5 Essential Skills for Embodied Mindfulness, with Lynda Caesara and Sean Fargo

Speaker 1 · 0:02Welcome everyone to the Mindfulness Exercises Podcast. Thank you for listening. Today I have the distinct honor and pleasure of welcoming my teacher, Linda Cesara. I consider her one of my core teachers, and I'm very glad she's here to speak with us and guide us in several energetic practices that she calls the basics. And so with today's episode, we're offering something a little bit different than normal. It's a conversation, but also an experience. I encourage you to listen in a safe, quiet space where you can join us for the five embodiment practices that Linda will present. You'll also find timestamps in the show notes to help you quickly return to any of these practices as you'd like to. You may not be able to do them all with us now, but it's my hope you'll want to practice them again and again almost every day like I do. The energetic skills I've learned from Linda have been very helpful and profound for me. Not only for my own mindfulness practice, but also for helping me share mindfulness with others from a more grounded, embodied presence. And so I've invited Linda to speak with us today about her work and some of the practices that she uses to guide people to be more in their bodies, to be more present, mindful with ourselves, with others in the world. Linda Cesara attended the Berkeley Psychic Institute and the Heart Song Psychic Institute in the 1970s. She's been a body worker of various sorts since 1972, and she's a specialist in the Barry method of corrective massage. Her energy work is rooted in psychosomatic models and leans heavily on her studies in Christian mysticism and a decades-long shamanic practice. Linda's been teaching advanced energy mastery for over 20 years to people from all over the world on retreats and in her classes, and her work helps a lot of practitioners, facilitators, therapists, coaches, and mindfulness teachers to live and teach with embodied presence. Linda, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today, for sharing some of these energetic skills, and it's great to be with you again.

Speaker 2 · 2:39You're so welcome, Sean. It's a pleasure.

Speaker 1 · 2:41Yeah, and so some of these energetic skills, there's five of them, and you call them the basics, and they comprise of grounding, their connection to the earth, me, not me, where it's only us in our body and in our space, edge, having a boundary to our space, core, finding a felt sense of center in our body, and the chakras, our energetic tools for interacting with the world. And many people are familiar with the seven chakras, and today we may be exploring two more that may be new to people. So could you share a little bit about how you came to learn these energetic practices and how you've organized them into these five practices in which you call them the basics?

Speaker 2 · 3:48Yes, thanks, Sean. So I learned many of these practices in the psychic school. But I went to psychic school because I was a bodyworker and because my teacher was doing energetic things that he wouldn't talk about. So in order to learn how to see what he was doing that he wouldn't talk about, I ended up serendipitously at the psychic school, and they gave me many of the fundamentals of the basics, which they said were Rosicrucian. What I've done, because I'm primarily a body worker, is I've oriented them to our physical instrument, our bodies, and bring that as a sense of presence in the world.

Speaker 1 · 4:31Beautiful. Thank you.

Speaker 2 · 4:33You're welcome.

Speaker 1 · 4:34So the first practice is ground.

Speaker 2 · 4:38Actually, the first practice is centered and being centered. But I don't really have people notice that as a first practice, but because we're teaching this in a slightly different way, I'm going to organize that a little bit differently. So the first practice is actually centeredness and being centered in your spine, attending to your bones. Most people don't have a felt sense of their bones, and they don't understand that their bones are actually quite large. Most people think their bones are these little bumps on the back that you can feel along your spine, but actually they're quite big, two to three inches wide and two to three inches front to back in your neck. By the time it gets to your bottom vertebrae, it's four to five inches side to side, four to five inches front to back. It ends in the sacrum, this triangle bone at the base of your body, and you can see how wide that is, right where it is at the fifth lumbar. And here, the fifth lumbar sits on top of it, and it's again hefty, wide, and about fist-sized. So if you think of your bones, you can think of them being fist-sized at the base of your spine. That's a substantial portion of the center of your body. So attending to your bones, which starts at the base of your skull, down through your spine, your torso, your abdomen to your sacrum, brings your attention into the center of your body. Our bones are always there. What wanders is our attention. So our attention into the center of our body, into our bones, and feeling bones in the center of us.

Speaker 1 · 6:48That's great. Where do you think people normally put their attention everywhere under the sun?

Speaker 2 · 6:58Attention goes everywhere and usually not in their bodies.

Speaker 1 · 7:02Yeah, and if it is in their bodies, it's still usually off-center, I would imagine, probably forward facing and perhaps in their belly or the front of their chest.

Speaker 2 · 7:16Or in their head.

Speaker 1 · 7:17The front of their head.

Speaker 2 · 7:19Yeah. So bringing people into presence, which is what the basics do. So presence practice, basics, is a way of bringing your attention into five places that orient you presently in your body. And most people say, oh, just come to presence. But what does that mean? How do I actually bring my attention into presence? So the basics is a way of bringing your attention into presence.

Speaker 1 · 7:52When I first met you, Linda, I think you said something to the effect that you have a bias towards the body. Yes. Could you share a little bit about what that means and why that could be important?

Speaker 2 · 8:07Okay. So our bodies are our instrument to be here in present time. If you have a body, you have a ticket to play on Earth plane. And because this is an incredibly phenomenal instrument, it's amazing. And we use so little of it, we have so little awareness of it. The body, these statistics come from the honeymoon effect by Bruce Lipton. The cognitive mind processes 40 neuroimpuls per second. The body mind, the unconscious mind, 40 million neuroimpuls per second. So the body has a lot more intelligence happening, going on, than most of our cognitive mind can keep up with. 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.

Speaker 1 · 9:24Yeah. And you know, so many people are sort of living in their head these days, especially in the thought world. And the more we practice mindfulness, the more we sense into our whole self, including the body, the heart. And so it's important to emphasize this whole body awareness. As you said, this is where we are. And you said centering is really the first practice towards being present. Can you share some ways that we can center into our bones and into our body?

Speaker 2 · 10:09It's bringing a felt sense 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. And getting a sense in, like, oh, can I sense into my bones? Can I feel actually feel the bones that are in the center of me, sometimes moving your spine a little bit, feeling how flexible it is. Because it's immensely flexible. It moves from side to side and forward and back. But there's all these incredible variety of movements, and it's like, oh, there I am. If you've done Pilates, you've had spent a lot of time sensing your spine and your core. Ballet is another way of sensing core. Aston patterning is a way of sensing core. Gyrotonics, Alexander technique. Those are all ways of bringing your attention into your physical center, your core. So as you attend, hopefully coming to a felt sense. You can either touch your skull. Oh, there it is. I have a skull and at the base of my skull. And then come down. Those little hard spots on the side of your neck are actually the edges of the vertebrae. You can touch them. That's fairly wide. So I can touch the sides of my vertebrae, my neck. I can feel down. Hard to get through your rib cage and down, but your ribs actually attach to your spine. So if you feel your ribs in the front and go around them to the back, it's like, oh, there it is. Because each of your ribs attaches to your spine. And so when you turn side to side, each of those ribs is articulating, touching your spine. And you come down to your pelvis, your pelvis touches your spine through your sacrum. So all of that are ways to get to the that sense experience of your bones. And it's a practice. More you attend, the better it works.

Speaker 1 · 12:46And so when we sense into center, how much of it is say feeling into a solidity, sensing into the location in relation to the rest of the body in our space? How much of it is sensing into the spine versus say the limbs?

Speaker 2 · 13:11You start with your spine, then you come around your pelvic bow into the bones there, because bones are in the center of your pelvic bowl. Then down your legs. Bones are in the center of your feet. All of that brings the bone, your attention to the bones in the center, spine, pelvis, feet, legs.

Speaker 1 · 13:50How long do you recommend people sense into their bones?

Speaker 2 · 13:56Well, ideally, all the time every day. When you're starting out a few minutes in the morning and check on it throughout the day. And that brings you into the center of your arms. Center of your arms, center of your legs, center of your torso.

Speaker 1 · 14:52You know, in a lot of mindfulness practices, we talk about anchors. Anchoring in the breath, anchoring in the feet, anchoring in the body.

Speaker 2 · 15:06Anchoring in the bones.

