Hello and welcome.
The following is a guided meditation by René Sills,
A somatic movement educator,
Energy worker and astrologer.
This meditation is intended to help support your embodied meditation practice.
If in the recording you are prompted to do something that doesn't feel good for your body,
Please adapt and modify to make it work for you.
Please also note that the content of these meditations sometimes explores deep and subtle states and memories,
And sometimes guided visualizations.
You are encouraged to work with discernment as you practice with them.
If any of the guidance René offers feels too activating or uncomfortable,
Please listen to your body's knowing and pause the recording until a later time if you wish to return to it.
These guided meditations range anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes and do not require any supplementary equipment to participate.
We hope you enjoy.
Hello and welcome.
This is René and thanks for joining me.
I want to offer a meditation or another meditation in a series of them called Deep Healing.
So there are a lot of layers that I know I need healing and I know I'm also not alone in feeling this way,
That there's fracturing for all of us on all the different layers.
So mental healing,
Emotional healing,
Psychological,
Spiritual,
Physical,
Environmental,
Familial,
Systemic,
Occupational.
Every area of our lives gives us opportunity to see the ways that we are fractured,
To see the ways that there is hurt and there's healing and of course seeing these things gives us opportunity to heal.
It's one of the paradoxes of life on earth that we experience ourselves as separate.
There is science,
There's religion and all kinds of different ways to know about connection,
To know about oneness.
On a scientific level we can understand that the elements that make our bodies are the same elements that make the earth.
On a spiritual level we can understand that the God essence infuses everything that exists.
In a poetic way we talk about oneness,
We talk about the family of the earth,
But the lived experience for most people is separateness.
The lived experience is feeling inadequate and confused and small and especially in the times that we live in now,
Feeling very divided in terms of our attention and our roots and the many aspects of our being.
So we're asked to live in ways that separate our spiritual natures from our physical and that rip us apart from our lineages that don't remember them with us,
That don't give them a place often.
This fracturing is incredibly damaging and destructive.
I don't think there is really any one way to go about healing.
There are lots of ways that we can seek to address these individual circumstances where we feel fractured or where we feel that we've been separated or that we separate.
In general though,
Deep healing is a process of including and I find that inclusion happens beyond the mental process.
It happens somewhere deeper,
Somewhere that's more creative.
When we're seeking to include aspects of our beings that have been taken away,
That have been hidden,
That have been splintered,
It can be very attractive to get into a kind of psychoanalysis with ourselves or there's a process of trying to explain why did this happen,
What is this thing that I'm feeling.
Psychoanalysis can be this kind of compulsion that I know I have and all of my friends do too,
So I'm assuming you do as well,
Which is to explain oneself,
To say,
Well,
This is this thing that happened and these things in my family and this is the way that I am now.
There's also within that the capacity for blame for shifting focus away from our lived experience and onto someone else's reasons,
Someone else's actions or a group of people or a system.
When we get into those mental loops,
There's a feeling of increased separateness,
A feeling of overwhelm because there's absolutely no way that we can influence other people or the world in general or any larger systems to include us if we don't feel included.
There's no way that we can control that and often the need for connection is something that first has to happen internally in order for us to be able to invite it to happen externally.
What I'm talking about here is a very deep wound,
It's a very deep hurt and the deep wound and the deep hurt of feeling severed or feeling disconnected or feeling that there's mistrust,
Not feeling family.
You might have the healthiest family in the world and have really secure attachments with them and there will still be situations or circumstances in your life that presents you with other people that you do not feel family with,
That you feel separate from,
That you feel judged by,
That you feel mistrust towards.
It's this place that I want to focus on today,
This kind of place of severing and of the instincts to feel hurt,
The instincts to retaliate,
To make other people feel bad and to continue this holding ourselves away and holding ourselves in division and holding ourselves in separation.
I think you know what I'm talking about because it's a very instinctual human behavior and it's something that we all do and you can see it with children,
With really young children when they feel hurt,
They often,
You go to comfort them and they'll hit you or something or they'll yell at you and it's this kind of weird pain mixed with shame instinct that is like I'm so hurt,
All I need is closeness and attention and love and yet that is exactly what I reject.
