Embodied Presence Exploration 1: Pace

Welcome to Embodied Presence.

What a miracle to be in body! Thank you for joining this journey to optimize our capacity for embodied presence.  Over these next eight weeks, we’’ll engage practices and work with tools to support us in fully inhabiting ourselves and in fully inhabiting each moment.

The overarching principle in this class, the sensibility that spans all of our lessons and is an essence of our work together, is this: 

How We Do Anything Is How We Do Everything. 

Together, we will build greater awareness of energetic building blocks that shape our lives.  This awareness supports us in becoming more vibrant, more aligned with our most desired version of ourselves and more resonant inside of each encounter and each creation. 

We begin each of our explorations in Embodied Presence with two foundational practices, the practice of taking a baseline, which I learned when studying Continuum Movement, and the practice of attunement, which I have learned much about from the teachings of Hiro Boga.  

Let’s begin by taking a baseline.  When we take a baseline, we bring our attention to what is, in our bodies.  We become aware of our current state, and our breath, without changing it.  This is an awareness practice and also offers a foundation from which we can check our evolution throughout our journey. 

Take a baseline now.  Bring your attention to what is, in your body.  Become aware of your current state and your breath, without changing it.  Take a few minutes here.

When you have your baseline, we continue.

Now, we attune to Source.   Attuning means aligning with and presencing to the energy of whatever we are attuning to.  If you are a wand or antenna connecting earth and cosmos, this is a practice of optimizing your frequency, like adjusting the dial on a stereo for maximum connection.  For our purposes, this attunement is not something to work at.  We attune to Source simply by intending to do so.   Take time now for this attunement.  If you wish, pause the audio or move away from the computer.  Attune to Source now.

From this place of baseline awareness and this place of attunement, we move into our exploration.  

We begin our practice of Embodied Presence with an inquiry into pace. 

Pace is the rate at which we move.  Our internal pace - the rate, speed and slow of our internal movements - and our pace in the world, greatly impact our capacity for presence.  When I seek to adjust my level of presence in a given situation, pace is the first place I bring my attention. 

Right Pace As Prayer

Where are you currently in right relationship with pace in your life?  How do you know and experience that?  What signifies to you that you are in right pace?  What does it feel like?  

Does the pace at which your body moves through your home and through the world support you in a state of presence?  Are there places you override your body’s natural pace to get yourself somewhere or to meet an imagined need?  In those moments, how might you call yourself into presence so that you are choosing your pace consciously?  What is the choice you invite?  

Rather than thinking of pace as fast or slow, I suggest we frame pace in terms of internally or externally generated.  

When you allow your body to move you, how does she move? Is this in sharp contrast to how she moves when You move her to meet something outside of her?

What is your desired relationship with pace?

If r i g h t p a c e i s p r a y e r , how and what do you pray?

Respond: In your Embodied Presence notebook, note your responses to the above questions or journal on where these questions take you in your Embodied Presence notebook.  

The Politics of Pace

Continuum Movement founder Emilie Conrad used a term she calls First Order Experiences - experiences in which we are led by our bodies, internal and organic movements, rhythms.  Emilie described choosing First Order Experiences as the most radical act we can engage.  

As I prepare the core of this lesson’s content, I am amidst a Shabbat during which I am intentionally stepping away from linear time awareness.  My phone is off. I have no clocks or watches in my home.  My late morning date is slated to come by to swoop me when she is free.   

I notice in this linear-time free zone that my sleep is deeper, my dreams more potent, and my level of attentiveness to and presence with Sarah, the cat who journeys with me, is much more whole.  My nervous system is smoother, my back-body and my energetic back-field more filled out.  Walking through the world today... visiting the farmer’s market with my friend, and transferring these files from handwriting to computer at a cafe... compliments about my energy abound.  The inner spaciousness created by dropping outer constraints supports a spaciousness in how I meet and am met by all that is around me. 

When we step away from tracking and being contained by or oriented to linear time - even for short periods- we become freer to open to our internal rhythms and the rhythms of the natural world.  

