Save the Cheerleader. Save the World: A Practice for Movement Meditation
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. That is Thoreau from Walden and this is a piece about confronting desperation with joy.
What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
I want to talk about manifesting a new way. I want to talk about meditation with movement — meeting exercise goals along with goals for personal growth and the release of emotional trauma. A two-fer.
I want to talk about using affirmations and establishing a movement practice for changing your life for the better. That’s what I did.
This has to do with developing a movement practice with intentional gnostic affirming. Gnostic means embodied — feeling something in the body.
So I will discuss what gnostic affirming is and the reasons we should do it and then present the details of the practice.
If we think about it when we affirm in a traditional way we are often addressing fear and avoidance.
We hope that something doesn’t happen.
Please save Aunt Margaret from pain.
I hope Aunt Margaret doesn’t suffer.
I hope I pass that test tomorrow.
I hope I will heal.
These kinds of affirmations are well intentioned but they focus on avoiding negative outcomes. They are avoidance affirmations.
We do this in our concern for others and we do this in concern for ourselves too even if we don’t think about it in those terms. We seem to be concerned with avoiding negative outcomes — I hope this or that doesn’t happen. Hope is really a futile word. Do you see what I mean? Hope can mean powerlessness. Hope can mean we are concerned something might not happen.
We say things like I hope my day isn’t terrible. We say I hope I don’t fail. We say I hope things change. This is a kind of despair really. Is hope fear?
We all say these things to ourselves to help us manage our stresses. When we say these things we may actually create the conditions for the negative outcome to occur. Self-fulfilling prophecy. And we often don’t DO anything.
We should say Let’s make sure the bees make it through the winter. They will. I will make sure they will.
Perhaps we shouldn’t hope things. We should act. Faith is ‘hope’ realized with a positive and productive orientation towards action.
The bees will make it through winter. I will make sure they have everything they need. It starts with this —
It sounds like this:
The bees will survive the winter. I will make sure of it. It starts with this act.
I will pass that test tomorrow. It starts with this act.
I am perfectly and vibrantly well. It starts with this act.
I have everything I need. It starts with this act.
It is done it is done it is done.
Faith paired with action. It is done.
It’s Eternal.
Intentional gnostic affirming is about manifesting the physiognomy and life you desire. Manifesting by definition means using an engaged thinking process strategically for creating the conditions that allow us to meet our goals.
Literature on manifesting is clear on the following points that I will summarize. I encourage you to explore “manifesting” on your own as companions on this journey. We all have preferences for what works for us so if one author doesn’t speak to you try another one. There are lots of voices and modes of presentation on manifesting and all are valuable.
Intentional gnostic affirming works because we are communicating clearly to ourselves about who we want to be as people and what we want to accomplish in our lives. We are changing some tapes and programs by doing this. We are all here on Earth to grow and we grow by making choices and learning from these choices. This can be positively or negatively oriented.
Choose your own adventure.
So when you make negative choices you have created a timeline or circumstances that move you in a negative direction. When you make positive choices you create a timeline or circumstances that move you in a positive direction. Choose your own adventure.
Gnostic affirming can help you make positively oriented choices and manage your life positively so that you move confidently in the direction of your dreams — as Thoreau wrote.
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. ~Thoreau
Without a positive orientation towards circumstances and choices our life challenges tax and enervate us. Without a positive orientation we seem to believe that life offers challenges without meaning — as if it is meaningless that we have the challenges that we have. That doesn’t seem productive. Do you think that is productive?
When we accept a life of meaninglessness like this we do not grow. We feel defeated. We feel victimized. We numb our pain with drugs and alcohol. We numb our pain with pleasures and distractions. Many of these things can bring us happiness briefly. We may find that we must do more and more of these things to remain happy. I drank a lot of wine.
A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what is called the games and amusement of mankind.. . . Also Thoreau.
Many people do this dance with pleasure and meaninglessness their whole lives. Thoreau says this is a life of quiet desperation.
I would say in a way that is okay. It can be a kind of life. I used to live one of those. I do not live that way anymore. I made another choice. What bothers me is that people do not understand that there is another choice. I do not think that is free will. Increasingly we have less and less free will to make another choice.
I would like to be assured that people understand their choices. If a person reads my material and says Okay Patricia Anne I understand there is another choice but I still choose this way then I say Okay. However we can optimize conditions that allow us to reach our life goals. I did.
Our life goals can run the gamut from the positive to the simply abysmal. You know that. You see people do that. I made some abymsal choices. I drank enough wine to prove it. Meet me at the bottom of the bottle Reader. I recovered.
