Embodied Presence Exploration 3: Space

Welcome to our third exploration of Embodied Presence: Presencing Space.

We begin by taking a baseline. Bring your awareness to your body.  Notice what is present in this moment, any sensations and your breath, without seeking to change it. Take a baseline now.

Once we have our baseline, we attune to Source, simply by intending to do so.  If you wish, pause the audio or step away from the computer.  Attune to source now. 

We build on the foundation practices we have explored to date - Right Pace and Giving Thanks.   As we enter into this new exploration, may we continue to be guided by right pace and may we give thanks.  Thank you for the attention you’ve given to this exploration, for all the ways you are cultivating embodied presence and building the field and container for this journey.

Presencing Space

What is your desired feeling state as you enter this inquiry of Presencing Space?  

There are two essential elements in our Presencing Space exploration: Clearing Space and Inhabiting Space. They apply to both inner and outer space, and eventually help us drop distinctions between the two.  

Our relationship with and inside of space is key to our availability for embodying presence.  When our internal and external space is clear, our capacity for inhabiting it, and for flow, increases dramatically.  When we are muddled or there is obstruction or internal or outer chaos in our spaces, our access to being fully at home in ourselves becomes compromised.  Sometimes we clutter our bodies or our spaces as a subtle or not so subtle way of resisting the activation that comes when we are living in clarity and presence.  Streamlining our space and choosing with care and connection what we welcome powerfully affects our state of presence.  

Ground and center.  Call into your mind’e eye, or gaze upon with your actual eyes and whatever other senses you choose, the physical space you inhabit beyond your body.  This could include your home, your office, your vehicle, or for any who are nomadic, your suitcase or backpack.  Ideally, we’ll begin with your home, unless one of these other spaces calls out you.   As you gaze upon your home or this space, literally or with your mind’s eye, notice what is particularly resonant.  What do you love about this space?  What helps define it for you?  What are elements in your home that most clearly vibrate yes?   What do you notice in your home that is not aligned with that yet?  What energy or elements break the flow of the space or feel draining?  What is needed to amplify what is resonant? What is needed to release what is not?  Journal responses to this. 

My clutter-busting mentor, Brooks Palmer, offers a powerful frame on clarifying and strengthening our space, flipping the script on the typical way many of us clear things out.  The invitation is to ask:  Do I love or need this?  If so, it stays. If not, it goes.  I used to clear my closets and my home by focusing on what I no longer wanted -- what was ready to be let go of.  By shifting the orientation to focus on what I love, that resonant energy builds, and anything that does not fit inside it falls away.  And, in Brooks’ system, there is no such thing as a maybe pile.  Something is a yes or its gone. 

A few years ago I returned to Maryland from a trip to California with a renewed dream to move west.  I remember sitting on my bed deeply wanting to move, but thinking “I have way too much stuff to actually move to California.”  That evening, I went to a yoga class and returned home to discover a radiator had burst in my apartment and the floors were covered six inches deep in boiling water.  I moved all of my stuff that hadn’t been ruined into the basement while floors were being redone.  For a week, I went through all of my possessions, determined to only return to the space things I absolutely loved, or definitely needed.  In addition to Brooks’ book Clutter-Busting, I was inspired by reading about the My 100 Things movement, and about people who’d streamlined their lives to the possessions most essential to them. When it was time to return to my apartment, I brought items in one-by-one, in order of priority.  First,  ceremonial white sage to clear the energy, then my bed, then the cat litter box, then my ipod and speaker.  

If you had to give an order of importance to items in your space, what would be in your top 10? 20? 30? Consider making such a list now.  Highlight what you do love and need.  That done, check in to see if its any easier to release what you don’t actually love or need.