Speaker 1 · 15:08Exactly, yeah, anchoring in the bones as a way to remember. Yeah, this core. So in a lot of mindfulness practices, we may feel like we're anchoring in the breath or the feet. With this practice, I highly recommend anchoring into the bones, into the spine, into the whole skeleton. Whether you're in formal meditation practice or not, as you said, we can do this anytime, anywhere. And it's a wonderful way to anchor back into the present moment, anchor back in the body, and come to our senses and come to this moment in our body. Could you share, say, a more of a formal practice of centering into our core?

Speaker 2 · 16:09So if we were to start the formal practice, I would ask you to please attend to your spine, which goes from the base of your skull down through your neck, your torso, your abdomen to your sacrum. Feeling the bones of your spine. Extending that awareness around your pelvic hole, down your legs into your feet, the bones there. Centered in your torso, centered in each of your legs. Your attention in your bones centers you. Centered in your torso, centered in your legs, centered in your arms.

Speaker 3 · 17:18You become centered.

Speaker 1 · 17:23Thank you. Are there certain postures you recommend for this practice for people just starting out, say between sitting, standing, or lying down?

Speaker 2 · 17:38This practice can actually be done in any of those three positions, depending on what works best. Sitting keeps your spine upright as to standing, and that can be helpful. Because I'm a householder, and sitting is not something I get to do that often, as most people with children in households know. You can do this anytime, anywhere. So starting out to get the felt sense, whatever you have time for, it often helps to do it in bed before you get up, because then there's the day. So a few minutes of attending to your bones can go, okay, here I am, I can do this.

Speaker 1 · 18:25Yeah. Have you found that there's certain bones in the body that are harder to feel into than others for people starting out? Say, you know, for me, it's a little bit harder to sense into the spine and say it's a little easier for me to sense into the bones of my arms and my femur and my feet. Even my skull feels much easier than the spine. Have you noticed any tendencies of which bones are easier to sense into than others?

Speaker 2 · 19:07Well, the spine, I think, is one of the hardest because you can't touch it. You know, we really don't have access to it except through the spinous process at the back and the back part of the sacrum, but we can't really touch and feel the extent. Whereas our legs, we can wrap our arm, you know, our hands around our bones. We can feel the substance inside each of our legs, we can feel the substance inside our arms, even the substance inside our heads. So I agree with you, spine tends to be trickier.

Speaker 1 · 19:43Yeah, and earlier you mentioned some of the physical activities or movement practices that people can use to help us to sense into our core and and sense into our bodies, you know, and in traditional, say formal mindfulness meditation practice, a lot of people feel like they have to be rigid or not move to be able to be in the body with the sense of physical stillness. But while stillness is wonderful to cultivate, there's nothing wrong with moving the body around and sensing into the movement, using movement as a way to bring awareness to the sensations of the body, and this can translate into mindful walking, or as you said, Pilates and the Alexander technique. Do you recommend people cultivating a daily practice of centering into the core and centering into the bones in, say, a formal posture of stillness as well as somatic movement as well?

Speaker 2 · 21:10Well, both are valid, and people tend toward different preferences. I think it's good to start with your preference, and then as you anchor the sensation in your preference, then take it where you don't have preference. If you constantly move, take it to stillness. If you are in stillness, take it to movement so that you have a wide range of being able to sense your bonds whenever.

Speaker 1 · 21:54Are there certain parts of the body that you recommend for different people to center into to help balance them and their energies? Say if some people tend to hold a lot of energy up in their body, in their head, do you recommend centering, say, in the pelvis, maybe a little bit more, versus others who may have a bias towards bringing energy down into their body? Would you recommend, say, sensing into the neck or the skull a little bit more? Or do you feel that it's basically the same practice for everyone to kind of sense into all of the bones as much as you can throughout the body? Yes.

Speaker 2 · 22:45Ultimately, it's all of the bones as much as you can, but wherever you start is wherever you start, and balance is good. So if you find yourself only in one part of your body, you may want to cultivate other parts of your body.

Speaker 1 · 23:03And that's a great segue into a point here that I think is helpful for a lot of people to understand, which is that these are energetic skills that we're cultivating. It's not like we're born with this ability to be able to do this all the time really well. That this is a skill that we can cultivate with practice, and that the more we practice it, the more we bring awareness to our body and to these practices. Essentially, the better we get, or the easier it becomes over time. Could you speak to this a little bit?

Speaker 2 · 23:53Yes. So everything that our bodies learn is through practice. Everything. We learn walking through practice, we learn riding and bicycle through practice, we learn eating through practice. And if you've had little kids, it takes a lot of practice to learn to eat. So everything in our bodies is something we learn through practice. And many people have already practiced these skills. If you have a physical practice, you may have practiced centering. Ballet is a centering practice. You can't do ballet without being centered. If you play an instrument, you have practiced and increased your nervous system's capacity to engage the hand movements, to engage hearing the notes, to engage all of putting all that together. It's all practice. So practice is the way of the body.

Speaker 1 · 24:50Linda, is there anything more you want to say about this practice of centering or finding our core?

Speaker 2 · 24:57Centering in our bones is the first practice of centering. And finding our core means bringing attention to essence, higher self, unique frequency of who we are. There are many names for it, but how do I know the me that is beyond my body? And how do I bring the me that is in my beyond my body into the center of this instrument so that I can play it well? So, first is the centering, attention in bones, and then once I have my attention in my bones, then I attend to my essence in my bones. And essence in bones gives you core. Essence into bones brings core. And essence makes your body, essence it permeates every part of your body, it's there all the time, otherwise you'd be dead. But our attention doesn't come to essence. So it's bringing our attention to the essence that already exists in our body and especially in our bones that brings us into core. And we have words for it. He has backbone, she has backbone. When people have backbone, they are present fully, including essence, into their bones.

Speaker 1 · 26:29That reminds me of a phrase that Frank Ostaseski often says, which is have a strong back and a soft front. Can you share some examples of people who you feel have this strong backbone and this strong sense of essence?

Speaker 2 · 26:51Colin Powell. Michelle Obama. Those are two that come to mind. I'm trying to think of public figures. Certainly Queen Elizabeth did. She knew who she was. People who know who they are and navigate the world from the place of knowing who they are.

Speaker 1 · 27:18I tend to think of wise old grandmothers who have seen it all and aren't phased by the little stuff, and they have this like core conviction of who they are.

Speaker 2 · 27:36Yes. And they can come in many different packages in all walks of life.

Speaker 1 · 27:42My four-year-old daughter often exudes that type of energy.

Speaker 2 · 27:48Yeah. And kids usually do before they become socialized.

Speaker 1 · 27:56For people who may be hearing this word essence for the first time, or who may be struggling to sense and do what their essence is, how do you recommend people well often when you are the happiest and moving, you have essence.

Speaker 2 · 28:24So 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.

Speaker 1 · 28:53Beautiful. Yeah, it's a wonderful reflection. And obviously there's this somatic element to feeling that happiness and let's say movement and that sense of that fullness of being, who we are. And even just that as an exercise, I think it would be wonderful to cultivate this sense of knowing what our essence is, and to be able to invite that into the body and into the bones more and more often. Thank you for sharing all of that about that basic skill of core centering into our bones. What's the next basic in practice that you recommend people do after centering?

Speaker 2 · 29:50The next basic is ground connecting to the earth. So our essence engages earth energy and creates our form, the body. And earth energy is available to anyone who has a body on earth. It's a birthright. If you don't have a body, you don't have earth energy. If you have a body, you have engaged earth energy and created a body. So we can go through a meditation that allows us to connect and receive the earth energy. That's our birthright.

Speaker 1 · 30:34I think a lot of people, when they hear this practice of grounding, they might say think of the topsoil or have this general concept of the landscape. But when we talk about connecting with the energy of the earth, can you say more about what that means?

Speaker 2 · 31:08So scientists tell us that the center of the earth is actually an iron crystal core. And what's interesting about iron is iron is in our blood. So in many ways, it's iron to iron and core to core relationship with the earth. And connecting to the topsoil is one way of connecting to earth. And I know people who love to be in mud and feel it on the skin and their bodies. We even have mud bats that we can go and engage in in calistoga. But feeling the sense of the core-to-core relationship of ourselves to the earth helps anchor us to do it.