You create what you think. If you are thinking a negative narrative that is what you are creating. Period. Stop doing that. Some people do not fully understand that they are in a negative consciousness. How are your thoughts polarized? To the negative? To the positive? What are the contents of the memes you read and post?
I call this “mostly hooray for our side” after the Buffalo Springfield song. You can be a champion for a noble cause in negative consciousness. That is a grand form of “othering.” It is deleterious.
Thank you Buffalo Springfield. 1967.
You are what you think you are. You think yourself into being.
You make you as my friend said.
These things are common understandings in much of the literature on personal development and manifestation. This is not just ‘pretty thinking’ about an idealized version of life as I used to believe it was.
What is important to understand is that the course of our life happens on a quantum level through our intentions. We can guide and direct our life course to achieve our positive desired outcomes and optimize ourselves.
It is eternal.
So in this formulation if you are thinking abysmal thoughts, perseverating on these negative outcomes then you optimize conditions to receive these abysmal things you are thinking.
On the other hand if you radiate positive thoughts and positive energy you send those signals up the energetic chain and you help yourself create that outcome on a quantum level.
The power of positive thinking is not just a pretty idea. Change your thoughts, change your actions and your paradigms, change your life. That is what I did. I healed myself and you can too.
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. Walt Whitman.
So how do you enact this change?
For me it has been a simple process. We should not overcomplicate it. We over complicate everything. A lot of the literature existing on these matters is over complicated in my estimation particularly the religious or spiritually-focused material. This can leave a reader thinking that matters of spirituality are obtuse and abstract, impossible to know or enact. They are not.
We must simplify our spiritual processes. Keep our accounts on our thumbnails — that is what Thoreau says as well. Simplify, Simplify. Maybe we need to forget the sturm und drang routine: the ritual of the priests and the hats and the regalia and the incense or any of the many overwrought routines of religious dogma. None of that religious pageantry and performance is significant in relation to your ability to recognize and know yourself.
If you like the pagentry that is fine but you are in control of your destiny — the personal and the spiritual. No one else is involved. Nothing else is involved.
Here is what matters as a helpful process of action:
Intention + emotion + repetition+ movement. That is the formula. As per me. What we are doing here is building energetic signals like chains that create clear mental maps of what we want to accomplish in our lives. We are teaching ourselves this.
This is drawing on the work of Louise Hay who wrote a powerful process I followed to heal. My healer gave me a copy of Hay’s small volume Heal Your Body. I devoured it and enacted it and healed. Thanks Myra.
There are a few things we can do to intensify the chain or signal we send up through our energetic fields to heal, starting with intentions.
Intention
Intention is setting the goal for yourself in an active and specific way. I write intentions out separately when I do this. Intentions should be written in the affirmative like this: I will write affirmative intentions. Positive only. No negative constructions. I will write affirmative intentions as a gesture of my commitment.
Positive affirmation is beautifully covered in Heal Your Body where you can link your ailments to their causes and find specific affirmations for this healing practice.
Utterance
Utterance is powerful. Say the things you want out loud. You do not have to shout or speak loudly although I found that helpful. Loud utterance will come to you with practice and that is important. To start — you can murmur your intentions — but full voiced and loud is great and preferable too.
We form intentions as a positive statement. I will handwrite positive affirmations in a journal with a pen I love.
Writing is a kinetic affirmation of great power. Do both of these things. Writing and utttering. Write the affirmation and utter it.
I have pages and pages of journaled affirmations which I go over with an analytical sort of focus, underlining, highlighting, even decorating with colored markers. I carry notecards of affirmations. I keep them in my car. I post them about the house and utter them when I see them. And I say the affirmations out loud. Keep them present.
Utterance and writing.
Emotion
Emotion is next. Emotion is critical. When you utter and write your intention you want to root it in a strong emotion that conveys its signature energy.
This means that if you are asking to realize a particular outcome like — say — wellness — you would root that intentional utterance in the feeling or emotion you have of wellness. What does wellness feel like to you?
Healer Gregg Braden teaches about this in the video below. His teachings and work greatly assisted my practice. It is a constellation Reader. Thank you Gregg Braden.
Now the tricky part is that if something like wellness is your intention, you are probably not feeling well. So it takes focus and concentration to create an emotion of wellness in your body when you are unwell. It can be done. I did it.
Visualization is a powerful, helpful tool here. You can root your intention of wellness, formed and written as a statement like this: “I am strong, healthy and well” or some other intention that serves your desire and then you create in your mind the picture of you in your new vibrant well state.
You may be — like me — signaling the ‘V’ for victory as you stand triumphantly on the top of a craggy peak; or you may be jogging on the warm soft sand of your favorite beach or dancing a polka to lively music — imagine whatever wellness means for you. That is what counts. What is your action of wellness? What does wellness look like to you? See it. Be it.
