[182] Uniting the Nightclub Community through Somatic Meditation - with Rebeca Castella
10:32PM Nov 26, 2024
Speakers:
Keywords:
meditation evening
somatic practices
body beyond body
lucid dreaming
dream yoga
death practices
liminal space
slowing down
earth descent
10 points practice
lower belly breathing
seated posture
somatic field
pain relief
dedication of merit
Good evening.
So hi shanbala, so we have a suite happening tonight. We are gathering Sanghas. We are uniting the nightclub community of Andrew holotech, which this Monday evenings are part of with some of my community, and Shambhala is in representation of my Ibiza meditation friends. So happy to have you. I've invited a few of my meditation friends to join these evenings, so we have sangas United. So welcome to those of you live and those of you who will listen to the recording afterwards. So I wanted to take a few minutes to just go through today what it is that we're doing here, because sometimes it's good to get little perspective on what's you know, why are we here? What are we doing? What is the point of gathering in this way? And I was doing a little bit of this exercise myself before, and I wanted to do it together with you. So as I just mentioned, this Monday meditation evening is part of the night club offering, which is the community of andropolitech. He has four different meditation teachers that are offering this on every Monday evening. And I get to host one of the Mondays every month. And now on my part of things, there might be a few of my friends joining so that will be joyful for me and hopefully for all of you too. So what is it that's being offered here? What am I offering specifically, and what's the nightclub community offering? So we're offering a space of meditation. It's that called the Monday meditation group. And every teacher has their own style and their own way of teaching, and what I have been doing, specifically on this Monday evenings, is to offer the practices that have been the most helpful to me, which are the somatic meditation practices, or somatic meditation protocols as taught by my teacher, Reggie Ray, and most of these practices are lying down meditation. There we start with the lying down posture, just as a as a way to enter what I would like to call the body beyond the body. And I've been touching on this on a few different Mondays, what we mean and what what the purpose is, but I like to revisit this a little bit today, so the body, beyond The body, that is what we're touching in these practices is so we're actually using our physical bodies to enter a space that exists, not just inside of our bodies, but actually beyond our physical bodies. It could, you know, it's in many traditions. It's called many different things. It could be the primordial space, the nature of the mind,
the beyond the source, the essence, if it's Christianity, would be God, maybe touching God. Many traditions call it love. The Buddhist tradition call it emptiness. So all of these words, actually, as we often say, to name the that is, that is beyond words, the non the non word. So this is a space that we are able to touch through meditation, and for me personally, is the space that I can touch in with this space, mostly through these specific somatic practices. So how does this connect? I wanted to mention a little bit how does this connect to what Andrew hollicheck is offering in his community as his main areas of teachings are on lucid dreaming, on Dream Yoga and. On the death and dying practices, and also lately and coming up more and more on dark retreat practice. So how is specifically my meditation offering connected to Andrew's teachings and practice and offerings? So in my understanding, after studying with Andrew for a few years, you know, all these practices are bringing us to have more awareness, more awareness in our daily lives, and with a nighttime practice, more awareness during our night life and in the beyond after death, more awareness in in times of dying and death. So it's all about bringing awareness, either to the daytime or to the night time or to the time of dying and death, death and dying. So that is the the main connection. And this awareness we can we can touch in many different ways and through many different practices. But for me, the somatic practices are really a way that that works, and these specific somatic protocols, or somatic meditations, bring us, you know, most of you have already tried these for now, so you have your own experience, but they bring us to this liminal space, this in between space that's also what in the death and dying teachings, is called the Bardo, the In between, or the gap. So this liminality of, Am I awake? Am I asleep? And this blurry space is a very fertile space for for awakening, or, you know, bringing awareness, and where we are completely, fully awake. You know, our