Speaker 1 · 31:58When we practice grounding, how important is it for us to literally be touching the bottoms of our feet to the earth, say the grass or the mud or the sand? And does it matter if we're wearing shoes? Does it matter if we're on the fifth story of a building? What does it mean to be sort of connecting with the earth?

Speaker 2 · 32:30There's two aspects of connecting to the earth. The physical aspect, my feet are on the ground and I have an electrical connection to the earth. You can find out about in a book called Earthing. They have a website, and that allows your physical body to electrically exchange energy with the earth. And that's helpful. It is health-giving to be able to do that. That's why people recommend shoes that are grounded. They are grounding pads. My body work teacher used to have us, he would never let us wear shoes while we're working, not rubber-sole shoes. We would have to wear leather shoes that could electrically engage the earth or go barefoot. And he would have us wrap our beds in copper wire and ground them to an outlet. Now that they have earthing, they actually make things like that, which is a whole lot better than wrapping your mattress in copper wire. And it's helpful. I find I sleep better, I find I do better when I can exchange the electrical energy to the earth. The concept of energetic grounding, one can do in an airplane. One can do in a boat, one can do anywhere in a building on the top floor of the Empire State Building, you can still ground. So what you do with your physical body and that electrical exchange, and what you do with your attention and that engagement with recognizing the center of the earth is two slightly different things. There's this physicist called Carla Rubelli, and he wrote a book called Reality Is Not What It Seems, and he essentially says that all connection is field-to-field connection. There is no time and space. So if you have a field connection to the earth field, you're engaging connectedness, and that's done with your attention. Field-to-field connection.

Speaker 1 · 34:43Thank you. You talk about this electrical exchange, and you've said in the past that grounding is an important energy basic. If you are ungrounded, you can overload your nervous system. In energy work, you can only hold what you can ground. Can you elaborate on what you mean by that?

Speaker 2 · 35:14So I've been to many new age ceremonies, and often in new age ceremonies, people are not as skilled as they might be, and they invite a lot more energy into the space than the space has capacity to hold. When that happens, you tend to lose people. And ground is a fundamental. Being able to offload excess energy to the ground, be able to receive energy from the ground, being able to modulate your system with ground. I mean, ask any electrician, it's what the ground wire is in your house. Same thing.

Speaker 1 · 36:35Yes. Touching the soil with their hands and their bodies and kind of connecting with the earth in a very direct physical way.

Speaker 2 · 36:48Yeah, and they've got not only their attention on the ground, they have their bodies on the ground. And so the electrical, just like static electricity, we know about that. Touch a car and you can feel the static electricity. That is the physical connection to the ground. And then there's the attention connection to the ground, which adds that felt sense awareness of connection.

Speaker 1 · 37:16And Linda, I don't know if this is say appropriate or relevant, but you've once led a practice in which you asked me and a few others to say sense into the ground about 20 feet below the surface and sense into the deeper layer of earth beneath our feet. Would you recommend that as a practice as a part of this grounding skill?

Speaker 2 · 37:50I would recommend first developing the way of connecting. So the practice of building the roots and building that sense of connecting to the center of the earth, because that's a prerequisite to feeling and sensing into the ground. It's a way of orienting to earth as primary, and then you can add the oh, I can do earth beneath my feet and down to bedrock.

Speaker 1 · 38:16Right. Would you be open to sharing one or two practices with us of how to ground?

Speaker 2 · 38:25Yes. So the first practice of grounding is to attend to your spine, that center core of your body, from the base of your skull down through your neck, your torso, your abdomen to your sacrum. Extending your awareness around your pelvic bowl and down through your legs, through the bones there, to your feet. And becoming aware of the bones of your arms. Body connection from your spine, your rib cage, to your spine, to your rib cage, to your sternum, to your clavicles, and down your arms. So centered in my bones. Attending to essence in my spine, in my bones. And then imagining from the base of your sacrum a root growing down through the center of the earth. Very fast-growing root, oblivious to anything. It finds its way down to the center of the earth in record time. And once you reach the center of the earth, you can anchor to something there. I prefer boulders myself, but whatever works for you is just fine. And you feel that root extending from the base of your circle all the way down to the center of the earth. And anchor thing. Reaching the center of the earth and finding something to anchor there. Connecting to the warm, nourishing heart of the earth. Once you have a connection to the warm, nourishing heart of the earth, you can claim your birthright. Your essence engages earth energy and creates your form. That's how your body came to be here. And you bring that earth energy up through your roots. Just as if you were a plant or a tree. Roots know how to bring nourishment from the earth. Into your feet, your lower legs, your knees, your thighs. Into your pelvis. Every cell of your body nourished, supported, and sustained with earth energy. Receiving your birthright that nourishes and sustains every cell of your body. It comes directly into your pelvis through your sacrum. Moves through your back. Every cell of your body nourished, supported, and sustained with earth energy. All around your core and your spine. All through the soft stuff in the middle of you, the pelvic viscera, digestive organs, heart and lungs. Every cell of your body nourished. It comes through your diaphragm into the front of your body. Healing the aliveness created energy. Bringing that aliveness to you. Your essence engages with energy. Every cell of your body. Goes up into your arms, your shoulders, elbows, forearms, wrists and hands.

Speaker 3 · 43:17And into your neck and your head. And so your body nourished, supported, and sustained.

Speaker 2 · 43:42Place your attention on your heart, your heart space, and imagine in your heart space a flower nourished and supported and sustained by that earth energy. And that flower receiving energy from the inside through essence of earth expresses your own unique self.

Speaker 3 · 44:08Notice its color, its fragrance. Whether it's open or closed.

Speaker 2 · 44:22How open, how closed. Notice whether it's turned toward the light. Notice your mouth. Nourish supported and sustained. Expressing that which is uniquely you meditate the ground. And your essence and bones.

Speaker 3 · 45:30I live here.

Speaker 1 · 45:39Would that phrase be a good summary of these five basics?

Speaker 3 · 45:50I live here.

Speaker 1 · 45:58Each of those words so powerful. Thank you, Linda. Would you like to say anything more about grounding or the practice of grounding?

Speaker 2 · 46:14It took me about three years to bring my practice of grounding online. So I would start in the morning and I'd do my basic practice, you know, about five minutes of essence, core, ground. And then three minutes later I'd forget it. So it took about three years of establishing the felt sense of ground and then maintaining that felt sense. So I check on it throughout the day. Is it still there? Can I still feel it? Can I sense into it until it became more automatic? Now at this stage, and that's about 45 years later, I notice when I'm not grounded. It's like, oh look at that, you're not grounded. But it's practice. There's a wonderful practice with kids, because kids at a certain age delight in jumping up from behind things and scaring you. And if you can maintain your ground when they do, your ground is there. And from having practice through a lot of kids, it can be done.

Speaker 1 · 47:33And likewise, I think you've used this example where if you walk down the street in, say, an urban setting and other people are walking by you. If you're walking with this sense of connection with earth when you're grounded, people will feel that, people will notice it maybe subconsciously, and usually kind of give you space to walk in the direction that you want to walk in, and they'll kind of move around you. Whereas if you're not grounded, not connected, then more likely to say bump into you or give you less of a birth. Can you speak to that phenomenon?

Speaker 2 · 48:25Yeah, well, ground is a calming presence. And you'll find that people who tend to work with animals have ground because they can bring people into calm. And so often people who are very grounded are people that other people want to be near and around. When you're walking down a street, what gives you birth and people walking around you is a sense of your edge. And if you attend to your edge, other people will attend to your edge. So they go, oh, there's an edge. And they then make room for your edge. So it's a combination of ground and edge that gives you space when you walk down the street.

Speaker 1 · 49:11Yeah, and hopefully you can give people an example or a reminder for them to sense into their space, sense into their body, and find that sense of calm as well.

Speaker 2 · 49:25Yes, often true. 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.

Speaker 1 · 49:44Yeah, and it's what good mindfulness teachers do as well, is we can often teach more by how we are than what we say. You know, my first mindfulness teachers barely spoke English, but they taught me so much just through how they were, and it provided that inspiration for me to cultivate these skills of being and grounding. So for all the mindfulness teachers out there listening, these practices can help us both with our own cultivation of presence, but also make us more impactful as we help others to cultivate mindfulness as well. What would be the next basic or next energetic skill you would recommend people to transition to after grounding practice?

