Writing Exploration with Notan, May 2011 Workshop

I leave the box
expand beyond four rigid corners of my darkness
The container of my darkness still available
you are there to keep me safe
and I still leave

Slowly peel away parts of my darkness
reveal light
I leave softly
rounded with curves
more often than by angular tears

You are me
My dark and light join
together you cradle me
I learn more about embracing
challenges
and how challenges
embrace me

"Consider that Everything may already be OK...

Do not strive to conform yourself to any preconceived ideas.
Awareness is the effortless aliveness you already are;
It cannot be moved toward nor moved away from.

See for yourself: Are you present and aware?
Can your presence-awareness be debated or refuted?
Or is this sense of awareness seen directly and without doubt?

No one can deny your presence-awareness.
So ground your sense of self in this irrefutable fact of reality.
Presence-awareness is the only thing you are already sure of.

It is always present when you are.
Therefore, you and presence-awareness are one in the same.
Awareness is your true essence: You are that.

The body/mind you have taken as self,
are merely sensations and perceptions arising in the Awareness you are.
Body/mind/world arise in Awareness, and pass away in deep sleep and dreams.

Now look at this Awareness you are.
Does it have boundaries? Location? Or any objective qualities?
Is it personal? Or is it globally present, shared by all beings?

Awareness is what experiences everything, or more accurately it is the experiencing,
the wholeness, the oneness, the totality.
Can you say it was ever born? If never born, can it die?

So relax and know the awareness you are is unaffected by the events of the body/mind/world.
What is left to worry about? What needs to be done?
Eternal, effortless, serene presence-awareness: You are that."

Meditation Insights - March Workshop

I had an image through the last meditation that we did. I was sure of the image that I was getting. The picture I had in mind was a space that held and included a scene of a lot of children and adults, which is not an uncommon sight. However, there was something very different going on at the time that I could not describe.

After some very unsettling days thinking about it, the difference came to me. The word that described the scene that was very different from what we experience in our culture today was "respect".

Respect for the land we walked on, the food we ate, the air we breathed. Respect that each adult and child had for themselves and respect that was shared between both child and adult. It seemed almost like a dream. Respect is the "missing link" for every aspect of life as we know it, on this planet.

-LC, workshop participant

Photos by Sandra from March's Unergi Workshop

A few of many photographs taken by Sandra of the beautiful location of our
March Unergi workshop: Parallel Realities in a Multiverse.

Many thanks to our hosts for offering such an amazing place to explore and step into expanded awareness of self and body, creating a community that values learning through joy, organic health and nature care, crone wisdom and composing life through art and music.

November Workshop: Chosen Relatives - Group Poem

See Beyond Your Vision

Spread your wings
fly, fly
I am elegant
go where you want to go
and take care of the earth
wherever you find yourself
you are home?
You see a bunch of ladies
who are walking beautifully toward you,
you don't have to be afraid
and then I have to leave you
while you find grace
in each step

Movement Responses & Feedback from Ute

-ALM, current Unergi student

June 3, 2010

Unergi Core Support Movement: Pelvic Dial

Once I had my feet planted on the floor, I felt like I didn’t want to move at all. It was especially unusual because this movement is really IN my body now. My body remembers how to do it and likes it. Today was different at first. So I just stayed on the floor at listened and imagined for a while. I thought that my body had softened into the floor, but about 10 minutes into listening, I became aware that my entire body was actually in a slight contraction and that was why my body didn’t want to move. It would have been forcing it. After I was able to let go, I visualized for a little longer and then my body joined in with my imagination and it all made sense.

Ute - I imagine that a part of you wanted to make sure that she had a voice, and was "firing her authority figures" that you have internalized over a lifetime. Since you didn't force her to "get with the program", but instead listened patiently and went WITH her resistance in to imagination (something we are really good at as children), she consented to come along and helped you with her fabulous, and most often forgotten, ability to SENSE! "...it all made sense".