I cannot be seen in this hurt.
I don't want you to see me.
It makes me angry that I'm in this place and so this instinct is a,
You know,
It's a hefty brew of really hard feelings all mixed together.
The pain,
The hurt,
The embarrassment,
The shame,
The defensiveness,
The anger,
All coming together and creating division.
So when we find ourselves in these places,
As I was saying,
It's really often not helpful to psychoanalyze or to seek the reasons why we feel that way.
That process of identifying why is solidifying the separation.
It's breaking things into small parts.
It's looking at certain players and assigning roles and it's not understanding that,
You know,
We're caught up in a mess together.
And this process of healing first has to involve a kind of reconciliation.
And this can be really hard if there have been circumstances which have been violating or violent and where in fact there is another person or there is a system or a group of people that have in very clear ways perpetuated or are at the fault of a certain kind of hurt.
It can be very hard to let go of wanting to separate from that,
Wanting to be angry at that,
Wanting to reject that,
Wanting to make that,
You know,
Get a taste of its own medicine or something like this.
And that's natural.
But it also then creates a condition of pain for whoever is holding on.
So if that's you,
If you're in a position where it's like,
You know,
It's their fault,
They made me feel this way,
That's true.
And it might be,
Or it's true for you,
And it might be really important to feel that way.
And that anger can often allow us the time and space that we need to make boundaries.
But ultimately that feeling is going to become a really heavy weight to bear.
That feeling is going to become its own divisiveness and it's going to require constant feeding.
It's going to develop its own ego.
So it's going to require constant feeding and affirmation that yes,
Indeed,
There's still the reason to be separate.
So in the spaces where we need to heal,
It's really important to stay cognizant and aware of when we embrace anger as a means for healthy separation and establishing boundaries and seeing things with,
You know,
A different kind of perspective that that's necessary sometimes if we've been really wrapped up in something and we need to get away from it.
And ultimately that also needs to be let go of because it is still separateness and it will create the kind of boomerang effect,
You know,
Where we end up becoming the thing that we hate because we spend so much time and attention keeping it away from us.
So this is a meditation for integration and it can be in regards to whatever is coming up for you.
And for me these days,
It's a mix of a lot of things.
You know,
I've got personal situations that feel really tender and I have a lot of upset and anger at,
You know,
This spiraling political global situation that feels pretty out of control and mindless.
And it's so satisfying and pleasurable sometimes to just,
You know,
Critique.
And yet it doesn't really help me and it doesn't,
It certainly doesn't help me get more connected.
And I know for me that what I need these days is to feel more connected,
To feel that my family is everybody else on earth and that my home is the earth.
And I know that this is something that we all really need,
That we all need to feel more safe,
That we all need to feel more held.
And that really,
You know,
We have to do this for ourselves and this will be part of us doing it for each other and one can't come first.
They have to arise together.
So that's where this meditation is coming from and moving towards.
All right.
So you can take this wherever you want.
And I think that there is a lot of wisdom in allowing meditations to move as we bring our attention into the somatic experience and into the ways that our mental and psychological states influence the body and the heart.
Sensations often come up that would like to be released,
That would like to be expressed in a certain way.
So I really want to invite you to be comfortable and also to be fluid,
To allow yourself to express,
To allow your body to resolve.
And whatever is coming up as a feeling,
To move towards it and allow it to move in you.
And eventually this kind of practice is a dialogue and it's a conversation that you get to have with yourself of,
Okay,
There's a feeling,
This is the expression of it.
This is the manifestation,
I'm going to allow it to sequence through myself.
Here's the gesture.
Now I get to look at it and now I can release it.
That this is the practice of feeling things come into form,
Noticing and then releasing.
And this is what we do with seated meditation when we notice our thoughts.
And in that kind of practice,
You're sitting,
You're observing your thoughts,
They're coming in.
