Coming home to Quakerism – How the journey began

‘Be patterns, be examples, in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come; that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one.’ ~ George Fox, founder of Quakerism, 1656

This months theme on ‘Home’  from the Creative Everyday Challenge is so rich for me and today I wanted to explore my homecoming to my spirituality

I came home to Quakerism just over a year ago. What triggered it was my involvement in a 10 month Leadership Programme.  Henry, over at the Bear and the Turtle Blog was one of the orginators of this programme and in this post, talks about how he uses secular language to wake people up to their spirituality – even if they don’t quite realise it

I think I was seeking a spiritual re-awakening when I signed up for the programme – I was hungry for something – for transformation, for embarkering on a bigger journey.  For me, the call had probably come about 8 years earlier.  I was on my family’s island in Maine (before the Depression, my mothers family had been well-to-do Quaker Merchants and although they lost most of their money, they did (thankfully) hold onto Ram Island which is now a family trust). That summer I was there, an eagle family returned to the island to raise their young and I would sit on the rocks, marvelling as I witness the young eagles learn to fly. (see photo of a young eaglet on Ram Island above).  That summer I decided I did want children, I wanted to change my career, I wanted to enter into a new life-affirming way of being.  So I started a journey which saw me convince my partner to have a child with me, leave my stressfull job as the CEO of a charity, enroll on coaching training,  jump into a leadership programme I could ill afford, fall in love with writing again and now, come home to Quakerism.  Interestingly, the Eagles didn’t return the following summer nor the next.  But they did return last summer – the summer I completed the leadership programme, the summer after my return to my spirituality.

So back to the story of how I came home to Quakers.  Just before the retreat, I had been thinking about Quakerism and my little boy.  I thought ‘oh, isn’t it sad – Sam won’t know anything about the Quaker tradition I grew up in but I’m so far removed from Quakers, that is just the way it will have to be – because I have disengaged. ‘ And at the end of the retreat, there were two words that I identified that I wanted to work with together.  ‘Stillness’ and ‘Passion’ – they represent a polarity for me – I think introspection and external action.   On the plane home from retreat, I thought ‘Of course – where I can hold these two qualities with ease and grace?’  Within the Society of Friends (Quakers).  Quakerism holds that paradox – of being silent and introspective AND totally committed to being in the world, to as George Fox points out ‘Walking Cheerfully All over the World.’  That’s why I choose the terms ‘Practical Mystic’ – a terms that has been used to describe Quakers – who are both mystical AND who practially put their faith into action.

So where do you call home?

That’s a question I get asked alot. I decided to blog about this today because February’s theme over on Be Creative Every Day is HOME.  I love this theme – and I want to blog about it in so many ways – being at home in myself, at home in my spirituality, my home, etc.

But today, I’m focusing on the geographical place I call home.  Which brings me back to the question ‘Where do I call home?’ Or ‘So where are you from?’  I probably get asked this question at least once a week.   I was born in the US, moved to rural Canada when I was 10, when back to the US for university and then ended up in the UK at my final year of university and have been here for over 20 years.  I go back to Canada – to Nova Scotia to visit family.  I return when I can to my family’s ancestral island in Maine, I have friends up and down the East Coast of the US which I’m familiar with from college and I am living and raising a family in London UK.

My accent – to people here in the UK – sounds unadulterated North American.  ‘Well, you haven’t lost your accent then!’ is what people always say.  Which makes me smile wryly.  Because when I go back ‘home’ to visit family, I get the opposite.  ‘Oh, are you originally from here you sound different – sort of English!’  And when I was CEO of a charity in London, I used to play this game with the American interns who would come and go every term.  After they had been in the charity a few weeks, I would ask them in a staff meeting – ‘So, where do you think I’m from?’.  The answer would never be the States or Canada.  It would be something like ‘Gee, are you from Ireland? or Europe somewhere?’  And of course, all the British staff would laugh – not believing that they couldn’t hear what to them was such a strong North American accent.

When I do met someone from where I grew up – rural Nova Scotia – there is often such a shared sense of recognition and knowledge that is very unique.  Growing up in a conservative, rough, rural place brings a sense of shared survivor-ness to those of us that escaped – and yet, we are often drawn back there or to talk about the place hungrily.

I recently met someone else – a Brit living in Germany and we shared our same secret joy.  Actually, we LIKE being different – not quite belonging, being that person from elsewhere.  It fun – it’s interesting, it also allows you the excuse of sometimes not-knowing or not fitting in ‘Oh, you get away with being an enthusiastic life coach over here because you are American.’  a friend said to me recently.

