How does it feel when it moves through you?

How do you know when you are in it, and how do you know when you have stepped out of it?

What are the sensations in your body, and how do you learn to embody this state on a daily basis?

In our final embodied awareness 5-day seminar, we discussed how intuition is integrated through action.  Acting on our guidance is also empowering.  It helps us discover the truth of inner awareness in those concrete real terms as it shows up in our daily lives.

Empowerment is the movement of your truest Self emerging into the present moment as a state of Presence.  Empowerment allows us to connect into inner awareness while interacting with others.

It is staying in this flow that continues to feed empowerment. Knowing deeply, embodying fully, allowing a greater awareness to flow through you, to fill you, nourish you.

From this state we are able to ask for what we want, be able to receive what we need, and be able to hear ‘no’ from someone  with the same ease as we hear ‘yes.’

Presence grows when there is room for all us to be our full empowered selves.  Being able to hear ‘yes’ and ‘no’ with equally enables you to stay present with yourself and others.  It helps you to actually stay in your power, while someone is asserting his or her own power.

When you feel empowered, you feel grounded, open, and relaxed.  You are comfortable with yourself and comfortable with others–just, as they are.

Presence is true power. Presence is the state that you go into when you are embodied. Empowerment hinges on the interplay of all these things.

I woke up this morning thinking about classism and the way we justify stratification of our relationships with each other based on income.  Have’s and Have not’s.  As a child, I would go to bed at night ‘solving the world’s problems.’  It was the only thing that would allow me to rest after being bombarded with images of poverty, greed and oppression.

Being a mystic at heart, I always wondered . . . how do we begin to live our ideal, what we know in our hearts is true . . . We are all human, we all have needs, and we all have something to contribute.

So today, I am still asking these questions, though I have more ‘data’.  I know now that greed, territoriality, ritualistic worship, and the instinct for procreation are all rudimentary elements of our spiritual journey into physical form.  Reptilian brain-stem reactions to sensory data.  We then attach ourselves to those ‘like us’—our tribe, family, clan, culture, society-the mammalian brain.  Then we tell ourselves stories about why we do what we do—we rationalize and justify our behaviour—the ‘new mammalian brain’ the cortex . . . although we are beginning to integrate new awareness through the synergy of all these inner and outer sensory signals via our mere 40,000-year-old pre-frontal cortex.  (See my earlier blog on Change).

The real question to me, is not only how do we change our thinking through mindfulness . . . but how do we integrate the deeper truths received through our energetic bodies and translated into physical form?  How do we embody the wisdom of the heart brain with its neurocardiology that creates trust . . . the awareness of our radiant solar plexus energy and our gut responses that are informed by our connection to 30,000 microbes that already know how to work together to create a healthy environment; that lets us digest our food; and assimilate reality in healthy ways?

These are the metaphors of what more is possible, as we connect to the subtle reality of who we are within the context of a macrocosm that reflects the microcosm and vice versa.

I am noodling today on . . . how might this greater awareness impact us if we were to create our economic systems of support from a different model beyond the neurology of our physical brains?  I will meditate on this.  I invite you to do the same and share your insights, reflections and new awareness with all of us.

What else is possible?

During our last Embodied Awareness retreat, we spent some time exploring the ideas and concepts around Power and Empowerment.

As a group, we shared what these words mean to us personally; and then we engaged in answering a question and then posing a question.

 I asked the first question, and it was…”What is Empowerment?”

Each person who volunteered to answer a question ended their answer with a new question to the group and, based on those indicating that they were interested in responding to the question, would pick someone from the group to offer an answer.  That person would respond, followed by posing his or her own question.

From this, a remarkable exchange of ideas, experiences, opinions, inspirations and clarifications were shared within our group of professionals.  The responses touched on everything from strength to responsibility to vulnerability.  So much deep and personal knowledge in such a short period…

Here are some of the questions that we posed and answered:

• When have you felt most empowered?
• How can we support one another to be more empowered?
• How do you transform your pain?
• Where is your power coming from?
• What allows you to stay in your heart with opposing forces?
• What is the balance between nurturing our own needs & meeting the needs out there?
• How do we know the fine line between empowering others and over helping?
• We must know what something isn’t to know what it is….What is dis-empowerment?
• How do we empower ourselves (and others) to do this work with people we have shared wounds with?

And so now, I ask… What is Empowerment to you?

The last of the three 5 day retreats of the 2015 Embodied Awareness Training Certification program wrapped up on Sunday.

I am still bathing in the afterglow of this experience.

Thinking back on the initial day of our first retreat in February, to last Sunday October 4, I feel awe and wonderment.

What a gift this experience has been – for so many reasons…

I was able to spend time and grow into greater synergy with my colleagues Dr. Patrick Tribble  and 1st Nations facilitator Kim Haxton.  I learn something new and wonderful each time we are together.

I was able to (and continue to each day) witness the growth and expansion of my mentees Meaghan, Deren and Mardi – who began this journey as students, and who have grown into mentors, coaches and Embodied Awareness educators themselves.

And, I am in wonder of the reality that has come from a dream that I dreamt many years ago… of the bringing together of a group of 12 unique and diverse individuals who have three vital things in common… a desire to grow into greater Embodied Awareness; the capacity to nurture it; and the ability to share new awareness by being more authentically themselves.

Through Embodied Awareness training, mentors and faciliteachers, our Global Community is growing and evolving in mysterious and wonderful ways; thank you for being a part of this…