Lifeletter #196: Occupy The Body~the joy of landing here on earth

If to say it once
And once only, then still
To say: Yes.

Now
Only the single syllable–
That is the beloved,
That is the world.

–Gregory Orr, How Beautiful the Beloved

Having lived for fifteen years in a small mountain town in the wilds of British Columbia, and before that for twenty three years in the Himalayas, there was one formidable challenge, connected with postmodern urban life that I managed to escape until now: parking!

Twice yesterday I was downtown, cruising around in my little Honda Fit, looking breathlessly for a space. I was breathless because I was anxious. Not terribly afraid, just anxious. I watched how my energy lifted up and away from the base of my pelvis, how my shoulders were creeping up toward my ears, how my breath was getting more and more restricted, as I cruised the streets, looking for a precious gap in the line of cars.

When I found the spot, and the car slid into it, my whole body went ‘Aaah’ and relaxed right down into the ground. I could feel a deep settling, an ease and comfort that arrived with the knowledge that “Yes, there is a space for me here.” I can relax, I can rest, I can breathe.

I’ve been practicing grounding intensely for the last few years, learning how to drop down, down, down, into my belly, into my legs, and into the ground. It’s a way of incarnating, of actually saying, with my whole being, “Here I am, I’m alive, I am willing to be here, to inhabit this body, to claim a space for myself.” The practice has not been easy for me—we live in a profoundly ungrounded culture. It’s required a lot of patience, dedication and persistence.

I’d like to start my own Occupy movement, and invite everyone who can hear me to occupy their our own body, especially the beautiful belly, the pelvis, the base. Occupying my own body fully brings so much stability, safety, joy and creativity that I no longer need to even think about occupying anyone else’s space or body, unless I am deeply invited to do so. When I really feel myself, I start to really feel everyone else too. And then I can’t treat them the way I do when I am separate, cut off and numbed out.

The base of our body is like a welcoming cave, a place for us to deeply rest, to be held. A teacher of mine, Thomas Huebl, describes it as a warm bath. Without knowing how to drop into our base, how to connect with our foundation, life feels unsafe and very wobbly. We shut down aspects of ourselves when we are anxious; precious parts of our flowing life energy get frozen out of fear. We may not even notice how anxious we are most of the time—we just learn to live with it and work around it.

When I am deeply grounded in my base, my actions change. I discover how to make efforts from a whole different place. When I run up against obstacles, I don’t take them so personally. Obstacles are often just the nature of form and structure; every structure wants to continue existing in its current form. Just like you do, just like I do. When I am moving, flowing, opening to new possibilities, I experience this tendency as inertia, as a resistance to change. I can encounter this tendency in my inner structures, or in the structures I meet in the world. Whether I like the way that forms and structures work or not, I will come up against this inertia. It can feel like bumping into a wall, or being sucked down into quicksand.

If I have a strong base, I enter into a totally different relationship to this wall. When I am strong and rooted down, I don’t collapse or attack the wall. I can stand my ground, I can breathe and stay present to whatever is here. I can learn to dance with my obstacles, get close to them, explore them, until the solidity of the wall opens up and I see a door, right in front of me, that I never knew was there. I discover there are many ways to work with difficulties, depending on how my body and energy meet the living moment.

It’s magnificent down here, in the base of the body, so full of pulsating aliveness. There are a lot of intense feelings that live here too, waiting to be felt, embraced and integrated. That’s why we don’t drop down into the warm embrace of this beautiful cave. We pull ourselves up into our heads so we don’t have to feel. We live in a culture that is ungrounded, because we are so afraid of intense feelings. Learning to ground ourselves in our base and become strong enough to hold a space for our emotions is a life changing practice. We can’t do this alone, especially not at the beginning. We learn to open to our feelings, bit by bit, when we feel held inside a relational space that is warm, friendly, and attuned to who we are in each moment.

Once we are ready to feel, and that can take a long time, a whole world reveals itself to us. Because we have finally said “Yes, I am here, I want to live, I am ready to be human, to be myself, at last.”

with love and gratitude to Thomas Huebl and our global sangha,
Shayla