I heard Hanif Karachi, the wonderful playwright talk about his feelings on home.  When he is the UK, he explained he feels Pakistani.  And when he is in Pakistan, he feels British.  He realised that he is most at home when he doesn’t feel at home.  And I know exactly what he means.  There is a liberation in having two (or more!) feet in different homelands – an ability to reflect and compare and to hold paradox in a way that just being the citizen or native of one land doesn’t quite get.

Polarity, Social Change and ‘the other’

A recurring theme I have kept returning back to in this blog is the potential for polarity/wholeness work and social change.  On the co-active community network today, an interesting discussion ‘ The politics of polarity’ has been started around this topic by Sam House of the Polarity Pathways Group

I’m a person of strong opinions, beliefs and values.  I have been heavily involved in political and campaigning groups including feminist groups, anti-aparteid groups (in the 80’s), Labour party political groups and Trade Union groups.  I also lived in Israel/Palestinian for a year, studying conflict resolution and the situation there.

The question I have always come back to is ‘How can I live my beliefs and intentions in the world, passionately advocate for what I believe in AND also meet the other when I do so?’  I have rarely had success at this but when I have, it has felt magical.  When I lived in Israel as a student at the Quaker Friends World College,  I took part in peace groups such as Peace Now and at the same time, I worked part time for a right-wing Israeli settler who was desperate for a part-time babysitter for his unruly children!  Twice a week, I used to go out to his house on a settlement just outside Jerusalem.  I would often stay on for discussions with him and his wife.  We were – as you can imagine – completely opposed in our viewpoints and beliefs!  I used to purposely wear a peace now badge with an Israeli and Palestinian holding hands.  And he, and his wife would talk about their views – why they lived on a settlement, why they believed they had a right to the land.  Sometime the debates were vigorous.  But what I remember most from that experience, was the fact that we both managed to carry out the discussions with respect for our humanity – even if we totally disagreed with our positions.

I have often wondered if our interaction impacted on them in any way.  How it affected on me was that I carried on when I left the Middle East discussing and campaigning for the rights of the Palestinians.  But I never descended into the levels of ‘dehumansing’ of the Israeli’s that I often saw in some of the left-wing campaigns I was involved with.  I also knew that I could discuss the issue with Israelis in a way that I think was more productive – because  on one level, I could see it through the eyes of the family I was involved with.  I could see they felt justified and beleaguered – and this gave me the ability to try to draw some analogies between their experience of being beleaguered and that of the Palestinian community.

This reminds me very much of a technique that we learnt with Wendy Palmer at ALIA.  In this technique, we are invited to work with a partner who is coming towards us in a strong ‘attacking movement’.  We then move slightly past them, using a clear forward, masculine energy movement and then stand behind our attacker, softening into a feminine, listening, holding movement (arms outstretched).  Wendy invited us to imagine that the attacker was coming towards us with a point of view that we disagreed with or was a point of friction.  Then, we were invited to imagine how our perspective changed when we stood behind the person, looking at the issue in the same direction.

The idea is not to lose our viewpoint or opinion or belief.  But rather, to see the arguement from the position of our attacker, to then see what might change in our interaction when we do so.

That is the power of working with polarity – of using the BOTH/AND.

The hot button issue – Ministry in Quaker Meetings

For my non-Quaker readers (of which there are many) of this blog, this post is pretty much exclusively on a topic that is close to the heart of many Quakers and is a subject of debate or, in Quaker speak, discernment. If you are not a Quaker but interested in reading more today,  I’ll give this brief introduction to the topic (Quakers you can skip this bit!).   Basically, Quaker meetings are held mainly in silence, as people worship or seek connection with the Divine/spirit/God/the Light directly, as they feel moved to do so.  When a member feels called (by the Light)  to speak or minister they do. There are no ministers, no preachers – everyone can minister.  Sounds straightforward, yes?

Well, not exactly.  An on-going discussion that is had amongst Quakers – and on many Quaker blogs such as Sheffield Quakers is the role of ministry in Quaker meeting.  The Sheffield Quaker blog reflects the discussion very well.   Some Quakers feel that silence of meeting is distrubed by too much ministry and as the blog points out, there are underlying concerns about the life and depth of ministry.  For instance,  one blog I read was very critical of the tendancy of Friends in many meeting to speak to political and social issues of the day – giving what he thought was ‘Radio 4 Ministry – not the ministry which is led by the spirit, the feeling something is speaking through you.