June 5, 2010

Unergi Core Support Movement: Shoulder & Hip Circles

I love that my shoulders understand this sequence. The glitches fall away within seconds and the movement becomes fluid. My hips are stubborn. When I turned to the other side, my other hip “got it” after a few minutes. I know I have a lot going on with my hips emotionally and that is likely playing a big role in my ability to move. I think it might also be time to pull out my anatomy coloring book so I have the most accurate understanding of what everything looks like in there. Maybe my visualization is throwing me off, too. I think it may have been the first Unergi weekend I came to that you said that if your body map is off, it reinforces habitual beliefs and responses. (Something along those lines.)

Ute - Yes, it is a very good idea to work with an accurate anatomical map in your thinking-brain. It will also help the (limbic) feeling-brain to feel more secure, and trust in your willingness to make an honest effort for contact.

June 12, 2010
Unergi Core Support Movement: Windshield Wiper

I feel sort of uneasy and disoriented. I seem to get really out of sorts when I do sequences lying on my side. I know I’ve written that before and I still don’t have a complete sense about why. I think part of it has to do with balance and also having my head in line with my spine. I haven’t figured out how to do that comfortably so throughout the sequence I’m rearranging my arm to make sure my neck isn’t contorted in some strange position – and I know I’m contracting my neck anyway. I just learned something! I know I’m starting to soften my shoulders and neck with more ease while lying on the floor on my BACK…lying on my side is a totally different story!

The other thing I wanted to mention relates to the head movement where I’m lying on my back and then move my head so my chin moves from my chest toward the ceiling and back. On the tape you say to notice how the movement ripples through the neck, spine and pelvis. The thing that is so interesting is that I totally felt the change in my body when my chin was moving toward my chest vs. when it was moving toward the ceiling… and it isn’t something I can verbalize yet. I KNOW, my BODY knows…and somehow I think that if I THINK about it too much in this moment, it will become pointlessly convoluted. Perhaps as I continue to experiment with that movement it will become easier to talk about. Right now I am comfortable sitting in the experience of FEELING it, and I guess that’s okay.

Ute - (Put a folded towel under your head that is high enough so that your spine is lying in a long line parallel to the floor.) Often, talking ABOUT something stays in the ABOUT and moves us away from the inside/insight of the experience, and away from Trust in the whole body function versus separating it into parts.

June 18, 2010

Unergi Core Support Movement: Pelvic Dial

I did this after I got out of the pool. After Monday’s swim that caused Tuesday’s pain like I haven’t felt in a while, I was nervous to swim at all. Marjory suggested that I might swim with Alexander awareness. It made total sense to me and that is what I did. I felt a difference in my body as I moved through the water. I didn’t swim long, but I spent a lot of time in the water, just walking around, floating around, being. Even still, I got out of the water and within 30 minutes my body started responding like it did on Tuesday. So down to the floor I went! The most interesting thing that I noticed is that it felt like my sacrum and lowest part of my back was shifting around and my back was cracking. My shoulders were completely relaxed – which is also very interesting. Usually I have to remind myself to let my shoulders fall into the floor.

My frustration with my body for the past 2 years…though mostly in the past 3 months because I really feel like I am gaining strength in the rest of my life…is that it seems so unpredictable. I practice all this body-awareness and then all of a sudden I wake up Tuesday morning feeling like I was run over by a truck. It really threw me off. My five minute a day focus that I chose at the Monergy Workshop is “I have my health”. On Tuesday night I lay in bed and I hadn’t done that yet, and so I started focusing on it…and I just started crying. I’m still waiting to see what I’m supposed to learn… it will come when it will come.

Ute - Here is what I imagine: You are moving into a whole new level of movable awareness, which is exciting AND scary. The younger parts that have had good reasons to be protective, and therefore withdrawn and contracted, are asked to leave the former protection behind and trust the expansion. As you observe, experience and affirm that you are able to make different, self-supportive choices in your present life, the earlier habitual protective mechanism is no longer needed. This can bring up a ton of different feelings, like, "Am I useless now? Does she reject all my efforts of trying so hard to stay safe (by making myself invisible, not speaking up, etc)? Is it safe to come out? Who can I really trust?..." The swimming and allowing the buoyancy of the water CARRY YOU and explore even more fluidity and expansion than ever before, may have thrown a younger part of you into panic. So, go back to patient listening, as you know how to do so beautifully, and wait for her to show you her timing, her pacing...

