Soul Alchemy

Dancing Freedom through the Elementals

EARTH  -  WATER  -  FIRE  -  AIR  -  ETHER

These core energies lens the five fundamental textures and geometric layers of the created universe through which we EMBODY.  Working with and through them allows us a full spectrum return to wholeness, and thus to embodied Oneness.  (I call this PeaceBody.)  The layers of the hologram of embodied Oneness necessarily include EVERYTHING.  Nothing is excluded from oneness, therefore skillfulness with all aspects of the created universe a key to mastery.  PeaceBody work integrates a timeless Mystery School understanding of the Elementals (through Vedic Teachings, Alchemy and the Goddess), with the contemporary wisdom of Somatics, particularly of Body Mind Centering, Authentic Movement and Feldenkrais, thus deepening our experiential (phenomenological) field of connection with all that is.

Begin with Earth, always returning to HOME base.  Then, work with other elements as suits your process.

EARTH is HOME. It is s your foundation, your bones, your I AM HERE-NESS on ALL planes as lensed through the gift of a 3D body.  It is your willingness to co-create with the descending aspect of love, otherwise known as GRAVITY.  Earth also calls you to truly explore your willingness to BE ONE WITH THE MOTHER.  Can you actually lay and play on the ground – a developmental return to your infant self and our mother-womb-original connection to both your physical mother and the Great Mother?  EARTH also calls you to recognize and honor yourself as a distinct being, and to clarify boundaries and hold space for the unique and contained aspect of your consciousness (and body) through which, we enter into a heightened and clear dissolution of separation.  Your body is the Earth, the Earth is your body.  Yet, they are distinct “biospheres.”  EARTH MEDITATION:  Arriving fully here, I am safe, I am grounded, I am HOME.

WATER is the medium of transduction, empathy and the feminine aspect of connected flow.  It is deep feeling – the ocean of the Mystery itself.  Primordial womb blood and liquid moonlight.  Shape shifting wave, ripple, snow, ice, steam, cloud.  Fluid dynamics and group flow patterns in the morphogenetic field.  The joints of the body contain fluid capsules: the lakes of the body.  The lymphatic ducts are your rivers.  Your connective tissues, fluid tissues, as well as the 80% water matrix of your body (the Oceans) represent the COMMUNICATION and CONNECTION matrix of your physical and multidimensional self.  Water is the ability to flow while staying connected.  It is pure feeling.  It is empathic harmonization with all that is.  The connective tissue especially represents your I AM CONNECTED-NESS, partnered with your I AM SURRENDERED-NESS, and your I AM EMBRACE.  It is your willingness to feel, and your capacity to feel without attachment to the feelings.  It is your FLUIDITY with the known and unknown.  WATER MEDITATION: Walk like water.  Follow the path of least resistance.

FIRE represents will and fuel, consumption and purification.  It is held primarily within the muscles of the body, as well as within the digestive, assimilative and eliminative aspects of the body, and with the blood and the fiery heart.   The sense of fire is sight, and therefore it is also held in the eyes and the power of VISION.  Descending fire brings us fully into the body, into the cellular Shakti fire of Kundalini, our passion, power and pure life energy.  It is the cellular fire burning bright.  Ascending fire is transmutation itself, the fire without fuel, light and geometry that shifts through its own love, wisdom and power. The two together are the force of our human/divine impulse for Oneness, for unity in diversity, for Love in action.  Fire is your ability to get behind your I AM presence to activate your I AM DIVINE ACTION, I AM DIVINE WILL, I AM DIVINE LIGHT, I AM DIVINE POWER.  Use fire to spark the outward gesture of union. ALSO, use fire to transmute.  Within the dance, the twin flames of Ruby Gold and Silver Violet twine to bring us fully into balance in immanence and transcendence.