Speaker 2 · 50:51So I'm doing these skills in the order that I engage them, but anybody can engage them in any order that works for them. So there's not a prescribed order for the basics. You just want to have all of them operating at once. And some people find attending to their edge first is what helps them there. Some people attending to their bones, some people attending the ground. Whatever helps bring you into that set of practice is what works.

Speaker 3 · 51:22Thanks for clarifying.

Speaker 2 · 51:24Yeah, so the next one we'll engage is me not me, a way of discerning and clearing your space. And it's really a boundary practice. If you don't have good social boundary skills, you probably don't have good energetic boundary skills. They are part and parcel connected. And some families allow you to have personal space, and some families don't allow you to have versatile space. So you may have never known that you're allowed to have personal space. Your space, when you are not sharing space with others, is an energetic, you know, about arm's length above your head, below your feet, front and back. And that's your auric space. And that's the edge of your auric space. In order to have an auric space, you want to be able to have the space all to yourself. And some people live in a condominium. You really want a single family residence. So 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. People who are empaths and feel other people's feelings often don't know whose feelings or whose. And we should probably talk about that at some point as well, how to engage that one. But the clearing your space, having only your own self in your space, means being able to feel who I am. So that flower in the heart, that essential essence of self, however, you want to have a felt sense of essence, that's who I really am. Oh, that's me. Anything that's not me doesn't belong. 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. All of those ideas are thought forms. Their basic energy, qi, basic energy, coalesced into a thought, a thought form, a belief system, which is not you. None of that's you. The only thing that's you is your sense of essence. So if I attend to my essence, and that's the predominant note or color in my space, and anything that is not that note, or not that color, or not that fragrance, however I perceive it, is not me. I can delete it, push the delete button and go by. I can dissolve it similarly, just take it out of existence. I can give it to the earth. The earth is a great composter. Anything that's not me, all of that energy can go to the earth and get composted and reused. There's a wonderful teacher named Sergio Magagna, and he gives that energy to the earth so that the earth can make something beautiful out of it, which is a lovely concept. So you give it to the earth, you can simply push it out, you can send it back if it belongs to somebody else, you can transform it with a magic wand. All these are mechanisms to dissolve, disperse, move the energy out of your space. So the only thing that belongs in your space is your dream. So we have a dream. We come to the earth with a dream, and our essence engages that dream. And we have a support team supporting our essence in our body. We have bacteria in our body, we have mitochondria, which has other DNA, we have all these things which support our dream. And anything that doesn't support our dream does not belong. You're either on board with the dream or you don't belong in the space. So that's the not me that one takes away and gets ruined. And then once you create more space for yourself, then you call yourself home. You can say your name. Your name is often a doorway to your essence, or however you feel when you're your best self. And say your name and call yourself home into your body. Bring your attention from wherever you might have left it, with other people, with your job, with yesterday, with all the places your attention might have wandered, and bring it back to the here and now so that you have it available to you. So the me is your essence and your attention. The not me is all of everybody else's attention that doesn't belong in your space.

Speaker 1 · 57:07Beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. I think a lot of, as you said, empaths tend to have this notion that we should dissolve our boundaries.

Speaker 2 · 57:20We're told that we're supposed to often. We're told that we're supposed to be one with the universe. And ultimately, yes, but we are a cell within the body of the universe. And if we don't maintain our cellness, then we don't have our node of attention, which is our place of being within the body of everything.

Speaker 1 · 57:46Yeah, you know, as a Buddhist monk for a couple years, I think I had this false notion that I was supposed to become one with the universe and dissolve all of my boundaries and kind of go with the flow of all the energies around me, and like kind of losing myself. And the more I practice and the more I study, and the more I learn from my teachers, the more I realize that that was a false notion and that boundaries are very healthy. When we talk about essence, maybe the closest thing that Buddhists talk about to essence is this chitta or heart-mind that stays with us or that is us as we transition through lifetimes. So it's not as if we don't exist, it's not as if there are no boundaries. There is clearly a sense of this unique energetic feel, the sense of me, and it's very healthy to have healthy boundaries. And so the more I practice this practice, probably more than any of the other basics, the more I feel me, the more I feel lighter, the more I feel say healthier because I'm not taking on everything that I tend to in others. You know, a lot of my work is supporting other people's mental health challenges, and if I don't have the sense of me not me, it's very easy to take on all of these other energies and lose myself and forget myself. And it tends to feel very heavy and disorienting, and you know, that's not healthy for me. Or my family. So I really value this practice of me, not me. Which, if you had asked me about this practice 10 years ago, I may have had a bias against it because I had beliefs that countered this notion. But the more I practice mindfulness, the more I realize that it's important to have this healthy sense of me in my space. And to kind of clean it out and clear it out. And so this practice is very helpful for doing that. So I want to thank you for introducing it to me and for sharing this with us.

Speaker 2 · 1:00:40Yeah, you're quite welcome. You know, the whole world is all about relationship. Everything is connected to everything. And we are a part of the everything. But unless we're holding our node, our point of reference, we lose that point of tension, influence, capacity within the everything. It's like singing in a chorus. If I can't sing my part, the whole song doesn't work. I have to be able to sing my part. So I want to sing my part within the whole. So it's a both and.

Speaker 1 · 1:01:34Yeah. Remember one time with in a group setting, you asked two people to stand next to each other. And you asked one person to stand tall, sense into their energy, hold their work space, and you asked the other person to merge into the other person and kind of like melt into the other person. And there was quite a telling effect that the person who merged into the other person's space lost their essence, and wasn't this say loving energy that a lot of empaths think that they're experiencing when they emerge, but they just lost themselves and they lost their sense of groundedness, space. It wasn't this positive thing that a lot of empaths feel like they're experiencing. It was a loss of energy. It wasn't sort of one plus one, it was more like one minus one almost. Can you speak to this?

Speaker 2 · 1:03:03I can. Burst Lipton has actually a lovely chapter in his book, The Honeymoon Effect. He has a chapter on the halogen gases. And he talks about how when halogen gases have electron rings that are complete in and of themselves. So when they get together, they don't combine electrons. They have each a whole electron ring, and when they get together, they actually start generating more energy between them. When you get elements that are missing parts of their electron ring, and they combine with another element, what happens is a loss of energy into the compound. It becomes something else, but the two do not generate more. The two actually lose a little bit as they move into that connection and compound minerals and energies. So it's a really good chapter, and I recommend it to anybody who really wants to understand this in a the paradigm of our culture, a scientific way. Merging tends to collapse the energies. Holding each of our space and having ourselves tends to generate more energy.

Speaker 1 · 1:04:23Yeah. Oftentimes there are these myths of mindfulness, that mindfulness means being agreeable and being a doormat or just saying yes to everything. But it's important for us to have these healthy boundaries, to be able to show fierce compassion when we need to, and to be able to hold our ground, have that backbone that you mentioned earlier. It's important for us to remember ourselves, who we are, and to help keep this energy moving, or you know, be able to process our own energy without holding on to other people's energies for extended periods of time. Like I may have in my childhood for many years. Can you share a practice or two for this skill of me not me?

Speaker 2 · 1:05:35Yeah. Yeah, let's do the me, not me, and then we'll talk about edge. They're kind of connected edges of me, not me. But the practice of me and not me, adding it to the practices of the tensions that we've already gained. So if I attend to my bones, from the base of my skull down through my neck, my torso, my abdomen to my sacrum, and down my legs, including the bones of my arms, having connected through my rib cage to my arms. That centers me. When I attend to my essence and my bones, I'm now centered and essence present. I connect to the roots that I've engaged. I'll go all the way down to the center of the earth. I'm receiving earth energy up through my body, through all of it. My arms, my head and shoulders, every part of me. And I attend to the flower in my heart, my essence. Nourished by the earth. Enlivened through my essence. And that gives me a reference for me. So I need my reference for me. It can be the flower in my heart. It can be my name. Often your name is a doorway to your essence. Sometimes singing your name to yourself can help you know who you are. Sometimes people have a personal song, which is their song, which reminds them of them. So a reference to essence. Anything that does not match your essence through color, through resonance, through felt sense, through fragrance is not you. Does not belong in your space. So you feel myself and you feel into your space and your body. You can do a body scan. So I have myself in my body, and I scan my body and feel myself. When I first started, I had about a third of my body. There were all kinds of other folks in there. The usual culprits, my mother, my father, my siblings, my lovers, all kinds of folks in my body who were not me. So you scan. I have me, I have my sense of self. Is that me in my head? Is it my neck, my body, my torso? And I feel my sense of self all the way through my body. All the way down through. Whatever is not me, not that sense of self. I can delete it. Just off the computer. I can dissolve it. I can send it back. Everybody's got their own bodies, they don't need mine. Back to yours. I can transform it with my magic wand. I can smudge it out of my system. Some people have a real good felt sense of smudging using the smoke to clear their system. Blessed water is another way that often is sprinkled out through their system. I can give it to the earth. All of that, which is not me. When I did my 10-day vipassan restreat, we sieved our fields, sending it down to the earth. That's another same way cleaning our space of things that are not us. And as we clear our space of that which is not us, it feels lighter, and we reference that shot. Clearing, moving out, not me. And that can include viruses and things that are where your body's not working well. Like don't you're not me, you don't belong.

