What is Witnessing?
Witnessing consciousness is described in ancient traditions as an ascendant (or top-down) practice, where we reside in inner stillness and enough spaciousness to be conscious of experience without getting stuck in reactivity, fusion, or avoidance. Ascendant practices are correlated with the masculine principle, Father Sky, and the capacity for discernment. Ascendance can also be understood as opening to what is possible, not yet manifest, and emergent.
What is Embodiment?
Embodying connects us with the fullness of life through our bodies: sensing, feeling, subtle inner movement, and our interconnection with each other and all of life. Embodying includes how we connect and relate interpersonally with each other. Embodiment is a descendant (or bottom-up) practice which is correlated with the feminine principle, Mother Earth, and rooting or grounding. Embodying connects us with wisdom integrated from the past: individually, ancestrally, and collectively.
Witnessing consciousness is described in ancient traditions as an ascendant (or top-down) practice, where we reside in inner stillness and enough spaciousness to be conscious of experience without getting stuck in reactivity, fusion, or avoidance. Ascendant practices are correlated with the masculine principle, Father Sky, and the capacity for discernment. Ascendance can also be understood as opening to what is possible, not yet manifest, and emergent.
What is Embodiment?
Embodying connects us with the fullness of life through our bodies: sensing, feeling, subtle inner movement, and our interconnection with each other and all of life. Embodying includes how we connect and relate interpersonally with each other. Embodiment is a descendant (or bottom-up) practice which is correlated with the feminine principle, Mother Earth, and rooting or grounding. Embodying connects us with wisdom integrated from the past: individually, ancestrally, and collectively.
Embodied Witnessing Practice is overlaid with the tradition of the medicine wheel and the historical trauma healing process developed by Dr. Ruby Gibson of the Freedom Lodge.
Ancient Indigenous wisdom is enfolded in the medicine wheel, with specific gifts connected with each cardinal direction which are connected with in a sequence for healing and transformation.
Embodied Witnessing Practice ...
- Implies both descendance and ascendance and internal alignment with the Dao, and the river of life through our spines.
- Expands compassion and brings us into relation with all parts of our S/selves with heartfulness, compassionate inquiry, and respect.
- Is grounded in kincentric awareness which honors the dignity, essentiality, and interdependence of all beings, human and more than human.
- Includes interpersonal relating, sensing, and group "we space" practices.
- Connects internal and external awareness practices to harmonize inner-outer coherence and create a foundation for embodied social justice.
- Is an ongoing moment-to-moment practice. Since life is a movement, embodied witnessing is a practice of attuning and flowing with the inner movements.
- Deepens presence which includes noticing when we experience more or less spaciousness without making that wrong.
- Opens the possibility of recognizing how we are relating physically, emotionally, and mentally in a given moment - when we are flowing, freezing, turning towards or turning away from what is happening.
- Disrupts trauma-based ideals such as hyper-individuality, shame- and pride-based identifications, perfectionism, scarcity, systemic white supremacy, dangerous world, extractive capitalism, and anti-Indigeneity.
- Creates a felt sense of connection and resourcing.
- Awakens us to new possibilities and perceptions.
Results people describe from the practices:
- Deepening capacity for presence in difficult situations
- Experiencing more possibility personally and in our world
- Learning, developing, and integrating through the practices
- Feeling somatically present, grounded and resourced
- Heartful in regard to the whole spectrum of emotions
- Increasing gratitude
- Increased mindfulness and spaciousness
- Supporting integration and inner freedom
- Experiencing a sense of meaning and purpose, ability to contribute through presence