egos is very much at bay and very active. And when we're completely asleep, we are, you know, gone and usually unconscious. So these practices bring us to this in between, to this liminal space that is very fruitful and very fertile. So let me see if there's anything else. Yeah, just one more point that has been also very, very current, very in my mind this week, and it has to do with speed and and slowing down. So actually, Brad and my husband and I, we just led our first weekend retreat here in our house in Spain this weekend. And people came from many different places in Europe and and the the one thing that stood out the most and every time I leave the island, is what stands out the most to me is the speed, the speed of our society, and the speed that most people live in these days, the almost like an addiction to busyness and addiction to productivity, and addition an addiction to action and doing, and really the these practices, to me, serve as an antidote to this speed. It's a way to really come back home and slow down and touch base with that essence that is nowhere to be fine found when we are too speedy, then we when we are too busy, when we're speeding through our lives and we don't take moments to just be that's that's when we kind of get lost in the distraction that Andrew talks about a lot also. So these practices are of a lot of benefit to slow down, to come back home and to touch base with, with our being, in our essence. Okay, so without further ado, you're gonna jump into a practice. And I hope you have the opportunity, if not, try to make that to have a space that you can lay down. We can lie down on our backs. We're
I have some new headphones today, so I'm really hoping that you can hear me really well, but please, if you don't hear me, if I starting to fade, then please just unmute yourself and let me know. So we are lying on our back. We are keeping our feet grounded, in connection to the ground, to the surface, underneath the ground, the earth, and we're putting our hands under our lower belly and closing our eyes, and just taking a minute or two to arrive to land in this posture, let ourselves just notice and feel What's present for us at this moment, right here and
feeling our breath as it naturally enters and leaves our body And
noticing gravity, inviting us To relax and surrender downward and
and so far in these Monday evenings, we've gone through a few different protocols. We've done the 10 points practice a couple of times. We've also had we also gone through the practice of the 12 fold lower belly breathing. And today we're going to do the earth descent. But before we enter that space, we're gonna do a brief 1210 points practice. Sorry, so just noticing these 10 points that are in contact with the earth as we're lying here, which are the feet, the butt cheeks, the mid Back, the shoulder blades, the elbows and the head and
and as we breathe in, allowing our body to take that breath in, and we Notice what is here right now, what's present, any tension, any pain,
any worries. So we notice what's here with in breath, and as we breathe out, we allow our out breath to go downward through these points, relaxing downward towards the earth you
so we're just going to take a few breaths like that, breathing in, noticing breathing out, relaxing downward through the 10 points and.
So now we're going to continue descending downward into the earth. We're staying connected with these 10 points. And as we're breathing in, we're noticing our body. And as we're breathing out, we relax completely downward, like letting gravity take us down, inviting us to relax, melt, release.
We can visualize, at first, just melting downward into the earth a few centimeters.
Now, with each exhale, we allow our body to sink further, so maybe 20, 3040, centimeters. Then the next in breath, we take it from down there. So we sank down 3040, centimeters, take a breath in from there. Feel notice, and then breathing out, descending a little further, meter to meters, and then breathing in from down there.
And breathing out descending further.
So we'll continue like this in our own rhythm for a few minutes,
and if you notice yourself coming back up, it's not A problem. We just keep sinking with each exhale and
to breathe in, we notice our body filling up with breath, filling up with life. As we breathing in, we notice what's here. We allow whatever is here to be here. And with the exhale, with the out breath, we just relax completely down, melting like a little stick of butter and some Sandy, hot beach with the sun laying on it just would drip, drip, drip down into the sand, into the earth and
With each exhale, we allow gravity to bring us down, the earth to take all the tension, all the worries, all the concerns, all the judgments, all the ideas, all the concepts, just letting them go for this Session, letting it all Go.
