Six Positions: Opening your Options
the Six Positions practice is one of my favorites. If you're feeling stuck, it's a great way to shift emotion & energy flow to open new options. It's also a good anytime 'stretch' of the emotional system.
There are four videos: an intro, then three videos that walk you through the Positions. (if your youtube has autoplay on, it'll play all of them in a row).
Big thanks to Joe Hudson for teaching me this.
Six Positions Intro
Positions 1 & 2: Strength and Openness
Positions 3 & 4: Freedom and Need
Positions 5 & 6: Gratitude and Surrender
How "Me" Changes in Groups & Nature
Waking up to a greater sense of who I am, it sometimes helps to change location or social setting to set aside the patterns of how we normally act.
Energy Flow and Awareness
"What is the Biological Basis of Consciousness?" When the magazine Science listed the top 125 questions facing science, that was question #2 (#1: what is the universe made of?). Here’s a short exploration:
Confession
I grew up Catholic and though that the practice of "confession," telling one's "sins" to a priest, was a way of shaming myself, admitting I wasn't good enough. When I learned about research on therapeutic presence, psychological safety and "getting things off our chests" to feel integrated and whole again, it occurred to me that this was the ideal role that confession could play.
Pre-internet and living in small villages, who could you go to for a loving listener if you had done something which you felt terrible about and which betrayed your highest values ("a sin")? Telling your peers, you might be ostracized from the community, which would mean death. I don't know the history behind this practice, and I know personally that the practice of confession didn't always live up to this idea. But I think maybe this was the ideal purpose.
Gratitude Practice
What creates to happiness? A major finding in psychology is that things which connect us to a bigger sense of who I am lead to greater wellbeing, joy, and compassion. Gratitude is a practice that can immediately restore just such a sense of appreciation and belonging.
Focused Attention
A practice in focusing or collecting attention, a fundamental skill for observing our experience more closely & developing a sense of peace.
Energy
How do we appear separate from other people and things? Are we not all made from the same underlying energy (or, "matter," which is temporarily-pattern-stabilized energy flow creating the appearance of solidity)? This remains one of the most foundational questions of science and contemplative practice––who or what are we? An exploration of mind, language, and energy.
The Experience Design of Labyrinths
Does life have a point, or is it a journey? Where do we suffer because we think we're not good enough yet or haven't grown enough yet? Walking a labyrinth in Santa Fe, I noticed that a well-designed labyrinth experience can smooth out our patience and perspective for the infinite road of life.