Origin & Arrival - Exploring Ancestry

This meditation is the first in the Healing & Resilience Series for 2019. In this episode, I explore the foundations of positioning and ancestral origin. I provide some writing prompts, so grab a pen and paper!

Transcript

Hello and welcome.

The following is a guided meditation by Renee Seals,

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 this meditation 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 Renee 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.

Thank you so much for listening.

My name is Renee Seals.

I'll be your guide and host for the next little bit of time in this somatic meditation.

Somatic meditation is a style or an approach to meditation that begins with the body.

It is an inner inquiry into our felt sense.

It's a way to access places in our unconscious and subconscious.

It's creative and I'll use imagery and guided visualization as often as I use invitations for touch or for movement or physical awareness.

Somatic meditation can be practiced at any time.

It's something that you can give space and time to,

Like you are doing now,

And these spaces and times then become points for your reflection and memory.

You can draw upon them at any other moment and you can incorporate somatic meditation into anything that you do.

Somatic is a word that means of the body.

As long as you're in your body,

You can meditate with it.

You can come deeply into your felt sense and there's a lot of wisdom.

The wisdom of many,

Many traditions points to this inner landscape as being a reflection of the outer landscape.

Of course,

We know now through quantum physics and science that a lot of what happens in the molecules and the DNA of our bodies is reflected and replicated in the molecules and DNA of other bodies and in the phenomenal world.

In the wisdom of yoga,

We learn that we can understand the mystery of the universe by seeking to understand ourselves.

That's really what somatic meditation is.

It is listening.

It's deep listening.

Today's meditation is the beginning of a series of meditations.

I am an astrologer and a lot of my meditations are based in astrology thinking about what's happening at the current moment of consciousness.

Humanity has reached a tipping point in terms of climate,

In terms of human rights,

In terms of our relationships with one another.

We're really in a moment of deep change and it is a precipice of something.

Which direction we go,

I don't know,

But I have a lot of hope and I also have a lot of fear.

I think that's probably true for most people at this time.

I know that collective change is birthed from the change in individuals and any offering that I have in these meditations is meant for that,

To turn the tide towards what I believe we really need to change into,

Which is a global culture of compassion,

A dismantling of borders and basically considering ourselves as global citizens who are all working for resilience and sustainability,

Not just for ourselves and our families and immediate communities but for the planet itself.

So anything that I offer is coming from that space.

I'm also a feminist.

I identify as queer.

I'm really interested in dismantling oppression and oppressive structures and so throughout this year I'm going to be using this space to look at a lot of these structures as they've been internalized in me and in our bodies.

Today's meditation is on positioning and it is a meditation on arrival.

Where are we right now?

That's going to have a different answer for everybody.

You might want to have a pen and paper nearby.

I'm going to ask some questions and give some space for reflection and it may be helpful to write something down.

Feel free to pause this recording and grab that if you need it.

Then whenever you're ready,

We'll begin.

Let's begin in a comfortable situation.

You can lie down.

You can sit up.

You can move around.

However your body needs to be right now is the way that it should be.

Please feel free to use any kinds of furniture or props that you have.

You can make yourself comfortable with pillows and blankets.

I myself am sitting on a chair at this moment.

Do whatever you need to do.

When you're ready,

Go ahead and start to take some deep breaths.

Breath is pretty much the only thing that we all have in common with one another.

So we live in bodies and bodies breathe.

Breath is something that we have in common not just with other humans but with other animals and with plant life and even in a larger sense with the planet itself.

There are larger phases and cycles of inhaling and expansion and exhaling and contraction.

So as you breathe,

As you inhale and as you exhale,

Just feel what that is.

Feel what it is to be the recipient of your inhale.

Feel what it is to contribute to the atmosphere with your exhale.

With your inhalations,

You're taking into your body the atmosphere around you,

The air around you.

With your exhales,

You're releasing into the atmosphere around you,

Into the atmosphere around you.

Into the air around you.

And of course,

Air and atmosphere move.

And the inhales of one person become the exhales of someone else.

The exhales of plants provide our inhales.

Our exhales provide their inhales.

So on and on and on and on.

So when you take a breath in,

What are you breathing in?

When you take a breath out,

What are you breathing out?

And you might imagine now that as you inhale,

You're inhaling the place that you're in.

You can just start with your very immediate location.

You're inhaling the air directly around your body.

And as you exhale,

Your body is releasing.

And the air that you breathe out swirls and filters into the space around you.