They culminate whenever the moment is that you recognize that you're thinking and then you release and you come back to an empty space or into more of a broad field of perspective.
With a somatic meditation,
It's the same thing,
Although thoughts are not limited to only something that's happening in your mind,
The images or the words.
Thoughts are everywhere.
It's the sensation.
It's the experience of now.
And so my invitation is to be present with the experience of now.
And if that creates a need to move your body,
Do it.
Begin by taking some deep breaths.
Breathe in through your nose,
Feel the movement of breath,
Come into your sinuses,
Move down your throat into your lungs.
Feel the inhale expand your belly,
Your back and your sides.
As you exhale,
Allow the relaxation of the exhale.
So with the inhales,
There's a levity and the lightness as your body takes in air and inflates in the chest.
As you exhale and the releasing of the air,
There is a condensing quality and gravity becomes apparent.
So let yourself move to gravity as you exhale and let yourself move to levity as you inhale and feel the movement of your breath and feel it manifest in your body and allow yourself to express that breathing.
So what is the gesture of inhaling?
Can you feel it in yourself?
Maybe it's opposite of the words that I use to describe my inhale.
If you have a feeling of your own inhale that's different from how I describe,
Then describe it for yourself.
Seek it for yourself,
Express it.
As you exhale and you feel the expression of the exhale,
What is this?
We have a value around taking in,
Around consumption,
Around experiencing.
We want our lives to be full and yet we can't inhale forever.
So in the exhaling,
We remember what it is to give and to give away,
To release and to relax.
And as you feel these two patterns of breath,
Notice your preference.
Notice what feels easier or easiest.
Don't judge it,
Don't change it,
Just notice.
Allow your breath to be the constant inquiry,
The unending research.
This is your longest relationship from your first inhale to your last exhale.
This is the presence of your life.
How does the presence of this breath bring you into your own experience,
Your own experience that's defined by your body,
By the skin you live in,
By the shape you inhabit and by all the stories that have accumulated in you?
When you breathe,
You maybe remember that your breath comes from an infinite source,
That the mystery of how our earth formed and the atmosphere that we have is still a living mystery,
It is still unanswered.
As you exhale,
You remember that all things in this realm die.
And the earth realm is one of manifestation.
And manifestation is constant change,
Birthing and dying.
Things come together and form for a certain amount of time and then they dissolve and realign themselves in a new manner.
As you feel your breath in,
You feel the passage of breath touch your history,
The movement of breath into your body that has grown from an infant's body into whatever age you are now.
As you exhale,
You remember that your body is a temporary home,
That regardless of all the flaws and the pain and the frustrations that you might have in it,
It's only for a moment that you will.
And someday,
Somehow,
Someplace,
Your body will stop breathing and you probably don't have much of a choice about when or where or how that is,
Unless you choose.
But until that moment,
You're alive and you're in this process of alchemical change,
Of experiencing something.
So as you inhale,
Can you inhale the presence and the preciousness of this moment?
As you exhale,
You commit yourself to the fleeting nature of time and space.
And there's a release of knowing in that,
There's a knowing that there can be no knowing.
So much has happened before that have laid the conditions for what you experience now.
And there is no way you can ever know what all of that is.
And all of your actions and inactions will accumulate and some will form and some will dissolve.
And they'll be part of the fabric of time and space that the future unfolds.
As you inhale,
Can you breathe in a mystery?
I don't know where this breath comes from.
And as you exhale,
Can you breathe out a mystery?
I don't know where this breath is going.
None of us get to choose.
None of us can control our lives with all the privileges and securities and materials that anyone might have.
They'll never have control.
They'll never have control over external events,
Things none of us can control like the weather,
Like culture and the way that billions of people influence and shift and consume.
They'll never have control over other people,
Their relationships.
The others that pull us into choices that shape our lives,
That attract,
That repel,
That bind,
We can never control anyone else.
We can seek to,
We can enslave others,
But we can never make them feel or think.
We really cannot impose our own will without doing extreme damage,
Not only to another,
But to ourselves.