AIR represents levity, constant change, permeability, quickness and ease.  Air is the masculine aspect of flow – as much mental as physical, completely unattached.  At the same time, it is the Divine Child, fairy, pixie, trickster in constant spontaneity.  It is held both within the breath and within the mental functions.  The organs associated with air are the lungs, the skin and the neural tissues.  Within the dance, we work with air to fully open the willingness to be as big as we are -within and without – to BREATHE the breath of Spirit and to BE this lightness, expansiveness and wonder.  We use AIR to open the subtle sense of touch – feeling the breath touch every part of our INNER-SPHERE (inner body), and every part of our SKIN-E-SPHERE (the layer of our physical bodies that touches the outer world, creating a membrane between us and everything else).  Air also re-connects us with WONDER and NOW – the N-atural O-rder of W-onder.  It is the element of the Divine Child, reconnecting the Inner child, held in earth, with the levity of eternal innocence.    AIR holds our I AM LIGHTNESS, LOVE AND WISDOM, I AM THE TOUCH OF THE DIVINE, I AM THE DIVINE CHILD OF THE LIGHT THAT I AM, I AM LOVE.

ETHER – Ah!  Ether!  SPACE.  GRACE. ETERNAL UNION WITH ALL THAT IS.  In the dance, Ether is all the space with, the space without, the quantum reconnection and union with all that is.  Ether is held in every aspect of the physical body.  It is our I AM presence embodied, in the purity of our union in all dimensions.  We arrive at sensing of Ether through detailed, loving awareness of the complete organism, our breath, our movements, our tissues, the space within and through all of our cells, atoms and particles.  We also can arrive here through ecstatic release.  The organs of Ether are the endocrine glands and the cerebro-spinal fluids.  We also contact it through sensing and feeling the DNA, the 50 billion cells, and the 99% empty space of our quantum selves.  Ether is the bridge to the quantum.  Sound is the sense associated with ether.  When we open to fully hearing and feeling waves and frequencies of sound, we become able to sense into the quantum field effortlessly and easily.  I AM FREEDOM.  I AM UNION.  I AM GRACE.  I AM THAT I AM.  ONE.  ALL.  MOVEMENT.  STILLNESS.  PRESENCE.  FULLNESS.  EMPTINESS.  DIVINE LOVE, LIGHT AND ENERGY.  DIVINE LOVE WISDOM AND POWER.  HOME.  In ETHER, we are welcomed back to the self that is beyond (yet contains) space, time and matter.

ELEMENTAL ALCHEMY!

So many people are waking to their multidimensional selves through TRUE, FULLY CELLULAR EXPERIENCE OF IT!  It is only through full integration of our physical, emotional, energetic and spiritual bodies that we can fully bring the transcendent beauty of awakening into immanent “re-all-ity.”   The following chart will help you to see/feel the different qualities, actions and powers of each element.  As you decrease in density, each element contains the one prior to it.

Blessed be the Dance!

The Holographic Intelligence of Embodiment

Element	Action	Sense	Body System	Essence	Feeling	Field
EARTH	Arrival Beginning Ending Grounding Composting Return Structure Foundation	Smell	Bones Sense of Gravity	I BE I AM HERE	Home Nurture Embrace Trust Quiescence Connection	Instinct
WATER	Flow Lubrication Washing Resonance Reflection Transmission Transduction	Taste	Connective Tissue Joints Fluids	I RESPOND I AM CONNECTED I EMBRACE I FLOW “Walk Like Water, flow the path of least resistance”	All Emotion Compassion Self-love Mercy Peace Availability Willingness	Emotion/ Empathy
FIRE	Fuel Consume Purify Reveal Vision Transformation Transmutation Both Earth and Cosmic Kundalini (Decending and Ascending Fire)	Sight	Muscles, Metabolic Function Cardiovascular System	I CHOOSE I AM LIGHT, LOVE & ENERGY I AM  DIVINE WILL, DIVINE ACTION, & DIVINE POWER I AM CREATIVE	All Emotion Will Passion Creativity Power Intensity Clarity Love	Empathy/ Emotion
AIR	Change Winnowing/ Refining Spontaneity Clarity Subtle Holding	Touch	Skin Respiratory Mental Functions	I GIVE I AM THE TOUCH OF THE DIVINE I AM CLARITY I AM EFFORTLESS CHANGE	Innocence Mental Clarity Lightness Buoyancy Child-like wonder Freedom Joy	Intuition
ETHER	Stillness Expansion Space Emptiness Fullness Infinitude	Hearing	Endocrine Cerebro-spinal fluid DNA	I KNOW I AM I AM ONE I AM ALL I AM FREEDOM, UNION, GRACE	Bliss Expansion Effortlessness interconnectivity Boundlessness Home	Psychic

Courage

Mid-August.  It is Monday night in Tokyo: hot, sultry weather and a room full of bodies in full motion.  Thirty dancers reveal the soul dancing as I “hold space” – just being fully myself and weaving light in the room.  The whole place vibrates, and I feel the earth sending waves of gratitude to us through the floor.