Speaker 3 · 1:10:11And you get that felt sense of oh there's just me in here. I own this whole space. It's my dream that's living here. My life. My purpose. Nobody else's.

Speaker 2 · 1:10:37And as you say your name, you can feel, perceive, notice the color that is your name filling your space. The resonance that is your name filling your space as you get rid of that which is not for you. However, you perceive yourself. Feel it filling every nook and cranny of your space. All the way to your org edge. Filling your whole space. And then you can give that job to your body. Remember those 40 million neuroimpulses per second. Your body's good at doing a lot of things. You can say, body, this is general housekeeping. Please keep this ongoing. Just like you do breathing, just like you do with my heart beating. Keep my space clear as an ongoing body function.

Speaker 3 · 1:11:42That doesn't mean you won't check in on it just as we do with breathing practices. It'll happen. Even when you don't check in.

Speaker 2 · 1:11:57And then once you have the space clear, say your name, notice your essence however you notice it, and bring all of your attention, all of your essence attention into the here and now of your body.

Speaker 3 · 1:12:13Into this space-time reality.

Speaker 2 · 1:12:18I belong here. My attention is here. I am present in the here and now with all of me. And feel yourself coming home. So that when you say your name, your resonance, color, fragrance, however you perceive it, occupies your whole body.

Speaker 3 · 1:12:43From the top of your head down to the bottom of your feet.

Speaker 2 · 1:12:54And again, give that practice, felt sense. Coming home to your body to maintain freedom. Twenty-four-seven. Add this to your repertoire body just like breathing. Coming home is part of the process. Put that into my unconscious attention. My body attention. Twenty-four-seven.

Speaker 3 · 1:13:25Thank you, Body.

Speaker 1 · 1:13:31And that's me, not for a lot of people who they focus on helping others, pleasing others, supporting others. This practice has this nice feeling of kind of giving permission to ourselves to be me, to be ourselves, and not take on everyone else first. And it's very freeing in that sense.

Speaker 2 · 1:14:13It is. And if you are not yourself, the world loses you. You are not occupying your job in the universe, which is to be you. It loses your essence and your contribution to the whole.

Speaker 1 · 1:14:54Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots perhaps made this phrase super popular by just telling each of his players and coaching staff, just do your job. Don't worry about everything else. Do your job. And it was very simple, and it helped make the Patriots super successful. And a lot of consultants are saying, just do your job. What is your job? And so I love that our job is to be yourself. And perhaps even taking it a step further, some people might say to love yourself. This is our job. And we have other responsibilities, especially if you have kids. But to not forget our job to be yourself and love yourself and value yourself. This is all really important. And I think as one of the just underlying motives of why you're sharing these practices to begin with, is to help people value themselves, be themselves, love themselves. Which is why I'm so delighted that you're sharing these, because it's just so powerful for people to do their job. We talk about the auric space, you know, it's a space about an arm's length in front of us, the sides above and below, behind. A lot of people may not have heard this phrase, aura or auric space. Can you talk a little bit about what that auric space is and how one can cultivate this felt sense of it a little bit more?

Speaker 2 · 1:17:21So we are electromagnetic fields, and our auric space is the extent of our electromagnetic field. So, yes, we have a body. That body is in and maintained with an electromagnetic field that science can now discern, have pictures of Karillian photography is part of that. So it's now becoming recognized as a thing that is part of us and actually part of who we are as beings in the world. We're not just bodies, we're bodies in a field. That field, I'm trying to think of another name for it, but aura. Some people call it our personal space. And auras generally, if we're not sharing space at arm's length, in different cultures that have different space capacities, we can pull our auric edge in. We can, you know, so it's flexible, we can move it. So if we're in a crowded elevator, we can pull it in. And 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, and it's your electromagnetic field. It's made by your essence, it's not divorced from your essence. So your the edge of your electromagnetic field is intelligent and can respond to your attention.

Speaker 1 · 1:19:05And when we talk about boundaries, there's different ways to talk about them, but in one sense, you could think of or sense into a boundary as being your auric edge. And this would it be helpful to think of it as almost like a like a bubble that's surrounding you on all sides, about an arm-length distance, that that's sort of an edge, that that's a boundary which contains your essence. And so, in this uh space, forgive the pun, of me not me, you know, there's this similar practice of edge, this energetic skill, this basic of having a boundary to your auric space.

Speaker 2 · 1:20:04Um the thing is that it's always there. What again, what you don't have is attention on it. So it's the attending to the boundary that actually exists. And your auric boundary is very much like a cell membrane boundary. It's intelligent, it can choose to let things in or not let things in. Bruce Lipton's biology of belief has a lovely rendition on cell membranes and how they work and how they interact. And auric membranes work much the same way.

Speaker 1 · 1:20:44Thank you for clarifying. Yeah, so we're not creating an edge or creating a boundary, but rather we're tending to it. And it's this practice of tending to it, you know, over and over and over as much as we can that helps us remember it's always there, and ideally, we can sense that more and more. Can you share more about this practice of having a boundary? And is there another practice you can recommend to sense into that?

Speaker 2 · 1:21:23Or I think first I'd like to do an exercise. And when we do these exercises, your body knows exactly what I'm talking about. Your cognitive mind may not. So you have to trust that your body knows and relax into your body's wisdom, those 40 million neuroimpulses per second, to play with me for a minute. So, to do this exercise, which will be updating the instructions given to your auric edge, because different families give different instructions to edges, we'll first attend to our center, our bones, and our essence into our bones, feeling that coming from the base of our neck down through our base of our skull, down through our neck, down through our torso to our sacrum, around our pelvic pole, down our legs, from the spine through our root cage to the center of our arms, feeling centered in our bones with essence, tending to the essence that lives in our bones all the time. So attention, our arms connected to those roots that go all the way down to the center of the earth, bringing us earth energy, our birthright, and sustenance comes up to our feet, our ankles, our lower legs, and knees thighs directly into our pelvis, wash into our back, all around our core, the soft stuff in the middle, the front, and our arms, into our neck and head. Feeling all of that. Noticing our essence in our heart space. Your heart's job is to radiate your essence into the world. Thank you, heart. And then we'll attend. We just did our meanot me, so our space is pretty clear. We'll attend to our org edge. Attending to that edge that surrounds our magnetic field. Don't think, just allow it to happen. Trust that that edge is intelligent, your body's intelligent, everything in your system is intelligent, and you can talk to it. So in your mind, say, Hi Edge. Nice to meet you. May be very surprised that you have any attention for it. And say now that I have attention for you, I would like to bring you current to the state of our hearing now. So the new instructions for your orc edge, no matter what previous instructions were given to, this is that your orc edge, just like any good cell membrane, only lets in that which is good for you. You say orc edge, we have new instructions. These new instructions that your job is to only let in that which is good for me. And you might even feel your orc edge and your system do a little bit of recalibrating. Sometimes it feels to me like a chick-chaker chicka chick-chick as things resettle and reorient.

Speaker 3 · 1:25:22Thank you, orchidge.

Speaker 2 · 1:25:30And then you can let your attention release your orchidge for a moment while it reorients and does its job of shifting to new instructions. So that's almost a precursor of having an edge is to update what its job is.

Speaker 3 · 1:25:56I'm gonna let people settle for a minute, so while that continues.