And so really just allowing that,
There's no control over anyone else and that's a good thing.
You don't want that responsibility.
And breathing into the unknown mystery of yourself,
That there will be all kinds of causes for the ways that you are and you'll never get to know what they are.
The family stories,
The lineages that have been lost and hidden,
The secrets that have been kept so long that now they're forgotten,
The residue of experiences that are nothing in the moment,
But build up into a hard layer of habit.
This is what we all come from and there's really no way to unwind any of it,
To find any pure space or state as long as we're trying to figure out what it is.
So letting that go with the exhale,
Letting go of the need to know,
Letting go of the need to control,
Letting go of the idea that there will ever be any knowing or any control.
As you inhale,
Simply feeling this breath.
This is the moment that's arising right now and that's really all you have.
So now let's bring our attention into the deepest parts of our bodies and you can start at your heart and let your attention move into your chest space where your heart is and just feel what's there and this will be qualities and sensations and textures.
Try not to name them,
Try not to explain them,
Try not to control them,
Just say hello.
And then travel down a couple of inches into your solar plexus.
This is the space between your chest and your navel,
The soft part of your upper belly and the upper and mid back.
And feel the textures that are here,
Feel the sensations that are here.
Allow your heart energy to melt into this space.
You don't need to label or name,
You don't need to know,
Just feel and acknowledge and accept.
And let your attention continue to melt and to cascade down into your belly,
Into your navel center,
Into your low back.
And feel this part of your body and greet whatever is there.
And in this process of including,
Let's include everything with love,
With peace.
So whatever you find in your belly,
Whatever awareness you have of sensation,
If there are emotional flavors,
If there are memories,
If there's discomfort,
Physical circumstances,
Gas or something,
Whatever is in your belly,
Feel it,
Be there with it,
Include it.
And let your heart space and your solar plexus just melt into this space.
So we get a sensation of deepening,
Of trickling down,
Of seeping in.
And then let your attention move into your sexuality,
Into your desire center or the sacral center.
This is a space that's just above the genitals,
The front of your sacrum and just above the pubic bones.
You can think of it as the womb space.
What's attractive,
What's desirous,
What is unknown,
A powerful spot in your body.
And what is there?
How can you include it?
How can you include even numbness or feelings of distraction?
So whatever you find,
Even if the finding is a feeling of losing or unknowing,
It's like you're pulling on a warm sweater or something.
You're wrapping yourself in a nourishing container.
And in that container,
Everything belongs.
Everything is accepted.
Everything has a place.
Everything is allowed.
And then let your attention continue to melt and seep down into the root of your being,
Into your pelvic floor,
Into your tail,
Into your body's weight,
Into the earth.
And notice what's there.
Notice what feelings,
Notice what textures,
What images,
What words.
And just include it all and don't separate anything out.
And as you feel this softness and inclusion from your heart all the way down through your solar plexus and your belly and your sacral center and your pelvic center,
It's like the best hug,
The best,
Most forgiving and pure friendship feeling that you can find in yourself of embracing it all.
Even if a lot of it is unknown,
Even if it feels hard,
Whatever is there,
You're holding it,
Accepting it.
Feel into the base of your pelvic floor,
Into your tailbone and contract those muscles.
And feel the way that this squeezing,
That pulling your tailbone up and in is a fear response.
It's what our bodies naturally do.
And so you can relax that.
And then you might imagine any time in the last couple of days when you've been startled or stressed.
And if you recall whatever that moment or circumstance was and see if you can remember in your body,
What do you do with your pelvic floor,
There's probably a pretty good chance that this is what you do,
That there's at least some kind of a tail tuck,
That there's some kind of closure between the pelvic center and anything that's above it.
And so the invitation right now is to release the fear response,
To acknowledge that that is a state that most of us probably live in a good amount of the time,
At least subtly.
And right now you're just releasing it and at the same time accepting that it has been there and it will probably come back.
So there's an acceptance of that space,
But just a decision to not indulge it right now.
Right now feel in your body what it is to belong.