It is a remarkable and brave thing to dance your soul.  Naked, vulnerable and free, I see dancers opening body, heart and spirit in the motion.  Sweaty and blissful, I see people in divine radiance.  I see courage.  I see the whole person.  I see the dance of life, death and birth.  I see timelessness.  It’s exquisite!

As I witness, I begin to contemplate this remarkable courage, expression and beauty.  I think about who these dancers are as people, as spirits, as wisdom keepers.  I shiver.

What is a person? A person is a collection of perceptions, feelings and actions.  A person is a skin bag full of bones, blood and heart.  A person is a miracle – with arms, legs, spine and a mouth to speak.  A person is a spiritual event happening one moment at a time.   A person is a body that includes the physical, emotional, mental, higher self, soul and spirit, all weaving together in one unfolding conversation of Self.    A person is a dance.

What is a dance? A dance is an act of essence.  It is a set of motions dissolving in space and time, never to be repeated again, known only through the experience of the dancer or the awareness of the witness.  A dance is a deeply courageous act.

What is courage? Courage is what I witness every day when these remarkable beings called humans come to do this incredible action called dancing.

Courage is naked self. It requires a willingness to perceive, feel and act.  It requires presence.  It takes guts.

When I see people connecting deeply to what their senses perceive, their bodies and emotions feel, and their dances express, I see raw humanity.  I see incredible, wild, truth.  I see diversity, and I see unity. I see divinity.  Courage is what I see when a person deeply perceives him or herself in the movement, allows that perception to be totally felt, and finds the willingness to express that into the dance.  It is risky.  There are no guarantees.  The gamble is our own freedom.

Courage means being your self totally, without apology, shame or doubt.  It means being vulnerable.  It is a tool for being wide awake – totally alive and free.  Without the courage to be vulnerable, we can never know true power.  True power comes from embrace of life, not control over it.  The dance asks us to loose control and thus experience being – totally.  It asks us for real embrace.  You can’t dance if you are busy editing your own feelings and actions.  You have to be unconditional.  This is how we learn self-love.

Here in Tokyo, we are dancing.  People are coming together – body and soul – to Dance Freedom and sweat prayers.   Everything is breaking open: hearts wide open, pores wide open, voices wide open, expression wide open!  I am in AWE of what I see.  Awe.  There is no other word for it.  It get kundalini waves just thinking about it.

The freedom to experience and express the self is such a radical thing here in Japan.  Just the concepts of self-awareness and self-leadership are radical.  There is no word for sovereignty in the Japanese Language.  In this culture, there has been so little space to feel, so little room for individuation. Space is tight.  You get by.  You do what you are told.  You fit in and work hard and live in responsibility to your family and ancestors.  You live in the context of a larger culture, an older order and continuity over which you have no control.  Yet, there is an incredible momentum towards self development and a growing drive towards sovereignty.  There is also a call to release the old pictures of cultural identity to enter new possibilities of beauty.  People are claiming their power and recognizing that they are creators.  There is a spark of passion – soul fire! – coming alive everywhere, like the day glow colors on the billboards of this endless city.  These people are so courageous!

This new Soul Fire is idiosyncratic, self-affirming and radiantly alive.  It arrives as a wordless drive, or a will to know, and it opens the gates of the heart.   People are shedding the skins of culture and asking WHO AM I?  WHAT DO I WANT?  WHAT AM I HERE TO CREATE?  HOW CAN I LOVE – MORE?  HOW CAN I BE FREE?  WHAT IS MY PURPOSE?   HOW CAN I LET GO OF EGO?  Each place I go, I meet people struggling with the Great Questions.  It is time to dance.  In the dance we arrive at sensation, feeling and action: the simplest building blocks of our humanity.  We remember that the answers are not external, like new clothes or new jobs, but are held in the heart and in the ways in which we experience our lives. We find the courage to be ourselves, and THIS is the only real answer.  Let life be an endless question.  It is much more interesting that way.  This is where the Dance of Freedom begins.

“Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires.”
– Clarissa Pinkola Estes

“Let’s Change Climate Change.”

No fear is stronger than our love.

Live from Shasta! Today’s Meditation: Sacred Community

We dance the Sacred Community.

We welcome all the inner selves and all the outer selves to dance together.  We welcome the singularity of Self.

We invite the presence of all of our communities:  our elders and ancestors, our animal and totem guides, our angels and archangels.  We invite the communities of our families, our lands, our workplaces.

We invite peace in all of these communities – that we be peaceful with ourselves in relationship to these communities.

We invoke and invite the sevenfold peace.

Peace in and with:

• Body
• Mind
• Family
• Community
• Country (Culture)
• Ecology
• The Divine

We recognize that to be against or separate from any part of these seven realms is to be other than in peace.  This non-peace expresses itself through and as judgment, distain, despair, anger, dissociation, fear, aversion, depression and violence.

The questions for our meditation:

• Where are you at war with the greater community?
• Where are you a slave to your projected judgment, fear, anger, pain, despair, disempowerment?
• Where are you not free because you are not at peace or for Peace?
• What is the relationship between choice and peace?
• What is the relationship between freedom and peace?
• What is the relationship between freedom, peace, wholeness and BALANCE?

To be a pert of community is to be a part of a system, a structure.  How do you participate within this structure?  How do you RESPOND?  How do you be powerful within this system?  How do you project onto it?  Being a part of a community means being a part of something bigger than yourself.  How do you dance with this thing/system/structure that is bigger than you?

What you can own, you can change.

Perception is the root of all suffering.

“Change” does not necessarily mean an outward expression of transition.  It begins with an inner choice of perception: of embrace, acceptance, tolerance, compassion, acknowledgement or honoring.  This is at the center of our co-creative process of being in Sacred Community.

Inner Connection & Outer Expression

Inner Connection and Outer Expression

Dancing Freedom Foundational Principle #3

Jen & Basin: The Dynamic Interplay of Love Loving Love

We are the dynamic creators of the play of the Universe. We do this both through being and becoming. We are called both to feel and sense our being and to activate becoming through expression of our being. In this way, the universe is literally birthing itself through each of us at every moment. The Living God lives in us as we allow ourselves to align with our divine human potential: with joy, bliss, compassion, power, inspiration, passion, truth and unconditional love. Source is within each of us, and here to be expressed through us. Dynamic, joyous and empowered living emerges from a creative and fluid interface of the inner and the outer. Inner connection is found through sensing and feeling – listening and being present with our inner experiences. As we connecting to this finely tuned presence, we call forth action – outer expression in dynamic harmony with the interior world. In the practice of Dancing Freedom, the Inner Dance deepens our relationship and skill in sensing and feeling, while the Outer Dance helps us receive information from beyond the self and to connect and express with others.

Visions of VISION: Harvest From Our August Quest

Visions of VISION:

The Dance of Nature Soul & Spirit

Cracking Open to Light and Shadow.  Luminous Souls.  Exquisite Nature.  A Bridge to Integral Embodiment.  A Road Home.

” Thru deep heart reflection and the quiteing of the identification with a separate self, the human can tap into a flow of natural abiding where anything is possible.  The simplicity of a vision quest has the potential to quite the mind and relax the habitual sense of separateness which constricts the potentiality of the human expression and flow. In this simple surrendered state a naturally arising deepend sense of listening with the whole body allows one to recieve and express nature’s raw messages. This natural connecting has inspired letting go of suppression and limitation.  I am living in the realization of the gift of humaness.”  – Chesary Aflen

