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

A practice in vividly feeling emotions and energy flow in the body

Positions 1 & 2: Strength and Openness

Uploaded by bonanza1422 on 2018-02-28.

Positions 3 & 4: Freedom and Need

Uploaded by bonanza1422 on 2018-02-28.

Positions 5 & 6: Gratitude and Surrender

Uploaded by bonanza1422 on 2018-02-28.

Confession

Uploaded by bonanza1422 on 2018-01-05.

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.

Uploaded by bonanza1422 on 2018-01-05.

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.