[180] A Somatic Meditation Practice - with Rebeca Castella
10:32PM Nov 26, 2024
Speakers:
Keywords:
Earth descent
meditation practice
somatic meditation
body relaxation
earth breathing
bigger body
nirmanakaya
sambhogakaya
dharmakaya
practice retreats
dedication of merit
personal aspiration
liminal space
technical issues
practice opportunities
There we go.
Hey So good evening in Europe and good day in America.
Good to be back.
So I wanted to do a practice called Earth descent today. So for me, this Monday meditations that we gather. For me personally, and I want you know that's what I want to offer in the group to are about the biggest part of it, practice, practice, practice meditation, because Andrew is so incredibly good at giving us a lot of the view. And I feel I personally after I listen to Andrew, and I follow him, and I do courses with him. I need to integrate a lot of his teachings, so I'm mostly wanting to focus on the practice part of things in this group. And I hope, I hope that resonates for you. My my little plan for today is to take maybe the first 10 minutes or so to talk a little bit about practice. So have a little piece of you and and then jump right in and probably do a good 40 minutes or so of a practice, and half of that will probably be lying down. I hope all of those of you who maybe haven't been with me before, I hope you have a situation that that's possible. Otherwise you can, you can remain seated. You don't have to lie down. But I'm hoping to do about 20 minutes of lying down, and then 20 minutes of sitting back up, approximately, and then I will leave 10 to 20 minutes at the end for any questions, comments, shares, anything that anybody has fresh on their heart that they would like to to bring to the group. So I hope that's a good plan, and let's see what happens. So a little bit on the view. So what are we doing and why? Actually, before I do anything else, I would love to do what I have been doing in this Monday evenings. Just start with the aspiration, and then we will end with the dedication. I hope you have that available, Alisa, but I will just say a few words while you pull that up on that for any of those who are here, potentially for the first time, or haven't been here, or just as a reminder for those who've been here before. So I like to start my practice sessions with an aspiration, just aspiring for my practice to not just be of benefit to myself, but also to others, because, like Andrew very, very often says at the end of many sessions, if what we are doing here is not of use to others, then it's absolutely pointless, absolutely useless. So for that reason, I like to you know, just take a moment to feel into why, why we're doing this, what our motivation, aspiration, intention is. And then at the very end of the session, we offer whatever marriage we might have accumulated by showing up here today even by doing the practice to
to others. So we don't keep it to ourselves.
So at least any chance you're finding that little piece of text of aspiration, this particular aspiration is actually based on an original piece by Chogyam Trungpa and and rewritten a little bit by my main teacher, Reggie Ray I really, really like this aspiration. I do it
daily, or almost daily as as often as I sit.
He was up Alyssa, but it moved to night club, okay?
So just taking a moment to gather ourselves and
just take a good posture while we wait for those meaningful words.
And then I like to just read it
at a slow pace and really feel the words and. Tune into the meaning from the heart.
There we are. Okay, so let's take one breath together, one sip of space. Andrew says,
if you feel so inspired, you can either put your hands in Anjali or put your hands on your heart, either way, and let's just do this aspiration together. May I 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. Let's just take a minute and feel into if there's any extra piece of intentionality or aspiration that's personal just to ask that we would like to bring to today's practice. You
Hey. So a few words on Why meditate altogether and why the specific practice that I feel inclined to share today.