June 25, 2010

Feldenkrais: Freeing the Mouth & Jaw

I did this just before going to sleep last night. The left side of my neck was very tight and it felt like my entire head was full of tension. I was sort of surprised because I have been very aware of my jaw and keeping it soft. I wonder if I compensated by holding my head in a strange way. It is quite possible. It has only been in the past couple days that I have consciously kept my head free and remembered the head/neck/atlas relationship. Anyway – when I first started and rolled my head, it rolled very easily to the right but didn’t want to go very far to the left at all. I spent a lot of time on this sequence…longer than usual. I could feel how opening my mouth affected my neck and because my neck was tense, my mouth did not want to open too much at first. By the end, my neck had released a little bit and my head was able to roll a little easier.

Ute - We hold a lot of tension in the jaw, head/neck area. I imagine this is because of our fear to speak up, to be heard, to take up space with our ideas in other people's lives. Notice how this Jaw sequence engages your whole body, not just the jaw area, and is therefore a "way in" to taking up our rightful place in the world.

The Impact of Unergi

I have only known Ute for about a year and a half, and in that short time she has helped me create many positive changes in my life that seemed near impossible when I first met her. When I first met with her I had never heard of Unergi, but after three years of a violently cyclic relationship (and others before that) I was willing to try anything. At that time, I had already been to a gestalt therapist, tried meditation, Reiki training, a vision quest, long periods of isolated "soul searching", and attempted psychohypnosis before I was led to Ute.

I had spent so many years trying to "erase" the undesirable parts of me, offering up a "forgive and forget" chant to anyone who had hurt me, but somehow I always came back to the same "baggage" or the same lesson wearing a different hat. It wasn't until I started doing Unergi work with Ute that I began to feel my habits shift, and I became empowered from knowing that I could retrain the habits that weren't serving me and ultimately rewrite my past. By learning to embrace the parts of me that I had been resisting and trying to eliminate, I moved into a present space that didn't erase my past, but no longer allowed it to control me.

Unergi continues to provide the self-healing space that can sometimes get left out in my busy day-to-day grind. It is wonderful to have such a warm and loving person such as Ute to facilitate my self-healing journey. I was raised to do everything for myself and never ask for help from anyone; to always appear strong on the outside. I am now realizing the great value (and relief!) of having someone outside of myself who can help me "see the forest for the trees" when I feel lost in the woods.

There have been many things that happened in the course of my life that seem to have shaped who I am today, many of which happened when I was a helpless child. I can never change what already happened, but I don't have to be the effect of those causes. I can rewrite it because "it is never too late to become what we might have been" (George Elliot).

The space Ute creates and the tools Unergi teaches can be described in so many ways, but for me it is: a safe haven; a maintenance plan for regular tune-ups; a reminder of what my soul has always known; and, a return to my true self, the person I was born to be and want to become.

-Melissa, former Unergi student

Unergi Responses

Unergi came into my life as I was approaching retirement. I had already had over ten years of psychotherapy and had made great progress in healing. But like many of us, I found it easier to do the intellectual work rather than the necessary emotional work. Something about lying vulnerable on a table being gently touched and moved allowed me to access my feelings more easily. This of course lead to deeper healing, and I frequently felt lighter when I left the office. Now some six years later, I am happy to say that in my golden years I am enjoying many hours of peace and contentment as I continue my journey toward wholeness.

