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Co-researchersA possible premise for how we are all positioned together is to see ourselves as co-researchers. A circle of researchers who may each be following different threads of a pattern depending on what interests each of us. Someone may be exploring the physicality, another the worldview, another the cosmology, another the mystery, another mythology, another the physics, the healing power, the movement, the form. Each of us has a thread and together we are weaving a tapestry of exploration.
We each collect data, our experience. We share it in conversation, through whatsapp and possible other platforms. We each can offer hypotheses, new questions, insights. We each apply what we are understanding and not understanding and gather more information. How does positioning yourself as a co-researcher, part of a team (circle), feel compared to a student-teacher (podium-and audience) or colleague (side by side but doing their own thing) relationship? Lab Guidelines or the safety talk Welcome•Consent•Respect Asking permission: like going into a field to gather plants: asking, is this the time and place to gather you? Are there enough plants if I gather some? In this same spirit as we explore, asking yourself is the time and place or asking/giving yourself permission to explore. Offering: like watering a plant or singing, what do we offer this exploration? Generally it is our listening and shining our attention to the question that is our offering. Appreciation: Thank you to the Earth, the plants, the life force – thank you to the Pattern, eachother… What is a gesture or image that reminds you of this trio: asking, offering, thanking? Gentleness While many styles of exploration exist and all have powerful gifts, this work is one that follows gentleness, ease, kindness. Gentleness can be dynamic. I can roar in gentleness. Explore what being gentle with yourself means or feels like; you might discover more about this by asking the opposite: what does not being gentle or being hard on myself feel like? Do I know the difference? What is a gesture of gentleness? Stop Signs In any exploration our system will give us signals to stop, to be done for now. Some common non-verbal signals that your system has had enough are: a reflexive gasp for air, swallowing, mind wandering, a back of the mind idea that I want to stop, jittering. Please add more. Generally, your system will learn more by stopping than when pushing through, (gentleness :)) This is similar to the power of dispersed practice compared to long practice sessions. What are your system’s stop signs? Dynamic Felt-Sense of Insight/Knowing and Not knowing In english many words around understanding are about gripping like I have a grip on this or a handle on this, you hit the nail on the head. The reverse for not knowing: words like spacy, lost, or foggy. In this work we ask how do we detect that feeling of a grip around an idea and open to the possibility of change, of not-knowing again, or holding the information lightly? In the dynamic of the unknown, how do we support the not-knowing with ground? What are some words for the continuum of knowing/understanding/unknowing? One of my favorite words in this territory is to Grok something. A scifi created word that captures a deep comprehension. The skill of leaving the Weight of rock in the Rock This is a life long exploration given to me by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. As we explore life and Nature our stories will arise. Some of these stories may carry weight, pain, stress. How do we meet these stories and not continue to carve the patterns that we likely are wanting to update? In other words, how do we meet a story, tell a story without retraumatizing ourselves or others? This exploration of putting the weight of the story in the rock, feeling the weight, then setting it down – possibly pebble by pebble, is a powerful way to begin to explore this skill. The permeations are endless. How do I listen to a hard story and not pick up the weight? (This isn’t my story.) When do I hold on to the weight? What if the weight is a boulder, a mountain? Can I lean against it, crawl into it? To put it down I have to feel it. What is enough feeling it? A few Fundamental Questions Do the Patterns of Nature matter to you or seem worthwhile to explore? If so, why? What is your hypothesis, if any, of what they offer you or others? Is there an aspect of the Patterns that interests you the most? Imagine that this thread is your research territory - you are the head of that department. If so I would you begin? Video Link for Ground Substance Session
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Here we are in a circle, gathered together to research letting Nature be our teacher through the permeating, far flung, exquisite Patterns of Nature.
Some premises of this work, as I understand them from our work with these Patterns over the years–what they have been teaching us:
*The first few and last patterns may be an exception to physically localized patterns. They seem more of the field of being, our being before form. Yet permeating just now in any one place or tissue layer. I wonder where do we begin when we are beginning again? Here we are turning directions to begin anew in the spiralic path of life, of exploring patterns of Nature as a way of learning within Nature. During a past spiral dance with the patterns we started with Vibration and then were drawn back further and found condensing and expanding. I am tempted to start at this last identified beginning. But, this is an opportunity to collectively ask where do we begin? Or are we asking where is a beginning? Is there a beginning that precedes condensing and expanding?
