Somatic Ritual

One of the ways we work through with our nervous system, our organ of perception, our brain and our nerves is through our eyes. orient to your space with your eyes. Look around your space. What do you notice? And as you look with your eyes, your skull, your head is gonna move. Are you breathing? Are you breathing? You are breathing. How are you breathing as you do this? How does your breath maybe change? As you look around your space. Look at what you notice in your room that you also really like. that you gravitate towards, like for me, my candles and the pelvic model I have on the side of the room. And maybe it's your pet, your cat, your dog. Also notice the doors of your room and the windows, if you have doors and windows. You're orienting to your space. and then come back to center. And this time, notice the periphery of the space. So take your hands to both sides of your head, just far enough so that you can still see your hands. That's your periphery, peripheral vision. And you can bring your hands out to farther away from you in the sides. And then they'll come out of your vision. And then you move your hands. closer to your head, the sides of your head, and you'll notice they come into your peripheral vision. And then you can let go of that and recenter yourself, meaning let go, let go of any perceiving for a moment. And then this time, as you once again look around your room. Can you focus on the details of something in your space? If you have wood in your home, you can focus on the details, the lines that's within the wood. Or if you have a plant, you could focus on the detail of a plant and the leaf. or an animal in your space, you could focus on the detail of their fur. And notice where that puts you when you're focusing on the detail. Are you more in the front of your body or the back of your body? How does that change? how you perceive your body. as you focus on a detail. Let that go. and come back to the periphery. Slowly. slowing letting go of the detail. Slowly orienting back to the preface of softer gaze, bringing in your whole space. taking a break if you need to. So what's the difference between focusing on details and then bringing in the periphery of your space, perceiving the whole space? And can you find some balance in between the two? Take your time, go at your own pace, pause the video if you need to, take a break. Is there a way to stay in the periphery and also focus on the details? And how does that affect how you feel in your body? Particularly the balance between the front of your body and the back of your body. And I talked about that in another video, how our sensory nerves come in through the back of our spine. And we sense through the back, motor nerves come out the front. There's this back and front body balance. that we can play with in this somatic ritual. for our organ of perception, our nervous system. I'd like to now pause from that and really take a break. And so one of the ways to do this is to cup your hands, sorry, cup your eyes with your hands. Let everything go. Notice the darkness. And then release that. Release your hands. back to center however you do that. Maybe it's touching your body. So Uranus is associated with the nervous system. And this is one way to work with the nervous system is through the eyes. Notice what you notice, what was interesting for you or helpful or useful. And now I'm going to shift to sensing into bones. Bones are Saturn. Saturn is related to the bones. So can you start to touch your bones, perhaps the bones of your arms and the bones of your fingertips? I'm just remembering now and I'll share with you that when my grandmother passed away. My grandmother had a brain tumor, so she couldn't say very much. And she ⁓ just touched my fingers. That's the last interaction I had with my grandmother, who I love dearly and I'm still very connected to in the spirit world. And she just stroked my fingers didn't say anything. And then a couple of days later, she passed away. Maybe she came in for this practice, I don't know, but wanted to share that. What does your experience feel like to you when you touch your fingers and connect with the bones? There's so many bones of your hands. And you don't need to have any kind of experience, right? It's bringing in curiosity, interest of how they feel. How does the touch feel to you and how does it feel for your thumb to be touched? And then come up your arms. And what kind of touch would you like? Do you want a harder touch, soft touch? That feels good to you. Come across your collarbone to your shoulder and then down your other arm. ⁓ to your other hand and touch your fingers. how do your arms feel with that touch? When you touch your bones and you touch into... this kind of solid structure of your body, the innermost part of your body in a way, so are your organs. But in what we're touching in our hands and our arms, it's inner. And it's our skeletal structure that holds us up from the earth. Can you feel your feet and the bones of your feet that also are grounded and planted into the earth? Maybe you're lying down and you want to bend your knees, have your feet on the floor. And now I'd to invite you to bring in the water element. How do you bring in the water element into your body? Maybe it's an image that comes to mind. So this could be, say, the image of you floating in water or kelp or seaweed floating in water. Can you feel, imagine, sense your body floating in the ocean? Like a fish maybe imagining salmon. Salmon, unlike us, don't have limbs. They have fins, not limbs like we do. we can relate to salmon through our spine. doing any kind of gentle movement of your spine. which is a bony structure, but certainly not straight, has curves. The spine can be fluid. So we've connected three parts of ourselves, the skeletal. They're always connected. They're always in relationship. They're never disconnected. You're not just your nervous system. Your body is not just a nervous system. You... You are relationships between body systems. So we've connected somewhat to our skeletal system. And with a fluid movement of feeling like we're kelp or salmon in water, in the oceans, in the river. I want to bring in that landscape of ocean, river. We begin to connect with the water element. and the fluidity of our bodies. Very fluid. Our hormones are in blood. we have lymph We have cerebral spinal fluid that surrounds our brain. surrounds our spine, spinal cord. You don't have to follow my movement. Find movement that works for you and your body in this moment. Or if you'd like to be still, just be still. Be still. It's not just. Be still. And do you want more bone, more skeletal? Maybe through touching or through really feeling your feet on the earth. and your spine connected to your pelvis that's connected to your legs down into the earth. Or are you more attracted to feeling the fluidity? and how that may support your nervous system. Both may support your nervous system. And I'd like to come to a close. You can continue to explore this. You can come back to this video. But I'd like to start to close this embodied ritual. by coming to some stillness. Placing your hands somewhere on your body. Remember it's a practice. If there was any confusion, something that was unclear, that's great. And you can come back to that. You can keep exploring. You can look at pictures of your skeletal system. You can learn about your cerebral spinal fluid. You could read more about Uranus and how it's connected to the nervous system. There's a lot to continue to explore. And then how do you find a way to close? I'll be closing by thanking myself for this practice, giving love and kindness to my body. sending out that love and kindness to the land that I'm on. to all beings that live on these lands. And then I'll probably close by blowing up my candles. Moving on with my day. That's a suggestion. How do you close? Thank you for being here with me for this somatic ritual practice.