meditation

June 2017 gathering

 

Smudging ceremony

Since June’s gathering was full of veteran Dreamers & Schemers we skipped over the agreements and “getting to know you” and opened up the circle with a smudging ceremony. Since getting back from my trip to Peru, I have been opening sacred space for myself with a private smudging ceremony. This is more than just smudging myself and my space, but also calling out to the four directions for support and in thanks. This ritual has been a really effective way of opening up my heart and familiarizing myself with my own heart energy, so I was really excited to share this with Dreamers & Schemers during heart month!

Physical heart vs. heart chakra vs. sacred heart

Leading up to the workshop I felt a bunch of resistance to referring to Anodea Judith’s work on the heart chakra. I was wondering about that on my walk to the gathering, and then it hit me: It’s because the work I want to do around the heart goes beyond the heart chakra, which is Judith’s concern. When I refer to the “heart center,” I mean both what we think of as the heart chakra and what we might call the divine sacred heart. (more…)

By Ysette, ago

Focusing on the felt sense

Last year when we worked on focusing we used the technique pioneered by Ann Weiser Cornell  in her book The Power of Focusing, which was my own personal introduction to the method. It was a great introduction to noticing how the body communicates to us something we need to know about our deeper selves, and how we can tap into that and attend to it if only we took the time to pay attention, ask, and listen.

Purists might disagree, but I consider focusing a form of meditation because it is just another way of quietly coming home to ourselves. But focusing also feels different from most traditional sitting practices because it really asks us to focus on the body (rather than the breath). It also requires that we be more “active,” in that we are meant to engage with what’s bubbling to the surface, rather than simply letting those bubbles go. One Dreamer & Schemer said that the focus on the body gave her something to hook into more easily than perhaps more “abstract” meditations, and that the experience led her to gain a new appreciation for her body!
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By Ysette, ago

Sacral chakra meditation with Higher Self

We did this meditation with the Higher Self because I wanted to show how easily accessible it was to connect with this aspect of ourselves. You can look up online how other folks suggest connecting with the Higher Self, some of which involve detailed visualizations or energy work, but I only gave two instructions: 1. Set the intention to connect with your higher self, and 2. If you notice that your mind is doing the answering, drop down lower or deeper into your body. You are used to being in conversation with your mind, so the answers will probably feel a little (or a LOT) different when they come from your Higher Self.

If you prefer to connect to your ancestors or any other guide(s), feel free to use whatever method you find effective to make the connection and then refer to the question set below to explore your emotional being. (more…)

By Ysette, ago

Dreamers & Schemers May 2017 gathering

AGREEMENTS

For the May gathering we welcomed a new member to our circle, so I took my time with the agreements. Because we were talking about personal power this month, I underscored the policy of not offering help to anyone unless they ask for it. It may seem counterintuitive, but part of claiming your power is being able to ask for help when you need it. The flip side of that is respecting someone’s power is not victimizing them and assuming we know when and how they need to be helped.

GETTING TO KNOW YOU

Along the theme of empowerment, I asked everyone to name an area in their life where they recently started to feel especially empowered, and another where they were still working on stepping into their power. (more…)

By Ysette, ago

March 2017 Dreamers & Schemers

Lots of learning around how we hold #fear in our bodies, hearts, and minds today. So much #gratitude for what was shared and for the gamely way everyone jumped into the exercises. On a mission to prove that #mindfulness and shadow work can be a lot of fun! #restorativejustice #selfcare #selfcareforsocialjustice #meditation #dreamersschemers

THREE AGREEMENTS

Dreamers & Schemers kicked off our March session, as always, with an overview of the Three Agreements that uphold our sacred space. This month, since we were about to delve into the topic of fear, I really wanted to emphasize the importance of honoring the self by being gentle and self-compassionate in our self inquiry. In terms of honoring other, I wanted to introduce the idea that sometimes the best way of honoring someone else is by trusting that person’s strength rather than rushing in to comfort at the slightest show of tears. Sometimes the rush to comfort victimizes the other or distracts us from what’s going on inside ourselves in reaction to external distress. Being a compassionate witness is being able to remain centered and expansive in the face of another person’s discomfort, trusting that if the other truly needs help, she will ask for it. As for beginner’s mind, it would come in especially hand during our guided visualizations. To get the most out of them, we have to be able to step out of all our judgments and expectations, effectively emptying ourselves out so we can receive what we can through our intuition rather than being bombarded with messages from our critical voice.

