Embodied Presence Exploration 7: Form & Flow

Welcome to Presencing Form & Flow. 

We begin our inquiry, as always, by taking a baseline.  Bring your attention to your body.  Become aware of any sensations. Become aware of your breath without trying to change it. Take a baseline now.

We continue by attuning to Source, simply by intending to do so. Attune to Source now. 

As we enter into our inquiry, we presence to State.  What is your current state? What is your desired state?  Make any adjustments you need to _right now_ to become closer to that desired state. 

This week’s inquiry is an exploration into Form & Flow.  

Form is the structure, container, shape or vessel which we pulse inside of. It is our organization inside of space and time.  It is the order and rhythm which moves us, guides us and which we pour our life force inside of. 

What is your relationship to structure?  How are you compelled by it or repelled by it?  What are current structures in your life?  What are your daily, weekly, monthly and yearly rhythms and what are core practices and structures that support you in each of these measurements of time?  What are your ritual structures around morning and night?  Do your waking and pre-sleep routines support and offer a sacred container around your day, and your sleep/night?

What are forms or structures that support your highest integrity and alignment at this time?  For example, for me - Yoga and mantra practice are a part of this as is right relationship with technology - setting boundaries around my internet usage to support my presence where I am.  I view both of those as structures supporting my presence and my spiritual life and its cultivation.  My daily rituals of waking prayer and of cleaning are structures that support my well-being and living in clarity and intention. 

Structures that inform my week include bringing flowers into my home at the beginning of the week, and honoring dusk on Friday night by creating a mood of divine love. Structures that inform my month include menstrual honoring practice.  This defining of month is a place where multiple forms meet for me.  I follow the western / roman calendar months, as well as the lunar months, as well as the monthly cycle defined by my bleeding body.  Tracking, honoring and unfolding inside of each of these forms brings different gifts to me and may also offer unique challenges.  Recognizing that this is July is helpful for me in being in easy conversation with the world around me and also places me in a linear mindset when engaging around time.  Feeling the current waning moon aligns me in a different way cyclically, and knowing where I am in my body’s menstrual cycle offers yet different gifts. 

Being conscious about the Form that we work with in time is important.  I invite presence around this.  Choose the time structures and rhythmic structures that are most aligned for you and pour your life inside of them. 

Look also at the structures that you work with in space.  How do your current structures support or challenge you?  For at least fifteen years, I lived an existence that included my abundant wardrobe scattered all over my floor.  I couldn’t find a system that worked for me to organize my clothes.  I hated hangers and putting folded clothes into dresser draws and mostly this resulted in piles on my floor.  I felt so bogged down by this - it affected the cleanliness of my space and the clarity of my emotional body and my mind, at the same time it was a reflection of this.  Then, I was blessed with a trade -- A friend’s daughter was ready to become Bat Mitzvah.  Would I work with her in trade for my friend’s personal organizing sessions?  At that time, I never would have invested in personal organizing sessions, but this was the trade that was presented to me.  I said yes and my life changed.  Patricia taught me to explore all the systems I had in my home and in my life and to take inventory of if they served my priorities.  We clearly saw my clothes system -- which though it looked like chaos, was indeed a structure. I would intend to use the closet and end up with piles on the floor - didn’t serve me.  Patricia immediately helped me see that square closets or drawers, hangers and folding was not my thing.  What was my thing at that time?  Low to the ground, not folding, ease of movement.  So I invested in a bunch of bushel-baskets and created a system of baskets that sat out on the floor that I could toss clothes in, sorted by color.  It was perfect -- it felt like being at a market with a beautiful array of colorful options to choose from.  It made getting dressed fun and streamlined overwhelm in my internal and external world.   Finding and developing a system that worked for me ... that supported the way my energy naturally wants to move... completely changed my experience.  

Are there any systems or structures in your life that need an overhaul?  Any pockets where you find yourself continually wrestling?  What is needed?  What are the qualities of energy you desire in relationship to what you are wrestling with?  What are creative, out-of-the-box ways you could re-organize this aspect of your life so the form serves you, rather than you serving, and perhaps struggling with it? 

Creating resonant forms is deeply informed by understanding how we flow. What do you know about how you like to move in the world?  What is your flow in time and space and how can the structures you create for yourself amplify the flow that is most aligned for you?  

I find it helpful to have clear priorities structured into my schedule.  And, one of my priorities is flow and spaciousness and doing what feels right when it feels right, rather than feeling obligated.  This informs how I make gathering times with friends.  I often set dates to meet with people for creative projects, but for social connection, I prefer spontaneous.  I let people know that the best way to reach me is in the moment they want to hang out, or that day, and trust that we will find right flow or alignment with Spirit.  At first, there were some glitches with this, when my scheduling structure didn’t match how some of my friends then managed their time.  Ultimately, I’ve discovered that those I am most resonant with tend to have a a similar relationship with flow and we find each other when the moment is right. 

