“Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns…We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.”
― Tara Brach.
I have so many times wondered how I could explain/describe the new ongoing course Embodied Presence. Recently as I flicked through my photos I found these 3 which have all been take from almost the same spot. I could see clearly with this visual representation exactly what the course is about.
The lower picture represents our real Self – clear, steady, inside and outside matching. The top two photos represent the trance of unworthiness as Tara Brach call it or as I have renamed it The Fog of Unworthiness- the habits we have lived under that belittle us, make us feel never enough etc.
Habits that keep us small, believing we are not worthy to be loved for who we are and not for what we do. Habits that have great power over how we live our lives as they tend to operate from outside our conscious awareness and are like fog clouding our vision, our hearing, our essential goodness.
Over the course of the year we have been together on Embodied Presence we have been mindfully and consciously getting to know the fog of unworthiness, its function in our lives and now as we come to a close we are exploring how we can find ways to lift the fog and allow our true worthiness to shine forth.
I have loved every minute of planning and teaching this course as I have also lifted my own fog and now can for the first time in my teaching career stand proud of the work I have created. It is a most strange and vulnerable stance and one that I am now ready to honour and embody more and more.
I have felt the tremendous support of the 42 participants -between the 2 courses- and 4 fabulous assistants as we all embarked on the journey into the fog and back out. I know real change has happened and we have built support systems to strengthen these changes.
“Just like me” is the mantra that would sum up this course, as we all realised we have our particular version of the fog and we all have a clear steady presence when the fog lifts. No one was above or without suffering and no one was beyond changing. The combination of movement, mindfulness and neuroscience were the ingredients of Embodied Presence.
I’d like to end with quote from one of the participants:
” The course you are designing for us has opened up space for me. In understanding how the mind wires itself I can take more control and be kinder to myself by gaining insight into how the brain becomes. By conscious compassionate movement and mindfulness I can choose to change old redundant patterns, this is a real possibility, not just an idea. The dance adds width and joy and love to this learning and is like adding fertiliser to new tilled land. Thank you for taking this step out into your joy.” S.F.
And I thank all who joined me in that dance and made Embodied Presence possible.:):):)