I decided to have a look through my Quaker books to find a good description of ministry and the best and most succinct was from John  Chuchman in 1734 who said ‘Ministry should be of necessity, and not of choice,  and there is no living by silence, or by preaching merely’.

I absolutely love this – it totally cuts to the heart of the matter.  Meetings are not about just meant to be totally in silence – although of course, many times a meeting can go by with no ministry.  Nor, are they about friends preaching merrily.  Ministry is a necessity – a feeling as if one is being pulled up by the roots of the hair to speak.  For me, another sign that I have been called to minster by the Light is that I feel a great sense of calmness when I have done.  And I find afterwards, several Elders making a point to say how much they enjoyed ministry – maybe is it positive reinforcement perhaps?? :> But I would never go  on the responses of other people to dicatate whether I was called to speak or not – it is just an added extra or icing on the cake if this happens.  I really love what Liz over at The Good Raised Up had to say on the issue of ministry.  That we are all spoken to by the spirit/God/the Light in different ways and therefore, we will have different ministries.  So instead of trying to make others ministry ‘like us’ we should ’strive to understand each other’ instead.  Great post!

We had a discussion about ministry after meeting at my meeting house one day – and one of the elders described it well.  It is, she said, a feeling that you HAVE to speak – that you must, and if you try not to, you feel yourself uneasy and bothered untill you do get up to speak.

Another great description of ministry I found is this quote by Marrianne McMullen, 1987 who said:

‘Ministry is what is one’s soul, and it can be in direct contradiction to what is on one’s mind.  It’s what the Inner Light gently pushes you toward or suddenly dumps in your lap.  It is rooted in eternity, divinity and selflessness of the Inner Light; not in the worldly, egoistic function of the conscious mind’

I very much relate to this description because the times I have given Ministry in the last year – three, I have always found myself speaking and ministering and always I’ve found myself using metaphors, speaking something that wants to be said through me – but not as a speech or trying to make a point.  I know other people minister in different ways and I’m very rarely irritated by others ministry – even when I feel it does come more from an intellectual or mind place.   Like my earlier post, when I talked about how some people at the ALIA conference were annoyed during the dialogue where people were supposed to speak from the heart about what was calling them to action, I feel like people need to try to speak or minister in their own way – even if it isn’t the spirit that moves them because they will soon learn the difference I feel.  The only time I have gotten slightly annoyed is when someone got up to minister and gave what I thought was more of a notice that could have been given after meeting (i.e. I want to make Friends aware of an appeal for xyz charity). I very much agree with Peter Lawless who commented on the Sheffield Quaker blog it shouldn’t be so very very irritating – if someone’s ministry doesn’t completely resonate full of the Spirit.  Because if you are in your centre and silently worshiping, then really it should roll off you!

Elders of every meeting have a role in gently guiding the spoken ministry – but there is no law, no enforcers and no strict guidance.  And this quote from Simon Heywood really speaks to me on the issue.  So I’ll end on that – and return to the discussion – here on this blog and other Quaker blogs another time.

And here it gets scary, because no-one on earth can order us about and get
us out of any messes we get ourselves in. We commit ourselves to the
understanding that nobody and nothing stands between us and God (or
other favoured term). Individually and corporately, we entitle
ourselves to spiritual freedom to the exact extent to which we
willingly accept direct responsibility to the Spirit. In this sense,
Quaker life is much *less* of a spiritual free-for-all than life lived
under the rule of a dogmatic institution, because the Spirit is not a
set or finite list of requirements. Scary thought. But that, folks, is
what we sign up to. We claim freedom in order to go deeper into the
Spirit than we would otherwise go. ~ Simon Heywood, Sheffield Quakers

A letter to a friend

Dear Friend,

I return from the gentle, loving, and feminine/masculine embrace of the ALIA gathering and find you are leaving tomorrow – to go to your EST type retreat, hoping for great learning and perhaps greater awareness up the spiral of human consciousness.  When you said you were inspired by two young people who you raised who went through the programme who blossomed you said because of it – I wanted to say.

‘But that was you, you who stroked fevered foreheads and kissed hurt knees

that lay the bedding for the flowers to bloom.

And it was the light that bathed them and the shadows that

shaded them when the light was too strong.

Not the programme, not the trainers – but you, the light and the shadow.