Speaker 1 · 1:26:34We can go there. I think some of our listeners may be inspired by it and helped by it if you want to go there.

Speaker 2 · 1:26:44Okay. So attending to your orc edge is done with your attention, and that is the primary way that that does it. However, we do have a visceral attention. Some of you know that from the belly brain. 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. There's a couple of books that have pictures. There's a book called Energetic Anatomy by Martin Rich. While I can't verify all the things in his books, I can verify the fiber information or what he calls cords. And he has lovely pictures of how those energetic hands come out of your belly. My sister, who works with pre-imperinatal work, has exercises which are part of what develop your nervous system. And when kids are on their bellies and they're simply on their bellies on the floor doing this, they're actually developing their fibers and getting it through their system as they reach for something, as they reach for something else, as they learn to move their legs. That's part of our nervous system that development is getting our belly brains working. And she has a book called Conception the Crawling that has that exercise in it that is important to you. There is Barbara Brandon's book. She has pictures of fibers coming out of the belly and interacting. I have had a Mason tell me that when they in their practice tie their aprons, they're tying their fibers. I have had martial artists, when we tie a ghee in martial arts, we are tying our fibers and creating a boundary between self and other. I've been told that in India the elaborate tying of the garments there is a replication of tying one's fibers. So when you use your visceral hands to help create a boundary between you and the other, it helps you get a felt sense of what we're talking about. So fibers, visceral hands, can be used to attend to your orc edge and give you a felt sense of that orc edge. If I imagine my fibers as two shoelaces, and I originally learned this practice from the deer tribe, and they call it tiny fibers. When you give a little half knot, extend it out to your orc edge, all the way around behind you, coming back through your body. You can't do that with a martial arts ski or physical things. But with your attention, you can, and do a square knot, snug it up against your body. That gives you self. Once we have self, right? I have my fibers, I have extended it and attended to my orc edge all the way around. Come back, and I nice square knot, I've got myself. So if you've done a martial arts practice and you've tied your ghee, it's the same sensation of feeling that felt sense. And all of those of you have that practice, I can feel or you can feel, oh, there I am. Here I am in space. And that gives a visceral attention to your orc edge. So it's nice to have an image in your mind as an attention, but ultimately you want to have the felt sense of your orc edge. So we just use the practice called tying our fibers to delineate a felt sense of our orc edge. So just to repeat it, imagine you have fibers in your hands, give it a little half knot, snug it up, extend it all the way to your orc edge, and all the way around your orc edge. Till it touches in the back. Bring it back through your body to anchor it to your physical self, because some people don't do that so well. Pick it up on the other side, do a square. And this practice is in a book called The Conscious Assembly Work Book by Yannica Kuhl.

Speaker 1 · 1:31:47Thank you.

Speaker 2 · 1:31:48You're welcome.

Speaker 1 · 1:31:51Yeah, and I would encourage people to try this practice in a wide variety of settings, including when you're at your desk at a computer. It's easy to get kind of lost into a school or a camera, to tend to your edge in all sorts of different environments to integrate this practice throughout your life and to notice when do I lose my sense of my edge more easily? And how can I tend to it to remember as much as possible? Thank you, Linda. Um would now be a good time to transition into our last practice. The chakras, yeah.

Speaker 2 · 1:32:49Chakras are energy centers of the spine. They actually have a visceral component. There are nerve ganglion at each energy center. They start at the impar ganglion, which is the bottom of the nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system chain. So impar means one loan, and it's the sympathetic nervous chain that comes down your spine to the impar, right at your perineum. And there's that ganglion, then there's ganglion in each of the chakras all the way up. And you can find the corresponding ganglion in your physiology. But they're energy centers, they're precursors to physical form. Those energy centers are tool sets for each of us, they each have aspects that they attend to and work with in your bodies. So first chakra attends to all things physical. It's at the base of your spine, right at your perineum, just in front of your coccyx. If you do a banda or a cable, you can feel that's the space of your first chakra and all things physical. So if your bills are paid, if your car is in running order, if everything's working in your life, then you probably have a pretty good first chakra. If those things aren't true, then you may want to work with your first chakra to get it more online and functioning. Your second chakra handles felt sense. So it's two to three fingers below your belly button, nestled against your spine, and its job is felt sense. Anything that you feel in sensation, felt sense, the feeling of a room when you walk into it, that's all second chakra. Feelings are a subset of second chakra. Sexuality is a subset of second chakra, sensation, second chakra function. So the ability to feel things. Riding between the worlds and well, the Tao of Equus and Riding Between the Worlds, they're books by Linda Kohanov, and they're all about felt sense. Because critters, horses, dogs, they're all felt sense. And paying attention to that felt sense. People who are empathic and feel other people's feelings often don't have good competency with the chakra. So we're going to do an exercise about having competency with the chakra, because it's important if you don't have that happen. So let's do that exercise and then I'll go through all the other chakras. So the exercise of competency with your second, all chakras open and close. That's just good to know. And the ability to open enclosure chakra and have conscious attention on it is what's going to give you competency. So for the purpose of the exercise, close your eyes, attend to your ground, attend to your center and your core, bones, ground, feeling that. Me, not me, edge. All of our previous basics gets us into presence. And since we've been doing it all morning, how soon they're pretty close at hand. And then imagine right at your belly, you can put your hand on your skin two to three inches below your button button, and even use your hands to help you notice. Imagine that there's an iris or an aperture, just like Looney Tunes, for those of you who have watched Looney Tunes, and imagine this iris opening wide. So imagine it opening wide, right at your skin, two to three inches below your belly button. You're opening your second chakra. And notice what you notice. It might feel comfortable, it might feel uncomfortable. You might like it, you might not like it. There is no right answer. There's only noticing. Notice what you notice. Does it feel familiar or unfamiliar? Any of those could be true. And as you're gathering your information, note it. And then close your second chakra all the way down. Close it down. And again, notice what you notice. Do you like it? Do you not like it? Is it familiar or unfamiliar? Comfortable or uncomfortable. Notice what you notice. And hold my back all the way wide. And again, notice what you notice now that you have a contrast. Like, not like, comfortable, uncomfortable, live unhealed.

Speaker 3 · 1:39:20Notice it all the way back down.

Speaker 2 · 1:39:41And then let it relax into your normal. Notice what your normal is. Could be anywhere along that spectrum. Bring your attention when you're ready. Back into the space, touch your skin. Hi, so second chakras are what allow you that felt sense of the world, and people who are empaths often feel other people's feelings. And if you don't have the ability to close your second when there's too much of that kind of thing in the room, you can get overloaded, overwhelmed, inundated, and not have be able to maintain your sense of self. So the ability to close your second is a really important ability. Some people who are empathic use their empathic ability. I work with bodies, I am an empath, and so I don't want to turn that facility off when I use it. But I don't want to feel inundated by other people's students. So what I learned to do, and I learned this in the psychic school, this was part of their training, was to buffer my second chakra for me with a drum head so that emotions could come, resonate against the drum head, and not enter into my system. I could maintain my me, not me while still perceiving what was out there. And I could distinguish between what was out there and what was in here, which is part of me, not me, by having that buffer. I know one person who used a two-way mirror, he was a psychologist and he used it in his practice, so that image worked really well for him. You find your own image of what works. Normally I ask people to live without a buffer for a while just so that you can practice opening and closing. Because when I walk into a room that has too much felt feeling in it, I'll close. I'll use my other chakras for what I need to know and simply close this. If I'm in relatively normal circumstances, I have my buffer. And so I can use this because it is one of my primary chakras and gain the information without feeling flooded. So learning competency around your second chakra is really, really important for me, not me. All chakras perceive information, meaning incoming, all chakras generate information. It goes two ways.

Speaker 3 · 1:42:42And your second is one of those big ones. Thank you.

