Feldenkrais and Qi Gong in Seattle Washington

What does it mean to move from the familiar to the unfamiliar? What happens within that moving? How does your inner world live as you expand to allow the unfamiliar to be present? Can you expand and open to allow a new wondering? Can you pause, sense your inner sensations of this unfamiliar way of being?

Likely dark, possibly muddled or unclear and possibly a little messy inside. Cluttered, a bit chaotic and at the same time very exhilarating. Exciting, your senses heightened with curiosity. What will unfold? How do I recognize the very unfolding? I feel my new self unfolding with my own noticing of the unfolding moment I am within.

I just returned from a walk in the forest in the dark on a crisp and cold October evening. We are camping near a river, ready to hike tomorrow to commune with the larches. The larches feed my soul and make my heart sing! A unique species of decidious needle tree that lives in very specific conditions on the east side of the crest of the Cascades between 5000 and 6000 feet.

Walking Into the Larches

PEAK LARCH WEEKEND

It is peak weekend. Peak for the amazing unfolding of color change as the larches prepare to let go of their needles. The dark green needles first turn a shade of lime green and then slowly become a bright yellow finally turning a deep golden shade before they softly nestle onto the ground. A basin of golden larches is an experience to take deeply into one’s soul! Tomorrow will be this year’s moment to unfold…. with those golden drops of joy.

Camping in October in the Cascades is cold and crisp. Darkness descends early. Dinner complete. Camp prepared for the night. Time for an evening stroll. My friend and I started out with our headlamps turned on and then we shut them down. Our walking slowed as we allowed our vision to adjust and our inner kinsthetic sensations to move into the foreground of our sensing.

First, it is possible to make out the shapes of the tall Douglas Firs, hemlocks and spruces against the night gray sky. Like a community of elders gathered together for a sacred ritual moment. As our eyes adjusted, we could begin to make out the edges of the gravel road in front of us. Allowing the unfolding sensations between my foot and the ground led me to know the shape and consistency of Mother Earth unfolding in front of me.

Slowly the lighter-colored maples and elms hovering along the edges of the corridor we were traversing through, came to be recognized. Like the light softness of a cream-colored blanket, cuddled closely on a dark armchair. Inviting. My eye is attracted to the difference. I pause, wait for the unfolding light, shadows, kinesthetic vision, and my inner world to fill in the knowing of what is.

EACH STEP UNFOLDS

The shape and path of the road unfolds with each step. Is the road straight? Does it curve? Are there dips, rocks, changes in surface from packed dirt to loose gravel? Amazing to just observe the new experience of my being unfold in the act of observing the unfolding path. Just observing the very experience of the unfamiliar becoming the familiar only to become unfamiliar again. And to come into knowing again, over and over. This is the very act of learning, evolving, becoming a new being.

The state of living. When observed consciously and co-created with, this is called insight, widom or discernment. Co-creating a new moment in the world. My friend and I walked arm and arm together through the vibrant darkness as a community of two leaderless leaders co-creating our unfolding path and moments as they were experienced.

The familiar, the unfamiliar, the coming into being....

Our collective human psyche is in a similar state. As a collective human species, we are starting to make out the shapes in the unfamiliar backdrop setting we are navigating through. We are in the forest. It’s dark. We know there are familiar species there. Trees, shrubs, gravel, rocks, sky, contours and other sentient beings. They feel and look unfamiliar as we wake up from our dark sleep of denial, fear, greed, and attachment. As we wake up together as a collective and begin to walk the unfolding path in front of us.

We create the very shape, speed and quality of it’s unfolding through just allowing the unfamilar to become familiar. To just stay present for the moment. We have to perceive and come to know our ‘new’ world through the ‘old.’ The new world is born from the old through our very act of perceiving it as it is unfolding. We each have to do that perceiving on our own. As our own leader. Together with others doing the same. A leaderless community of leaders. All living in interconnection with each other and our planet.

OCCUPY TOGETHER

The Occupy Together events sweeping our world are this very creation in progress. Our Universe has been expanding forwards into higher levels of consciousness since the Big Bang over 16 billion years ago. Consciousness becoming conscious of itself. This is the very act of creating a highter level of consciousness.

We must move forward into the total unfamiliar if we want to survive as a species. The unfamiliar of being our own leader within a community of other leaders, all leaderless. We must each learn to co-create with our own unfolding experience of how we are inextricably interconnected with All That the Universe Is… and with each other.

Leaderless Community of Leaders

This Occupy Together movement is our chance to walk into the night forest together. Where it is dark, and allow the unfolding shapes, contours, patterns and sensations form our new co-creative world of knowing our inherent interconnection to All That is. To create a new way of being where we are each fully empowered to live responsibly, engaged with life in each present moment. Living in a equitable, compassionate, way by co-creating with each new moment. Together as a community of leaderlsss leaders…..together.

