Accessible Yoga Training with Amina Naru and Pamela Stokes Eggleston
Yes, its all about Dreaming the world into being,
love Allie
From some of the mentees comments:
“When or where did the initiatory spark come from…wow”
“When asked I seem to have known very clearly”
“Every one is doing their own inner work”
Here’s my Palo Santo and here’s my candle. Since this is creation time. This is the time of resilience and renewal, as we invite the many ways in which our planet, our selves are starting to open up. I very much respect that this time that I have, short time, just about a half hour, and so will invite some ground, some earth into your practice.
The good news is that I’ve been invited to tell my story and I don’t usually do that. I’m a little nervous because I’m an old white girl, right? And I grew up with mostly people who weren’t like me. And so, when I came of age, which was about 16, and got the hell out of my family, I knew that I had things to do and places to go.`
And one of the things that I want to witness in front of you is that it took me a long time to honor my parents who gave me life. And even that, even though my mom and I didn’t get along, I didn’t like her smell, it took me a long, long time to come back and say, “Thank you” to her. To honor that what she had initiated in our family, which was basically the recognition of a diverse spiritual container, and to clarify I had received the spark of initiation, however unpleasant it felt. By the way, her father’s family was an old New York fish merchant family who brought a new type of fish to the fish markets in the city. They have a little diorama in the New York State Museum showing that, and she never told me that story….if she even knew or remembered it then.
And it is no different, now perhaps, than when we are being asked, as a human species, to honor our beloved planet earth. To bow honor and respect our mothers, our selves our shared human family as we honor the earth as our shared mother.
And so, if the spiritual container is what my friends Pam and Amina are doing for you, because I know they are, basically, we know that we can hold that space together tonight as I tell my story. To invite your stories to unfold. Not being anxious at all, but just saying, “This is how it landed.” And so I’ll share with you now, what happens when I free up enough and say, “This is who I am.”
In my so-called ‘professional development’, I was invited in to do all sorts of things, (or volunteered) because I knew I needed to find my voice. I also needed to rehabilitate my physical body after a lot of accidents sustained during my physical training years. I needed to find a clearing mechanism for myself. To find true meaning, I needed to find connection with the earth. And that’s what I was born into because, it wasn’t a white place, it was mostly an “everything else” place. And so, even though my family was white, I was not that, because of the environment. The forces that surrounded me, the teachers, the many diverse traditions, the diversity, the variety. Right? Because of the environment. That’s the amazing thing…its all about the diversity for me…I need it to feel like me. That’s why my business is called Integrative Leadership Practices. And I don’t do that alone now, yet that’s another story…the main story is always about surrendering to love. Thank you my beloved Newell.
So the other day Amina and I were chatting and we said, “You know, we could have told those trauma stories,” but it actually didn’t occur to us. It was just the next right thing based upon this incredible feeling that there was something, not a somebody, but a something that was informing the spiritual path that then landed in my body. And then I began to trust that I could do my own journey.
For me that meant that I had a lot of education because of my the status of my family of origin, but I took every single other job that I could get because I needed to go to other places to see who I truly was. Because I wasn’t seen as a kid; I had three brothers, I was number two and I wasn’t interested in those roles but, what I did get was a big rootedness of being really a wild person connected to Nature and very able to express my voice as I began to embody the “who I truly am”. My dear old aunt used to say, “why do you want to work with ‘those people’?” No words. And then I ended up educating white corporate men in wilderness trainings. They were struggling to adapt to a hostile takeover in their day jobs. As a wilderness educator, I was part of a team taking these groups on retreats to establish new ways of understanding while they struggled though physical, emotional, spiritual and social changes in their environments.
And all that continues. I’m 68 years old right now and if it hadn’t been for yoga in my twenties, when I had my first accident, I wouldn’t be here now. I was a windsurfer doing wilderness education in corporate training environments all over the world. I was on a day off.