You're breathing in the energy of the room that you're in or the space that you're occupying.

What's the vibe of this place?

How does it feel?

Receive that into your body.

When you exhale,

Notice how your presence here changes the vibe.

Maybe you are in a room that you've designed.

You have become this vibe in a lot of ways.

You've created it.

Maybe you're outside and your presence in the outside space changes the way that air flows,

Changes the way that animals and people move,

Brings awareness,

Reduces awareness.

So as you inhale,

Allow yourself to be affected.

And as you exhale,

Acknowledge that you in turn affect.

Bring your attention into your body as a general space.

And you might choose to look at your body or to use your hands as well to touch your body.

If you're lying down or if you're around a tree or something that you want to lean on,

You can use other bodies to inform your body.

You might roll on the floor and feel your body weight.

You might push into the back of your chair and feel the resistance of one form against another.

And then wherever you happen to be feeling your body,

Pause,

Let your attention stay there,

And then try and breathe into that space.

And of course,

Your lungs are where they are.

And so literally you may or may not be able to breathe into the space where your attention is.

But figuratively,

You can breathe into any space in your body.

And so wherever your attention is,

Allow it to be a recipient of your breath.

And as you inhale,

You can feel the way that breath moves into a certain place that brings awareness.

As you exhale,

You can just ask for relaxation,

A softening,

Letting go.

Can you find the expansion and condensing of your inhales and exhales in this space in your body?

And then release that.

And bring your attention to your body as a whole.

And if you have a strong mental image,

You might just see yourself in the shape that you're in right now.

Using your hands and your touch is a great way to just brush over your skin,

Caress your body,

Feel its shape,

Feel its boundaries and container.

As you touch your body,

Stay in the literal.

If you notice that your mind jumps off into a story about your body,

What it feels like,

What it looks like,

Etc.

,

Call it back.

We're just thinking about the literal.

Can you feel your skin?

Can you feel your bones?

Can you feel your parameters?

This is where the idea of you begins and ends.

Your skin marks the place where others,

And therefore you,

Perceive yourself as a separate being.

And your skin is the container for your inner body,

For all of your vital functions,

All of what keeps you alive,

Your circulation,

Your breath,

Your digestion,

And also for your inner experiences,

All your feelings and your thoughts.

And then as you breathe,

Can you imagine and can you feel your entire body expanding?

And as you exhale,

Imagine and feel your entire body condensing.

And you can condense into whatever it is that feels like the center.

And so that might be the center behind your belly behind your belly button,

It might be the center at your spine,

Might be the center around your skeleton,

The skeletal outline,

Or maybe the center of every cell.

And then as you inhale,

Feel all of the tissues in your body expanding.

And as you exhale,

All of the tissues in your body condensing.

So the remainder of this meditation,

I'm going to be inviting some imaginations and voyages to other places,

Other people,

Other times.

And if you get lost in the meditation,

Just come back to your body,

Come back to this presence,

The feeling of your own touch,

The expansion and condensing of your breath.

So now let's bring hands or awareness to your belly button.

One thing I'll just say before we begin as well is that if at any point this meditation brings up a lot of feelings,

And if the feelings are too much to handle in the moment,

Just pause and again,

Come back to your body,

Come back to this simple just being with yourself.

All right,

So bring your attention to your belly button.

And if it's all right,

Wherever you are,

Touch it,

Touch the shape of your own belly button.

And then breathe into your belly button,

Try and let your belly soften and expand as you inhale.

And as you exhale,

Feel your belly drop back in.

This is the place in your body where you had the first connection.

So you and your biological mother share this space,

This conduit.

And from her body,

You received nourishment.

And through this space,

Through your umbilicus,

You released byproducts.

So when you were in the womb,

You didn't breathe,

And your body released waste products,

Of course,

Through peeing and stuff into your amniotic fluids.

But a lot of what was released was released through the umbilicus back into your mother's body and she processed that waste product.

And then you released the amniotic fluids back into your mother's body and she processed that waste for you.

It's pretty amazing what mothers do in all that they give and all that they process.

Regardless of the relationship that you've had with your biological mother,

See if you can just breathe into that,

Into that first connection of sharing and assimilation.

Notice anything that arises for you,

Any associations,

Any feelings in your body,

Any emotional feelings.

In the weeks and months and hours before you were born,

You were a recipient of your mother's early,

Excuse me,

Of your mother's environments.

So your early environments were her environments.

Feelings that she was having,

Sounds she was hearing,

Movements she was doing.

