Tuesday night meditation/healing circle after 90min of yoga. There were eight of us in the group, led by my good friend Jerome Gross. Jerome teaches yoga and fitness and does incredible energy healing. In the depths of my depression and despair, he is among the few friends whose authenticity and simple presence have moved me. We all have those kinds of people in our lives, for good reason.
Every time I stay for the healing session, I learn a new technique to deepen my connection with body and spirit and find the mind at ease. On this night, Jerome guided us through the spine as a gateway to bring calm and alignment to the space of another.
We began by breathing and being aware of our own spine, slowly gliding our awareness from the base to the head, relaxed and upright, noticing moods and sensations, subtle or strong, the felt sense of having a spine in its flesh and bone, finding that balance and alignment on the chair, the head gently lifted like a sky hook keeping it there.
Through the heightened awareness of our own body and spine, we then paired up to scan the body and emotions of our partners’. When I did this with my partner, I felt an array of feelings and sensations throughout my body that were not familiar as my own. I breathed and sat with those places in my own body. And through this inner practice we were able to connect and shared and interesting conversation afterward.
“And the actions that emerge are real, raw, and authentic from that place of inner focus.”
Jerome referred to this process as a tool of assessment for healing and rejuvenation. To test if the process had any affect, in the beginning we were asked to think of something that was bothering us. After the exercise, we revisited the feeling to see if it had changed. Everyone in the group reported a significant shift.
The process appeals to me because it’s not an intervention in the conventional sense. It’s the continual inner awareness of mood and sensation and that by its’ very nature is restorative. No self-righteous effort is needed.
There is no use to identify with thoughts that arise, there is no mountain to climb, no doors to unlock, no feelings to resolve, just aliveness in the present, a simple awareness is enough. And the actions that emerge are real, raw, and authentic from that place of inner focus.
A key element to this process is to be in a state of surrender, meaning being open and not taking things personally. Through this non-judgmental state we can transcend the limiting patterns of the mind and introduce new ones that are just more meaningful and interesting.