I was in waters that I did not know. I went beyond my capacity and my sail went down and I didn’t listen to the winds. I didn’t listen to the winds and I did not turn my boat so that the wind was helping me, I turned and I faced the wind with my back. My sail on the wind surfing board was down and I leaned over and I muscled that sail up with the wind at my back. It’s okay if you’re in a motorboat, but not when you’re in a sailboat. You want that wind to luff when you get your sail up. So I busted my hip getting my sail up. I had a bone replacement operation. Five years later, I had to have another hip put in, crazy but the surgeon gave me metal that didn’t hold my energy. You catch that? Stress, be gone. Let me grow a new body. I started doing more spiritual practices and that’s also when, through the physical door of yoga, not only my spiritual practices, when I learned I could integrate them according to my own lived experience, my own explorations, experimentations and willingness to stay present to what was unfolding even as painful as it was…
But more importantly, that I knew I had to find the pieces of my heart that had been broken. Of my soul, that had gone out and was coming back in. And also, I had the physical journey of body parts. Like, okay, let’s get a new leg in there. Let’s get another leg in there. I had a leg length discrepancy of two inches for five years. They used to call me Quasimodo. So, that means that I was hauling my body around by my upper right shoulder and, you should have seen it. It was no fun. So I’m 15 years out of the last surgery and, I say that kind of weird story about my physical journey, because as we recreate this new world in these tarot cards, these zoom spaces, we’re here not to worry about what’s going to happen next. We’re here to co-create the new world. To dream the new world into being. Together.
And that’s why I brought my Eagle feather for you guys. To rub some of the Palo Santo into the cyber space streams here because as we learn again, to relax into the dream that is unfolding every moment and to be present with it. To sense into what is happening and to stay present with it. That is what we call Presencing and that is the approach I am offering in Integrative Leadership Practices and through my two books.
That the connection of our hearts allows us to relax enough, these are the yogic ways, where the mind drops into the heart. We regain our legs. That’s the big esoteric lesson that we get our ambulation back, and when we get our ambulation back, the ability to walk on the Earth. More importantly, we remember that we’re supposed to listen to the great mother Earth as well as the stars, the symbols from the constellations and the elements.
So remember what yoga teaches us? We are the space between Heaven and Earth. These bodies are who we truly are and it is our purpose, from a consciousness perspective, to anchor at the root. To anchor at the root. What we call connecting to source in Presencing work. We have shared cares. We have shared cares. Even though there are shared cares, we must practice through the deeper dimensions of listening to what is moving though us as well as what is activated when we are still. To learn to listen to the All and Everything and to follow that energy.
And so, as we listen to these constant alerts, conscious or unconscious. That we have to remember that we will constantly feel the uncertainty of these volatile and uncertain chaotic and ambiguous times yet, from the Presencing approach that I’d like to share with you tonight in a guided visualization and then a little dialogue, it is a way to use our dreaming capacity. This completely functionally oriented integration space of dreaming the world into being. What not? That happens, right, when we hold a yoga pose. What happens when we go through a really consciously and adept breath practice. When we actually begin to learn to stay with and be with whatever’s happening in the moment. Because if we start to do all this, that “I don’t know, I can’t” space dissolves. This “Oh I don’t want to do this. Oh, it’s hard. I don’t understand” spaces merge into a spacious awareness space we create though practice that allows time to pass with ease and creative impulse. This is the Energy of intention and attention coming together in a stream of will connected to the forces that harmonize the elements, however turbulen that feel. Then you know what that is, it the ground of longterm practice. Go, find it your selves, at home now, not only from six or eight weeks of silence in meditation centers. We learn to love that monkey mind and enjoy compassionate at all levels, inside and out and let go os saying, “oh, I should be different.”
Establish what is in each and every moment, honoring the root, honoring the unfolding, respecting the expressions for the sake of co-evolution. Of course some say now we are experiencing that last gaps of an old being….so give it space….let it go….with peace in your hearts and minds…and bodies…
But when we learn to land, when we learn that the dreams begin to actually be the most important information, that the fact is that this is the co-creation space and that our work, particularly you guys are so lucky to be with Pamela and Amina. Our work is to co-evolve, to co-create. Right? To nurture our capacity for the collective or to help the collective to come in. That makes sense to you? Give me a thumbs up or thumbs sideways or thumbs down. You got it? Okay, are we moving it?
