Nature’s Flow: 30-Minute Foundation - All Three Qualities

In this integration session, we'll weave together all three qualities of nature's flow into a complete 30-minute foundation practice. I'll guide you through 5-minute intervals that stack together—mutual flow through body and earth, free flow through breath awareness, and whole flow through hands and space. Through this foundational practice, you might discover how these qualities create a springboard for feeling resourced by your inner nature retreat and ready for further adventures into presence.

Some possible takeaways from today's practice:
An accessible practice you can return to daily
Feeling how the three qualities support and build on each other
The sense of being resourced by your inner nature retreat
A foundation for further adventures and explorations of presence

Transcript

Welcome to what will be an integration 30 minute where we can go through these five minute intervals,

Touching in on the qualities of presence that we always already have as a part of nature.

So that by the end of this 30 minute foundation,

We have,

We have a foundation,

We have what can serve as a springboard for other adventures into not to sound too grand about it,

But coming closer in touch with our true nature in this approach where we're not having to change anything to have these qualities.

And at the same time,

We're just going to access them in,

In the most accessible,

Immediate,

Evident way that I've personally come to find in my own practice.

And this entire process and approach is very much inspired by the teachings of Master Wancho Park and the three qualities of flow that we will be getting into experientially.

So welcome and hi.

I'm glad that you're back.

And if this is you're joining and some of the prompts are a little less clear this time,

Just know that that's intentional.

It's to give you more space for inner guidance,

More space to feel into your own practice.

And that you can always go back to the sessions where we go through and explore the qualities more,

More in depth one at a time.

So welcome to the first 30 minutes of what can then become an hour of presence.

And I'll have a little surprise for after the 30 minute mark,

If you're up for surprises.

And so let's land here.

And actually the first quality of flow,

Quality of presence that we'll practice together will help us more fully do that.

And may like to close your eyes and just notice how we may have been quite preoccupied with external things,

The external landscape.

And even by closing our eyes,

It's an invitation to begin to notice our inner experience,

Just as it is.

What sometimes is called our inner landscape.

And with these qualities of presence,

We begin to relate to this inner landscape as rich and vast and,

And like our own inner nature retreat.

And allowing everything to be there in our inner nature retreat.

As we begin also to feel the breath,

Sensations of expansion,

Sensations of release.

As we let go of the air,

Just noticing that sense of letting go and release.

If you'd like the thigh,

Go ahead and feel it with a sigh.

And now beginning to notice the shoulders as you breathe.

And allow the shoulders to lay down.

The weight of the arms,

The weight of the shoulders to simply lay down and rest on the support of your torso.

The next,

You out-breath seeing if a little bit of tension can melt away.

Help us feel more completely how the shoulders are supported.

Letting go.

And laying down into that support.

And now noticing the hands.

The hands resting on the lap.

And like we did with the shoulders,

Letting the hands feel their own weight.

Let them feel heavy.

And let them lay down.

Give their weight to the support beneath.

Next couple of out-breaths,

Seeing if at the very end of the letting go of that out-breath.

And then beginning to notice right in the very place where the hands make contact with your lap.

Right there.

The experience,

The felt experience of natural lay down and support.

Mutual connection.

Allowing yourself to get a taste of it.

A flavor of that felt experience of hands and lap contactfully,

Mutually connecting.

And now feeling that flavor,

Taste,

Quality of experience in connection with the ground.

Your body and the ground.

Right at your seat.

And again,

To help with that,

In use the letting go and releasing sense of the out-breath.

On the next couple of out-breaths,

Laying down.

Lay down the burden of your weight.

What if at the end of the next out-breath you could give it more completely to the earth?

And allowing yourself,

Allowing your body to receive the matching force of support that comes from the earth and up into your body.

May even like to breathe it in like a fragrance.

The felt experience of support.

And then letting yourself feel this sense of contact and connection at the seat,

At the hands,

At the shoulders.

All laying down,

All being met by support.

All right there in your experience.

Already streaming in your awareness.

And it's not filtering out or blocking out that aspect of experience.

That mutual flow,

Quality.

Connection,

Quality.

Tangibly and immediately contactable quality.