So, as Andrew also often says, and I do too, one of my our favorite translations of meditations is to become familiar with becoming familiar with our minds, and we have a big array of tools to do that, which is incredible, but sometimes also, as Andrew says, we can get lost in The display, we can lose the essence in the display. So Tom sometimes, it happens to me all the time, and I'm sure it happens to you. If we have too many tools, we can get little blinded by just opening this toolbox and looking at all these beautiful tools, but actually not using them. You know, the whole point of the tools is to use them when when needed, when necessary. So the tool that I have been offering specifically in this Monday evening in Europe meditations is a somatic meditation as taught by my main teacher, Reggie Ray and and I would like to just say a few words, maybe as reminders or maybe as first comments about somatic meditation. So I don't have a lot of experience. I know Mayra does, and maybe some of you have had with yoga nidra, and it's a little bit, it's a little bit bordering yoga nidra. So part of the somatic meditation, as taught by Reggie, is done lying down and and one part of this is very, very relaxing and very restful, because, you know, relaxed body, relaxed mind and relaxed body and mind, open body and open mind. And I'm sure, as many of you have heard, and I think I say that every time, if the whole path would be reduced to one instruction. What would that be? Good students of Andrew, might I say it open and relax? Yes, that's it, open and relax. Open and relax. And for me personally, no other practice has helped me open and relax as much as the somatic protocols or the somatic practices that that I that I practice, and that I have had the good fortune to stumble upon. So this is my personal inspiration. And of course, we teach what we. Most need to learn as well. So me, like many people in this Sangha, I'm a very heady person. I like to think a lot. I seem, seems like I'm very addicted to thinking. And, you know, it's, it's, there's a lot of activity, a lot of activity going on. Non stop. Non stop. I remember when I first arrived to meditation, I kept thinking, if I just could find that a button that said pause, if I could just push pause button. Oh, my goodness, wouldn't that be amazing and and eventually I realized, you know, it's not, it's not as fast as just pushing a button one time and then, you know, I'm pushing it, and then it starts again, but slowly, slowly with time and with these practices, you know, the activity does slow down. And definitely with these practices, you know, we're able to touch something else, something different than just the and I know you all know this, so it's just a reminder. But these practices particularly have helped me, in this regard, to really come into my body much much more. Relax My body much more. And so relax my mind and be able to feel a little bit of a break, a pause, a piece, sometimes short, shorter and sometimes a little bit more extended. So let's see what what the practice bring today. So just a few words on this specific practice that I want to bring in today. I have not offered this one in this community before. It's called the earth descent, Earth breathing, or earth descent. Maybe some of you are familiar with Reggie Ray's work, and you know this. So Reggie calls these practices protocols or or practices or exercises. So there's quite a few, like I said, protocols or tools, that all you know, there's one overarching goal, let's say, but there's also some particularities. So Earth descent, particularly to me is to really taste the bigger body. You know, all the somatic practices in general. You know, somatic is from Soma body, body based practices, we use our body to somehow get rid of of our body. No, that's not correctly put but, but it's like we do the practices with our physical body, basically to realize that our body is much more than just our physical body. And probably many of you have heard the teaching on the three bodies of the Bucha, but the in the Vajrayana or in Sanskrit, this teaching, these bodies are kayas called kayas. So we're talking about the nirmanakaya, sambhoga kaya and dharma Kaya. So nirmanakaya being the body of manifestation, body of form, sambogakaya, body of bliss, or energetic body. And Dharmakaya is the the primordial space, the open space, the the the body beyond the body, let's say that ground of everything. So through these practices, our physical body becomes one part of the body, but we are also able to touch those other two bodies which are part of the bodies of the Buddha, the bodies of an awakened, of an awakened being. So in other words, through these practices, we become slowly, slowly, or maybe not so slowly. You know, everybody sought their own speed, more and more awakened, more and more of a Bucha.
And so this is, this is also an aspiration, as part of this practice is to actually touch
the awakened state, or be awakened and taste that and touch that. So part of my intention today is for all of us to touch this state. So let's get on with it. So for those of you who can we're going to start lying down and rely on our back.
If you you have a comfortable space,
either a blanket or a meditation Sabaton. You.
Sick brain here.
Can you all still hear me, all right? I think so. I have these pods in I get a thumb up, yes, you can hear me perfect. Okay, so we're going to lie on our back. You can use your meditation cushion if you want to have your head a little more elevated, or just lay flat on the floor. If that's comfortable for your neck, you
and then we're keeping our feet grounded and our knees comfortable, leaning towards each other if you want or need a scarf or a belt or something to tie your knees on, if you feel like you're
if you're straining your knees and it doesn't feel naturally, and you have that not too far and handy, please, please put that. And then we place our hands on our lower belly. And then let's just take a minute to arrive here. Close our eyes and just feel our body on the ground, allowing the weight of gravity. Do we have our body, sink, relax, rest and
a few baby breaths. Yes, it's a way to land. Our bodies are so intelligent that they do this naturally. We come home from a long day at work and we throw ourselves on the sofa,
and our body is because sighing, big sigh, one or two, the intelligence of the body just bringing some Breath into our bodies or grounding, some arrival, some landing.
That's a way to enter the earth breathing or and Earth descent gonna guide us through a brief 10 points practice. This practice, I think I offered a couple of times on this Monday evenings, and it's one of the most basic of the protocols. It's still one of my favorites, and it will allow us to just get in touch with our bodies, with ourselves, just enter the space of letting go and relaxation. So the 10 points are just putting attention onto the 10 points of our body that are in touch with the ground right now, as we may hear so they are our two feet, our two butt cheeks, right and left, the mid back section, the shoulder Blades right and left,
our elbows and our head. So just taking a moment to feel those 10 points
again as we breathe in, just feel our body. Feel these points contacting the surface yours and breathing out, you can just relax downward through these points and
breathing in, we just feel our bodies and breathing out, let go, relax downward through the point into the earth and.
