Building Flow Part 3 Revisited

Last week we worked on creating flow through the breath while completing a mundane task. Before we begin this week, take a couple centered breaths and reflect on how your practice went.

Was it open and flowing? Did you breathe new life and meaning into doing chores? Or like most of us, did you got caught up in completing the task at hand and slip into the comfortable rhythm of habit?

Although most of us will return to our habitual patterns after a couple of minutes, our practice is always rewarded. Because once an open and flowing breath is established, it continues to flow long after we stop paying attention to it.

The assignment for this week is simple. Continue to practice paying attention while doing chores. Establish an open and flowing breath and move about your business. However, this week, give yourself permission to move into habit. Try to notice the increased flow within your system as you move through your habitual patterns.

Note – Hopefully, it is easier to establish and feel the effects of being in a state of flow. This week, see if you can identify some of the things that reduce or prevent you from maintaining flow.

Building Flow Part 2 (revisited)

Last week we worked on the centered breath. Before we begin this week’s lesson, center and take 5 breaths.

Did you feel the breath rise effortlessly through the body? Try again and really allow yourself to feel the breath rise. Notice how the system relaxes into the breath and the breath flows throughout the body effortlessly. Try it again. Really pay attention to that sense of flow and ease as the breath rises throughout the body.

Now, I want you to pick a mundane chore that you perform all the time. Something like sweeping the floor, vacuuming, dishes, etc... Center yourself and practice breathing while doing the chore you picked out. Notice the flow of breath and the sense of ease in your body while doing the task. Notice how the work progresses and how your body feels. Try to re-create this feeling with each chore you perform this week.

Don’t work too hard at it, just allow yourself to find the flow and the breath within the process of being centered while doing the chore.

Note - This piece was originally published in April of 2016. The ability to find and create flow is essential to creating health and balance. It can also be used for finding out what is right and true. Now, I’m not talking about “truth” that agrees with our logic or how we have been programmed to think. I’m talking about the essential truth of things. For instance, go back and read Ben’s piece from Friday. Center and feel the ideas behind and the truth of the words – WE THE PEOPLE.

We’ll continue to build on this idea next week.

Building Flow – Revisited

There are many ways to build flow within a system. Over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing these techniques with you. The first and most important is the centered breath.

Seated Center

Wherever you find yourself reading this – take a minute, notice where your feet are. Notice your posture. Where are your shoulders in relation to your hips? Is your breath deep or shallow? Are you breathing consciously or unconsciously? How aware are you of your surroundings?

Now take a minute, put your feet firmly on the ground hip-to-shoulder width apart.
Have your knees bent 90 degrees.

Sit up so your shoulders are directly over your hips.

Now, gently raise your diaphragm – notice how your shoulders drop when you do this.

Relax your feet by wiggling your toes and letting your arches soften. As your feet relax your legs will relax.

Now, take a nice easy breath up through your hips and into your upper chest and shoulders. Did your breath rise? Try it again.

Notice your breath as it moves up through your pelvis, past your belly button, through the diaphragm and into your upper chest. Now, take another easy breath. Allow yourself the luxury of feeling what an open flowing breath feels like.

When your breath flows freely from your pelvis into your upper chest and shoulders you are CENTERED.

Centering when seated is the starting position to begin a meditation practice.

Practice maintaining this position and focusing on your breath for 3-5 minutes once or twice per day.

Energy Dynamics

Last Friday, Ben very elegantly painted a picture of how one’s perspective changes as they become more centered, grounded and energy aware. How the centered breath acts as a reminder of the inter-connectedness of all things. The fact that we are all energetically connected makes dealing with our current circumstances difficult.

In my 50+ years on this planet, I have never seen so much derision and plain hatred toward people simply based on their color, political affiliation, religious beliefs, and/or sexual orientation. It seems to me that ideology has replaced the idea that we are all on this planet and in this together. That we all need fresh air to breathe and clean water to drink, not to mention a safe place to lay our heads and raise a family.