So, you know what they tell me? They say, “Oh God, oh my God, she’s going to go move that energy again. You’d better watch out.” So, all right. So, one last piece of the story before the practice. I worked in a law firm. I went to law school. I hated it. I then, literally, walked the gangplank and then went to work for The South Street Seaport Museum, right next to the fish market that my ancestors had sold their famous catch. Do you guys know about those museums that started to help sea ports and other places get people to come down to places that were needing urban renewal? So I was there. And was then recruited by The New York Public Library to re-start a new enterprise to make products for their collections.
My energy has always been about clearing the path and starting things, rooted always in the energy of spirit from diverse transitions. Co-initiation practices, renewal and restoration practices. And I learned this from the inside out. I have been dealing with serious physical health issues sine my mid twenties, doing lots of healing work, physically and emotionally as well and reorienting to a more universal spiritual and Nature-based understanding of living, loving, working and relating. And when I shifted location out of the city, moving to the country, I renovated a beautiful old barn on an old dairy farm and began working all over the world, training leaders and teams in the wilderness. It started because I was given an opportunity to start a federally funded mediation center, working with at-risk youth, learning to bring a mind, body and spirit approach to as they regained a sense of belonging and capacity to be well. My friends and I created a little company, Above & Beyond, and began training teams in adventure based learning all over. We worked with corporations and universities, all of it. This was the wave early team development using the wilderness and mind-body techniques. The 1980’2 early 90’s. Beat up my body. Busted my hip in the windsurfing accident. Didn’t do it on purpose. Had a bunch of lovers, right? Don’t we all? Maybe. And then, never had children because I couldn’t. That was past of the situation i was given, my life. That was the other big piece for me. Couldn’t have kids. Body didn’t want them. So then, I ended up doing creation. Making things happen with other people, as spirit moved me.
And so, that’s what I heard you guys are doing tonight. You’re doing creation, right? Getting ready to seed your own creation stories. So, you already know that we can do anything that we set ourselves out to do. That’s why I love Pam and Amina so much because they’re listening. And when we, Pam and Amina and I, listened together. It’s like, in the Zoom here, they’re both on either side of me so I get the point. They have me covered. Thank you Pamela and Amina for supporting my unfolding by believing in me too. I love you.
And when we have our calls, it’s like, “What? What happened to you? And then that too?” And then we say, “What’s happening now?” And they say, “Are you kidding? You made that happen?” And so that’s what you are going to get from Pamela and Amina. I promise you and, if they don’t deliver, you can come looking for me. Okay? Is that a deal? I’m on the street now, guys, I’m on the street. Doing a regular life with my partner…well sort of…Okay. So, this is the real deal. When we know that we can have it all, that is dream the new world into being and life a good life. As a collective. Hand in hand. As a species. We can do that, together. But now, this is about you, right?
So that was a big opening on purpose, so that you could be under the stars, lying on the Earth, feeling the vibratory field because that’s how Amina and I really connected. Remember? Amina? We had that circle at the inaugural circle of the Community Healing and Social Justice Community Interest Community forum. Pamela has picked it up afterwards too. As our time there was ending, we turned and we said, “Well, we’re going to have to go away now, what are we going to do?”
I said, “Well, we can do this.” So we all put our hands on the hearts of each other, in the physical circle at the International Association of Yoga Therapists, where I did this project. It’s turning into the second book, Yoga Radicals, A curated Set of Inspiring Stories from Pioneers in the Field. Pam and Amina are both in the book. And so we had to go, right? And this is the magic about time being a construct. Time. You know. They just made that up. They made that up and they kind of made space up but, we’re in it so we have to play with it. Right? That’s what bodies are for. We have to play it, dance with the music of the spheres. But when we turned and we had to go away, we had put our hands on each other’s hearts and then we turned and I asked, “Well, what do you feel? What do you sense?” And different people said exactly different things about what they were sensing from the field. Okay? So that’s what happens in Zoom now. That we’re actually, not only here, we’re actually in each of our spaces as if we were in the same room together but, we’re using different parts of our organism. We’re activating these more complete aspects of our shared humanity as we open to the space we share, through our hearts…. you can feel it, Right?
