Consciously embrace the creature
In our focus on spiritual awakening, we can forget about the sweet creature of the body that bears the brunt of coping from within conditioning. With our cultural legacy of the devaluation of the body, we can forget that the fear that drives conditioning lives there. Until we fully and consciously embrace the creaturely aspect of our embodiment, we are prone to perpetuate our suffering. Join Jeannie and friends for this online series to explore bringing the love home to the body.
Class 1
Jeannie guides participants to drop into felt experience and explore gravity, the bulk of the body and the sturdy support of ground, to soften open and let the earth carry the body, while using breath to fill and then carry out remaining tension in the body. She talks about the holy nature of the body and the sacred relationship of spirit and matter that is the human being. She talks about the vulnerability of the body, its mortality, fallibility and affectable-ness as well as its sweetness and innocence, and about its dual nature as animal and instrument of the Holy. Jeannie stresses the importance of getting to know and have mercy for the body as innocent creature. Jeannie talks about the simplest level of care is bringing attention to what's cared for, and talks about the way conditioning discourages us from including the body in that care. The love in our consciousness through our attention is the basis of "loving oneself" -- to bring attention to flesh we include its cries in our heart. She talks about life energy as the raw energy that the instrument of the body uses to express holy beauty and creativity on earth. She stresses that conditioning has us separate from our bodies, banish them and use the mind and will to exert control over the body, as well as to relegate it to the unconscious. Most important is to return attention to flesh so that the repressed wisdom of the creature can be integrated into our embodiment. She underscores the importance of trauma resolution in this process where indicated.
Exchange 1: Participant mentions a sense of "lurching" when she sits and Jeannie talks about the conditioned habit to compulsively "do" and how reclaiming an ability to rest in being requires watching those "lurches" and allowing no movement to happen. She talks about the "threshing floor" of being that can allow us to examine the fuel that fuels our actions, whether egoic or from pure Being. Participant talks about her life energy and Jeannie covers the basic challenge of sitting with our immense life energy as well as the influence of trauma on our energy. Participant also explores her energy not moving with certain bodywork clients and Jeannie talks about the possible causes there.
Exchange 2: Participant notes impact of softening open in being with Jeannie and her same experience on retreat, only to have challenges when going home. Jeannie talks about "growing legs under the heart" and how challenging that can be. Jeannie talks about how vital it is to be seen in all our "multi-petaledness" without being harmed or shocked, and the challenge of being sensitive in a clunky world. Participant mentions trouble with looped thinking and trauma and Jeannie talks about the importance of resourcing as well as eventually the resolution of the trauma, but how much resourcing is vital to the resolution as well. Jeannie talks about a sense of unworthiness can be at the bottom of a lack of care for the creature.
Exchange 3: Participant wants to inquire into supporting the creature while sick and explores the fallibility and vulnerability of his current recovery, past dances with physical challenges and the experience of his father slipping into Alzheimer's.
Exchange 4: Participant mostly rests in Being and she and Jeannie exchange around "squishy-ness." Jeannie talks about creating safe spaces for people to fall open, be squishy and grow sturdy legs under it.
Exchange 5: Participant is touched by the vulnerability in the call, feels validated to be who she is, and wonders at how dropping into the body seems to "bypass" the grief of her breakup which she can find by putting attention on the stories and thoughts that seem to serve grieving.
Class 2
Jeannie guides participants to drop into ground and breath, emphasizing the vital importance of those two resources as a basis of unwinding unconscious habits of neglect and abuse of the body. She encourages people to not only become aware of the felt experience of ground and breath but also to feed oneself with the direct experience of the benevolence and harmlessness of those aspects of incarnation. She talks about the power of breath to inspire on the inhalation and to ground on the exhalation. She calls one's very incarnation a miracle, the wedding of heaven and earth, and our experience as we came to earth. She talks about a base layer of disconnection/separation from the body and the felt web of existence as an invisible pain from our cultural legacy that we have all inherited. Without addressing this root of our suffering we are left attempting to fix it on top of this primary disconnect from the miracle of incarnation. She talks about the mentality of using the present and the body to purchase a "someday" happiness, an approach that inherently perpetuates suffering. Return to the miracle of the incarnation of spirit and flesh!
Exchange 1: Participant and Jeannie explore what it means to be sensitive and how to root in sovereignty and open to the compassionate broken heart and digest the grief that rises there when we notice others who are not present to the moment.
Exchange 2: Participant and Jeannie explore participant's lifelong habit of "disappearing" and how to address that. Jeannie talks at length about unwinding unconscious patterns through inquiry, curiosity and consciousness
Exchange 3: Participant and Jeannie explore insomnia and the pull of exhaustion.
Class 3
Jeannie guides participants to drop into felt experience and allow attention to move through the body. Jeannie talks about the power of awareness and noticing to harmonize our systems with the organic flow of the Holy, and how conditioning has left our attention fused to troubleshooting mind and will to "solve" the imbalances we experience. She stresses the importance of noticing as a way to bring a gentle transformational force to our bodies, watching the pulls to self-blame, solve or figure out. Jeannie stresses that our struggles are a result of an imbalanced system from the effects of conditioning, not our fault, and advises bringing mercy and noticing rather than self-blame, mind and will. She talks about conditioned self-blame that grows out of the conditioned expectation that we should be able to solve our struggles through the application of mind and will, and that the fact that we haven't makes us worthy of self-hatred. Jeannie goes through a list of aspects of embodiment that might benefit from our paying attention to them in a deep and gentle way.
Exchange 1: Participant and Jeannie explore identity, dissociation and the loss of identity.
Exchange 2: Participant expresses appreciation for the teaching and finds that her questions disappear in the fear that rises when she comes on-screen. Jeannie talks about the fear of being visible.
Exchange 3: Participant wants support around embracing expressing things like joy and enthusiasm.
Exchange 4: Participant just wants to be seen for a few minutes. Jeannie talks about how vital to a young being it is to have one's being witnessed and enjoyed simply for its existence.