I feel that if we were in a state of flow as a society, these ideas wouldn’t sound foreign to so many. But, as Ben stated on Friday, our political system is blocked energetically on a very fundamental level. The real problem here is that any system that has been denied flow will begin to stagnate. If left in this state long enough, the system becomes corrupted and begins a disease process that if left unchecked often leads to the death of the system.

A perfect example of this a pond. As long as a pond has fresh water flowing through it, it will thrive. The wildlife that uses it as a home and/or a source of drinking water also thrives. Cut off the flow of fresh water and watch what happens to the system. First scum will begin covering the pond and slowly the water becomes toxic and the wildlife either begins to die or moves away to another water source. If left alone the pond will begin the putrefaction process and die.

During the election process, Trump often said that “when he got to Washington, he was going to drain the swamp.” Although the analogy of Washington as a swamp was a good one, the man has no idea of how to create flow. Unfortunately, if we don’t create some flow within our political system, it too will die.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be rehashing a series of posts from last year that works on the idea of building flow. As individuals, the more flow we can create within our lives, the greater the positive effect we can have on our society. The change has to start with us. Not by creating hate and derision, but by creating flow.

The Fray

Last week I decided that it was time to enter the political fray. After publishing my piece, I began reading and doing some research. Holy crap, there’s a lot going on!

I found that as I read, if I didn’t really ground myself and stay centered, I would get really wound up. Now, I work with and teach these skills every day, and I found it a challenge to stay grounded and centered. I can only imagine what it’s like for people that haven’t developed these skills.

As part of this process, I began discussing issues and generally talking about the state of things with some of my clients. I got some useful information and resources from them, but I found that if I wasn’t careful they would become over-activated and emotionally distraught. Although this provided a great opportunity to reinforce their grounding and centering skills, it wasn’t necessarily why they were there to see me.

I quickly realized that I needed to establish some rules and boundaries around staying informed and sharing and discussing issues with others. After witnessing and even instigating some uncomfortable interactions between people, I thought I would share these rules with you.

  1. Don’t assume everyone thinks the way you do.

  2. Take time to ground and center before reading or watching the news. Preparing yourself mentally and emotionally will allow you to control your response to what is going on, while taking in more of the actual information.

  3. Use multiple sources for information. Most news outlets are slanted one way or the other. Know where your sources are slanted towards and try to get fully rounded views. Challenge yourself by reading from sources that you generally disagree with.

  4. Take the time to fully understand the issues. If something is being repealed, know what it was meant to do, and who benefits from the change.

  5. Be diligent, but watch your emotional responses. There are going to be lots of changes and reasons to be upset. It’s important to stay focused. If we respond to every potential situation, we’ll burn ourselves out and not be able to respond when it’s needed the most.

  6. Stand up and be counted. If you feel the need to protest or make a statement, do so.

  7. When in public or in a group, make sure that a political discussion is ok with the group. There is a time and a place for these discussions.

I hope these basic rules are helpful. I find that it’s easier to stay informed and protect my mental and emotional energy by following these simple rules.

Shifting Gears

After reading Ben’s piece on Friday, I have decided that I am part of the problem! You see, I don’t watch the news or read the newspaper. I avoid the political fray as often as possible. In an attempt to protect my personal energy and manage my emotional balance, I have removed myself from the political debate. Essentially, I have silenced my own voice.

Mentally and emotionally, I know this is extremely beneficial to me. But, I’m beginning to think it sets the wrong example. By removing my voice, I have eliminated the possibility of intelligent discourse and debate. On a visceral level I know how I feel about the issues being raised by the President’s actions this first 10 days of his reign. But, intellectually, I truly cannot explain the pro’s and con’s behind the issues.

And this is the problem! As a nation, we have quit reading, questioning, and understanding the world and the issues that affect all of us. It doesn’t even matter what side of the political debate you find yourself connected to. You might watch the news or listen to a political celebrity rant and rave on this or that issue. But the news channels, the political commentators, and the people trying to tell you what the issues mean are biased. They have an agenda. Their job is to get you riled up and think a certain way. Because if they control your emotions, they control your opinions. If they can tell you what to think and how to feel, then they can do whatever they want and never be held accountable. And the truly scary thing is that we want to be told what to think and how to feel. That’s why we tune into their shows.

