Feldenkrais and Qi Gong in Seattle Washington

We are living in interesting times. We are living in monumentally interesting times. Whatever your spiritual connections or beliefs, it is hard to deny that there is a strong push for our species, the human species to evolve. To evolve consciously.

The impact we have had on our planet, Mother Earth, is profound and undeniable. We can’t continue as is. We have deeply injured Mother Earth. Conscious awareness of who we are, how we are, how we act and interact with all beings and with Mother Nature is on the rise. Have you stepped onto the awareness train? It is time–there is no time to waste. We as a species do not have ‘all the time in the world’.

Our planet will no longer tolerate our disconnection from our true nature–our disconnection from Mother Nature. They are one and the same.

How do we facilitate an improvement in our conscious awareness? There are many types of practices that can facilitate that improvement. At the core, our practice requires paying attention to how we do what we do, not just doing something. Not just mindlessly repeating a movement or a meditation or a mantra or an intent. Our practice requires being in harmony with our inner true nature–that unique quality that only you have to manifest in this world.

The collective human consciousness energy requires each of our unique energies to move forward to evolve fully and easily.

When do you feel most fully alive? When do you feel most interconnected to the unfolding moment? When do those moments occur with the least amount of ‘stuff’ or ‘things’ required to create them?

Those wordless moments of connection can occur easily for some through being in nature, through music or other expressions of art, poetry, writing, through dance or any of the movement arts practices, through true undefended authentic connections with others, and through moments of sitting with internal stillness. They occur when we are being our authentic selves in any given moment–simple or complex as the moment is.

We are being called to return to these moments–to find them and know them through our internal sensations, thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Is it possible to simplify—to simplify your life? Can you begin to let go of what doesn’t allow your true nature to shine? Can you commit to a practice that asks you to pay attention to those internal moments of flow and interconnectedness? Can you commit to that practice frequently, daily?

Sitting. Just sitting and allowing what is to be there. What is there? Sensations. Pressure. Contact. Temperature. Heaviness. Lightness. Leaning. Tilting. Turning. Breathing. Rising and Falling of breathing. If you are having discomfort or tension—what are the qualities? Tight. Aching. Burning. Buzzing. Sharp. Dull.

What do you sense as far as feeling states are concerned? A feeling state. A sensory experience that gives rise to a felt-sense experience within us that we give a name to. Possibly curiosity, boredom, frustration, trying, wonder. Can you feel the qualities of sensation that make up the feeling state? They may be similar to the qualities you first noticed. Qualities like temperature, texture, weight, shape, density, or maybe a more metaphorical description of a quality–feels like sort of jumpy and quick as an example. If you really allow yourself to just sit and have a direct experience of the moment, you may be able to recognize the feeling state’s inherent basic qualities of sensation that make up the ‘name’ we give it.

Thoughts arise within us as a sensation also. They are usually much more difficult to directly sense however.

Sensations that are basic qualities as were listed above could be compared to the quality of earth. Earth is solid, dense and easy for us to feel and see in our experience. Like earth, these qualities of pressure, contact, texture, temperature, color, density, etc…. are how we directly experience a moment.

Emotions or feelings are also felt and could be more analogous to water. Like water, they are not so easy to ‘hold onto’ or ‘get ahold of’. They are less dense and much more fluid. As we know, they can at times flow more like a tsunami.

Thoughts could be compared to air. They are ungraspable. Tough to hold onto and very flyaway. Almost invisible. They are easily made into a story ‘about’ a moment or series of moments. Just like you can’t see wind itself but can only see wind move the leaves or branches of a tree, you can’t ‘see’ or ‘feel’ a thought–only the direct sensation that makes it up. Once the thought is ‘held’ however it becomes more solid in our sensation–it becomes a belief.

An error we make as humans is to believe the story ‘about’ the direct experience that our thoughts, emotions and sensations make up. We think ‘about’ an experience or think ‘about’ an emotion and don’t allow ourselves to just have the direct experience–to just ‘be’ it.

Can you commit to a practice of sitting and just allowing……just allowing your direct experience of the unfolding moment…..by moment……by sensory moment…….

With time and with practice, this sitting allows ‘allowing’ to arise more easily in our lives. Allowing arises out of a neutral moment. A neutral moment is the direct moment of our experience when we don’t add anything to that moment. We don’t ‘resist’ or ‘help’ the sensory moment. Allowing lives between—between our adding help or resistance to a moment….or to an intent, emotion or thought.

This state of allowing is perceived by us as a gentle opening or a gentle expansion without any work or effort in the moment. We just ‘turn’ slightly towards the moment with a friendly warm open heart to whatever is there. One can reach this state through just sitting and gently allowing one’s awareness of the direct experience of each unfolding moment without adding. Deleting the extra ‘noise’ in the system then allows more clear knowing and wisdom and joy to arise. This is a state that can be reached through quieting the system during just sitting—through being–and alowing any unnecessary ‘effort’ of additions to thinking, feeling and doing to fall away. We can find the internal ‘movement’ that is pure and wise through facilitating external stillness.

This state paradoxically can also be found from the other side of the coin. This same state of allowing can be perceived by us when our awareness skills become more and more refined for discerning those particular qualities of sensation we listed earlier. Qualities of weight, direction, pressure, ease or effort in our moving. We can become infinitely subtle in our ability to pay attention to these qualities in our movement intentions. Over time our same wise, knowing self can begin to lead or organize our actions by slowly discarding those ‘additions’ we make to our movement intents. Training our sensory awareness more subtlely in this way allows access to a state of internal ‘stillness or ‘calm’ or ‘no addition direct experience’ while we are doing slow, directed movements with particular sensory attention. So, paradoxically we can reach the same state of ‘internal’ stillness thru quality external movement.

These two ways to access our own inner knowing, our own wise self are not different–they are two sides of the same coin. Two ways into the same house. We require both to live in peace.

Meditation practice of ‘just sitting’ takes external stillness to reach internal ‘movement’ of wise knowing and Feldenkrais and Qi Gong take external moving through wise directed attention to reach internal stillness. The two combined allow for the alchemical mixing of ‘doing and being’, of yin/yang, of masculine/feminine, and for our specific unique manifestation of that alchemy to arise within us as our own wise, alive, and vibrant inner guide.

This is ‘knowing our own inner true nature’. When we live more moments closer to this state-which includes all moments we are living that we are moving ‘in the direction of’ that neutral state,—- we feel interconnected. We feel ‘in the flow’ of what is. We aren’t adding. We aren’t resisting. We aren’t seperate from the unfolding moment. We are it. We are one and the same with the larger unfolding ‘flow’ of Mother Nature manifesting through the current moment as our own inner true nature.

This is the moment of ‘union’ or enlightenment that all of the world’s great and longstanding traditions are referring to. The moment when we are with what is.

We are at a crucial time on this planet where our species has the unique opportunity to exponentially create more of the above moments. Then we can act from that state of neutrality allowing healing for our planet which has occurred from our disconnection from the whole.

It all starts with the first step of paying attention inside (noticing qualities of sensation) as you ‘move’ (act) outside and also while paying attention outside (acting) as you move inside (noticing qualities of internal sensation). In other words noticing as we do and doing as we notice.

The first step along this path is cultivating your own inner awareness skills through a practice. Join in with Feldenkrais, Qi Gong and Meditation in Seattle.

Won’t you step onto the awareness train? We as a species are waiting for your unique true nature to become manifest within the whole. We are waiting for you!

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