Embodied Presence Exploration 4: Place & Elementals

Welcome to this exploration into Presencing Place and Elementals.  We arrive here from a journey that includes inquiry into pace and gratitude practice. We’ve given attention to integration. We’ve invoked grace.  We’ve worked in realms of clearing and inhabiting space ~ within our bodies and beyond.  The next layer of our journey is an invitation to deepen our experience of embodied presence through relationship with Place and Elementals. 

We begin by taking a baseline.  Bring your attention to your body.  Become aware of any sensations, of your breath, of your current state, without seeking to change it.  Take as much time as you need here.  Take a baseline now. 

Once we’ve become aware of our baseline, we attune to source, simply by intending to do so.  Attune to source now. 

Place can refer to a physical or energetic location that exists or to a location that exists in relationship -- ie finding right place inside of any given context.  Our relationship to places are often deeply influenced by elemental energies within us and of that place. 

Please presence to the place where you are in this moment.  What physical place are you currently inhabiting -- literally, where are you right now?  What do you notice around you that is of this place?  What is the shape and color and matter of the edges where you listen to or read this -  be it a room in a building, a tent, a forest canopy, on a boat orin a bus or subway car. 

Feel into the character and energy of the place of your current moment.  Notice how it’s personality, the matter that makes it up, and the ways that it dances with those who move through or around it are in this very moment in conversation with your body and affecting, and perhaps also being affected by, your current state.   What are specific resources in this place that support you?  What are aspects of this place that nurture something important for you or that support your presence in this very moment?  Journal or reflect on these questions, pausing the audio or moving away from your computer as needed.

I write this in the cottage where I live.  I am aware of support coming from the aquamarine of the two walls behind me ... inviting a lightness of being and a tropical energy that calls me into playful, spacious summer energy.  I also receiving support by the light reflected on my ceiling that mirrors the rippling of water in the pool by my cottage, which echoes and invites inner flow and supports my connection to the world outside this cottage. 

Again, what do you notice in the place where you are in this very moment that is a resource for you and connects you with an experience you desire?  What do you notice in this place that affects you in a way that is perhaps less what you desire but shapes you nonetheless.  I am grateful for the roof above my head - and for the ripples of water reflected on it, and I am aware of the sharp triangular lines and shapes of this roof, and of the lines and corners of the cottage and how the geometry of this shapes affects my own state of linearity - increasing my attunement to what is human made and oriented to find strength in linearity rather than in flow or circles.   I don’t seek to judge this in this moment, rather to notice how the physical structures around me impact my state - a simple cultivation of awareness.  

I invite you to think of two places that are in a similar category as each other- perhaps two places you have bought groceries, two pools you have swum in, two temples where you have prayed.  Reflect comparatively - notice the different states and levels of feeling at ease or inspired that each brought.  What reactions did you have in each place and what physical elements of each place led to each distinct experience?  Throughout our inquiry into place, I invite us to look at how the places we bring ourselves to and live our lives inside of affect our state.  

Think now of a place that might most bring you to your current desired feeling state.  It could be a place where you’ve been once before, or that you journey to again and again, or that you have not yet met outside of your minds eye.  Bring that place into your body and your mind’s eye.  Notice what happens in your body when you bring this place to you. Take your time here.  Allow the features and energies of this place to move you and to inform your cells.  When this place has come to you, notice particular aspects or energies of this place that support the state in you that you were seeking. 

If as part of your day, you are going to a place that holds an energy of challenge in any regard for you, know that you can presence to supportive energies you’ll need to balance or thrive in that place before you arrive there.  You can prepare internally by strengthening any aspects inside yourself that might be compromised in the upcoming environment.  You can call that place into your mind’s eye before journeying there and send particular energy to it in advance.  If you are journeying to a new place for a workshop, for example, and are concerned about feeling at home and comfortable in this new place, there are many levels on which you could work this.  A great beginning could be to strengthen the home resources inside of yourself.  Then, you could think practically about steps to increase your sense of home there - what you might bring with you, or who you might reach out to to support your welcome.  I want to remind you that you can also reach out in energetic realms.  Attune to an energy of home already available to you and bring your energetic attention to that place and bring an energy of home there for you before you arrive.  This is kind of like praying and it is kind of like visualizing, but it is a somatic invitation - an establishing a connection to a place before you have arrived and inviting the energies you want to connect with there to come and meet you. Introduce yourself to them before you physically arrive so you can both be preparing to meet in person.  