Starting with gently feeling the connection between us and the earth, feeling the support of our bigger body, which is the earth and
noticing the opportunity for our body To relax and let go into the bigger body and
taking a few more breaths, just breathing in, noticing our body being present and breathing out, letting go, exhaling downward Through the 10 points and
Hello, allowing this practice to be really nourishing for ourselves. It's only when we are nourished we have others be nourished, like when we're on the airplane, where they always say to put the mask on yourself first before you help others. This practice, it's the same. So just allowing yourself to feel nourished,
relaxed,
rested, as we surrender and let go of any concepts and your judgments and thoughts and words, you can place them on your shelf for this time together and dream this come back to our body, to Our breath, to the earth.
Take a couple more breaths, just here in our body, letting go down and
so continue with some earth breathing, breathing in, and Just noticing our body and breathing out, letting go, surrendering any tension, any stress, and bring worries into the earth, and starting to feel the earth breathing with us, so this bigger body That is the earth that is us starting to breathe same time, in synchronicity, unless you're breathing in and feeling our body also breathing in, feeling the bigger body of The
Earth, breathing out, relaxing, letting go, feeling the earth Being there, also exhaling, relaxing, receiving
With the earth past the earth and
We're going to continue here a bit,
descending
in the earth, into the earth. So as we're breathing in again, we're just aware present notice anything in our body, anything going on. And as we exhale, we actually allow our awareness to descend downwards, a few feet, maybe 345, feet down. And as we go down, we can take the next in breath from down there, three, four feet below, breathing in, just noticing and breathing out, exhaling, descending down a little further, few more feet and
and breathing in from there and continuing a little bit at our own pace. Each in breath, we are better further below and exhale, descending further and in no need to be too serious or too strict to this process. If we find ourselves up again at the surface, we just continue in the same way. Doesn't really matter how far down we are or how much we're able to descend at once, like we just take an in breath. We become aware where we are, we notice and then we allow ourselves to descend downward or fall backwards with the exhale and
let's do These for a few breaths at our own pace and
it might be some moments of disorientation and space in us as we're doing this practice,
arched and completely normal, maybe losing touch of our complete attachment just to form and touching into the body of bliss, or the bigger body Dharmakaya. If
we notice this, moments of touching something beyond sometimes we feel a moment of fear or order to put it all together again, that's normal and fine. Let's see if we can, each time, just relax the further, or allow a little bit more of that unknown, that quality of falling, that quality of letting go, surrendering losing control, to inhabit us more and more so it's a practice or practicing
this, just as any other meditations, it's also a practice from death, like we've heard Andrew say many times, we die Before we die, we will not die when we die. So this is practice and dying, dying, allowing our ego to die, allowing our exclusive identification form within our Mona Kaya, the physical body to dissolve, become blurry, and for something else to be allowed and appeared and touched. And we're going to continue together a little further. We're descending into the earth. We're. So as we breathe in, we are where we are, we start where we are, and as we breathe out, we descend together, maybe 1520, feet,
then breathe in and down below, and then breathe out, falling Downward little bit further again.
Breathing in Lower your
eyes. And breathing out, descending
with your mind and
rendering and
moving In, allowing moving around.
There's two different visuals that can be used for this practice that we can explore. One is more the slow path, where you can visualize yourself as a feather, and you're descending really slowly, like a feather would be falling down the air. We threw a feather over a cliff edge. Would be swinging from side to side, going with the wind slowly, slowly descending. That's one style and the other style on the fast track. You could be visualizing yourself on the edge, at the tip, the tip edge, and then you just throw yourself backwards the following You
rituals, either on the fast track that suits you better For the slow track so
notice Your body, notice your state of mind, what is
the quality of your experience at the moment? The difference to. A few minutes ago, when you first started, first lay down.
And from here, slowly in the next minute or two, take your time, you can transition up to seated posture again and continue the practice.
A good way to transition. Turn to one of your sides and just lay there for A few breaths and then rightly pushing yourself back and
find your way back up to seated posture. Take your posture, press your eyes for smoother transition. Come back to the breath and the body.
Reconnect with the earth underneath.