Let’s use the travel ban and the Syrian refugee immigration issues as an example. On the surface, this feels wrong to me. It seems very un-American and hate oriented. This weekend, as I drove through Longmont Co, I noticed a small group with signs protesting this ban. I looked at their signs, honked my horn in support and continued on my way. Now, I know nothing of the facts about this issue. I saw that President Obama spoke out against the ban and since I truly respect and admire him, I find myself influenced by that. All of the news outlets that lean to the right seem in favor of it, but I typically write them off as hate mongers so I’m also influenced by my personal bias. But what does the ban really mean to me personally and the world in general? How do I get that information? And more importantly, after educating myself, how do I inspire you to do the same thing?

You see, we can no longer afford to think like a Democrat or a Republican. Both parties are a mess and no longer capable of governing a nation for the people, by the people. That’s why we are in this mess in the first place. As citizens, it’s time to become educated and aware of the issues at hand. Think about it, how can we decide what’s right or wrong for all of us, if we only know what they want us to know?

Over the next week, I plan to research news outlets that are focused on truly presenting information for the sake of educating people on the issues at hand. Preferably, without any political influence towards the left or the right. I will share what if any, sources I find and if you have any suggestions, please share them with me.

It’s time to become involved.

Life

On Monday morning I went to work only to discover that a young woman (she was in her early 30’s) who worked at the recreation center and with whom I had been friends for 10-12 years had died. She had taken suddenly ill and been in the hospital for a couple weeks.

As you can imagine the mood and atmosphere within the center was heavy with loss and grief. There was a memorial with her picture and people were offered the opportunity to leave a note to let her family know how much she was loved and would be missed.

Around noon that day, I was working with a young mildly autistic man (also in his early 30’s) who had been friends with her for a long time. We started our appointment as we often do, discussing current affairs in general and politics specifically. (A side note: he loves history, politics, and current affairs. His knowledge and understanding of the historical significance of our current political situation is staggering.) We were discussing the protests and marches surrounding the inauguration this weekend when he stopped and asked if we could talk about the young lady who had died.

He asked me some very pointed questions about how well I knew her, what happened, and how she died. I explained the best that I could, not knowing where the conversation was going. He looked me directly in the eyes and asked “You know how people always say that God doesn’t give you more than you can handle?” I shook my head yes and he quickly blurted, “That’s complete bullshit!”

I didn’t know if he was referring to the pain that her parents were feeling--her twin brother had also died 10 years earlier--his personal pain, or the pain all of us are feeling right now. But I understood. It’s tough to be a feeling human being right now.

I reminded him that nothing is promised to any of us! All we can do is hang on to each other, love each other, and support each other. To make sure that those we love know and feel it. He smiled and told me he would be sure to give his mother an extra big hug when she picked him up. I reminded him to breathe and center. We had each other, it would be okay.

Feeling the Collective Energy

Last week, I asked for all of you to do something extremely difficult. I asked that you take a good long look at your personal energy field and see what you are bringing to the collective. I asked this because we all should be aware of how our actions and reactions effect those around us.

The energetic damage that we do to ourselves and others is rarely intentional. Often, it’s just something that happens because we're not living consciously. In fact, most of us stumble around completely unaware of the emotions that we are projecting through our energy field. For example, if you’ve had a frustrating day and you’re tense and angry, those dominant emotions are being projected through your energy field. As you come into contact with others, unless they are shielded, that energy will affect their mood and emotions as your energy meshes with theirs. Then, these dominant emotions get passed from person to person into the collective energy, infecting everyone, much like germs.

Occasionally, a group or an individual will intentionally try to influence or control the mood and emotions of others by manipulating the collective energy. The stronger the individual’s personality and the greater the emotion, the larger the effect on the collective energy and the number of people infected.