Hey man, you know what I learnt last week?  I learnt that when I stand tall and uplifted, connecting my head, heart and hara – feeling my ancestors and archetypal mentors at my back, supporting me – I can fill the whole room – my consciousness expands and transforms

In Quaker meeting on Sunday after returning. I gave ministry – feeling that powerful force calling me to speak and all I said was how as I watched the light come through the meeting house windows I noticed how the light held the shadows with ease – no tension, no fighting, no stress – just wholeness.  And I felt myself fill the space and touch hearts. Quakers don’t have ministers, we don’t have leaders as such because we know that everyone can speak to the divine, everyone can lead themselves up the spiral of transformation, everyone can access powerful wisdom.

And you know what else?  I can tap into and use powerful masculine, clean, clear, forward moving, cutting energy simply by moving my arms in the shape of a triangle, my legs moving powerfully.  And then, I can soften into the feminine.  The energy shifts, feminine and masculine within me dancing together.

But you know what my biggest learning last week was – that there is no programme, no teacher, no organisation that can give me the gift of higher consciousness – that I have all I need within me to unwrap this gift myself  -  without any leader or facilitator.   I learnt that really – it’s all in me and it’s all in you.  That’s all we need to transcend to the next level.   We don’t need hotel rooms with hundred of disciplines wanting, longing for prophets to touch them – even longing to touch them with harsh words because that would be something, that would be connection and we are all yearning for connection. But all we need to connect  is to sit quietly and wait, as my favorite Parker Palmer says, for the shy human soul to emerge.  The soul is tender and shy and does not come in rooms of shouting and pushing and forcing.

So when you are there this week – in this conference suite with shouting and tears – I am hoping a moment will come when you   – connect with your head, heart, and hara and feel your archetypal mentors supporting you as you stand up, fill the room and then leave, taking some of the weeping wounded along with you.   Your power, my power, is our own – we shouldn’t give it away – I know that now. So strongly and so powerfully I could weep that I didn’t know this untill now – untill just now.

Reflecting on the week at ALIA

 

A dialogue between Beth and Ursula – friends and co-leaders of Creating from Polarity workshops.

Beth: Wow! That was quite a week!

Ursula: Yes, it was!

Beth: What are your initial thoughts about your experience?

Ursula:  I was particularly impressed by the quality of the space that the hosting team together with the facilitators, artists, and meditation teachers were able to create. This space felt welcoming, flexible, inspiring and full of generosity. For me as a participant, it was so easy to tune in, move freely, encounter others, share and learn.  In this space, I enjoyed the open-heartedness of many people I talked to,

Beth: Yes, I was very struck by the generosity of the space.  I loved the way the module leaders both led their modules and then participated in the creative streams and visa-versa.  It was that feeling that we are all in it together, swimming along in the same sea.

Ursula: It was as if the space had a pulse that invited everything, including seriousness, play and silence.

Beth: You know,  when I look back at my intention for the week, which was to lean more into the pole of autonomy/independence (as you know Ursula, I can sit very firmly on the pole of connection to the determent of autonomy!), I feel really pleased about how much this week enabled me to really experience and live this intention.  The Concious Embodiment module was exactly what I needed to do this – I feel very grounded in the knowledge I have the resources to keep returning to centre – and step into my power as a leader more fully.  I know I will be much more powerful and able to lead having this strong sense of centre – and it will enable those who are leading to find there centre, because I am clearer about mine – if that makes sense?

Ursula:  Oh yes it does! And I took so much from this week as well – I  recommitted to meditation practice, learned to serve a composition and to sing the blues of fear and fearlessness, had intense musical experiences with the four pianos, and felt my body from bone to skin. What a delight. 

Beth: COOL!

Ursula: Hey Beth! Want to hear my blues, and even the previously unreleased parts ?

‘I am making this up
Just now on the spot
Sometimes I am scared
Sometimes I am not

When I follow the pulse
And trust the bliss
I’m welcoming life
Just as it is’

Beth: I love this  Ursula!  Well, I know there is much more we can say and I think all our learnings will keep bubbling up and will be serving us and the world well over the next year.  I also think that we are so much clearer and focused about our book idea ‘Creating from Polarity: The Paradox of Leadership in a Divided World’ – can’t wait to develop our book proposal!