According to halachically observant Jewish practice, women are exempt from time-bound mitzvot.  We are invited to honor the wisdom of our bodies, knowing and rhythms around sacred practice and to orient toward organic or intuitive rhythms.  

I have found that one way to support a slowing is to apprentice to the rhythms of the night and to see what she wants from me. Rather than illuminating her with light from screen and bulb, I gently offer her glow from flame and ride her where she seeks to take me.

Marney Makridakis book “Creating Time: Using Creativity to Reinvent the Clock and Reclaim Your Life” is a sweet text advocating a Movement for Qualitative Time. Chapter Titles include “Creating Time Through Flow: Time Sighs When You’re Having Fun and “Creating Time Through Stillness: Taking a Time Out.”  Another voice in this movement, Ian Xel Lungold, writes, “Calendars are subliminal program devices oriented to a particular perspective on time, space and being.” Clocks are the same. 

In some contexts - with meetings or commitments that are important to you, or work schedules if you work for someone besides yourself - choosing to live inside of conventional calendar and clock time makes much sense.  There are many gifts in being able to coordinate and connect.  And, there are plenty of contexts in life that don’t necessarily call for clock or calendar time as we know it, yet we can become wedded to, or even addicted to, this way of tracking.  It is important to cultivate a balance in relationship with conventional clock and calendar time.  Let that be one way of measuring time in your life, while having access to others.  Learn how to listen to and follow the rhythms of your body and of earth.  Don’t check the time before you go to sleep at night.  Don’t look at the time upon rising unless you need to for some reason.  Follow the flow of what your body and being wants and ride that into waves of deeper presence. 

According to Markidakis, “We measure time in linear fashion, with number on a clock and squares on a calendar to represent the forward arrow of time.  But what if we could interpret time as a qualitative entity instead of something just measured by quantity.  For example, instead of measuring how long something takes, why not measure it by how much we learn by doing it?  We might experiment with forgoing a measurement of minutes and instead think about how much we can be In It.” She asks, “How deeply can you extend your awareness to be truly present, conscious and connected to everything around you right now?  What effect does this extension of meaning have on time?”

Practice

Chose a pocket in time this week in which you step away from linear tracking of time. This can be a night or a day or both in which you intentionally drop from tracking or being tracked by clock-time or Julian calendar-time.   

Guided By Body

When I was first learning my way around the neighborhood where I live, I often used Googlemaps to get directions from point A to point B.  I could press a button and see how long Googlemaps estimated each route would take me by car, by bus, by bike or by walking.  

Playing with these buttons, I discovered that an outing an hour away by car could be at least a days’ walk.  I also discovered that my walking pace was no match for Google.  It considered my healer’s office a fifteen minute walk from my home.  When I walked at the pace that was comfortable for me and still had momentum - a forward movement and kick in my step, it took me a half hour.  And, on the way home from the healers’-- my body in a state of ease and acceptance, my mind dropped in to being a guest of and guided by my body---moving through the world en route home with no time agenda, the walk was about 45 minutes.  I enjoyed each step, feeling the curve of my feet meet and met by the earth.  

I felt the plants and trees and people and pulsing activity as a gorgeous and alive landscape. Each lift of foot and each arm sway was in conversation or dance with the the birds, the plants, the cars, the people, the critters, and the trees.

Practice

This week, try on a new pace.  Allow your pace to be guided by your body.  This may mean you dial down to super-slow in some moments, or speed up in others.  Practice walking a normal route - whether it is to a cafe on the corner, down your driveway, or from your bed to your kitchen, at a pace that is more fully guided by your body.  What gifts or information does this bring?  Journal about this. 

When We Slow Enough, Each Movement Is Making Love

When we are deeply inside of a moment or experience, all else drops away, or co-exists in the background in a way that supports and is supported by this full focus. Being deeply inside of space and time can offer us the greatest capacity to transcend it.  

Practice

Eat at a pace that allows your tongue to savor the unique constellation of flavor in each bite.

Practice

When on your computer, experiment with varying speeds and slows of fingers to keyboard, thought to screen. What do you notice about how these shifts affect your experience, your offering, your body, your breath?

Practice

Integrate attention to pace into your erotic play with yourself or another.