Whenever we find ourselves, we're going to come back to our cushion, back to our body, and just breathe Naturally, noticing our body, noticing our state of mind,
noticing our heart and
from here we're gonna slowly sit back up again, transition Through lying in our side for a few breaths and
Taking a comfortable seat keeping our eyes closed to get started
connecting with the points of contact with the Earth. Now in the seated posture, sits bones, our feet, our legs and
allowing our torso to raise from the base up to the space above and
leaving our hands rest comfortably on our thighs,
feeling a strong back along a soft front, tucking in the shin a little bit So we can open the back of our head and
we can visualize in the seated posture The string on the center on the earth, the earth going up through our body and out through our crown to space above,
feeling gravity again, pulling us down, grounding us, staying connected to the bigger body of the earth, and at the same Time, noticing our our body, our being racing, sitting with dignity and integrity towards the space above and around and
taking Some breaths now in the seated posture with the earth in the same way as we were doing lying down, so now, breathing in, noticing our body In this posture, breathing out, downward, relaxing, releasing down and
From the space, feeling connected to the ground and also available in the space, and start opening our eyes slightly, raising our gaze, maybe a meter or a meter and a half in front of us.
If you can stay home within us, same Time as allowing the outside world to penetrate and
place your gaze a little bit more, maybe Two three meters ahead and
and eventually erase Your gaze all the way looking just ahead And
okay.
Thank you. Applause.
So I wanted to read a page from body somatic practices from this book, awakening the body. I read your A, this is the short it's a it's a thin books, the short version of the of the somatic practices by ready the the bigger, longer version is called touching enlightenment, finding realization through the body that was written before this book. And this book is a little bit more to the point in the summary. And I personally prefer the the other book has a lot more view, a lot more understanding, but there's some good nuggets here, and I wanted to read a little page. I
it's called the dimensions of the body, and it's part of the latter part of the book of check, a chapter called how the practices unfold, and specifically paradoxes of the soma. So the soma that we come to know in somatic meditation is different from our conventional ideas of our body in another in another way, when we enter the somatic practices, we are beginning with our notion of our body as contained within the envelope of our skin. As we progress through the protocols, however, we gain intimation that there may be more to it. In fact, as we learn to set aside our assumptions and preconceptions about our body and really look. We begin to sense that the envelope of our skin is an arbitrary boundary, as we begin to experience within our delimited body, but not bounded by it, a much more extensive somatic field. It is still our body interoceptively, it is the same experiential space, but we see there's much more to the experience of our body than we previously thought. For example, we may begin to get an inkling that our Soma actually has no boundaries at all. That while we may try to restrain and limit our somatic scope, we are continually called to let go and open further and further in ancient Chan and Zen, it is said that in meditation, our practice is to abide fully and completely in this immediate body of ours. Over time, though, we begin to discover that this body of ours actually includes the external incarnation of the world around us, even up to the entire cosmos, with all its realms of being, as always, with these wonderful practicing traditions, what is being referred to here is not theory, but rather possibilities of an actual personal experience. Of course, we know scientifically that our body is porous, infinitely receptive and intimately connected with our entire environment, but it is quite another matter to discover this experientially in our practice and in Our body.
So this is a little write up I'm ready about what I was calling at the beginning of the body, beyond the body, and hopefully you had an experience of that beyond the words. There's nothing like experiencing it beyond the words. And I wanted to offer an opportunity, if there are Any questions, any experiences of the practice, any doubts, I
Okay. Do you want to speak? Shambhala, okay, Alyssa, Can you unmute Shambhala, please. Yeah, she should be able to unmute now. Oh, you can unmute.
Okay, thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, hello, Rebecca and everybody who's there. Oh, it was just perfect meditation for me. And what was very special, I felt I became, after a short while, very flat, more like two dimensional, not the three dimensional self perception I usually have. But it was getting like flatter and flatter and flatter. So I became very big, but not high. It was this thin layer of my body spreading out like you do with dough, you know, very funny and pleasant. Oh, sensation. And then I noticed that my mind was separating from the body and doing its own thing and thinking about a very crucial subject of my current life. And I wanted to shut it up, but it didn't work. You know, usually I can silence the mind when I meditate, but here it would was really adamant to have a right to be active. And so I tried to make a little distance between these voices, these thoughts and my consciousness. And there were moments where I could do that, and then I became spacious, even more flat, more spread out
and drifting, and that was very like a reset, like regenerating. And then, when you said, Now, sit up. I said, Oh, no.