Join Carrie at Feldenkrais and Qi Gong in Seattle for a class or a workshop. She can be reached at http://www.movementfromwithin.net, 206-459-1773, or feldychi@comcast.net.

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Well, I’ve done it. Created a blog that is, or I should more accurately say, I have had help in creating a blog. A blog about Feldenkrais and Qi Gong in Seattle as well as other related ideas and topics especially in the realm of awareness, consciousness and sustainable connection/living.

Of course it is interesting (as some things in life are–especially those that are curious and push our limits of perception). I am one of those who has been saying, “I do not want to spend more time in front of the computer” and yet, here I am. Why? Times are what they are and this is a means for sharing that has potential to disseminate ideas and possibilities quickly. We are living in powerful and important times. This is the nature of reality as it is. How do we go with it? How do we become aware of our relationship to it? I have found my way as this blog post was written while sitting on the beach overlooking the sunset with pen and paper which allows the words to flow more easily for me than the interface of the computer.

How do we become aware of the unfolding moment? There are so many ways to reach that elusive moment and they all have at their core–the presence of allowing. The direct experience of an unfolding moment–the present moment. It is both powerful and empty. Just full of what is–no more and no less, no story, no extras–just allowance of the true nature of reality in that moment.

These times we live in are crying out for more direct experience moments. Moments where there is no self, no other, no object, no foreground, no background–just relating. The true nature of the self with the true nature of the universe interconnected. Our species is here to remember this interconnection —through any of the wondrous ways possible to have that experiencing or relating come alive. We are here to remember that our true nature and the true nature of the universe are the same–exactly the same.

We can find that direct experiencing when we slow down, sit back. be quiet, pay attention inside and allow……allow the direct experiencing or relating to just come alive. It doesn’t have to be a big fanfare moment. It can be simple–as simple as just walking outside each night before you go to bed and looking at the night sky. What do you feel? How do you experience the temperature on your skin? What is the direct sensory experience of the mist in the air as it settles on your cheek or your lips? Can you just experience the unfolding moment without adding any judgement of whether you like or dislike the moment or by quickly moving onto the next thing? As you stand there looking up at the night sky, can you allow your sensing of the moment to just come to you? Maybe you experience an occasional glimmer of a star that blinks at you behind a cloud. Can you open all of your senses as you ‘see’ the star twinkle? How do you hear the night sky? How do you feel the darkness—even there in your own yard? Can you just allow without a story “about” to begin to arise? If the story does arise, can you recognize the train of thought and gently widen your senses and allow yourself to ‘return’ to the present alive and unfolding moment?

Can you begin a practice of going outside each night–no matter the weather–no matter how ‘busy’ you are? Can you be…….just for a few minutes…….be just one with and interconnected to the night; without doing anything, or participating in a story, just merging with the sacred moment of night-you-cosmic consciousness.

This is awareness. Awareness is. We don’t have to (and in fact we can’t) add anything or subtract anything from awareness. It simply is. Inner wisdom, intuition, insight, clarity of things, possibility, ancient novel knowing all arise from awareness. An awareness practice allows us to access these qualities.

An experiential moment of sensory-motor awareness is the same. Just noticing. Imagine sitting……at the computer…….as you may possibly be doing as you are reading this. Can you just feel yourself sitting? Can you feel the pressure of your buttocks on the chair? This does not mean ‘think about’ that experience. Do you remember just having the direct experience of the mist on your cheeks or your lips? You weren’t ‘thinking about’ that experience. Can you just feel the sense of pressure, the shape of that pressure of your buttocks on the chair and your feet on the floor? Can you just be…….feeling yourself sitting…..without adding anything to the moment? Creating no judgement of your liking or disliking the sense or moving quickly onto a need to fix, correct, or change the moment? Can you just be……like the moment of feeling the dark night sky?

Can you open your senses and allow just a little more space between your cells–your allowing cells—not grasping or striving cells but just allowing. By ‘allowing’ for a moment, our inner wisdom ‘moves’ gently forward as awareness– towards a more directly experiencing embodied self.

Cultivating this bare, simple noticing without additions or subtractions is what an awareness practice is. The power that lies within awareness is what allows our ability to be more comfortable, to be more at peace, and to return to our own wise inner true nature of oneness with all that arises.

Our world is in such need for more of us to wake up and create a clearer internal awareness practice in order to live and act in our world in a more interconnected way.

Feldenkrais, Qi Gong, and Meditation are all ways to cultivate this bare simple noticing and as I blog, I will share some musings on these amazing practices with you. Thanks for joining me.

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I will be posting information on my Seattle Feldenkrais Workshops and Seattle Qi Gong soon…

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