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What we learn from our most beloved mindfulness teachers isn’t always in the words they say, but in how they show up. Just being near someone who exudes a grounded presence and an open heart can be co-regulating and profoundly healing.
Embodying mindfulness in this way is a lifelong practice, but it’s one we can all take part in. Bringing attention and awareness to subtle energies in the body enhances our ability to work with these energies to expand our compassionate presence.
In this episode, Sean Fargo speaks with bodyworker and energy practitioner Lynda Caesara. Lynda presents us with five essential practices for connecting to, and harnessing, energy in the body.
This episode contains both theory and practice. Please listen in a safe, quiet space where you can practice along with us. Or, to return to these practices at any time, use the timestamps below as a reference.
This podcast is brought to you by the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program. Learn more about this unique, online, self-paced certification program at mindfulnessexercises.com/certify
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
Show Notes:
Energetic practices and the body as a portal to presence
A longtime bodyworker, Lynda Caesara was first introduced to energetic practices through her bodywork studies. In an effort to understand the subtleties her teacher was working with, she went to psychic school in 1974. The ancient energetic practices she learned there have helped her connect to presence by way of the body. Today, she refers to these energetic practices as The Basics.
“{The body) is an incredibly phenomenal instrument. It's amazing and we use so little of it, we have so little awareness of it. [...] If you treat your body as a partner, if you join with your body as a partner in life, it offers an incredible capacity to enjoy and be present in life. If you reject your body or think it's not important, then you lose so much capacity. That's why I think it's important. Bodies are just cool.”
Centering as a preliminary practice
Becoming centered is a preliminary to the 5 energetic practices of The Basics. It is a means of bringing our wandering, distracted attention back to the body and ultimately, to our essence. We begin the process of centering by bringing attention to our bones, a relatively accessible presence.
“It's bringing a felt sense of awareness. So in order to come to felt sense awareness, sometimes we have to imagine. That's a bridge to bring us into the felt sense or sensation of what we know. So we start by however we start. If we imagine our bones and get a picture of them and a sense of them, ‘Oh, that's how big they are.’ If we have the opportunity to feel bones and say, ‘Oh, they feel that big and that substantial,’ that's helpful.”
Connecting to our essence or ‘Core’
Centering into our bones can be the first step toward connecting to a subtler centered energy, that of essence or core. Lynda describes essence as our higher self, our unique frequency. It permeates all parts of our body and is there all the time. Once we have brought attention to our bones, we can bring attention to our essence. Typically our essence comes most alive when we are happiest.
“Often when you are the happiest and moving, you have essence. So if your happiness is skiing down a ski slope or your happiness is dancing when you feel most like yourself, and that can be cooking in the kitchen, it could be riding on a skateboard, it can be when you feel most like yourself. ‘Oh, right. I'm me, I'm here.’ And often coupled with pleasure.”
Jump To 16:03 For A Guided Practice On Centering
The Basic practice of Grounding
The human body takes shape when essence engages with earth energy. Grounding, then, is a process of reconnecting to our birthright, our true earth-energy home. When we physically connect to the earth, we establish an electrical exchange. Connecting to the earth through our attention is a slightly subtler, more advanced, practice.
“There's a phrase for it now called co-regulation, and someone who is grounded and centered and calm can help other people co-regulate and come back into ground and centered calmness. It's what a meditation practice does.”
Jump To 38:25 For A Guided Practice On Grounding
The Basic practice of Me/Not Me
Although there’s no prescribed order in which to practice The Basics, Lynda often turns to Me/Not Me practice after Grounding. This purification practice can help us bring more attention to what’s present in our auric space, the energetic field that extends about an arm’s length from our body in all directions. Getting clear about what’s in our auric space, and then clearing that space so it’s only ‘me’ can help us stay connected to essence.
“Having your own space means, ‘Wow, I get to think my own thoughts and be my own person and have the space to discern who I am and what I feel and what's happening in myself and my body.’ It's a way of being able to self-orient. And if you've never cultivated the space to be able to self-orient, then you don't have such a space. [...] Other people's thoughts, other people's agendas, other people's ideas of who you are and who you should be. None of those belong in your space.”
Jump To 1:06:17 For A Guided Practice Of Me/Not Me
The Basic practice of Edge
Some people choose to begin The Basics with the energetic practice of Edge. Similar to Me/Not Me, Edge helps us define our auric space. This energetic boundary is always with us. When our attention is not on it, however, it becomes vulnerable to penetration. Edge practice does not create a boundary; rather, it’s the practice of attending to the natural energetic boundary that is always with us.
