Lately I’ve been in deep contemplation about my own porosity of selfhood, and watching my embodied responses to when I feel whole and cohesive, and when, like yesterday, I feel wildly fragmented and disconnected. Yesterday for work I spent nearly 8 hours online in virtual meetings with other with very little movement or dedicated meal breaks. By the time I ended my day, I was spinning in what Ayurveda would call Vata derangement, and what western psychologists might name dissociated fragmentation.
Thank goodness my life also has woven into it both an person poetry writing group I helped start years ago (Poet’s Pen), and a wonderful in person yoga class– both of which I did following work. Both of which were extremely difficult to get myself centered enough to actually arrive at both physically and metaphorically.
In my poetry practice I pondered what happens to us on an energetic and consciousness level when we meet with other humans virtually– do micro parts of ourselves travel to the liminal space in between bodies where we meet in the ethers? Does this constant practice fragment us as we scatter nano particles of ourselves through thought and energy into this third space between?
In my yoga practice I could feel my heightened tendency towards porosity practicing next to others, and how this blurred sense of self moved into a more shared quieting of the loud cognition and into a coherence of presence, breath, and synchronized movement– how I could ride the wave co-created by our group as each person moved into full presence both in the body and the moment.
This cascade of recent experience leaves me today pondering what it is to bring purposeful presence and coherence as well as embodied centering to our shared online communities of practice. I am curious about your experiences!
Come join me for a shared exploration in our next Mindful Monday Session on Monday, August 3 at 09:00 PDT where we will be continuing the series of sessions focused on the IDGs: Inner Development Goals- a framework for the inner change needed to pair with the outer Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) for meaningful climate action.
This month we will be focusing on the IDG skill of Presence is defined as the ability to be in the here and now without judgment, in a state of open-ended awareness. It is one of the five core skills under the “Being: Relationship to Self” dimension. I have the great honor to be co-facilitating this session with LFA alumni Brooke Suter, who also since 2014 has co-facilitated the MIT Sloan School of Management course, “U-Lab: Transforming Self, Business and Society” with Theory U founder Otto Scharmer (also founder of the Presencing Institute). Join us for this free, experiential practice in mindful community, link here to register: https://app.terra.do/app/events/Monthly-Mindful-Mondays-1784090901
nikyta palmisani 