“My Quest revealed shadows I had, in the past, locked inside and choked down. I felt the weight of past guilt (a “trait” I picked up in my Catholic school upbringing), old anger towards what I perceived as challenges in my life/ my family’s life, grumpy frustrations about my expectations (or more than likely, my parent’s expectations) for my future. Even my grouchiness during the water fast surprised me (duh!). In a self-defeating way, I did not relate this to my detox, I kept wondering, Why am I in such a bad mood? And then I accepted it! This experience created a greater acceptance of ME! And ohhh it felt AWEsome and Terrible exploring my shadow self. I realized I was exhausted holding my past all in! I allowed myself to FEEL and express my emotions. My experience expanded my heart’s capacity for greater self-love and acceptance which has also translated over into my connections to community/friends/family/other.”  – Meghan Dwyer

“The deepest insight that I had while on the quest was that I am falling apart- or I was.  Since then, I have really fallen into accepting that falling apart is exactly where I am meant to be at this time.  I have been experiencing a process of unravelling for the past 5 or 6 years.  So many changes have occurred in my life over that time.  I went from a state where my entire life was about trying to keep it together to present a certain image of myself to the world, to a place where I can truly just be who I am.  On  the quest I realized that who I am, naturally, without trying to be anything else, is an amazing, exquisite individual.  I am different from every other person on the planet, and that person is who the world needs me to be in order to do whatever it is that I am meant to do on this planet.  And, at the same time, I am different than others.  I also really get how we are all unique emanations of spirit- that we are all truly connected.  This was highlighted for me as we were sitting around the fire sharing our stories.  As I heard the details of each person’s journey, I felt as though each person was reflecting emotions and experiences that I myself have felt at different times.  For example, my path at this time was not necessarily to be scared out of my mind, or to encounter a bear, or to face my struggle with addiction…  And yet, as I heard the shares, I knew that some other part of myself has experienced these things- or will at some time.  I know this experience has changed my life in ways that will become more clear to me over time.  What’s obvious to me now is this:  I gained a sense of confidence.  For one thing, just simply going out on my own in the woods for several days, feeling comfortable and joyful, feels like an accomplishment.  I learned to build fires, which was amazing!  I also found myself feeling like I really had a unique role as a member of such an incredible group of people.  And, as I was on the quest, I realized that I was physically the elder of the community.  This was important for me because in the past, I have always been more comfortable as a novice.  Now I recognize myself as a product of my experiences, and I realize that those experiences may be useful to share with others.”  – Savra Kramer

Oneness Excludes Nothing

Embodied Oneness

Dancing Freedom Foundational Principle # 1

We are all here together in this vast universe as the One, as the Many. Oneness is the reconnection with our core connection to source AND to all that is. Embodiment is to Oneness what the Mind is to Enlightenment. Embodiment happens over time through practice.  It is felt through experiential union and communion with source and with the created and animate universe. Oneness, of necessity, contains, connects and interpenetrates all things, reweaving the singular fabric of wholeness that interpenetrates everything in existence. It excludes nothing. Practicing together in joyous authenticity is a vehicle for the felt and integrated experience of Oneness. Wisdom is an experiential science and a sacred game.

Unity In Diversity

Dancing Freedom Foundational Principle #2

In our communities, all experience and expression are sacred.  We embody Unconditional Love, Tolerance, Compassion and Contentment. We support Sovereignty of the Individual to create power in the whole – ALL experience is sacred.  Additionally, we acknowledge that “there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”  We embrace and invite the myriad practices and varied traditions of body-based evolution.  We respect and honor all of wisdom streams.  We bow to the lineages, the teachers, the elders, the ancestors and the teachings that have led us to this moment, while we co-generate a contemporary evolutionary movement through Dancing Freedom.  We open to the freshness, vibrancy and immediacy of Collective Avatar birthing through the intelligence of our communities and expressing through our creative engagement in the Dance.

YOU HAVE TO DO IT BY YOURSELF.  YOU CAN NOT DO IT ALONE.  – Thich Nhat Hanh

PeaceBody Song

Peace is the body
Whose heart has been found.

Peace is the body
At rest on the ground.

Peace is the body
Whose spine is well known.

Peace is the body
Whose spirit is whole.

Peace is the body

Well loved and joy worked.

Peace is the body
Sweet danced and deep touched.

Peace is the body
In integral light.

Peace is the body
At home and in flight.

-Samantha Sweetwater

Dancing Freedom

The peace between the pieces.

The dance between the stillness.

The stillness between the light waves.

The waves becoming form…

Today, in words, I am dancing.