Oh, thank you, because it's so just what I needed to deeply relax and connect with Mother Earth. I love these 10 points. I did that once or twice with you before and I forgot. So it was wonderful to remember that also for my own practice. So thank you very much. Rebecca,
thank you, Shambhala. I'm happy you could make it
not really a question, but I felt like sharing it.
Yeah, nice. I love, I love hearing the sharings. Because there is always as many sharings as there is people. You know, there's like never one same experience. I have not yet heard the dough part. It makes me want to run to Sweden, to my mom and make cinema rolls. That was a very sweet image. Yeah, yeah. I mean, often my experience is, to me, there's a relief. My body becomes more porous and more of nothing. You know, there's not this solid form, physical form that I usually walk around in, you know, this is me. This is my body. This is this, you know, like my my being seems to be contained often by this idea of my physical body. But, but these practices often bring me in different ways. But, you know, a loosening, or a liberation, a little bit of that, of those boundaries, and it sounds along those lines, that the with the dough, Shambhala becoming a dough, that's very nice.
And also, I was very identified this afternoon with the body, because I had a very strong treatment. I have a problem in my sexual Iliad joint, so I have lots of pain since two weeks. And I got a session today at last, and it was quite painful, and I'm still feeling the pain. I didn't want to take a painkiller, and so I could feel how during the meditation, I could separate myself from the physical sensation of pain in the lower back. And that was very wonderful, because when I'm in strong pain, I get so identified with the body, and it's just concentrating on that sensation. And in this meditation, it just Yeah, it was there, but not important, kind of Yeah,
yeah. That's actually a really, good point. I have had some sessions, not always, but sadly, I, you know, I suffer from migraines and, and sometimes it has happened that I do these practices with a migraine and, and it actually releases. It's like, you know, because we are we, you know, I do identify with my migraines. You know, I am a person who suffers from migraine. Oh, no, this migraine is here now. Oh, what am I going to do? How am I going to get it away and and, like I said, not always, but this, this practice, have been helpful. There's something about, yeah, dissolving, like I was inviting us to dissolve the concepts and dissolve the judgments and dissolve these ideas that we have about anything, and that actually includes pain, you know, pain in the physical body. Amazing how sometimes unconsciously we can, you know, grasp onto this. Yeah, actually, I heard this concept that really stood out to me yesterday listening to a little a little talk by Anne, or a little piece of one of his the book study on preparing to die from a few weeks ago, when he was saying that we don't need to grasp after struggle. But it seems like on some strange level, we are, you know, addicted to struggle, and we grasp after struggle, and how we can, even to some level, do that with with physical pain, it's incredible. And how even just relaxing and relaxing and releasing and opening and allowing and letting go, actually, can, you know, open some things up for us to actually cease feeling the pain. So it's like magic.
This meditation was better than painkill. It nice.
Anything else? Any other comments i
Oh, Rebecca, you're muted. Oops, okay. How long have I been muted? Not so long, I think. Okay. So Alisa, we forgot. I usually like to start the sessions with the aspiration, and I like to end them with the dedication. But maybe we can close just with both of those two, one after the other. Maybe the aspiration first and the dedication after. If you have those available. Alisa, To pull them up.
Sorry,
I feel I look very blurry on the screen. Do I just look blurry to me, or do I look blurry to you too? You don't look blurry. No, okay,
a little bit
Okay, there we go, aspiration. So let's just close by doing this aspiration. Take three breaths together and
may develop complete acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions and to all people. May I experience everything nakedly, completely without mental reservations or blockages. May I never withdraw from life or centralize onto myself, may my heart be lay bare and open to the fire of all that is
the dedication of merit, whatever goodness my practice has brought, I dedicate to all those who suffer, whatever insight and joy I have found I willingly share with all beings, whatever marriage my practice has generated, may it be multiplied to infinity for the happiness and welfare of all.
Okay, thank you. Good night everyone, or a good day. Bye, bye.