This inner method practice is the avenue to cultivate and continuously returning,
Deepening our access to the inner reservoir we call hara center.
The belly based intelligence that offers a real pure view on both the ways of experience or stimulus that we're being met with and then our own agency as practitioners to get quite spacious inside and meet whatever's in the midst.
And so this hara practice is a three-step practice where we begin by arriving in this very moment and if you have any familiarity with that versatility in the psychological realm,
The fact that there's many parts all circulating in any one cross-section of time and space,
You'll know that there are parts that exist in the past.
So recognizing even now as you meet yourself here,
There are still parts that are driving up Sunshine Canyon to get here,
Still the hurried or the busy parts that supported your journey this morning,
Parts that are thinking back to a conversation you might have had yesterday or some challenge that you're grappling with.
So in this moment,
The arrival piece is really about welcoming all the parts to meet us where we are now.
And in order to do that,
We'll need to pause to give those parts a chance to catch up.
So let's use just a few rounds of out-breath to descend into the belly and pause any thoughts about reality.
So we might at the onset just live in direct experience via the hara.
One more minute in the shape you're in now to keep breathing yourself down into the belly as you hit the pause button on your day.
And of course,
If you're happy in the shape you're in,
Please feel free to stay longer.
As I mentioned,
This is a three-step practice,
And so we'll have the opportunity to take two more shapes.
I'm coming into anything that feels aligned for your body.
This could be an asymmetrical pose like pigeon or half floor frog or Janu Sirsasana.
And even in the transition of the sequence,
Still attempting to stay quite rooted from the vantage point of the abdomen.
I'm coming into the second step of this glimpse practice of this inner method to arrive from pausing really the momentum of our day to just give all of our parts a chance to catch up to where we are now.
We then soften.
Soften really refers to the mere recognition to rest with whatever content is with you presently,
To host softly whatever's here right now.
So that ever-present inquiry,
What's it like right now?
Another way to think about that is,
What is my evolutionary edge?
What am I being asked to meet?
And then this beautiful recognition in the subterranean field of whatever content you're walking through right now is that these are all markers for living a vivid life,
That it's a rich experience of the human terrain,
Ephemeral,
Impermanent,
And with you now.
So we're here with this content,
With the vivid interest of staying awake to it.
We're alive.
And for as long as we live,
We'll have material to meet.
And just notice what parts within you are holding some heaviness.
And as you meet them,
Know that we're not trying to shift things that are hard or heavy or tense.
It's not that we're trying to soften the material.
We're trying to hold the material softly.
So feel that distinction.
And take a few last breaths here.
The whole energy body softens and spreads from the center to hold it all.
Coming up slowly with the support of the in-breath,
Such an ally of the in-breath,
Such an ally to lift us out and into the next.
Moving into a third shape of your choice,
The third step of this arrival practice.
Again,
Really attempting to stay quite grounded into the low center of gravity that Qigong practitioners call the dantian.
That whole aura of intelligence between pubic bone and navel.
Not just the front body,
But across the across the kidney bands,
The top of the ilium,
And to soak across the sacral plate,
The whole midsection.
Moving into step three,
Where we connect to the belly field as our chosen locus of refuge.
I take refuge in the supreme mother of basic space.
Letting this eternal inner wellspring be an avenue,
A corridor to lead yourself back home.
Connecting in through the navel like the umbilicus that connects us lifelong to Gaia,
To earth intelligence and the immediacy of this moment.
So let's practice here,
Fully opening to reality just as it is.
This is what it's like right now.
Three more breaths here.
Take your time.
We'll meet in seated.