Social Presencing Theatre and Dialogue

Last night at ALIA, we had a Social Presencing Theatre followed by a Dialogue. The Presenting Institute a global action research community for profound societal innovation and change. It seeks to bring the Theory of U to practical applied situations. One of the recent developments has been the Social Presencing Theatre – involving members of the community in developing a piece of theatre about what is going on in the community, what issues need to be spoken about or brought to the surface.

Then, what followed was a chance for people to speak what they are sensing needs to be brought through them. In the theory of U model, this would be at the bottom of the U is the precensing. The session was introduced as being in the structure of a Quaker meeting – which as a Quaker I found most interesting. What interested me was how the religious base of Quakerism wasn’t really mentioned – it was presented as more of a humanistic tradition – a way of speaking things that were being sensed into the space. Someone asked me if that irritated or bothered me. And I said NOT at all – I just find it extremely fascinating – can you take what is a spiritual, religious practice out of context and use it as part of a process? Anyway, I think I will return to this issue at another time.

Anyway, many people spoke to the question of ‘What calls you to action?’ I spoke twice – the first time I did have that same sense when in Quaker meeting at home I have felt called to minister – that feeling that I am being pulled by the roots of my hair up, that a force is speaking through me. My call to action I said was a pulse, a drumbeat from my ancestors calling me to the heartbeat of the future. I needed to write that down – as Parker Palmer says in his wonderful book ‘A Hidden Wholeness’, it is often the words that we speak in spaces like this we need to write down – so we remember the wisdom speaking through us.

Afterwards, I spoke some participants who were very irritated and annoyed at the dialogue. Some people felt that some of the people speaking weren’t speaking from the heart or authentically. My question to them was why does this annoy you? and also, how do you know that the person just didn’t get scared or self-conscious and speak from the mind in that moment instead of the heart? My experience of speaking in Quaker meeting is that you need to experience both – that feeling of being pulled from your chair AND when you are speaking more from your mind or ego. So you know the difference.

Talking to some people at lunch today, trying to understand why people didn’t like the dialogue session, one person explained it really well. She didn’t understand the concept behind the Quaker meeting – that you should speak when you feel called – when you feel for example like you are being spoken to by archetypal figures (actually at a Quaker meeting it would be feeling the spirit or God moving you to speak). And, we both agreed that if perhaps the idea of precencing had been discussed and maybe people were asked to imagine that their archetypal energies or friends or mentors were speaking to them about what in the world needed acting on, then perhaps it would have given people a frame of reference, something to come back to if we feel confused.

Greeting and Letting Go

Yesterday early evening, I was catching up with reading some of my favorite blogs and this blog post on input from Henry at The Bear and the Turtle resonated with me.  And then, as synchronicity would have it, a theme that ran through my morning (day four) at ALIA was how to be with, as a leader, the many different inputs we have in our lives.   In the meditation this morning, the speaker spoke about how in meditation, we do not try to ‘hammer down’ our thoughts with a hammer as if we are attacking them.  Rather, we seek to greet our thoughts as friends and then let them go.

In Wendy Palmer’s module, we practiced greeting people who wanted our time, acknowledging them and then letting go – saying ‘not now’.   We did this with a physical exercise of moving forward to greet people and then, skillfully letting them go.   We can use this as a metaphor – for people, thoughts, ‘things’ which are demanding of our time.  So that we don’t either have to push them away harshly nor get sucked into them.   What I love about this approach is how it really gives you the sense or the ‘imprint’ as Wendy calls it, of what it feels like energetically to do this.  And then, we need to practice, practice, practice.  Greeting thoughts, people or things – going forward to greet them.  And then letting them go – so that we can return to what we need to focus on in this time and place.

It is day four of ALIA and I feel very calm, centred, relaxed.  A couple of people who met me on the first night said how differently I seem now – not so excited and distracted.  It is interesting to me I said to them – because of course, I used to be excited and distracted nearly all the time!!! Now, I find that it comes primarily when I am in a new situation – with new people, when I am nervous or unsure of my place I find myself falling into a familiar pattern, way of being.  For me, to recover to being more rooted and grounded by day two is great progress indeed – which is good to know, because then it means next time I am at a new event or gathering, I will be quicker to recover, to be grounded.  And maybe, one day, without even noticing, I will arrive at a new event, and only be excited and distracted for a minute or perhaps a second.