When I let this question fall into me, I first find myself wanting to look at the research and mythologies of the beginning of the Universe and pair those stories with what we know of the beginning of conception, creation of new beings. While the question does rest in me, my modus operandi is thinking, frontal, problem solving approach. I am excited and motivated and deeply curious about exploring what I know will be the tiniest tip of a mountain of material. This cognitive dive will be a source for imaginal consolidation. When I let this question fall into me, and I want to receive information from Nature directly, I get quiet and still, today. What layer of me will I be awakened to to resonate in the field of the question? I find myself dropping into a cellular awareness and there is a hum with my ancient ancestors, the first breaths that created an oxygen rich Earth. Cells are a lineage line. I am pulled to go below the cells. I have this image of atoms – how the protons orbiting the nucleus are as far away as a ball orbiting a stadium when the nucleus is first base. Feels like a random recollection and yet with it, I feel like my bodiness drops away. I am space, atoms, everywhere and nowhere. Hummm humm. Here is lineageless and the source of lineage. How is this about beginning again? Nothing to something. How does nothing become something? How does emptiness create stuff? How does space birth matter? When I let the questions fall into me, I let them move me. It is as if Nature flows through me and the dance itself is the language I am receiving. Perhaps when you let the question fall into you, sounds will flow through you shaping and phrasing and showing you something about the universe. Or colors come and flow and shape and form a story on paper or fabric. Perhaps words flow as poetry, arriving not searched for. Is this generative flow, this creative force Nature’s language or one of Nature’s languages? When we embark on an adventure it can be useful, crucial to equip ourselves with tools to help us navigate the terrain, to access and traverse passageways, nourish and sustain our well-being. Similarly, dancing with Patterns of Nature as a pathway to Nature as our teacher and guide can be facilitated by developing tools for this exploratory self guided learning.
Tools here are practices, something you can spend years wondering about as you do them.
Video link for above 5 tools: LINK
Week 1 Foundations
A question is asked: How do you know you are alive? What is the sensation of aliveness? I notice when I start to answer it, I have a sense of urgency, a sensation of up and forward, as if the answer is out there ahead of me. Thoughts come about the questioner like ‘what does she think’ and on its heels the thought “Is this right?” I am supposed to get something, figure something out. These are the familiar sensations of jumping into action. Taking action is a powerful and necessary property of my system. It is how I get things done. A shorthand for this way of being organized from a Nervous System/body lens is I am in a ‘motoring’ coordination. This is a common coordination when I am answering someone else’s question. What lets this question become my question? I stop. For a moment, I let the question be, like setting a plant in fertile soil. I give it a moment to adjust to the ground, the sky, the light, and the water. In this space, I can notice if this question interests me. Am I drawn to it, even if it is a little scary? Yes, I am drawn, and now I let the question become mine. It rephrases itself: how do I sense aliveness in the world and in me? I am resting back into myself, right here. I am letting roots flow into the soil of my experiences, branches opening to feel the light of this moment. I am receiving the question. Connections, images, insights emerge. Sometimes through a gesture or movement. Other times as color on a page or a sound to be sung. Another time, a shattering stillness, quietness takes me. When the question is my own, my system can organize in a ‘sensing’ or receiving coordination. Motor nerves flow from the front of the spine. Sensory nerves flow in through the back of the spine. When I want to invite more listening than doing, I soften that frontal energy and open my back spaces. There are times to do, and times to receive, and times to be in the flow of doing, being, receiving, expressing. This is our creative nature, our learning nature. As we work together this Autumn, I invite you to explore what living a question is to you. What lets you learn within yourself and this field of Nature? 9/11/26
This late-summer morning is a buzzing swirl of life. The resident family of hummingbirds arrives at dawn to feast on the ever-flowing nectar of the salvia. Multitudes of bees—from tiny ones to great bumbles—disappear into petals to gather pollen. Butterflies in vivid colors create fluttering crowns across the garden. Under this wild, interweaving dance of bird, bee, and butterfly is a primordial pulse: the drawing toward, the pulling away, and the inevitable drawing in again—the movement of life itself. When I meet this thrumming in me, I feel the sensation of my cells gathering inward, condensing me, followed by the answering spring of opening. Condense… expand… condense… expand… A breath beneath the breath. In that resonating pulse, I am bee and breath, tide and storm, galaxy and gravity, the expanding Universe. The timeless patterns of life offer me a conduit for knowing myself—through blood, bones, breath—as Nature. When I allow this pattern to be my guide, my teacher, something shifts. In my body: I bring this enlivening pulse to the pain in my upper back. It feels as though a rib is out of place. Almost imperceptible movement begins to ripple through me, like a fluid breath bathing my back, breathing my back. Held within the support of my full body, within the pulsing support of Earth, the pain dissolves. In my consciousness: As I look toward a challenging day ahead, I ask: What needs to condense? What needs to be gathered in, held close? What can I allow to open and expand? What tempo of pulse do I want to underlie my day? In this way, Patterns of Nature have become my primary guides for navigating life. Reliable, ever-present, challenging, and surprising teachers. For more than twenty years, a small and mighty community has been exploring and co-creating this inquiry: remembering Nature as ourselves, and discovering Patterns of Nature as tangible conduits into the mystery and miracle that are always here—even when they feel gently veiled, or deeply hidden, much of the time. This autumn, we are Beginning Again—letting what we think we “know” fall away, making space for what might arise if we meet the Patterns anew. |
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