It’s like when the elephants went to the top of the mountain when the tsunami came. This is the vibration of conscious intention and we as humans, kind of forgot that, that’s what we’re supposed to be doing. All the time. Conscious intention. Holding a dream, with our intentions and attention intact. And that’s why this ecological crisis is going on. This spiritual crisis and the personal crisis. Right? How many more suicides can we handle? How many more addictions can we handle? Right? So that’s the work that I do. Presencing. And why is it important for mentorship in an accessible yoga program? Because people who have learned that we’re not putting suffering at the top of the list any more. We’re putting life at the top of the list and other people need to know how to live. Right? And that’s the thing about, what we name in one of the practices. We move through time, right? That’s what we do when we do a long yoga hold and we breathe into it. Through it. Stabilizing our frequencies with the harmony of the universe.
Something releases. That’s the nervous system but the collective also has a nervous system. And now imagine this in your mentorship program, imagine that you’re all in it now, you know, this collective attunment and alignment, adjusting your pelvic bowls, getting your legs under you again so that your spine can lift into the heart so you can safely learn to listen outwards too, and that your head can actual respond. Bringing in new thinking, perhaps. Yes. So that’s what we’re going to go through now. Head responding to the energy forces that are coming up through your system and from all around. Eco system awareness, replaces the ancient ego drive. And, oh, by the way, everybody’s welcome. You’ll bring in those cultures, those ancestor lines, you’ll bring them in. Welcome it all, Okay? So this is about a six minute personal journaling practice. Short form of the longer one I will record and send.
So the invitation is, please, you can take your video off. You don’t need to be looking at other people or yourself for this practice of conscious intention setting. Just settle in and bring your hand to your paper. And listen
I call this ’embodying the field of the future.’ Its a preparation for what we call in Social Presencing Theatre the seed dance. It about preparing or cultivation your field of the future. Now we’re going to apply a little imagination. So no matter what’s going on in your space, just claim your sacred bubble. Right here right now, connected to the blessed Mother Earth. Okay? And usually what that means, in this Presencing work, is to surround yourself with a sense of being open in your mind. Being completely open in your heart. And more importantly to welcome your courageous will. So this is an activation practice. Take good care of yourself and, of course, this is completely voluntary. You can always pick it up off of the Presencing Institute site. So as I begin this, I do this several times a year, I invite your highest selves in. Leave the rest.
Just notice what you’re sensing inside. So here’s the first question. What did you notice over the past days or weeks, or even during this Corona time about what is emerging and what wants to be born? This is about you. What is emerging and what wants to be born? So you can just do keywords. Even drawing is okay. Names. And then go to your community. What did you notice about what is wanting to be born in your community or in your context? The things that you’re connected to.
(silence).
Sensing and, to current noticing. And then, drop a note or two about what really frustrates you the most. What is it really?, You know, it. The thorns.
(silence).
Kindly jot a minimum of three things for each question. You can always go back. And now we’re going to lift up into more of that witness consciousness or helicopter view. Just lift up and watch yourself from above. What are you doing? What are you trying to do at this stage of your personal and professional journey? Where’s your effort? What is your dream wanting to be born?
(silence)
And then, who is there with you?
(silence)
So when this journey of a single step begins, right?, this being the first one. Go back to your younger self. When did that spark begin to ignite? When or where was your initiation? My Shaman teachers would say to me. “When did you know that there was another path?” That you had a destinies star you could listen to, be guided by…? Welcome that.
(silence).
Okay. You remember through time, there is no time. We get to dream the world into being. Now we get to go fast forward. To the end. You know, the Tibetans say, “It’s all preparation.” From that future self that you will be working on creating. Here. Now. What footprint, what do you want to leave behind? That people will either see, feel or sense. What footprint? What impression? What is it that people will feel, see or sense after you are gone?
And staying there. Rest in the scene. Inside and safe. What advice would you give to your current self?
(silence)
So, from your future self, as you look back to your current self, you can say something that might be useful, helpful. A way forward….a mini moment of opening toward….
(silence)
Just take a moment, maybe do a little drawing. Play with how this practice of deep, deep, inner work lands in your body. This is all about sensing from the wisdom in the body. Already there. Always there. Sometimes we just call it ‘the intelligence of the heart’. And so now, we return to the present and we begin to cultivate this question of “what is it that you want to create?” “What is actually arriving as a deep intention?” It could be a drawing or a color or some very fragmented piece. Remember, these are lifetimes that we’re trying to bring back. Souls to be retrieved and restored. Embraced by your light.