If you imagine this action of wellness and feel it and utter your affirmation you have just created a gnostic intention. You are practicing intentional gnostic affirmation.
When I was quite unwell, I also used a particular kind of music — such as Alexia Chellun’s song Eternal above. This is in the genre I call consciousness music. Alexia Chellun is a Queen in the consciousness music movement. Trevor Hall is a King. It is a constellation.
Here is a song from Alexia Chellun I used to help me heal. This song is an extraordinary healer and I made progress using it daily in its entirety. This song contains healing codes through sound frequency. This is a constellation of healing. Thank you Alexia Chellun.
I listened to this song so often, over and over and over, that I began dreaming it. This is important. I dreamed the music and the words. I would wake in the early twilight morning mentally singing the words to this song and other consciousness songs. I changed the narrative in my head in my sleep and in my twilight sleepiness though a commitment to consciousness music and only consciousness music during the time of my healing.
Repetition
Repetition is also key. We build successful life plans when we give ourselves clear directions. Just like anything. So a hallmark of good teaching I learned years ago is the use of repetition.
Repeat your affirmations to yourself out loud. You are your own student here. You are teaching yourself. This is instruction for you to help you adopt this posture. You are teaching yourself what you want to realize in your life.
So along with your utterance of intention with the emotion, add the repetition and lots of it.
The more you repeat your affirmations, the stronger the signal to yourself. The stronger the learning. You are reprogramming yourself here.
What is more you give yourself a clear message like the clarion call to yourself when you repeat your affirmation over and over in a single session.
Saying your affirmation once or twice is not much of a signal flare — three times, four— no — these are pretty ineffectual affirmations like an off-hand comment. Do more.
You are not telling yourself how serious you are.
A great affirmation session that lasts ten, fifteen, twenty minutes or more is doing fine work. Like Alexia Chellun’s “Healing Song” above. It’s 30 minutes. I listened to this for hours Reader. It became a product of my mind. I often found myself singing it in sleep and twilight waking. It became my mental landscape. I healed.
Alexa Sunshine Rose’s songs work like this too. Many of these consciousness artists — like Trevor Hall too— offer brilliant healing in this way.
Thank you Alexa Sunshine Rose. It is a constellation Reader.
So you are uttering your affirmation to yourself over and over and feeling it in your body through your visualizations, utterance, and writing too Establishing a routine, especially one that involves movement (however that is possible for you) is highly effective for doing this work. I personally like walking.
So on we go to a discussion of the movement in the meditation.
Movement
Move while you do this work. That is important. Move however you can. Even small gestures of moment. Even blinking your eyes. It’s a kinetic imprint. Move how you can move.
For the ambulatory, walking is a great option. Dancing is so wonderful for this. Yoga is wonderful. Any exercise is great for movement meditation. Move. Move. Move — even if that is your own slow and gentle shuffle. Do a quiet dance in place like Tai Chi. I like to walk and I decide what my affirmations will be for the walk.
Three affirmations per walk is good for me. Body. Mind. Spirit. One affirmation for each. I divide the walk up (or exercise time) into sections for focusing on the different affirmations.
For example I might decide to do one affirmation in utterance down to the corner of my street and around the bend and then when I get to the neighbor’s mailbox I will start my other affirmation and I do that one for a whole street and then on the home stretch I will round it out with my last affirmation out loud for that particular routine. No music. Just me in utterance out loud over and over. You are entirely focused on uttering your affirmations and setting the emotional register for your desired change.
Here are some sample affirmations as recorded in my journal:
Body: “I will daily move my body.”
Mind: “I will vary and expand my understanding of beauty so that I may experience people and the natural world with joy.”
Spirit: “I will be an instrument of positive Universal Will in my thoughts, words, behaviors, deeds, and actions.”
Body. Mind. Spirit.
These specific constructions direct the affirmations in the proper manner and separate them from other competing thoughts. There are a number of other things to note about these particular affirmations. Notice that each of these targets a different level of being. Body. Mind. Spirit.
Affirmations for the Body
The first one “I will daily move my body” addresses limitations about my body and the conditioning of the physical body. For me daily movement has been a challenging but important exercise goal because of the weakening of my physical body during my long illness. I have had a lifelong resistance to exercise due to limiting beliefs about my physical body and daily movement in exercise has always seemed challenging to me. I am challenging this limiting belief and I am telling myself that I will daily exercise in movement. I am working to accept this new belief through affirmations about being strong, fit, and active.
This is a affirmation for my body.
Affirmations for the Mind
The second affirmation “I will vary and expand my understanding of beauty so that I may experience people and the natural world with joy” addresses limitations in my perception.