- Rhoda Todd, former Unergi student

*******

Dear Ute,

WOW...and thanks..."Releasing the need for Healing and Fixing" has been in my thoughts a lot lately...so I feel like I am in tune with the upcoming weekend. I have been paying attention to how healing and fixing focus detracts from a softer/more loving... more open kind of focus...perhaps... in/of wellness, good health, well being, loving self acceptance, Beauty, the creative spirit, the joy of life itself, etc.

It has been an interesting journey for me in recent weeks...and I love the images that have appeared in my mind's eye...carrying me along...touching back...all-ways reminding me that the core presence of my being embraces a bigger "picture"...a larger view...a holographic construct...that often makes me laugh, smile, feel well supported...de-lighted.

Part of this was initiated in its current form by the exercise we did last month playing with the blocks... touching back and forth into that structure...and that space...without even having to "figure it out"...feeling like that structure/space has a life...a vibration...where something is shared...and things simply happen every time energy is shared. It is WOW-full...and I am grateful...living with/in Spirit this way.

Lovingly...Karen

-Karen Hoffman, former Unergi student

Thoughts on Unergi

Ute,

So glad you are avoiding the "sound bite" world, as your teaching cannot be contained in the "world of words", which is a small and constricted world.

Unergi builds bridges between polarities.

The traditional nondual teachings would say that polarities apparently exist because we overlook our true nature which is awareness itself, and all polarities are contained in awareness, and so are already reconciled from the viewpoint of our true nature, and, of course, Unergi re-introduces us to our true nature. I continue to be amazed at the similarity between Unergi and nondual teachings (such as those of Jesus, Lao Tze, Advaita Vedanta, Zen (6 th patriach), Sufi, etc. There is a saying that all "problems" (polarities?) are dissolved in the Buddha mind (natural, non-conceptual mind).

It seems we are all awareness itself, and nothing more. And Unergi invites us there, to this reality that is "closer than our own breath." Our true nature is "worry-free, effortless, ever-fresh, self-shining present awareness" (this is how the Tibetans describe it, although they use the word "non-conceptual" that I've replaced with the less academic term "worry-free". Jesus might say "the Kingdom of Heaven within." What could be a clearer articulation of the Unergi experience?

With warmest regards and gratitude, gratitude, gratitude...Love, Dave

-David B. Trindle, FSA, MAAAA

Unergi Explorations

"I so enjoyed painting, as per usual, it's the release I look forward to the most. I frees me up. I have come to so value the process of it, the movement of painting, the freedom I then feel in my body, the pure joy of creative self-expression. It leads to peace and quiet exuberance. Unergi has really taught me to think so differently about being artistic and I love being so present to the process and less attached to the outcome, and being agenda free.

My painting was like the eye of the storm. At the center, I saw a moon, a planet and they say to me: you can rest here, in the middle of the storm. The storm is red, shaky, intense: I see it as the expression of my frustration, irritability and anger in the face of life's stressors. But then I see that maybe the key is resting at the center of it all instead of fighting it, just being present to it. And I notice all this space around the red storm part too: I have all this support within and outside the storm, it says: rest here, take a deep breath, trust me, I'm here to support you. There is so much support all around! The next painting is about flow and waves, they tell me to go with the flow, that waves can be life giving, there is also a very playful, exuberant inner child coming out in that painting. It was reassuring to be reminded of this message, although the reminder is needed over and over again..."

What have I learned about self care?
All that Jan Baty stuff is rich, rich, rich. I wish there was a way to really ingrain it in my heart/brain memory because it all feels so fleeting. She spoke of not pushing out with elbow, not locking or fixing that elbow, staying soft in the hand, not tensing, doing less and not overdoing or over pushing which I know I tend to do. Remember the hand receives in, all the way to the back of me... I love the idea of approaching clients remembering there is a large energy field around them. Remembering directionality in knee, head, pelvis... endlessly sensing, feeling, including and using the heart/brain loop. Instead of adding something, how can I let go?
I also love: nature is a sentient being and we're part of it. It affected me profoundly to hear Ute say that, it was as if realizing for the first time that I am of the earth, I am like the flowers and the trees...

-Stephanie Bourgeois, December 2007