“(Our auric edge is) flexible. We can move it. So if we're in a crowded elevator, we can pull it in. Different cultures have different spaces that they feel are appropriate for each person. Some cultures hold it closer than others, but it's still your auric edge, it’s your electromagnetic field, it's made by your essence. It's not divorced from your essence. So the edge of your electromagnetic field is intelligent and can respond to your attention.”
Jump To 1:21:23 For A Guided Practice Of Edge
Using fibers to understand auric edge
An exercise we can do to further work with edge includes visualizing energetic fibers that extend from the belly in the form of visceral attention. Some have referred to this phenomenon as the belly brain, cords, threads or energetic hands. We can work with our auric edge by visualizing tying these fibers together to bring greater attention to our personal energetic boundary.
“We do have a visceral attention. Some of you know that from the belly brain, our visceral attention and martial arts, dance, many physical things use the belly brain. And some people have noticed that our belly brain actually has energetic hands which extend from our belly button out into the world.”
Jump To 1:29:34 For A Practice Of Tying Our Fibers
Understanding and practicing with Chakras
Chakras are energy centers that align with the spine. Not merely energetic, there are also actual nerve ganglions that exist at each chakra point. We can work with these energetic centers as if they were tools. Each chakra has aspects we can attend to, to manipulate energy in the body.
“All chakras perceive information, meaning incoming. All chakras generate information. It’s two ways. And your second is one of those big ones. [...] People vary and remember that all the information we read is somebody else's experience. It's somebody else's experience. What's true for you is your experience.”
Jump To 1:35:51 For A Guided Chakra Practice on the 2nd Chakra
Chakras outside of the body
Although controversial, Lynda includes 2 additional chakras as energetic centers outside the physical body. One is about an arm’s length above our head, and the other an arm’s length below our feet. These chakras bracket our aura. We can work with them to help set energetic boundaries.
“So, seven chakras in your body nestled against your spine, often open front and back, radiating spheres of light, depending on how you perceive them. Bracketed at the bottom by an eighth chakra that is right at the base of your auric edge. It modulates earth energy coming in and out, bracketed at the top by what I call a ninth chakra in the top of your auric space, which again, modulates energy coming up, just as your seventh does into your body, your ninth does into your auric space and that are the nine chakras that I use. And many people have different ways of attending the chakras off-body.”
Jump To 1:53:12 For A Guided Nine Chakra Practice
The Basics as a mindfulness practice
Secular mindfulness doesn’t often touch upon visceral threads in the belly, auric edge or the chakras. But with practice, we can bring mindfulness to even the subtlest of energies in the body. There are many ways to sense into our present moment reality. Opening to the field of energy within and around us can open us to new ways of being increasingly present in our bodies and in our world.
Sean Fargo: “There's a lot of nuance here to be felt into. There's so much written about these practices over the decades and even centuries. These aren't brand new practices, and drawing on the wisdom of our elders and to be able to sense into the felt experience of these practices right now can be so useful for really living fully and doing our job of being ourselves, loving ourselves, radiating this essence energy, hopefully for the benefit of all beings. And so I can't stress enough how helpful these practices have been for me, even though I'm still cultivating these and still trying to remember.”
Lynda Caesara: “I'm still cultivating them too. They're lifelong practices.”
Jump To 2:10:31 For The Full Guided Practice of The Basics
Additional Resources:
About Lynda Caesara:
Lynda Caesara is a bodyworker, energy practitioner and wisdom teacher who has taught fundamental energy practices for over 20 years. Lynda’s work is rooted in a psycho-somatic model and based on nearly 50 years of bodywork and energy practices.
Lynda attended Berkeley Psychic Institute in 1974, followed by the Heart Song Psychic Institute from 1975 to 1977. She went on to teach at Heart Song for six years. Lynda spent two years studying Christian mysticism before turning to shamanic practice. Since, she has been active in bodywork, primarily the Berry Method of corrective massage.
Lynda has been teaching energy classes and workshops since 2001, integrating the wisdom of her shamanic practices and a wide variety of master teachers. Her classes help bodyworkers, facilitators, coaches and practitioners activate their intuitive capacities, work with reactive patterns, and share mindfulness and healing from a grounded, embodied presence.