 

GETTING TO KNOW YOU

The questions I put into the circle today were: What fear have you overcome? and What fear are you currently grappling with? (more…)

By Ysette, ago

Throwing a Monster Celebration

The Monster Celebration is perhaps the most famous guided meditation comes from Amanda Owen’s book, The Power of Receiving, and it comes to me via my cherished friend Steph Cowling. I really dig visualization exercises such as this because in addition to being powerful and effective, they are also fun and surprising. Yes, this is a really fun way to do shadow work. (Personally, I found talk therapy to be incredibly important foundational work, but fun? Not so much.)

Owen’s hypothesis is that standing between us and whatever goals we’re struggling to achieve is at least one “monster”—her word for inner demon. In spite of the name, this is not an “evil” or “bad” aspect of the self. To the contrary, she holds that our monsters are likely outworn beliefs and behaviors that no longer serve us (e.g., the Rebel or the Good Girl). Monsters are thus the rejected or misundertood parts of ourselves that continue to haunt us precisely because we refuse to know them more intimately and accept them with unconditional love.

If we want to live our lives in wholeness and integrity, it makes perfect sense that the task ahead is to know and integrate every aspect of the self, including those that we wish did not exist. The magical thing about healing—alchemical, really—is that observing any aspect of the self in loving attention transforms that aspect into gold.

With this in mind, Owen has come up with a playful solution to facing the most feared aspect of the self: throwing it a celebratory party! What better way to embrace someone we’ve ignored or rejected for so long? (more…)

By Ysette, ago

Mindfully sitting with fear

This practice of sitting mindfully with fear is inspired by the work of psychologist and Buddhist meditation teacher, Tara Brach. She teaches that fear is the root of all negative emotion, including those that manifest in ways that do not seem or feel fearful, such as anger, addiction, compulsiveness, and the need for control. If you drill down into any one of these, the root answer will always be fear. My grandmother provides a great example of how fear is the deep-rooted emotion behind most others. I’d never seen her more upset with me than when I came home hours later than I promised. (I didn’t think to call because I got caught up working on a school project.) Beneath her anger, of course, was the fear for my safety. (And beneath that was the love that she was unable to express verbally for most of her life–love tamped down by fear of vulnerability.)

Fear, you’ve surely heard, causes a physiological reaction in our bodies, regardless of how “real” the threat may be. Brach points out that most things that make us anxious are actually not imminent dangers, but either memories of past traumas or imagined future threats. This is why mindfulness—attuning ourselves to what is going on within us and around us in the present moment—is such an effective way of moving through fear. Neural plasticity enables us to interrupt our natural instincts (fight, flight, or freeze) and rewire our brains so we can create more effective ways of being in he world.

The best way of moving through fear, Brach argues, is by going against our natural instincts to turn away from it. (more…)

By Ysette, ago

Shielding

WHAT IS SHIELDING? Earlier this year we went over grounding and centering as basic meditation and energy management practices. This month we added shielding to our tool belt. What is shielding? It’s something I believe we all learn to do instinctively when we are young. There are many ways to Read more…

By Ysette, ago

February 2017 gathering

Our space tonight is extra pretty with #orchids! #dreamersschemers

Our space tonight is extra pretty with #orchids! #dreamersschemers

This year I’ve decided to structure our gatherings along with the seasons and the chakra system, so February was the time for us to “make like plants” by turning inward to feed our roots (and root chakra) in preparation for spring. (more…)

By Ysette, ago