Open ourselves, open our body to the bigger body of the earth and
a few breaths here again, as the Earth breathing in, feeling Our body and the bigger body breathing out, relaxing, rendering, allowing that's the first
noticing gravity
being a very good friend,
noticing gravity, allowing us to feel as we are, the earth and same time, this seated posture also connects us to the space above,
as it's expressed in the Shambhala tradition, As humans are the connection between heaven and earth and
I will just going to sit quietly for a few minutes and breathe as the Earth from the Earth with the Earth, as the Earth and.
as we're sitting here, your eyes still closed, as the Earth breathing as the Earth, and start slowly, Slowly, slowly, the next few minutes, raising our gaze, trying to still stay grounded, connected as we do so, so we can start by just maybe raising Our gaze like two three feet ahead of us and
see, we still remain
in our body, connected to the earth as we do that. And if we notice we lost it, we can just close our eyes back Again
we connect and then open them again.
Thanks, them.
Eventually just looking straight and great ahead horizon and.
Thank you. We have no time for
any sharing, any questions, comments. Usually, after this kind of practices, it's Be quiet.
You're welcome to
you can just unmute yourself if you want to say something. You can write if you prefer, or you can just feel after practice space.
Good morning. Thank you for that meditation. It was wonderful. I however you might it may be it's on my end, but the sound quality of your voice is a bit distorted, so I didn't hear very clearly all that you had to say. Did anybody else experience that? Yes, Myra, so I don't know what you need to do, but it needs to be much, much clearer than we can hear everything so but other than that, it was marvelous for me. I had an experience, which sometimes I have, not that I fell asleep, but I get, I get small dreamlets that happen so they may just take one second or two seconds. At one point, lying down, I had a very clear picture so real of a camera in front of me. Somebody was holding a camera and adjusting the lens, and that was it. Then it disappeared, and then I became aware of the fact that I was still lying there. So interesting phenomena may actually be noum, but there's no there's no comparison. So thank you for that. It was, it was lovely. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Well, first of all, nice to meet you. Hamish,
thank you.
Okay. In fact,
are you hearing me? Alright, right now?
That's a bit better, yes, but there's still kind of like the oh, okay, I'm just going
to try right now. So I also know for the future, please give me one minute I have my tech hustle here trying to troubleshoot,
okay?
And let's see, I do know from the past that I need to really practice on also raising my voice during the practice, okay, I tend to just become more quiet and slow, which is, you know, what this practices bring. But of course, if I'm guiding the practice, I need to have a voice.
Okay, I don't think it's your voice quality. You have a lovely voice. To me, it sounds like there is a technical problem. Yeah,
okay, okay, okay, so
let's see. Okay, and man, my name is HEY. Hamish. Actually, it's Hey with a mesh on the end. And how is,
how is your name? Hamish?
No, that's, I said that's what Andrew still calls me. He still calls me Hamish, but it's so
what is the real Hamish? Okay, Hamish. Yes. Okay. So how is this? Is this better? This? I have new headphones. I exchange white ones for black ones. Is it better or no, what do you think
black is
better? It's like Black is better, great.
All of a sudden it's a sonic dark retreat.
Well, hey, it's all about black these days. Dark. Darkness is feminine, right? Okay, so good. That's, that's good, good to know. And again, I'm very, very sorry about that. But then also, yeah, this, you know, sometimes there is more than the sound of the voice that carries. So I'm hoping that there's some of that as well. And I just wanted to also say one small thing I've said it before. I don't know if you've been here or not, but yes, my experience when we do these practices is very much, you know, the experience of liminality, or liminal space. You know, this in between, it's not fully awake and also not fully asleep. And it's interesting, I often share, I think that the first two years that I did this, practices, which I was pretty, you know, consistent, and they were offering me a lot, but I did fall asleep, literally for every single practice. You know, I probably just needed two years to catch up on my sleep. So it's very, very common, but, but curiously and funnily enough, when I was in a group setting being guided somehow, and many people would fall asleep. Sometimes you would have people in the room snoring and but somehow, in the moment that the instructor said, We're sitting back up, everybody was sitting back up. There was never anybody that continued snoring and continued sleeping after that. So you know that that just shows that, that, you know, we often don't get in deep I mean, if somebody would tell me in the middle of the night, sit back up, I don't think I would hear sit back up. As a matter of fact, I don't hear a lot of things when I'm asleep. But so there's something about, you know, it's a gray scale of liminality, I think, from being completely discursive and awake and thinking all the time to being completely gone and and anything in between is, is usually what these practices, where it takes us and where we are, and that's also the spaces where we can let go of this obsession that we have with only form and only physicality and only this world. You know, we have to just relax into not being there fully for that to happen in my experience. So yeah, and interesting. You would having some dream. Let's you know, in that space, I like that.