The first sense that we develop is the sense of movement,

Actually,

Is feeling ourselves kind of in the amniotic sea and gravity shifting.

And we feel ourselves kind of afloat and moving around and we bump up against barriers of the uterine wall.

We push against it and the pushing against boundaries turns into the strengthening and the knowing of our own bodies.

And as our bodies develop,

We push more,

We explore where we are,

We move more.

And then imagine that these early experiences,

This moment in time when you were held in the body of your mother,

When you were directly connected to her,

Imagine that that still exists and now your mother is a baby.

And yes,

This is an imagination.

It's not what actually happens.

So you are in the inner body,

The internal experience of your mother,

And she is in the internal experience of her mother and the connection that she had to her grandmother.

And of course,

You've heard this before,

But all female babies are born with all the eggs they'll ever have.

So if your mother was born with all the eggs she would ever have,

And one of those was going to be you,

There is some kind of cellular memory that you have of being alive in your grandmother's body.

Okay,

So that's what we're imagining right now is the emotional experiences that your grandmother was having when she was pregnant with your mom,

With your biological mother.

And let's just breathe into that as resonance and notice what feelings come up in your belly and in your womb space or your chest space.

And for all of us,

Regardless of our sex,

Regardless of gender,

Regardless of genitals and reproductive organs,

This part of the body is the part of the body that energetically holds others.

It's where we get courted and tied energetically and emotionally with other people.

So as I'm talking about these relationships,

I'm imagining that there's probably stuff that's coming up pretty much for everyone.

And whatever that stuff is,

I don't know.

I'm sure it's the whole range.

But can you just breathe into it?

Can you soften it?

Can you greet it?

If you need to move in and out of your body,

If you need to move in and out of awareness with the present moment,

Just noticing your environment,

Feeling your body now and then coming back into the memory,

That's fine.

So and then let's turn our attention towards the inheritances from our biological fathers.

And of course,

We're grown in the bodies of our mothers,

But half of our DNA comes from the paternal source.

And whether or not your experience of your biological father was one that was present or loving or not,

His instincts,

His traits,

Etc.

Exist in you and they're alive in you.

So let your attention spread out into all of your being,

Into your skin,

Into your bones,

Into all the soft tissues,

Into your mannerisms and into your habits.

You might know immediately,

Or it may be less of a mental concept and more of a felt sense of your relationship and connection to your biological father and what he passed down.

I recently met my half-brother who's my dad's son and they've never met.

And it's just really amazing to realize how much genetics are at play.

My half-brother is the spitting image of my paternal uncle,

Looks a lot like my dad did at his age.

And there are so many similarities and my brother never grew up with that part of his family.

But the similarities are there,

The tendencies are there.

So whether or not you know who this person is or was,

Can you feel him?

Can you feel the way that he lives in you now?

And imagining back to the fathers of your father.

And the paternal lines.

And then you might allow your mind to imagine,

And I see this very clearly in my imagination as like a fractal,

And the way that our lines and lineages come from small rivulets and then stream into these rivers of our own lives.

And so in your body right now you contain not only the DNA of your mother and father,

The emotional experiences of your mother and your grandmother,

But all of the collected memories of your mother's fathers and your father's mothers,

And back and back and back and back.

That with each generation there is a passing down,

And it's not everything,

But it's a lot.

It's not all the stories,

But it's the feelings of the stories.

It's their residue.

It's what gets retained.

If there were people in your family's history who lived through a famine,

That memory is stored in your body somewhere.

So can you imagine this mapping of the many streams that are pouring into the river of you?

And you might know a lot of the stories.

You might not know any of them.

You can imagine.

You can feel.

And breathe in and feel the way that you collect them all.

And then breathe out and feel how you as a product of all of your influences create in the world.

And you may be a parent.

You might have created another human being who's going to pass through these stories and memories as well and embody them.

You might be an artist or a builder or an inventor.

You might be someone who works with people,

Who's in relations.

All the ways that you influence the world around you are ways that you have been able to influence the world around you.

Your preferences,

Your privileges,

What are the ways that you've been positioned by the people who came before you?

And this is where I'm going to invite you to either name things out loud or write things down.

And the general question right now is what did you inherit?

And you may have inherited what we often think of with inheritance,

Which is money or privilege,

Resource.

You may have also inherited debt.

You've inherited anything that's associated with your cultural or ethnic identities.

You've inherited the history of the country that you were born in and the countries where you live.