Incidentally, this is how Trump won the presidential election. Without bringing party affiliation into it, think about it for a moment. His message started as a tirade against minorities, inciting racial tensions within the poor and uneducated. As this energy caught hold, he attacked women in general and then Hillary Clinton specifically. As his comments got ruder and crasser, energetically, everyone became emotionally charged. Whether you agreed with him or not, you were effected emotionally by what was being said and done.

People who were pro-Hillary fed the fury of the collective energy with their outrage. People who were pro-Trump rode that emotion to greater levels of hatred and allowed themselves to be led into darkness. Those who were watching and not protecting themselves from the fray, got caught up within the collective energy. Once caught up, the intensity of the energy field simply made it impossible for people to think and feel. When this happens, we unconsciously follow, or are manipulated by, the prevailing emotions within the collective energy.

The result of this emotional manipulation is a president with no qualifications, a penchant for pettiness and wild emotional reactions. Coincidentally, that is exactly how Hitler took power in Pre- World War II Germany. Now, don’t take my word for it, read some history!

The manipulation of the collective energy was a brilliant ploy by Trump and the Republican party to control the election. Personally, I think it lacked moral integrity and will prove to be the end of our democracy. Apparently, we as a nation no longer have a moral compass and are no longer the champions of the weak, the poor, nor the down trodden.

In the weeks to come, I will be focusing on how we can begin to shield ourselves from being controlled and manipulated by the collective energy. Once we are capable of shielding ourselves, I will share some ideas on how to re-align our moral compass and begin to effect change around us. Between now and then, practice centering and BREATHE!

The Collective Energy Field and You

Last week, I asked that you explore the collective energy around you. The question that I left unasked was: What do you bring to the collective energy field? Are you a source of chaos and drama? Or do you bring a balancing force to the collective energy around you?

This week I would like you to monitor your personal energy and notice what you bring to the collective. It isn’t necessary to adjust or change anything, just pay attention to the effect that you have on others and your environment.

Collective Vs Universal Energy

In response to my piece last week, there were some questions concerning the difference between the collective energy field and the universal energy field. I thought it would be appropriate to deepen our understanding of the two.

The universal energy field is dynamic and robust while being grounding and stable. Sit on a mountain top or next to a stream and the wonder of the universal energy field is easily felt. It comprises the heavens, the earth, and everything in between. Even though we humans are also part of the universal energy filed, there is little we can do to affect or change it. It is immune to our petty bickering and political messes. It knows no countries or religion. It simply IS. If we attune ourselves with it, it provides a foundation of strength and balance that acts as a guide for living a connected life.

The collective energy field is the energy that you surround yourself with, from the people you associate with, to the places you go, and the information that you consume daily.

Many of us do not get to control the collective energy around us. Whether it’s at work, school, or play, we are surrounded by people and circumstances that we cannot control. For example, I work in a public recreation center. Because of the people who made New Year’s resolutions, and the kids being out of school, the energy within the building right now is quite chaotic with the frenzy associated with a new year. Each person who walks through the recreation centers doors adds to the collective energy of the building.

When you consider how many people come through those doors, the music playing over the noise of the patrons, the number of televisions that are tuned to the news and people moving as fast and furiously as possible, the collective energy field within the recreation center is potentially harmful.

Over the next few weeks, I will be sharing shielding techniques and other methods for controlling the collective energy that surrounds you. But before we can shield ourselves from it, we must learn to recognize and become sensitive to it. To do this, we have to expose ourselves to the collective energy around us. To help limit the amount of exposure and potential damage, I highly recommend that you start by grounding yourself and cementing your connection to the earth.

Once grounded, allow yourself to notice the energy around you. Watch the people go about their business, the expressions on their faces, the feel of the room. Don’t join the energy, just notice it. Practice this exercise in many different places, from your favorite coffee shop, your place of employment, to the facility in which you work out. Again, don’t manipulate the energy field, just notice the collective energy around you, while you stay safe and grounded.