Right there,

Seat,

Hands,

Shoulders.

Of presence.

Sitting like a mountain.

Because we are in this nature's connection.

And you're welcome to continue sitting like a mountain as we touch in on the second quality of presence.

You're beginning to notice now the breath once again.

And this time more noticing the sensations of this flow of air.

This flow of nature that flows into our body and flows out of our body.

And that passes through our nose as it does so.

Within the space inside our nose.

Allowing ourselves to become sensitive to the sensations of flow there.

Letting the forehead be soft.

You may like to feel the space as well between the eyes and allow it to feel wide and open.

As we become attuned to the subtle sensations inside the space of our nose.

And we can begin a pattern of noticing back and forth.

Where on the next in-breath noticing the right nostril sensation.

And on the out-breath shifting over to the left nostril and its sensations.

You breathe in staying there noticing the left nostril.

And breathing out noticing the sensations in the right nostril.

And if that feels good for you can continue to repeat it in a cycle.

As it may aid our inquiry here.

Feeling the sensations of this fine free flow of air at our nose.

Perhaps one nostril at a time.

Inquiring into what's the finest sensation of flow I can feel in this nostril.

On this part of the breath.

Opening to that finest sensation.

The finest feeling of flow.

Instead of feeling that oh I got it.

I've grasped it.

What would it be like to continue to open the air is still practically infinitely fine in its freedom.

What would it be like to experience this at the nose without prematurely putting any limit on it.

The experience of infinite free flow.

Practically infinite finer flows within flows right at our nose.

Letting the forehead be soft.

Face between the eyes wide.

And gently letting the alternate focus fade if you were practicing that way.

And letting the focus at the nose dissolve.

And for the next few moments not trying to notice anything or manage your experience in any particular way.

And now having touched in on the free flow quality of nature.

And the mutual flow quality of nature.

And we'll spend a little bit of time here in this next interval to feel into how these are not arising separately.

But that like any quality of nature they happen together.

Freedom and connection.

Yes.

Happening.

Arising together.

So let's continue to feel now the breath of the nose.

But now trace it down inside us.

So as the air comes in on the in-breath we're going to trace it from the nose down inside our body.

And repeating that for a couple of breaths here.

A free flow of breath.

Of air itself coming inside us.

And then beginning to notice more the out-breath.

And how as the air leaves our body there's naturally a downward wave.

A downward cascading wave of the chest and the belly.

And we trace that downward cascading wave down with the out-breath.

And let's do that a couple of breaths.

The natural movement of the breath.

Movement of the body.

And we're just tracing downward.

That downward cascade as our breath leaves the body.

And then combining these two.

Next in-breath.

Tracing the air itself as it comes down inside us.

Out-breath.

The cascading wave of our body.

Front body.

Belly.

Traveling downward.

Repeating that.

We're feeling a sense of downward movement and tracing on both the in-breath and the out-breath.

And we're alternating between feeling the sensations of the air itself and feeling this subtle wave of our body.

And as we continue to feel into both.

Beginning to notice the wave of the front body.

And how just like a water wave,

It's so free.

So finely free.

And also so connected.

So mutually connected in its wave motion.

And we may be feeling some more of the subtlety of our body.

And as we transition to the third quality.

We'll be using the access point of our very sensitive fingers.

As we also continue to use the breath.

If that feels good for you.

And so beginning to notice the fingers.

And for this part of the practice.

Flipping the hands open,

Faith.

So that the fingers are free to move a little.

Feel surrounded by the air.

And starting by feeling into the thumb.

And we'll be putting a little bit of movement into the thumb on the out-breath.

Very micro,

Almost imperceptible inner movement of elongating the thumb.

And then seeing what it would be like to end our out-breath right as we're feeling the very tip of our thumb.

Even the tip of our thumb touching the air just beyond it.

And we're going to be doing this finger by finger.

Breath by breath.

So starting with the next out-breath.

Elongating the thumb and feeling to its very tip with that breath.

And then doing likewise for the pointer finger.

Next out-breath,

Middle finger.

Next out-breath,

Fourth finger,

Long.

And then feeling all the way to the very tip of the pinky.