Speaker 2 · 1:43:06So we'll move to third chakra, belly button, solar flexus region, depending on who you talk to, because people vary. And remember that all the information you read is somebody else's experience. It's somebody else's experience. What's true for you is your experience. So belly button, solar flexus region, good to know. And now you find out where's yours. For me, mine includes both, but I spent years determining that that was true. So you spend your time, whatever that takes, noticing your own and what that determines. Your third chakra is what turns your lights on, it's your power center. It's where your factory is, your digestive organs, all the that's the physical representation. And if you have a good functioning third, then all of your lights are on, and you're not doing the two dysfunctional mechanisms with third. So the dysfunction is I don't think I'm powerful, so therefore I'm always asserting my power, and often it feels like a battery ramp out in front of the third chakra. The person who does this really well is Donald Trump. You can see that out in front. He's always moving that out in front of himself. The other dysfunction of the third chakra is the victim stance where I have no power, which is not true because you'd be dead. All the likes would be often dead. And often that comes out as covert manipulation, which comes from a third. To me, it looks like little hands that come out from your third chakra and they manipulate from the side. So a good functioning third chakra is a Dalai Lama. He doesn't do power over, he doesn't do victim stance, power under, he simply is. And that is-ness is the full functioning of his body. All the lights are on. So that's third. Fourth chakra, fourth chakra, energy center, is all about self-love, all about the capacity to have compassion for self first, and then extend that to others. Often this one is called sympathy, second chakra, sympathy, empathy, the ability to feel what somebody else is feeling. And this one's called compassion for what others are feeling. So I can have compassion for someone, sensing what they might be feeling, but not losing myself in what they might be feeling. So I can offer them compassion, offer myself compassion, offer others compassion, the radiant energy of heart chakra. Extend both inward and outward. Fifth chakra, all about communication, sound. Musicians often look to me like they have these big ears. People who are telepaths, which is the psychic word for a strong fifth chakra, can look like that. Those switchboards you see them on the old movies where everybody's plugging in. Well, your neck, if you have this, can look like a switchboard. Everybody's plugging in it willy-nilly everywhere. And what you want is all of that to be gone. And if anyone you do want to make a connection right here, at this little hollow in your neck in the new brain, is a good place to connect. When I used to teach psyche school, and of course, there are many telepaths in the school, and the first day they were all worried, they plug in, and I'd lose my voice. So we would talk about it. You can't do it that way. You have to connect right here, more respectfully, not freaked out, and then we can have an exchange rather than me losing my voice. So, fifth chakra, incoming, information, outgoing. Mick Jagger, Tina Turner, they would receive all of that emotional energy with their seconds, and then they would belt it out in their fifth. So, second, fifth, primary chakras. Really good at it. And people who are orators and can influence people with their voice, strong fit chakra. Doesn't mean their information is in alignment, just means they have that chakra skill set. So you can receive here. If you pick up the phone and you know who's on it, and you haven't said anything yet, if you can sing words to a song even though you don't know them, that's all telepathic skill set. So you might want to play with that. But you can open and close your fit, you can organize it, making sure that people connect here rather than nilly. You can pay attention to how your voice comes across. People who are good at hypnosis, mesmeres, they can be called, good fit chakras.

Speaker 3 · 1:48:37People who sing, often good fish chakras.

Speaker 2 · 1:48:42So attending to that. Sixth chakra, which is really in the center of your head. It's not right here at the front of your forehead. This is just the aperture. It's in the center of your head, often associated with sometimes the pituitary, but the pineal gland. Center of your head, top of your brainstem, which is the same conduit where all the chakras are, right along your spine. And the brainstem is just a continuation of the nerves of the spine into your skull, often an origin place. All about vision. Anything that you can see, all about vision. You can close your six, you can open your six, it's all about vision. Some people are so visual. My daughter is so visual that she sees the words across her visual screen. She's not strong here, but her visual is extremely strong. I don't see much. Mine's more this one. I don't have a strong visual sense. So all things vision. Seventh chakra, right at the top of the crown of your head, opens and closes. Access to the above. Again, if you are getting too much data, information from out of your body, you can close it a little, close it down, orient more in your system. And you can modulate all of your chakras because your chakras are simply apertures that perceive information and generate information, information streams. I include a chakra below your feet and above your head, so arm's length above your head, arm's length below your feet, which brackets your aura. Once you get off body, nobody agrees. I found a few people who agree with me, which is always good. But it's simply a bracket of your aura. So you can think super ground, you can think super connection to the above. They're just octaves of that. 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 in and out, just as your seventh does into your body, your ninth does into your auric space. And not that would be nine chakras that I use. And many people have different ways of attending the chakras off body, most agree with the seven in your body, at least now. Third chakras most disagreed on. But I like to bracket art space.

Speaker 1 · 1:52:03Yeah, I've certainly found that very helpful to have those brackets. Thank you for that brief summary of the chakras. One book I found particularly helpful for this topic is Eastern Body, Western Mind by Anadilla Judith. So I highly recommend that book. Some ways that we can run with this, but wondering if there's a practice you'd like to share where we sense into each of these chakras, either like sensing into them or you know, sensing into the light from each one. Here's what you'd like to share.

Speaker 2 · 1:52:50I think what we could is just spend a little bit of time at each chakra, just noticing. Right? There are many chakra practices, and those chakra practices are all valid. You know, you practice them, you learn them, you notice what it can teach you, and then you can engage another one. Many chakra practices. So this will be just a very basic sensing attention on each one so that you get some awareness of where it might be and how it is.

Speaker 1 · 1:53:22That sounds great.

Speaker 2 · 1:53:24Good. So again, our basics so far that we have our attention to spine, essence in our bones, connection to ground, receiving earth energy, our flower in our heart, radiating our essence, clearing our space, using our essence as a reference point to clear our space, nothing in it but that which matches our essence. And calling ourselves home, me not me. Noticing an edge to our orc space. And now we'll attend to our chakras, which would be our fifth basic practice. So having those first four basics in place, you can sit on your hand, which gives you a felt sets reference for your first. Or if you already know it, you can do the kegel, do a banda, so people are already with those practices, and I'll give you a felt sense reference of your first.

Speaker 3 · 1:54:52And then just notice your first. It's like, oh, there you are. Hi first. Just getting a sense of it.

Speaker 2 · 1:55:04The introduction. And notice whether it's familiar or unfamiliar. Do I do I attend to that show? Is that even in my awareness?

Speaker 3 · 1:55:16Some people may and some people may not. It helps govern the physical sense of your body. Simple physicality.

Speaker 2 · 1:56:01Since we're doing this briefly, then move your attention to your second chakra to lift the fingers below your belly button. Nestle against your spine. And notice that your second chakra has a different felt sense than your first. They're different. You can even reference one and then go and reference the other. Feeling the difference in the felt sense. And get to know your second. Hi second. How are you? Good to know.

Speaker 3 · 1:56:46This is the felt sense of my second chakra.

Speaker 2 · 1:56:54Notice if it's familiar unfamiliar. Some people use their seconds a lot, some people don't. Hardly at all.

Speaker 3 · 1:57:06Just notice.

Speaker 2 · 1:57:27Then shift your attention to your third. Belly button solar plexus region. And again, notice what you notice. It's a very different felt sense than the other two. Notice is the shock of familiar. You can move. Move around it, feel it. Times when I use it, times when I don't.

Speaker 3 · 1:58:01What's the felt sense of this shock?

Speaker 2 · 1:58:13Notice this. Contrast it to the first and second, it's different. Different place in my body, different fault sense, different function.

Speaker 3 · 1:58:33All the chakras out.

Speaker 2 · 1:58:46Notice swift your attention to your fourth chakra, your heart region. And notice that. Many people in mindfulness practice spend a lot of time on their heart chakra. You may notice that it's well developed.

Speaker 3 · 1:59:10Maybe a familiar place. Different felt sense than any of the other three. Good to know.

Speaker 2 · 1:59:25Put it into your felt sense memory. This is what my heart chakra feels like.

Speaker 3 · 1:59:46Shift to your fifth chakra.

Speaker 2 · 1:59:50Your throat region. If you sing, if you're a musician, you may find yourself having a well developed fifth if you're a teacher. All that region. If you like music and listen to it on there's the incoming, which is different than the output.

Speaker 3 · 2:00:23It's different than the other four. Bookmark it references.

Speaker 2 · 2:01:04Then place your attention in your sixth chakra, center of your head. It's just above your ears, back from your third eye, in the center of your head. Feel the felt sense of your sex. Even if you're not visual, you would still have a felt sense of your sex. Oh, it's there.

Speaker 3 · 2:01:33It feels like this. I can notice it here.

