These are four voice files for you to download onto your phone, mp3 player or ipod. They describe where to put your attention while you walk and breathe. The first two go together and you might want to listen to them one after the other, maybe even a couple of times, before you go on to the explorations proposed in part three. You might want to turn your player off, while you observe your walking and breathing. If you prefer to listen to some music, make sure that it will allow you to stay with the sensations in your body without imposing another rhythm on your own, while you walk, observe and explore. Make a note of your observations. Record them on your phone or write them down on a piece of paper.
The third file will help you recognize your habitual holding pattern and become familiar with it. The fourth will help you develop a way of being in line with the flow of gravity.
After exploring the proposal of part three, take a moment to record your observations.
In order to explore the proposal of part four, find a nice place that offers you a perspective you will enjoy contemplating for a while. At the end make a note of your observations.
The sensations related to your movements, breathing and all the other physiological functions as well as to your contact with the environment are continuously fluctuating. When you pay attention to their flow and you relax tensions you habitually hold, sensations may surface that you tend to keep underneath the threshold of your consciousness through the tension of your muscles. Do not be afraid of them. Although in the past you did feel the need to hold them outside your awareness, they are nothing more than sensations. If you focus your attention the way I describe in these files, they will flow on and leave space for new sensations to appear. They may inform you about things you had forgotten, affairs that need some kind of resolution or that simply need to be understood in order to be able to let them go. If a sensation turns your attention towards something that needs immediate attention, like for example that you need to blow your nose, do it. If there is something you can do to take care of whatever it is that the sensations brings to your attention, but just not right now, promise that you will do it as soon as you can. If there is nothing you can do, because it is not in your hands, entrust it to the ground and the open space, Mother Earth and Father Sky, together with the weight of your body and the air you breathe, and ask them to take care of it.
If you feel unwell following the sequences and it does not get any better after a number of breaths and you don’t know how to take care of it on your own, you might want to find an expert in trauma resolution. If you are in the area of Barcelona, you could come for some sessions of DFA Somatic Pattern Recognition, which are described in more detail in other places on this website. From other parts of the world, we could deal with it by way of Skype. For the time being, though, walk briskly to invigorate the part of you that is trapped in feeling unwell and let the intensity of the emotional charge go out together with the air you exhale.
Other than that, I hope the experience of cultivating the relationship between the living being you are and the material world you are a part of through breathing and walking with awareness will be pleasurable for you.