And repeating that,

Going at your own pace.

And then repeating around where you'd like can feel like the volume of each finger as you breathe and trace it is filling with presence.

It is full of presence.

And now letting ourselves actually feel not just the length but the 3D volume all the way to each fingertip as we continue to breathe and feel finger by finger on both hands.

And feel like the sense of the is-ness,

The am-ness,

The tangible,

Teeming field of sensation.

So fine and so mutually interconnected filling.

The space that each finger occupies.

And then gradually letting the finger by finger noticing fade out and see what we're left with.

And then we like to slightly spread all the fingers ever so slightly.

Allow yourself to feel the space in between all the fingers all at once.

The space where there's not fingers.

Sometimes that awareness of the negative space actually brings greater into effortless contrast.

Our fingers,

All of them,

All at once,

Full of this presence.

Radiating this is-ness all together.

And then it can allow the experience we have in our fingers almost to feel like it can begin to fill the volume of our entire hand.

And letting ourselves feel both hands full,

Full to the brim,

With no part of the hand missing,

Whole in its integrity,

And it's all together at once-ness,

Filling that space.

And how what we can feel in our hands,

The whole flow,

Quality,

We may begin to access more in our experience of our hands in this practice.

And the free flow we might feel at our nose,

And the mutual flow and connection we might feel with our seat and the ground.

That these qualities of nature are everywhere in nature,

Including everywhere in us.

And so having touched in non-conceptually,

I should just even say,

Just say non-conceptually is so conceptual,

Just experientially,

We felt the stuff,

Right?

We found some places perhaps that we could have a felt experience of these qualities that are indeed everywhere in nature.

So this gives us the foundation for further adventures that can be explorations of taking any number of the experiences,

Any one of these qualities,

And feeling it more all-pervasively.

Or feeling more of them in combination,

Feeling them for deeper relaxation,

Feeling them for performance and movement,

Feeling them for relating to difficult emotions,

Feeling them for experiential insights into the wisdom of the ages.

And for today,

An invitation if you do have a little more time here before you transition to what's next for you in your day,

To see how one of the greatest adventures that we could ever go on and springboard into further discoveries would be just to lie down.

So if you do have some time and I'll extend this here together,

We're just coming into lying down.

And have a sense of the simpleness of,

You know,

In kindergarten,

We have a lie down,

We have a nap.

If you'd like to take a nap,

That would work just fine.

Come down to lying down.

You may like to just have the feet a little bit apart,

May like to put a bolster underneath your knees,

Finding a place to lay down that feels comfortable for you.

And if we'd like,

We can just gently feel that we can lay down to the earth.

And see what it's like to just offer your experience a gap between actively practicing and moving into your day.

Notice if there's any subtle resistance,

Minor panic.

What am I supposed to do then?

And just acknowledging that this can be one of the most challenging adventures.

It may be helpful to just give it a shorter amount of time.

I have recalled during the practice when I said,

You know,

For the next few moments,

No need to try to manage your experience in any particular way.

So what would it be like for just the next few moments?

No need to manage our experiences in any particular way.

And even trying not to manage your experience is the managing of your experience.

So just maybe having a sense of humor about that.

And I'll be just allowing this silence and this rest.

And your experience is your experience unfolding.

Three minutes.

And you're welcome to stay here.

It can be one way to soak in the experience of this practice.

Where you're taking time out from your busy life to feel into these qualities of presence.

Feel very nourishing and resourcing.

And maybe even what we've been looking for in the outside circumstances of our life.

Connection,

Freedom,

Wholeness.

And this practice is the opportunity to find these qualities within our own experience.

As we share it as a flow of nature.

And as we share it as a flow of energy.

So going forward there just can always be this option.

If your schedule allows for it or can schedule for it.

To build in a little bit of this time.

Where you're neither practicing nor immediately moving into the activities of your life.

I'll be gradually transitioning here for a chance to have any discussion.

Again,

Move the fingers and toes,

Hands and feet,

Arms and legs,

However feels good.

If you're transitioning with me and gradually coming on up.

So this is a time for any reflections you'd like to share about your life.

Your experience.

Something that may have stood out for you about the practice.