And typically, these last two pieces are, as we connect to source, we light the path. In your journey now, what are some of the things you know, you need to let go of?, before you really connect to source and invite this future in? Into this creative field of the all in everything. So there’s ample space for what wants to be born. (bell rings)
And this is this hard work of learning again and again. Letting go, connecting to source and then witnessing what wants to come. So, we’ll just leave it at that. This is the sort form…I’ll send the longer form by audio file for you all.
Just take these last minutes to anchor. Come back to the present. I’ll be sending send Pam and Amina follow-ups so you can always return to it. Just notice, where are you in your body now?, as we activate the field of creation. Where are you in your body? Your space, with in and with out.
And then, just take a moment and notice if you’re here or, did we lose each other in the dream that we’re trying to create together? And it’s okay. Come on back….just like in meditation. To notice how it feels to actually find a collective feeling that we can move toward a new and emerging space with others. We have to rest in not-knowing yet. Its all just emerging, It’s okay not to know. Notice what calls your attention now, and all around you as we come back in to this ground, to the screen. Notice how your body feels. What’s happening. Sensing in. Making a little movement, maybe stretch it out a bit, breathe.
And, we do these for days on end. In the old days we used to do these for weekends. That we would just continue to go in and in and in. So this is just a little taste. Yeah. Let’s see. A little stretch out maybe. Yeah. A little back bend. Open the heart and lymph spaces in the body, arms up, heads up, curl backwards. Opening the body to this new time, this creation time. Yes, a little twist. Those of you who are practitioners, you know what to do. So we’re trying to activate and initiate this creation space of connecting to source. And that was a very, mini, mini taste of what we call The Field of the Future Journaling practice and it relates to sensing and being present with what wants to emerge. And that’s the essence of Presencing and that’s what we offer the future from our mind and our heart and our will. Completely aligned and attuned. And it’s a work in progress.
So I pass it.
(silence).
Pamela: Great. Thank you Allie.
Amina: So maybe everybody could just come on back and let’s just take a look at anything that we noticed. You know, lean and you could do those emoticon little buttony things or, I don’t know like the five, 10, two. I don’t know. I do a lot of online so there’s all these different ways. I see smiles. That’s good.
Is that okay? Not too weird? Okay. Yeah. Oh nice, thank you. That helps. Yeah. A little ring. Okay. Well, I guess this is it so I’ll slip out. You know what we do when we do the bigger groups? We just say, “Well, time is dissolving for us at this moment.” And you have to pick it up so that the dreaming stays with you. So I pass it to both Amina and Pam. It is my deep honor to have been able to come and be together tonight. And oh, let’s don’t get me going to my New York self right now. You guys got potential in here. I can feel it. Okay.
Pamela: It’s true. And it’s so true. They have potential and we love you so much. Allie? We love you so much.
Speaker 4: There’s so Much in the chat about you, Allie. Everyone is thanking you. “So beautiful, Allie. Thank you. That was lovely.”
Allie: I didn’t see it yet. Oh, Okay! Thank you.
Speaker 4: So they’re resonating. Everything is in alignment.
Allie: Oh yeah. Okay. Well, be well. Do good work. I’ll tell you what I did to prepare. I went and seeded my grass and I put some new micro greens in just before I came, just so that you know.
Pamela: The hands in the dirt. Get in the dirt. Yes, yes.
Allie: Love you.
Pamela: Love you too.:
And have fun. Have fun. Most of all.
Allie: Yes. That’s the only way. And I’ll be back whenever.
Pamela: All right.
Amina: Take care.
Pamela: Thanks Allie.
Allie: Thank you. I know. Thank you for all the nice comments. That feels good.
Pamela: Yeah. Hashtags
Amina: Hashtag Allie knows.
Pamela: Allie knows about the micro greens.
Amina: Yes. Wasn’t that beautiful? Oh, …
Pamela: It’s always something, right? We always learn from her. This is why she’s in our life and this is why it’s so important to have people like that in our lives and she jokes about it, asking “Is that too weird?” She could have got weirder. She’s weird and strange and we love her, that’s what we love. You know, when you know who your tribe is or, you know who your people are and you do the weird things. And that’s how we are too.