Speaker 2 · 2:01:57Place your attention on your seventh at the crown of your head. You can put your hand there to help you get a felt sense reference. It has a different sensation than any of the other chakras. Notice it.

Speaker 3 · 2:02:14Feel it.

Speaker 2 · 2:02:16Bookmark it.

Speaker 3 · 2:02:18Oh, this is what my seven feels like. Good.

Speaker 2 · 2:02:39And then we're gonna add the two that I used to bracket the aura. And we're gonna go down first rather than up. Because going down helps anchor our ground. So feel your feet, and then go about a foot and a half below your feet, which is really the edge of your aura, arm's length below your feet. And feel a chakra. Now it's interesting, both Sean and I are doing it, and that felt sense will translate over the zoom call so that you could pick it up and feel. Oh, there it is, way down there. When you have martial artists and they do the demonstrations where Ted Men can't move them, they're using their eight. It's a solid anchor into the ground.

Speaker 3 · 2:03:41Super ground. So a reference. Your eighth brackets Aura.

Speaker 2 · 2:03:50And boom. Then we'll attend to the upper bracket and ninth chakra, foot and a half above your head. It's the top part of your aura. It's nice to have a reference of all the other ones as well. And then feel all of them together. Seven in your body, nice up against your spine. Online. Noticed, talking to each other. Racketed bottom and top of the eighth and the ninth. When all is in balance, balanced, online, communicating. When all is in balance, bring your attention back to your space, touch your skin.

Speaker 3 · 2:05:06I leave you.

Speaker 2 · 2:05:19So now we've covered all five basics with context so that people can have a reference to them. And what I'd like to offer at the end, maybe even in the seventh section, is the basics all at once.

Speaker 3 · 2:05:38Great. Thank you.

Speaker 2 · 2:05:41Cool. Anything you want to say?

Speaker 1 · 2:05:46I think it's easy for people to think of these kinds of practices as not being mindfulness practices because they're not traditionally taught in certain schools or traditions. But I think they are mindfulness practices, and they're highly valid. They can complement traditional quote-unquote mindfulness practices like body scans and mindful breathing and mindful walking. And I highly encourage people to utilize these practices to cultivate this embodied sense of mindfulness as much as they can, to see or to sense which of these practices are useful for you at different times, see which ones, or to sense which ones may feel familiar, which ones feel a little bit scary or undercultivated, and to move in maybe steps towards cultivating these, maybe listen to these recordings multiple times to really sense into the nuance of what's being shared here. Linda, you've covered so much ground that isn't talked about in our circles that much, and there's a lot of nuance here to be felt into. So bottom line is I'm really grateful for you sharing these practices and guiding us through the experiential felt sense of these practices. So those are my initial thoughts. But thank you for sharing all of this.

Speaker 2 · 2:10:27You're so welcome. Good. So then we'll put it all together in one full practice. So please, feet on the floor, and to your spine. That central core of your body comes from the base of your spine, base of your skull down through your neck, your torso, your abdomen to your sacrum. Feeling the length of your spine, and those hefty pieces of bone as they live in the center of your body. Extending your awareness around your pelvic bowl through the bones there, down through your legs, into your feet. When your attention is in the bones of your legs, you are centered in each of your legs. Centered in your torso, centered in your legs. Noticing where your rib cage meets your spine, coming around your rib cage to the front, your sternum up, sternum to your collarbones, your clavicles, down your arms. When your attention is in the bones of your arms, you are centered in each of your arms. Centered in your torso, centered in your legs, centered in your arms, centered in your body. When you attend to essence in your bones, you have core. Your essence is always in your body. It's your attention that wanders. When you attend to essence in these bones, you have core. Bringing up earth energy, your birthright, from the warm, nourishing heart of the earth, into your feet, your ankles, your lower legs, your knees, your thighs, into your pelvis. Directly into your pelvis through your sacrum. Washing all through your back, around your core. Every cell of your body nourished, supported and sustained with earth energy. Your birthright. Thank you, Earth. All the soft stuff in the middle, your pelvic, visceral, digestive organs, heart and lungs. Every cell of your body nourished, supported and sustained with earth energy. Through your diaphragm to the front of you. Up into your shoulders. Down your arms, elbows, forearms, wrists, and hands. And into your neck and head. Celebrating your birthright, earth energy throughout your body. Your essence engages earth energy and creates your form. Your body.

Speaker 3 · 2:13:52Thank you, Earth.

Speaker 2 · 2:13:58Attend to your heart space and that flower that you've envisioned and discovered in your heart space. That unique expression of your essence. It helps you radiate your essence into the world. It nourishes you in your heart space. It nourishes your orc space, nourishes your body. And it can nourish beyond your heart space, body space, and orc space. But really your concern is to feel your essence within you.

Speaker 3 · 2:14:42So that you can hold yourself in relationship with the world.

Speaker 2 · 2:14:51Say your name as a doorway to your essence, or notice your flower as a doorway to your essence. Anything that does not match your essence is not you. You can delete it, you can dissolve it, you can send it away, and give it to the earth. You can vacuum it up, put a little vacuum bag outside your aura with an incinerator just for that purpose. You can transform it with your magic wand, you can smudge it out of your system. There are so many ways to get rid of that which is not you.

Speaker 3 · 2:15:27Pick your favorites.

Speaker 2 · 2:16:00Bring your attention back from wherever you might have left it into the here and now of your body.

Speaker 3 · 2:16:06So that you can be here and now yourself coming into presence the here and now of your body.

Speaker 2 · 2:16:29Give both of these functions to your body to operate for you twenty-four-seven. Just like they do breathing. Heart rate. Your orc edge contains you, it protects you, and it has newly updated instructions to only let in that which is good for you. Thank you, orc edge. We'll add our visceral attention to our orc edge by tying the fibers. Fibers are visceral hands, energetic hands which come out of the belly button. Mangin them in two as if they were two shoelaces. A little half knot, snug it up to your body. Extend your hands out in front of you, arms length around your sides and into the back of you, closing your auric edge, bringing it back through your body to anchor it to your physical, and a little a square knot.

Speaker 3 · 2:18:02Snuck up against your rock.

Speaker 2 · 2:18:05So now your visceral hands, your fibers, are delineating your auric edge with adding visceral attention to feeling the felt sense of your auric edge. Ultimately, when you attend to your auric edge, you want to feel it viscerally as well. Then we'll attend to our chakras one through seven in our body. First chakra, just in front of the toxics, such a panel. Second chakra, two to three inches below your belly button, ness it against your spine. Third chakra, but in solar plexus region. Each of them feel differently. They're all intelligent, they all can talk to each other. Up to your fourth chakra, loving yourself and others in the world. Into your fifth, your throat region, having to do with all forms of sound communication.

Speaker 3 · 2:19:27Your sixth, all forms visual. Your seventh connection to the above.

Speaker 2 · 2:19:46Um bring Chico to the body. All the way above your head to your knife. Down above your head. Down and around.

Speaker 3 · 2:19:58Back down to your eighth. So all of your chakras are in the two online and connect it.

Speaker 2 · 2:20:10From the ground, through the side of your body. Up to the night. Down and around back to your eight. Again delineating your arm gauge.

Speaker 3 · 2:20:23Tilling you saw with you.

Speaker 2 · 2:20:28When all is in balance and intended to bring your attention to your body, touch your skin. That is a good basics practice, which takes five or ten minutes to engage. You can engage it in the morning, when you get up, check on it throughout the day. And over time, you'll be able to drive this vehicle with your attention on the edges of the road, your fenders, all the center, so that you can drive this vehicle as well as you drive your car. Or better.

Speaker 1 · 2:21:21Back to the basics. Back to the basics. Back to the basics. Linda Cesare, thank you so much for sharing these basics with us. These energetic skills to help us be ourselves and to be more present. You've dedicated your life to these practices and many more. You've helped thousands of people around the world, uh, many more than that. And I see you as someone who's quite connected with yourself and with so many energies in our world in a loving, wise way. And so I appreciate your practice and your generosity of spirit and the skill in which you share these practices with others. With this embodied sense of equanimity, it's like caring perspective. I appreciate your humility, and it's been uh pleasure learning from you, practicing with you, and it's been an honor speaking with you today. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 · 2:22:44You're so welcome, it's been my pleasure.