Monday, 13 February 2012
An Initiation: Continuum in Relationship
Yesterday I facilitated a new Continuum workshop called Continuum in Relationship. My heart is still tenderly resonating with the experience. I was so deeply touched by witnessing the courage, honesty and vulnerability each participant displayed. During the sharing at the end, I felt an impulse to offer a space to continue the emerging dialogue. Not only will I offer this workshop again soon, but it occurred to me to start a blog space like this as a place for people who have taken my workshops to express and communicate about what happens in the safe, nurturing field of a Continuum class, where we enter a soft, fluid, primordial state of being and explore what arises.
I was particularly touched yesterday by the willingness and ability of each person to be with the tender, scary, challenging pieces that can emerge when we melt the armour built up over a life time. Continuum does that so effectively. I see it as incredibly healing to be able to be with what is there, what may have been hidden in the shadows in the back of our consciousness or the depths of our body pains and discomforts. To be able to be with what is, without having to change it, without having to dive into it, without getting lost in it, without having to figure it all out. To be able to be with what is from a state of open, receptive awareness. To me, this is love. And this is what relationship is about.
The conditions of our lives have too often taught us to withdraw and avoid the pain that can come with relationship, whether it be with a lover, friend, acquaintance, colleague, or even a therapist or teacher. The possibility of physical contact can touch on a whole other set of fears and patterning. In the workshop, we practiced staying in the sweet, subtle state of somatic awareness and movement of Continuum, with the invitation to include an awareness of the space around us, the space between us and others, and any impulses to interact through that space.
I have a vision of a world where everyone everywhere can relate with this level of consciousness and the safety it creates. I would love to hear from those who were there yesterday anything you feel to contribute to this blog. This is a space for us to speak with one another, and perhaps with the larger world. I trust whoever arrives at this blog will also be willing to find a way to deepen into heartful presence, and will benefit from our words.
Please feel free to share this blog with anyone you think would appreciate and perhaps contribute to our field of being.
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I am filled with love and gratitude, for everyone who shared in this magical day, and for Cherionna for creating and holding this space for and with us. With each Continuum experience my connection with how things really are for me, with how my body really is, becomes more profound, but never in a way that is overwhelming. Continuum seems to offer the opportunity to tiptoe as slowly and gently and as quietly as necessary towards being able to be with what is.
ReplyDeleteThe workshop on Sunday added a whole new layer to this already wonderful mix. For me, it allowed such a deep recognition of how and where I am, in relation to others. Slowing things down I found myself in a place usually avoided, rushed past – a place that is quivering between the desire to reach out and connect, and the reluctance, the fears, the vulnerability involved in doing so. It felt like a gift – an opportunity of feeling safe enough to really explore and be with the sensations and feelings in my body associated with the smallest of movements, or even just the intention to move, towards, or away from , other people. To react or not, to their reaching out to me, to reach out or not, to them. A truly remarkable and humbling experience, it has touched my heart.
Thankyou again everyone.
Steph x
Thanks so much, Steph, for your beautiful words and thoughts. I resonate with that love and gratitude! I appreciate what you say about "the opportunity to tiptoe as slowly and gently and as quietly as necessary." I really see it that way. Slowing down in this way is such a gift, and we can take the awareness and exquisiteness that accompanies it into every aspect of our lives and relationships. I feel my heart unfold a bit further as we dialogue in this way about it!
ReplyDeleteThank you!
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ReplyDeleteHere is a link to something that I read today that seemed very relevant to things we are sharing here. hope you enjoy it !
ReplyDeletehttp://middlegroundsages.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/drifting-self/
Thanks for the link Steph - it's lovely article - useful to get a new link to writing on prenatal work.
ReplyDeleteHave you seen this - a youtube talk about connection and space in relationship. By Hedy Schleifer, a clinical psychologist on the Power of Connection,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEaERAnIqsY
There is a lovely quote within it:
Beyond right thinking and wrong thinking
There is a field
I will meet you there
(Rumi)