I want to address a limitation in my thinking and perceiving. This limitation has been given to me through cultural osmosis and instruction and I very much dislike it and reject it. So this specific affirmation addresses a narrow perception of beauty — which is culturally derived — that I want to change. I have seen how this culturally derived narrow perception of beauty has limited my ability to fully appreciate the beauty in myself, in other people, and in the natural world. I see the fantastic value of such an expansion of my perception. It has worked. This has been amazing for me. I am able to see beauty in everything and everyone with so much joy.
This is a affirmation for my mind.
Affirmations for the Spirit
The third affirmation “I will be an instrument of positive Universal Will in my thoughts, words, behaviors, deeds, and actions” addresses what I call a soul-level goal. This kind of affirmation helps me by strengthening my ties to my larger spiritual purpose and helps me maintain my connection with my highest and most positive self.
Oh God, Please deliver me into this day with grace, serenity, great good humor, surety, purity and clarity of vision and purpose. This is my daily morning prayer.
I want to optimize myself and meet my highest purpose as much as I am able to for this lifetime. I need to do this kind of work on myself to accomplish this. This is a affirmation for my spirit. “I will be an instrument of positive Universal Will in my thoughts, words, behaviors, deeds, and actions”
In sum I create three types of affirmations for my healing session: body, mind, and spirit.
Let’s put this all together. We are closing in on the finish here.
Please understand that we already have the capacity to be and to think and to do all of these things that we are affirming. We already have and contain everything we need. We are all potential like a seed. Like the egg of a chicken. It is already in you. This is such an important point.
Scroll up and look at that little picture of me when I was three years old sitting on my grandmother Viola’s lap. I was a seed to myself. That is my potential and that is what I am reclaiming. That is my reclamation Reader. I will live in joy. I will live large in spirit and purity of purpose. I will reclaim my body, my mind, and my spirit. These are also regular affirmations for my movement meditation practice.
In this wonderful, faithful endeavor we are not asking to be different people. We are not asking to be changed in this sense. We, like germinating seeds, are asking to be opened to our optimal selves which we already have the capacity to be.
We are all potential.
You have it inside of yourself.
We have merely lost our connections to these parts of ourselves. We can find these connections inside of us by building these bridges back to ourselves through affirming and believing in ourselves and we can do some of this work through movement meditation as I have described. This worked for me. I am vibrantly well after a debilitating decade long illness and a perilous wonderful awful healing journey of five confining years. These are some of the things I learned to heal myself.
We can reclaim these goals for ourselves and we can reactivate them inside of us; we can optimize ourselves. That is what movement meditation helps us do. We are learning how to reclaim the best version of ourselves. We teach this to ourselves though this practice. We are here on Earth to figure this out.
To be honest it seems as though many people don’t figure out much. That doesn’t mean they don’t live happy and productive lives. Most actually do. It can be both of these things. Parallel tracks I say. We can live happy lives not doing any of this Reader. We sure can. That may seem confusing and contradictory and it took a while for me to understand how it can this be so yet I do believe it is so. We can live happy lives not doing any of this.
We can think about it this way: we have parallel tracks running here in our lives. On one track we are a humans being living our difficult human lives. On another we are each of us an eternal soul on a soul journey. We do not have conscious awareness of our soul self and that is purposeful. These things are well understood in spiritual literature. I am not saying anything new here. You can read all about it elsewhere too.
The story goes like this: when we agreed to incarnate we signed a contract of amnesia. This contract stipulates that we agree to have no memory of our soul lives and our soul purpose. The reason for this is that we have contracted to grow and learn here in Earth school and so we accept a life with certain specific challenges and we can’t know these in advance and intrude on the learning. The learning must be pure.
The challenges we contract for are in the general categories of grief, loss, self esteem, and prosperity or lack of prosperity. Another important category of challenge of course is relationship. Relationship is the most important category of all. These general categories make up our life challenges. I also write about this in my essay “Reclamation.”
So when we come here we are presented with these life challenges that encourage us to make progress toward our growth goals as humans and as souls. We have many opportunities to make choices that allow us to succeed or fail. Most of us do a combination of succeeding and failing. That is what I did. We succeed in one category only to fail in another. Recognize that this is how life works in big and small ways. No one is a total success or a total failure. We are all muddling through, making progress here, taking our lumps there.
My own story, which I have shared with honesty in my Medium collection, is illustrative of this. I have a record of significant success and I have a record of significant failure.
Reader that is just the way it is. There is nothing to be ashamed about. There is nothing to hide on the human learning journey.
I healed myself and you can too.
It’s Eternal.
Let’s HEAL.
~Patricia Anne
Pattern and kit by Clementine on ETSY