And if you can imagine that the fear response becomes its opposite.
So rather than contracting or tucking or drawing in that there is an expansion and a spreading and a rooting down.
And if you imagine a scorpion and its long tail and the way that tail and its spike can come down on something and pierce it and penetrate.
This is the kind of feeling I want you to have in your tailbone right now,
That there's a ferocity and a assertion.
And I want you to pierce through the crust of the building that you're in,
If you're inside through the crust of the earth and just send your spinal energy,
Your uprightness,
Send it rooting down into the ground.
And as you send it rooting down and into the ground,
Tell yourself,
I'm going to use I as a pronoun here and I want you to hear these words internally.
I have a right to be here.
I belong.
I am safe.
I am worthy.
I am powerful.
I can affect change.
So as you hear those messages,
Notice what your body does with them.
Can you accept them?
Can you receive them?
Can you find your own words if my words are not the ones you'd want?
Can you bring that essence into your being?
Can you feel that your uprightness is supported and tapped into the fire at the center of our planet?
It's like that deep that you want to root,
That you want to feel resourced and warmed and invigorated.
From this space,
Remember that most humans are suffering the wounds of abandonment and division.
From this space,
Remember that it is incredibly challenging to be alive right now in a world that doesn't honor community,
That has forgotten how to be at home on our earth.
This is perverse.
Literally,
It goes against our instincts as animals,
As creations of the earth.
It manifests in our beings as dysfunction and as illness.
Stay attached to your power.
Stay attached to your root as you hear these words.
Just remember that this is the situation that most of us,
Not all of us,
Have to navigate every day.
And it's been this way for a long time,
That most everyone listening has come from a family that has been separated from its ancestral indigenous intelligence.
And can you breathe in that knowing and as you breathe it in,
Can you invite compassion?
Invite compassion for the state of fear that most humans are living in,
For the state of confusion and suffering.
Remember the anchor of your spinal energy,
Of your alignment,
Of your uprightness,
Of your vitality and send it down into the core of the earth and feel that energy,
That hot fire at the center of the planet that is constantly churning,
That is constantly pushing out,
That is constantly evolving.
Remember that that pushes into you and through you that you are part of her manifestation.
You don't need to know,
You don't need to control.
The human family is working something out right now together and we're all part of it.
How can you find your resource and power in this?
In this knowing that there will continue to be suffering,
That there will continue to be pain and violence and upheaval,
That humans will continue to feel separated and confused.
Can you know that?
Can you expand compassion into that knowing?
Can you expand compassion because you know that there is nothing you can do other than to be compassionate and to continue to seek your own route,
Your own power,
Your own connection?
And as you feel this simultaneous rooting connection and compassion,
Invite whomever or whatever needs resolution for you personally,
For your forgiveness right now.
Whoever has hurt you or is hurting you,
Whatever the situation was,
You can call it into your mind,
You can see them clearly,
You can feel your own root,
That ferocity of the scorpion tail,
That penetration down deep,
Deep,
Deep,
Deep,
Deep into the planet that you come from,
That is your home,
That is your birthright.
You belong,
You're safe,
You're powerful,
You're seen.
And from that space you regard,
You observe,
Whoever,
Whatever,
You know who they are.
You breathe in compassion.
There is a very good chance that they had no idea what they were doing when they hurt you.
There is a very good chance that those systems are too big,
That they're unwieldy and out of control and there are so many casualties.
Release in yourself any placement of blame you've put on yourself for the pain you've felt.
Release in yourself any placement of blame you have put on yourself for the pain you have felt.
Release in yourself any placement of blame you have put on yourself for the pain you have felt.
And see what that bond is.
Imagine it,
See what it looks like.
See its color,
Feel its texture,
Imagine its shape.
And then choose a tool,
It might be a hammer,
It might be scissors,
It might be smoke.
Dissolve the bond,
Cut the bond,
Separate from it.
Release yourself from the object of your pain.
Release the need for them to know how much it hurts.
Release the need for revenge.
Release the need for acknowledgement.