Power and Love

Yesterday, at ALIA we had a fascinating talk from Adam Kahane whose latest book is called ‘Power and Love”.  In this book, he looks at the question ‘What does it take to create forward movement on complex social challenges”?”  His argument is that we need both power and love when trying to bring social change into the world.  For example, at Copenhagen, he noticed that the delegates fell into either two camps.  The power camp consisted of the government representatives of industrialised countries – concerned mainly with their sovereignty.  The love camp consisted of the NGO representatives – concerned with the interconnectedness of all things. And, as often happens in these situations, neither side understood or felt they could work with the other.  Yet, as he points out, we need both love (connection) and power (autonomy) for effective social change. The generative side of power is that things happen, things move forward, things get done.  The generative side of love is that there is connection, space for shared ideas and passions to be explored. But power without love is degenerative, destructive. Love without power is anemic and ineffective.

Each pole has a generative and degenerative side.  And it is Kahane’s argument that power is the generative side of love and love is the generative side of power.

For myself and my friend/co-leader Ursula Glunk, this was very exciting and inspirational as it connects very strongly to our work around polarity/wholeness .  Currently, we are developing a book proposal which will explore leadership through the lens of polarity/wholeness working and we wish to integrate a number of approaches – both personal approaches to working with polarity (i.e. polarity coaching) and then social change approaches (i.e. Kahane’s Power and Love approach).  We hope to interview him for our book as we would like to bring in the work of people approaching polarities/wholeness in different ways, using different lens.

One of the important things Kahane pointed out in his talk last night, we need to explore and accept these polarities of power and love within ourselves before using them in a social change situation.  Which is where, for myself and Ursula, a polarity coaching method becomes very relevant.  And, other approaches, such as the work  Wendy Palmer is doing around embodiment is another approach to how we can hold the tension between polarities, without collasping them into each other, without (as Kahane wryly pointed out) not pretending they are the same thing.  But keeping them both separate and distinct AND holding both.  He felt the danger was when we thought we needed to use both power and love at the same time.  Using the analogy of walking, we need both our legs to walk but we use one leg and then the other.

Many polarity metaphors talk about the interdepdence of two poles – for example breathing.  We cannot breathe in and out at the same time.  However, it is how the in-breath and out-breath work together is what creates wholeness.  AND it is at the place of the boundary – where the in-breath turns into the out-breath is a very important place.  The boundary can either be rigid – i.e. in the situation in Copenhagen, there was a rigid boundary or wall between the two poles of power and love.  No fluidity.  However, by creating a boundary which has fluidity, that allows for dialogue, discussion and flow between the two poles – that is a place where generative social change can happen.  That’s what I’m interested in as a leader – how can we create these spaces in the world and within ourselves?

There is much more I could say now on power & love and polarities but I need to go to the chapel for a wonderful violin recital!   I will return to the fascinating topic of power and love again in another blog post down the road, that is for sure!

Recovering to Centre

It is day two at ALIA, Authentic Leadership in Action

I had meant to blog yesterday evening but after dinner, I was so tired and so full of the experience, that I just went to sleep – 8:30pm which is very unusual for me.  At conferences and gatherings, I like to stay up late, in the bar and communal areas talking and de-briefing.  But, I felt so full – full of ideas, reflections, knowledge that I needed to just sleep!

The module I’m taking here  is Wendy Palmer’s Embodied Leadership.   It is extremely powerful work - Conscious Embodiment Using physical exercises, we are exploring reactive patterns – ways that our personality or ego like things done.  Just noticing.  So for instance, when in an exercise a partner pushes me, I automatically fall back, shoulders tighten.  I’m off-centre, trying to negate the conflict.  And then, Wendy coaches us through a four-part centering exercise – breathing out, we ground ourselves and feel ourselves becoming more upright and stable.  Our arms move forward and out, fingers outstretched.  In that minute it takes, we transform.  We are no longer dependent on the other to be centered – what other people do or don’t do doesn’t dictate our actions.  So while in work or home we may not be physically pushed – we may find ourselves triggered.  And doing this, can enable us to recover to our centre.

One of the things she talks about – again and again – is not basing our sense of centre and power on other people.   For example, one of my old patterns tends to be seeking approval from others to feel centred  for instance  (do they like me? Do they approve? Do they think I’m powerful?)  But rather, our sense of worthiness, of power really needs to come from our centre, for our sense of something larger than ourselves.

Of course, I KNOW this – my mind knows this, it’s read all the books!  But I find very powerful about the conscious embodiment approach is that it gives to practical ways to recover to your centre using your body.  This really helps to embed new ways of doing things – of approaching situation and human relationships.   I feel like I’ve started to come home to myself today.  And that is a great feeling.