A Morning Contemplation on Staying Connected in the time of Covid19

I am working on a blog post called “Pacing Yourself in the Time of Social Distancing”; however, because I am pacing myself, it is not yet ready to share. Meanwhile, I would like to share with you this morning contemplation I wrote on connection. My gift to you. - Vic

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Good morning, my friend.

Let's get together right now. Would you like that?

We may not be able to touch hands or hug. I may not be able to rest the right side of my face on the right side of yours, heart to heart. We may not be able to face each other, just across a table, coffees in our hands, our words bumping into each other through the sagittal space we share. We may not be able to do any of these things right now...and yet,

we can breathe together, in this space that is spaceless, where there is no real distance, where we are all connected.

I exhale, fully aware that I am releasing parts of myself to the environment. I am confident that my body knows how to release the stuff I no longer need - and while, right now, we might be inclined, consciously or not, to focus on the stuff we or others are exhaling that can be of danger, I'm suggesting we choose to remember that our out breath is also a gift. The trees, the grasses, the crocuses that are just finishing their debut, the ready-for-their-show daffodils all live because of our exhale, and, likewise, we because of theirs.

My exhale becomes their exhale, my toxic waste taken in by their wise cells, accepted, transformed into nourishment for them, and then passed on, out into their environment. Passed out of them into others and others until it finds you, a gift of breath especially for you, to do with what you will.

And please know that I am here, accepting your gift. As I inhale again, I give thanks to you, my human friend, and to all the plants between us, who have made this breath possible. I give thanks to the connections that exist, always.

I urge us both to take time, at least once today and as often as possible, to consciously honor this Breathing thing we are doing and often don't even notice. I want to remind us both to spend some time out of the house and in nature, breathing and paying attention to the life that is all around us.
And to remember: we are all in this together.

Blessed be, my friend.

What is Embodiment? A coffee and conversation talk

This morning I share my thoughts on the topic "What is Embodiment" at a local free Saturday morning event called "Coffee and Conversation."  Here are the notes that I have prepared along with this previous blog entry. 

As embryos, fetuses, and infants we did not have thoughts or emotions as we have them as adults.    We began as an organism, a collection of cells, with sensory receptors and movement.

Our movement abilities formed from amoeba-like to the most complex of walking, jumping and running as a naturally organized process of development in response to the information we received from our environment through our sensory receptors.

Given this, embodiment is…the sensory experience of breathing and of our weight on the Earth, of pressure, texture, temperature, light, smell, sound, taste and rhythm.   These are all the things that prompted us to move in the earliest days of our existence in the body we are in.  We experienced a sensation and we responded or reacted, in pleasure or in pain, in response to comfort or discomfort.

Then we learned words.  Words give a symbolic form to our experiences, a way to communicate sensations, thoughts and emotions.  Words are valuable and words can be spoken from an embodied perspective, but words are not themselves embodied.  Similarly sensory and emotional words are just labels, not things themselves. Emotions are actually a collection of sensations we associate with a specific experience.

The map is not the territory.” A. Korzybski 

We learn, as individuals, and have learned, as a culture, to override the sensory information of our body for many reasons.  Pain.  Traumatic events we witness or experience.  Devaluation by other people’s words or actions.  Descartian split of mind from body. Some religious beliefs, especially dogmatic Christianity.  Consumerism that views sensations as something to market to.  Capitalism that views sensations as a nuisance, diminishing the value of the workforce.  Incompatibility between the design of our sensory systems & the sensory information in our environments.

My perspective is that the result is overwhelm, anxiety, depression, disease, disconnection from ourselves, each other and the Earth.  And that a  regular practice of noticing, deepening, inviting, enhancing embodiment is healing and powerful, in all ways.  This includes breath awareness, sensory awareness and conscious movement exploration to re-pattern what we have learned, as young children and into adulthood, about our body.