Rotation of Consciousness
Try this FREE 15 minute progressive relaxation practice to get out of thinking mind and into your body
The ego rules us. It’s sad, frustrating and annoying. The ego thinks it’s in charge — and when we live in habit, in our unconsciousness, it’s absolutely right.
Thank goodness there are tools to lessen it’s grip.
The ego is part of the left brain. It’s the conscious self that is linear, linguistic and logical. It cycles and recycles existing information — it’s a processor. And it’s as far removed from the body as it can get.
The right brain, however, is creative and lives in the now. It houses the Soma (the intersection of body, mind and spirit). It’s our physical, emotional self and it allows for direct, unmediated, non-conceptual experience.
There are many body-based practices that can help you build your right brain capacity. Yoga is one practice that moves us into right brain consciousness, but not all teachers/practices focus their language that way.
Yoga lineages are vast, and practices are varied.
I am currently enrolled in EmbodiYoga’s advanced yoga teacher training, and this yoga’s focus is exclusively soma-based. It’s a beautiful blend of yoga, somatics, body-mind centering and the human development principles of embryology.
Somatic meditation is also a beautiful tool that helps us develop greater awareness of our bodies. Instead of top-down meditation like most in the west, it’s bottom-up beginning (and ending) in the body. We access the body directly instead of controlling the mind to enter the body.
Somatic meditation develops a meditative consciousness that is accessed through the spontaneous feelings, sensations, visceral intuitions and felt sensations of the body itself. We are simply trying to tune into it to the basic awareness of the body … the human body is already and always abiding in the meditative state, the domain of awakening — we are trying to gain entry into that. *
For years I’ve taught a type of somatic meditation called Rotation of Consciousness (also known as Progressive Relaxation). It’s a beautiful practice accessible to all, and my students crave it after they’ve left for the semester. I created a recording that I’m giving away for free. It’s a gift from me to you in the hopes that more of us live more embodied lives. Practice it anytime you need to calm down, get out of thinking mind and into your body. Fall asleep to it at night — your consciousness is picking all of it up.
Try this FREE ‘Rotation of Consciousness’ Practice to begin your journey, then go deeper.
Feel free to connect with me for further resources on the embodied path! *Excerpt above from The Awakening Body by Reggie Ray
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Heather is a writer and yoga educator. Writing is part of her daily spiritual practice and she shares (almost) daily as she works on her first book. Change your perspective. Subscribe for a dose of inspiration straight to your inbox that can be read in 4 minutes or less, or receive a FREE 15 minute Rotation of Consciousness Practice to calm yourself, get out of your mind and drop into the body.