Tending flow well means allowing space for it in your life.  To create that space, you might need clear structures or forms around it.  You might create a weekly writing date with yourself to give the words a container to pour through.  You might have a regular practice of recording your dreams to support a flow of deeper dream medicine coming through.  Or, you may need to create super-wide river banks for your flow .... creating pockets in time where you drop certain structures, in service to flow.  I experience Shabbat practice, creating what Abraham Joshua Heschel called A Palace in Time, as an exquisite example of form serving flow - creating a container around an experience or time-period, to support abounding flow within it. 

As you inquire into your relationship with flow, pay particular attention to your relationship with literal flow and with water.  What is your current relationship with water?  How much do you drink and where is it sourced?  Do you bring yourself to bodies of water?  What are your immersion practices --- shower, bath, hot tub, pool, mikvah, sea?  What is your water consumption / usage awareness --- how honoring and aware are you of the water that is a part of your daily life -- washing dishes or clothes, or flushing most toilets?   

What is your relationship with your fluid body?  I invite you to presence right now to your fluid body, simply by bringing your attention to it.  Make space, intend, listen.  Feel the pulse of your fluid body.  Notice its’ feeling tone.  Where do you feel the most vibrance and optimal health in your fluid body? 

At some point this week, bring yourself to water in it’s emergent state in nature.  Notice it’s patterns of flow. Whether a stream or lake or sea or rain falling from clouds, feel into the rhythms and particular of it’s flow. Let your fluid body be informed by and dance with this water.  Learn together and be in dialogue.  

In his book Sensitive Chaos: The Creation of Flowing Forms in Water and Air, Theodore Schwenk addresses archetypal movements of water.  “Wherever water occurs it tends to take on a spherical form....Falling as a drop, water oscillates about the shape of a sphere...We see moving water always seeking a lower level, following the pull of gravity.  It is earthly laws that cause it to flow, draw it away from it’s spherical form and make it follow a more or less linear and determined course.  Yet water continually strives to return to its spherical form. It finds many ways of maintaining a rhythmical balance between the spherical form natural to it and the pull of earthly gravity.... A sphere is a totality, a whole, and water will always attempt to form an organic whole by joining what is divided and uniting it in circulation.”

My teacher Emilie Conrad’s life work focused on engaging fluid movement as a tool for transformation.  She understood our bodies as evolved from water creatures and explored our movement patterns as adaptations of water-beings living on land.   In her book, Living On Land, Emilie writes:  

“Continuum is a way of restoring personal access to billions of years of intelligence that is spiraled into the very swirl of our embryonic coil... We are part of an unfolding process that remains intact within us. ..As each one of us enters into the stream of intelligence that moves through our cells and every liquid part of us, our consciousness is merged with pulsating nectar and we are bathed with the story of the stars...We have our origins in the primordial/cosmic field that continues its resonance with all the fluids of the body, no matter how viscous or hidden..As the fluid within our structure becomes more versatile, there are subtle shifts in all bodily tissues that actually alter the emphasis of structure. 

The undulating waves taking place inside us still sing their ancient voicings.  When we enter the Earth’s atmosphere it is cosmic/primordial eyes that peer into this world; it is the liquidity that becomes fingers that hesitatingly feel the air.  This liquid being has entered a new atmosphere and as it hesitates, still wet with memory, new urgings begin.  The atmosphere of Earth calls forth new chemical responses, and this extraordinary watery being enters into the amphibian state.  The movement of water on land.  We come through fluid streams to earth.  We lie there in our grass hut, or brick house, we lie on leaves, on cotton, on wool, or straw, and we become.  We are lifted, we are touched, liquid eyes meet Earth eyes, and we make contact.  As we touch and feel our new home, our chemistry sings our messages of arrival.  Our water arms undulating with memories begin their grasping, and the tiniest pulsations of muscle begin.  We have arrived.”

This week, this life, I invite you to presence again and again to your fluid body.  To presence to your origins in the fluid body of the cosmos.  Presence to the flow as she moves uniquely and universally through you.  Listen to the song of your fluid body.  Listen to the song of your flow.  Allow the waters of Source to dance through you.  Find the origins of each of your movements, of all of your speech, of every choice in your water self.  Let your fluid body guide you and see what emerges.  Cultivate sweet, nourishing whole structures in service to this flow.  May form and flow be in cosmic union, serving embodied divinity through you.  May we presence to the Sacred, to the dance of form and flow within and beyond.  Thank you for being on this journey, thank you for being.  I am so grateful to be with you!  In form, in flow and in love....

Taya