful.

Notice that these 7 main chakras are on the midline of the body.

What’s important here is that the midline, or more accurately mid-space, is your central energy channel.

It runs between your perineum/root/muladhara chakra and the location of your infant soft spot/crown/sahasrara chakra at the top of the head. It connects your chakras.

This central energy channel is what you tune into, after doing some relaxing breaths.

This is where you’ll sense the Tide.

If it is difficult to sense the whole channel, start smaller, with your abdomen or chest.

See if you can sense motion, moving up or moving down.

That’s the Tide.

The more often you tune into it, the clearer it becomes. You can seek it in meditation. When you’re falling asleep or just waking up are other good times to tune in.

It’s exciting when you first find it!

With practice, you can follow its motion between crown and root.

Some say the Tide is extracellular fluid in motion. Some sense it as energy moving.

I can’t tell the difference!

Today is Day 76 of my posts about my Biodynamic Meditations. This morning: breathing, awareness of central energy channel, sensations of Tide moving up and down, radiance at my face, sensation at root chakra, stillpoint at sacral end of channel, third eye chakra, crown chakra.

Effervescence and soothing kindness nurture my vitality

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My Biodynamic Meditation session this morning was about breath, awareness of my central energy channel, awareness of the Tide moving up and down and then settling at my sacrum as healing energy for a bit, moving up to my solar plexus region, and then to my crown chakra.

The energetic sensation was that of effervescence at my sacrum and my crown, and like soothing kindness at my solar plexus.

Continue reading →

Self-healing starts with intention

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My intent when starting today’s Biodynamic Meditation was to keep my attention focused more on my sensation, with little distraction from my monkey mind.

It worked.

Intention is so powerful. It’s like making a promise to yourself and then honoring it.

Continue reading →

Seeking, finding, losing, refinding the Tide

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This morning in my Biodynamic Meditation, the Tide was elusive.

I did 12 Bhastrikas, settled into sukhasana, and tuned into my body.

I sensed my midline, seeking the rising and falling sensation of tidal motion.

Nothing.

Was I in a stillpoint? I couldn’t tell! I didn’t feel a pooling of energy at either my cranial or sacral areas.

I remember when I first started getting acquainted with Biodynamics 10 years ago, seeking the tide and not finding it.

Then, one day I found it, or part of it, in my abdomen along my midline or central channel.

Continue reading →

Subjective measures of relaxation: what would you add?

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How do you know you’re relaxed? I have a hunch that most people think they relax sometimes, but compared to people who’ve explored relaxation, they are not. Relaxing with a beer, with friends, in nature, on vacation, etc. is what comes to mind for a lot of people when they think of relaxation.

Yes, it’s different from working or feeling stressed, and yet the depth of relaxation can be so much more. It’s not about what you do, it’s what you experience in your body, and in your mind.  Continue reading →

What happens when boundaries are crossed

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Special Bonus! What happens when Boundaries are Crossed!.

Came across this blog post, which illustrates how to use Somatic Experiencing when one’s boundaries have been crossed. There’s a lot of noticing sensations, emotions, reactivity, and new tools to facilitate healing.

It’s good to see how to use SE. It develops “the witness”.

 

The most effective diet tip of all

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Get in touch with your hunger.

That’s all. Just get in touch with your hunger.

How long has it been since you actually felt hunger? We live with abundant food all around us, but our bodies haven’t evolved much from 10,000 years ago when the human species was hunting and gathering its food, feasting in times of plenty and going hungry in lean times.

Many modern people go for years without ever feeling hungry, so that when it does happen, they don’t know the sensation—and if they do know it, they gobble food down to avoid feeling it as quickly as possible. Feeling anything has become something to be avoided.

Many people eat according to the clock, not according to their stomachs. And we wonder why we have such an obesity problem. It’s not just the HFCS. It’s not being in touch with our bodies, with our hunger, with what “enough” actually is.

If you feel stuck with unnecessary weight or a poor diet, if you’ve used food to numb your feelings while comforting yourself, try this:

Postpone your next meal until you feel hungry and really notice the sensations in your body of feeling hungry.

There are wonderful wise lessons to learn from feeling hunger that can help you live a healthy life that you actually experience and enjoy first-hand.

  • You can allow yourself to feel hunger and know that you are going to survive. You are not going to starve to death from a little hunger (even though your mind may be telling you so). Death by starvation unfortunately did happen 10,000 years ago and sadly still happens even now, but it’s pretty rare in first world countries. How much discomfort is actually there, on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being excruciating discomfort? Can you feel it as simply sensation without judging it as painful?
  • You can recognize the signature of feeling hungry. How do you know it’s hunger? Where in your body do you feel it? Feel it for 5 or 10 or 30 minutes. How does it change—does it ebb or constantly get more intense? Do you forget sometimes that you’re feeling hungry? Can you distinguish between feeling hungry and feeling thirsty? What happens to your hunger if you drink water?
  • You can experiment with how much food, and what kinds of foods, you can eat to no longer feel hungry. After fully experiencing your hunger, eat three bites of food slowly, savoring the taste and the mouth-feel and thoroughly chewing each bite before swallowing. Wait one minute and notice your hunger again. How has it changed? Now eat three more bites and notice. Notice how many bites of food you need to eat for your hunger to go away, and notice how long it stays away before it returns.

You can totally play with eating in this way! A couple of weeks of eating like this is quite refreshing after mindless eating and pretty much guarantees that just by being in touch with your hunger and eating accordingly, you will drop a few pounds.

More importantly, you may feel more energy and gratitude for your life.

~

Caveat: When is it not a good idea to play with hunger? When you have issues with your blood sugar. If you are diabetic or pre-diabetic or have hypo- or hyperglycemia, or get really shaky when hungry, you need to take extra good care of yourself and consult a knowledgeable professional first.