Release the need for closure.
Release the need to know why.
In the releasing there is a giving back.
You do not want to carry anyone else's confusion,
Anyone else's upset.
It is not yours to carry the conditions that have piled one on top of each other in ways you can't even comprehend that have created another's action or inaction that has hurt you.
Release yourself from any responsibility towards the resolution,
From all of the things that you tell yourself you should do or need to do or should be done or they should do,
Just release it.
And in your imagination it might be a long cutting or a smashing or just an easy dissipation.
And then feel your own root again.
And feel like grounding all the way down to the center of the earth.
And remember that from the beginning of our time together here on earth,
Humans have had to deal with their shadows,
With their instincts towards violence,
Domination,
Greed,
Jealousy,
Fear.
These feelings and sensations are not new.
They've existed everywhere.
Can you find in yourself the soothing of that anxiety that humans feel?
Can you feel that you are in fact connected?
You are in fact at home.
You are safe.
You are loved.
You are powerful.
You have the capacity to be effective.
Release yourself from any relationships that keep you feeling separate.
And in the releasing,
Can you feel that there is an accepting?
There is an accepting of things just as they are.
You can't control.
You won't know.
You can make choices that allow you as much comfort as you can have in the most sustainable ways it can be.
You can choose which relationships bring you healing and bring you joy.
And you can choose distance in whatever ways that you can from those that don't.
And beyond that,
There's no control.
There's no knowing.
So releasing the boundaries and the barriers that are gripped around the control,
That are gripped around the knowing or the need to know,
That are gripped around the unknowing and the franticness of not knowing.
And feel your own root and your own power and your own acceptance that there is no explaining why or how.
And then allow your breath to deepen and your attention to surface.
And look around the space that you find yourself.
See whatever colors or shapes are there.
Use your hands and touch your body.
Feel your form.
And say to yourself as you touch yourself,
This is me.
This is my body.
This is my home.
And then look around again and see your environment.
Look out a window.
See a plant.
See anything made of wood.
See any water.
See any stones.
If you can see the soil,
If you can see the sky.
Say,
This is my home.
This is my environment.
I belong here.
This is what I'm made from.
All right,
In whatever way makes sense to you to close your meditation,
Do feel free to linger longer if you choose.
Thank you for practicing this meditation.
It's not one that has any kind of great conclusion or soaring symphony of bliss,
But it is a pretty practical one.
And this practice of mindfulness or what has been passed down through streams of Buddhism,
This acceptance of what is and coming into presence is really not so simple.
And we find that over and over again that to come into presence,
There's giants we have to battle and demons we have to face and bonds of slavery that we have to cut ourselves out of.
And it's really a pretty complex matter a lot of the time to face our own pain.
And this is the point of meditation.
It's actually not about blissing out and escaping.
It's really getting into the bondage that keeps us locked into our suffering.
And as we start to work with those layers,
One at a time,
One at a time,
We build resilience and we build the capacity to not incur more karma upon ourselves in our lives by taking it personally and then acting from that place.
So when we take things personally and we think,
You know,
I don't know,
We want to control other people,
We think their actions or behaviors are because of us.
And then we get locked into things where we make choices that end up feeding habits and behaviors that really are just more of the same old shit.
So practicing this kind of meditation as tedious as it might feel sometimes is quite liberating over time because it's a simple acceptance of this is the way things are.
The only power is the power that each of us chooses for ourselves to claim.
And no one can give you that.
No one can validate you enough.
You with all the wealth in the world,
You can still feel like a total loser.
You know,
Just look at the president of the U.
S.
To see a display of deep insecurity.
So let's all practice together,
Just turning towards those shadowy places,
Doing what we can to accept what has been and getting ourselves into a space of inclusion in ourselves so that we're not separating our various parts of our beings,
Which will then create reactivity,
Which will then create this ease.
And from those spaces,
We'll just perpetuate that more.
And I know that's not what any of us want to do.
All right,
Everyone,
Thanks for practicing.
And until the next time,
Much love and bye for now.