You may have inherited what we often think of as money or privilege,

Resource.

You may have also inherited debt.

You've inherited anything that's associated with your cultural or ethnic identities.

You've inherited the history of the country that you were born in and the countries where you live.

You've inherited memories of your people,

Embodied memories.

You've inherited belief systems about your priorities,

About what is good and what is bad,

So take a few moments,

If you wish,

Pause the recording and write on what you have inherited.

And then when you're ready,

Come back and I'm just going to keep going for now.

So as you feel all of the layers of inheritance,

Can you feel the way that it's residue,

That these moments of history and the accumulation of the momentum of all of your associations and the people and the places that you've come from have collected and paused and stalled in time.

And of course,

And I should have said this earlier,

Your biological inheritance through the DNA and through the memories is very strong and it's very real.

But if you are a person who's adopted or who's lived a lot of your life with a family that's not of biological origin,

We're so sensitive.

You've inherited a lot from them as well.

And I'm sorry to acknowledge that earlier,

It's important.

The ways that we inherit are residual,

Right?

They leave a film and a trace.

And there's this idea that I've carried for a long time that our bodies are layers of frozen memories.

They're frozen shadows.

And the ways that our bodies have built are the accumulated residue of all of the nourishment and the habits of our ancestral origins.

Whether or not our people had enough to eat 800 years ago means something about the density of our bones or our immune systems now.

Whether or not our people went through a big emotional crisis at some point will have a lot to do with how we respond to trauma and activation now.

Breathe into your body as layers of frozen shadows.

And then ask yourself,

How do you know yourself in all of this?

If we know that the phenomenal material world is a constant recycling of matter,

That energy never ends,

It just changes form.

And if we know that there is no new ideas,

Just the retelling of old ideas,

And if we know that our preferences and belief systems and biases were formed because of the way that our people grew and our cultures grew around them,

Then who are you?

What are you?

Are you your name?

Are you your gender?

Are you even your body?

And when you think about how quickly your body changes and the associations you might make with your body in terms of how it looks or how it functions and therefore what or how you are,

The question of are you your body takes a lot of time to kind of sort through.

Are you your passions?

What are all the ways that you identify?

How do you know yourself there?

And this would be another moment to pause if you choose and just reflect a little bit on who am I?

What am I?

And there's a line of questioning and philosophic thought that starts here and basically there's no answer.

So all the things that you think you are,

If you really turn to look at them,

They are constructions.

They are constructed ideas that were made by the human mind and there's not very much that any of us can actually say that we are that is anything at all permanent.

So you might say that you are your body but your body of course is always changing and your body is the accumulation of the past as well as the influences of now,

The foods you eat,

The toxins in the environment,

The stuff in the water,

The emotional atmosphere.

So what are you?

Who are you?

How do you know?

And then if your eyes have been closed,

Open them again and take a look around wherever you are and once again feel your inhale and your exhale.

Notice the way that you take in your environment.

Notice the way you affect your environment.

What is the environment that you're taking in and how are you uniquely affecting it?

Our exhales release the byproducts of our bodies in their internal state of health or toxicity.

As you breathe out,

What are you breathing out into the general atmosphere?

As you influence a space,

What is the general influence of your emotional,

Mental and physical state upon that space?

And how do you respond and internalize the space that you're in?

This question of who are you and what are you is a never-ending question and ideally it's a question that has no answer.

It is unanswerable.

When we think that we can answer it,

We're confused.

We've begun to identify with something that is incomplete and imperfect and impermanent.

What we're made of is everything around us.

It's the residue of everything that has been and of course each of us is part of the momentum that creates whatever will be.

And in that there's perfection.

In that there's magic and so that is also within you.

And of course magic can be used for good or ill and that's also within you.

This is the end of the meditation for today so I'll leave it with this,

Just a general invitation that all of us,

Including me,

Spend time with this question of where did I come from?

What made me?

What did I inherit?

And then who am I and what am I?

I think those questions alone are a pretty important space to spend some time with right now.

Thank you for participating.

Thank you for listening.

There are also lots of guided meditations that I offer about all different ideas and subjects and you can also ask for themes.

You can ask for meditations or healing practices and I also always welcome your feedback and comments and feel free to get in touch with me.

Thank you so much for listening.

Wishing you all the best.

Bye for now.

Reviews

This was such a perfectly needed meditation! My recently departed grandmother’s heavenly birthday was on the day I listened to this, and sending my awareness to being in her womb was such a beyond the body experience. Thank you for that <333