They're they're actually getting more common for me when I, when I come into the hypnopompic state. Waking up just the other night, I I heard tinkling, tinkling like little bells, definitive auditory phenomena. And then, as I came up, I was I was aware. Then I was lying in bed beside my wife, and then I saw fairy lights. My eyes were still closed, but I saw these fairy lights. So my liminality is, is, is a good sign for me that eventually, maybe I will, I will achieve full, full lucidity. I haven't twice. I've done it twice, but very, very brief. So
Well, it sounds like I like to think of a like, you know, when, when I first came to meditation, let's say it was more of a rock or a piece of brick, and then eventually we become a little bit more like a sponge, you know, more porous with this, you know, with this unseen or unexperienced or other other realms, right? So it sounds like you're becoming more spongy, more porous. Nice. Thank you.
Okay, thank you.
Anybody else? Anything else? No.
What is the saying that Andrew says so often about the think it's Ramana Maharishi, the one who knows doesn't speak, the one who speaks doesn't know. Is that how it goes? Yeah,
silence. I Okay,
well, let me feeling too if I have anything else that I would like to share.
Well, I guess just I was having a mini chat with maida before we jumped on here. We were a couple of minutes delayed because of maida. I'm sorry. We forgive you Mayra, but, yeah, she was sharing of an initiative, a meditation initiative, that might be coming. I'm not going to make the announcement made you will, you will have to do it in the the future, but, but just another practice opportunity, you know, anything, any practice opportunity, online, offline, in person, that we feel inspired to Jump on. This is really, I think, a gift. So I don't know if you if some of you are in Europe, or who are, who is in Europe and who's in America, but you know, my husband and I are starting to do a few more offerings here in Europe. We are going to start leading a few weekend retreats, of practice retreats coming up. We're doing one now in in November, and probably another now in February and and one more at the beginning of the summer. Hey, miss you. Are in Vancouver. Well, this is not very handy for a weekend retreat for you that. But anyway, if any of you are in Europe, Yeah, you're welcome to to contact us, and I'll send you more information for the for the retreats, or, I don't know if Alyssa, we can also add to this, maybe to this specific recording, we can add a link at the bottom with with a link to the weekend retreats that you can check out and and see if or if you're coming to Europe in the future for a bigger trip. Maybe you can fit it in. If you feel inspired by just for the Europeans listening to this, know that there's some in person opportunities and offerings coming up, and otherwise I will be back here for more somatic meditation in November and December. Let me recheck the dates. I think we just pinned those down. Elisa, did you get those? I think the next one will be, yeah, November 18, when I will be on Monday, November 18 and Monday, December 16. What is Maya saying? Hand? Oh, you have a hand up. Okay, okay.
Did you say that
your retreats are going to be also online?
I am not planning on it now to begin with or just be in person. Yeah.
Okay, come, just come.
Oh, I love it. Oh, my gosh, would that be a dream?
Thank you. Okay, you're welcome. Where are you?
I am in Spain. Ah, I'm in Spain. Yes, yes. And this weekend retreats will be here in our house, actually, in Spain. Yeah, we can host up to up to 12 people here so, but they will be small, intimate, homey retreats, just everybody staying with us here at our house. Oh, those are cute. All those hearts Theresa, thank you. I don't know how to do that. I've seen that in the past. I'll have to ask someone
that's really nice.
Okay, well, if you have your hand up again, Maira, or is it the same hand as before? Same hand as before? Okay, okay. Okay, so if there's nothing else, we can just close with the dedication. Alyssa, if you have it handy, and again, just to say a word on the dedication, you know, at the end of a gathering, we any merit we may have accumulated from doing this, practices, any bliss we have touched, or anything that has has been brought together we we offer it for the benefit of the world. So this is a dedication of merit written by my teacher, Reggie Reggie Ray and and we will take 30 seconds at the very end of reading these two so you can just add your personal touch. If there's anything else from your from your heart, that you would like to say to to offer this the merit that we may have created here, then please do so Okay, so we'll take a sip of space.
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 merit my practice has generated made me multiply to infinity for the happiness and welfare of all and let's just take a moment Tito To touch in with any personal dedication of merit.