Outer Space Shapes Inner Space

My friend Indigo suggests that each item we have in our possession exists not only in our outer world, but also takes up space in our head.  She offered me this perspective when I was in process of streamlining my library from 700 to 70 books.  At first, it was painful to get rid of these books, I couldn’t imagine not having them.  What if I needed them again?  The freedom I felt when they were let go felt like the literal weight of 630 books off my energetic body.  I journeyed to a permaculture apprenticeship ready to be out of my head and to learn with my hands in the earth.   In the fifteen years since, I’ve only wished I’d had one or two of those books I released in my possession, and repurchased them. Now I have one small bookcase and a shelf where my books are housed.  It is the amount of space I want to give to books in my life, and allows for the core works I want to read and have access to.  All of my books fit into these spaces, and when the books expand beyond that space, I know its time to let some go. 

Are there any particular pockets of excess in your collection of stuff?  What do you have a lot of, that you might streamline to essential items?  Notice how you feel about the possibility of opening space in that arena.

Practice

Streamline some aspect of your stuff, engaging any of the above models of approach.  Notice your somatic experience before, during and after this space clearing.  If you notice emotions emerge, allow yourself to experience them, but come back to the physicality of what you are doing, and of being aware in your body.

Cleanliness Next to Godliness

Cleaning is a surefire way to shift energy in the physical, emotional and spiritual realms.  If I can’t sleep, I get up and clean.  If I wake overwhelmed into the day, I clean.  If I am wanting to change energy or bless up a particular project or happening, I clean.  This does not come naturally to me - it is a practice I learned under the tutelage of dear ones who received this training as part of their spiritual practice growing up.  

I’ve become great at cleaning counters, and love wiping them down with sponges. The polishing at levels of solar plexus and heart are energies I’m familiar with even beyond physical cleaning.  I consistently ignore and resist floor cleaning. Scrubbing or mopping floors, and vacuuming rugs takes a big effort for me, as does accessing my lower body in general, grounding or really feeling my feet.  I’ve learned that paying attention to floors is good medicine for me when I struggle with grounding.  But I don’t start there -I start with the cleaning I feel good at and ease my way slowly to the floor.

How clean is your space?  What is your relationship to cleaning spaces?  Is it in balance, and an integrated practice that supports all that you are up to in your life?  Is it a chore?  Is it an obsession?  Are there particular kinds of cleaning that you are drawn to or that are therapeutic for you?  Are there particular aspects of cleaning that you resist and consistently ignore?  What is the learning for you in this?  Are there practices around cleaning that you are ready to take on as part of this inquiry?  Journal here.

Caring for Our Bodies as Inhabiting Space

Once a space is clear, how do we inhabit it?  Clearing and Inhabiting Space are practices that are external and also internal.  How we tend our physical bodies greatly affects and is greatly affected by our capacity for presence.  This tending includes what we eat, as well as our level of relaxation and presence when we eat, what we drink, how we move our body and how we tend to the health and vitality of our digestive system, nervous system, organs, bones, tissues and fluid body.

We sometimes refer to such tending as how we are taking care of ourselves.  When we expand our perspective to understand that our level of presence dramatically affects all we touch and encounter, taking care of ourselves is an extension of how we care for those around us and the world.  It is an amplified version of the airplane safety instructions “Put your own oxygen mask on first”.  Tending our health in such a way that invites and allows embodied presence makes a difference in all that we do.  

What does it look like for you to tend your health toward embodied presence? How are you currently tending your physical body?  What choices are making that support you inhabiting your space -- your body, the moment, and interactions with others -- as fully as possible?   What helps you continue to make these choices -- are there any structures you have in place toward this or is the experience of presence more than enough to keep you consistent in making choices in support of presence? What choices are you making that diminish your level of embodied presence?  What draws you to those choices?  How do you notice their impact on you?  If you desire to shift them, what support or accountability would help you make this shift?

In this moment, what is your level of embodied presence - to what extent are you actually your in body?  Please journal on these questions.  Exploring these practices is an excellent opportunity to receive support and accountability toward raising our level of self-care and increasing our embodied presence. 

This week, as you explore realms of Clearing and Inhabiting Space in inner and outer realms, notice what emerges for you.  What frees up?  What are places of challenge? 

Clearing, Inhabiting and Presencing Space with you.  Grateful to be with you on this journey...

Taya