Back from Jupiter

Where do you go when you meditate?  Today I might as well have been on another planet.  I did my psoas release work as I have been every day and did some energy work at the same time.  Then I moved into yoga.  I decided before going right into savasna, I would release my hips in supta baddha konasana.  That is is reclining pose with your hips open and the soles of your feet touching.  From there I went to savasna and I find that doing it every day, I am falling more and more quickly into a trance.  More than that, I am feeling more and more grounded immediately.

Starting from my head and moving all the way to my feet, I visualized each part of my body falling into the ground.  When I got to my feet, which in a fully expressed savasna pose I think would end up fully turned out, I not only felt a very significant release, but I literally felt hands wrap around them and gently pull them down, like a gentle body worker might do in a reflexology session.  That was comforting and yet feeling so connected to the earth was actually disarming and I felt a substantial amount of anxiety.  I snapped out of it, but immediately went back to grounding myself with the intention that I would ride through the fear and release it.  I grounded myself again, felt myself once again pulled very close down on to the ground and my whole body relax deeply, and for the first moment things were so intense that I stopped breathing and my palms curled up.

A very good practice that a friend has taught me is simply noticing and sitting with a sensation before reacting to it.  I waited for breath to come rather than forcing it.  I immediately thought of the energetic significance of one's palms - they contain the minor chakras (incoming on the left, outgoing on the right) that receive and give unconditional love and healing, and are connected to the heart chakra.  I imagined unconditional love coming into my left palm, and moving back out of the right to whomever needed it.  My whole body relaxed and gave over to the grounding, my palms flattened to the ground and remained upward and open, and I deepened even further into the trance.  I was surprised to find my flatmate napping in my bed as a came to, although I had vaugely heard her enter early in the meditation.  I then did what i know only as triangle pose, or ankle on knee pose - I don't know the Sankskrit and I do know that it is a hip opening pose for those of us who cannot (yet) achieve pigeon pose.  Perhaps it's because I've done this pose a lot lately, or perhaps it was the earlier supta baddha konasana, but my knees, rather than hovering their usual four or five inches above my ankles, were only a half inch above or so and release very quickly.  It is exciting to see such remarkable progress after only a few days, especially when it seems that several years of yoga didn't do as much.  Perhaps it's because I've been doing the psoas release along with it, perhaps it's the holy basil tea, or the geranium oil, or the meditation.  Whatever it is, it works and I'm thrilled.

Now, I've done my yoga for the day, so that must mean I'm off to write next.