This kind of work with place -- all of the exploration so far - is relevant to physical locations and can also apply to finding our place within particular contexts, for example, right place in relationship to birth family or to an organization we work with or support, ora community we are a part of building.  We notice what is about the existing structure, and how what is is already in dialogue with our somatic being.  We pay attention to what aspects of this structure affect us in ways that feel like a positive resource or support.  We notice any aspects of this structure that affect us in ways that don’t feel supportive.  We notice ways our own internal state affects this structure. When we see clearly, we can strengthen our capacity to be in right place with existing systems we engage.  We can find additional ways to cultivate states we desire and ways to release what doesn’t serve us.  We can also give attention to the internal states we show up with.  If we are exploring our relationship to right place inside of particular family or community group, we may be aware of a particular state that is helpful for us to cultivate as we enter into interactions with that family or community.  Being aware of impact on state, and giving attention to state cultivation supports us in finding right, resonant place.  

As we explore Place this week, Elementals are strong allies and teachers for us.  Elemental energies of earth, water, air and fire are within and all around us.  Building our awareness of how these elements affect us is of great support in a journey toward embodied presence.  Throughout our elemental exploration, I’ll be referring to earth, water, air and fire.  Please expand this to include any elements that are resonant for you according to your cosmology and energetic perspective or experience.  Practitioners of Chinese Medicine may choose to include wood or metal in this inquiry - I offer the energies I am most fluent in working with and invite you to engage in the realms that most speak to you. 

Let’s begin by taking an elemental baseline.  What elements are you currently engaging?  What is the current state of your relationship with the elements in this very moment?  You might presence to air as it flows in and out of your body through your breath or your skin or the way the ambient temperature is affecting you.  You might presence to water by noticing if you feel hydrated or dehydrated or by presencing to your fluid body and feeling into any pulsations there or to your sense of physical flow in this moment.  You might presence to fire by becoming aware of your body temperature and any places that are warmer or cooler than others in you or to sensations of inspiration or energized spark.  You might presence to earth by feeling into your bones or your flesh or your tissue or feeling your body in gravity or noticing a sense of full or empty in your belly.  

We are always dancing with the elements, inside our bodies and in the world we inhabit.  Developing a fluency in relationship to the elements and a strong and clear relationship with them is of great support in embodying presencing and in priestessing.  Beyond this immediate moment elemental baseline, what is your relationship with the elements?  Are you in actively honoring and engaging with them?  What are home elements for you -- elements that you feel most yourself when you are around, elements you feel you bring to the world through your gifts and your being?  Are there people or places you feel drawn to or repelled by because of the strong elemental energies they hold?   Journal about this now. 

As a part of our inquiry into Place and Elementals, I invite you this week to engage physically with this by doing altar work.  Please create or tend a dedicated sacred spacethat works with at least one element and at least one aspect of your exploration in Presencing the Priestess Body.  This altar is a space for that energy to be honored in physicality ... a container for the energy to reside with focused attention and intention while you are in this exploration around place and elements.  Many of you have created many altars before and may be currently tending many altars.  Some of you may be creating an altar for the first time.  Whatever your relationship with altar-practice, in creating this altar, please be guided by your intuition and by whatever feeling state you are seeking to cultivate.  I invite simplicity and beauty.  As per our inquiry last week, this altar is a space that is clear and that is ripe to inhabit -- a place where presence exists clear and full.  This altar is a devoted space for practice.  It could be a place you actually sit beside -- or a travel altar you unfold or an altar you create anew in different natural spots -- as you journal or read for this course or engage any spiritual or physical practice you are currently committed to.  Or, it could be a practice space in that you practice embodying presence through the act of creating and tending this altar.  Perhaps the practice is simply continuing to dialogue with the altar to see what is needed.  Again, your altar may include energies of each element in the system you are working, or it may be strong in one particular element.  Whatever it’s elemental resonance, please do bring your desired state cultivation to this altar and allow the elements to be in support of and dialogue with that.  

This altar is also a connection point to the energetic center of this course.  When you are ready, if you choose, you can link up this altar to the energetic center of Presencing The Priestess Body, simply by choosing to do so.  Doing this may strengthen your physical connection to the work we are doing and the container of the class.  It may also mean an additional linking to the energetic of the group.  If you do choose to link your altar up, I ask that you tend it with additional care, to keep our field clear.  

Your courage, clarity and commitment to showing up for yourself and exploration is a blessing.   Remember, part of embodied presence is trusting the ebbs and flows, while supporting continued alignment.  

I am so grateful to be on this journey with you.  Please do record descriptive or visual images of places, elements or altars you are working with in your Embodied Presence notebook.

Present with you.  Looking forward to playing with you in the field.  Much love,

Taya