Blog #5D & #6A: Shapeshifting through Trance Induction and Story Telling

Anavami Center
Shapeshifting through Trance Induction and Story Telling

Dream of Fossilized Oyster Found in the Desert

This week we experienced shapeshifting field-trips: Robert guided us to feel into stone-ness, Marjorie had us holding a regret as we ran our finger through water offering a subliminal catalyst for release. Carolyn spoke in the first person as the tumbled rocks and shells of the tide line at the ocean and called forth the details of that rhythm. Lainie brought us through a delightful romp as a chipmunk who dashed and looked, leaped and listened, tasted and stashed gathering nuts and savoring the squirrel’s sunflower seeds.

Shapeshifting through Trance Induction and Story Telling

Unreconcilable

Lucy, surprised us with her contribution by reaching back to the bard tradition as she brought us into deep participation in her story. She began by having us crawl around on the floor moving as cats, feeling the shoulders and hips initiate the movement of the limbs. She showed a short of the French tightrope walker Philippe Petit as his feet stepped along the steel wire. Then she began the story of his participation in 1987 walking aerially over the Valley of Hell between Palestine and Israel. This dramatic portrayal, 25 meters above the roaring crowd, was an occasion when there seemed to be a possible resolution between the two states. Her presentation included a lively portrayal of a confused white dove released from a piece of silk choosing to instead of fly to freedom land on Philippe’s head then the end of his pole and then walked behind him on the wire, almost mimicking his movements. All of this ended in the dove taking flight as Phillippe reached his destination.

When one actually imaginally embodies other, the experience brings emotions, information and insights very different from thinking about something. It was from this state that we undertook our Marking bringing forward powerful images from all of the journeys.  You can get a sense of that from the markings that appear after this blog.
 

Majio
 

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Blog #5C Become-like Cloud, Fear, Fingers and Raven

Anavami Center
Blog #5C Become-like Cloud, Fear, Fingers and Raven

Fingers of Fire

This week our field-trip guides who took us into shape-shifting were creative and innovative in their choice of subject and how they induced the state of mind to be receptive to becoming like something other or something we push away. Jess began with a complex hand mudra. She asked participants to gather a variety of materials and to interact with them by feel. She had us become like the tips of our fingers exploring and getting information through body sensation. My fingers became a fire gobbling up everything within touch leaving only ash of residual sensation and wispy smoke of memory.

Blog #5C Become-like Cloud, Fear, Fingers and Raven

In the Jaws of Fear

The venture that Margie stimulated was a journey into fear. She set the stage ahead of time for everyone to choose a strong memory of being in abject fear. Carol chose a more traditional journey taking us into the body of Raven with the breathing pulsing the wings in flight. Lorrie used the form of paradelle to induce the state of becoming-cloud, which will follow.

Majio
 

NOTE: “The paradelle is one of the more demanding French fixed forms, first appearing in the langue d’oc love poetry of the eleventh century. It is a poem of four six-line stanzas in which the first and second lines, as well as the third and fourth lines of the first three stanzas, must be identical. The fifth and sixth lines, which traditionally resolve these stanzas, must use all the words from the preceding lines and only those words. Similarly, the final stanza must use every word from all the preceding stanzas and only those words.” Poet Laureate Billy Collins, as it turns out fabricated the form.

Shapeshifting Clouds

Wade into a sea of clouds and swim with the Sun
Wade into a sea of clouds and swim with the Sun

I look to the sky the clouds stretch across weaving into many shapes.
I look to the sky the clouds stretch across weaving into many shapes.
Travelers conforming, changing, disappearing without beginning or end.
Travelers conforming, changing, disappearing without beginning or end.
Beginning to stretch into sky conforming the travelers or disappearing shapes.
Weaving across clouds I end many without changing the look.

So soft they appear I wish to wrap them all around me.
So soft they appear I wish to wrap them all around me.
They are wind clouds but I am enticed by their warmth.
They are wind clouds but I am enticed by their warmth.
I appear soft but they wrap me around their wind.
Wish clouds they are so enticed by all warmth I am to them.

Floating by like feathers I hug them to my heart.
Floating by like feathers I hug them to my heart.
Whiteness, softness, delicate movement I am looking at my Soul.
Whiteness, softness, delicate movement I am looking at my Soul.
Looking at my heart movement floating whiteness I am delicate.
I like Soul feathers my hug to them by softness.

The clouds are weaving my delicate Soul by wind movement so I am.
Soft whiteness stretch them beginning into shapes I appear without end.
Changing or floating across my heart they hug me to them.
I wrap warmth by softness around all travelers.
They enticed me but wish I am looking at disappearing.
I look conforming the sky to many clouds like their feathers.

Wade into a sea of clouds and swim with the Sun
Wade into a sea of clouds and swim with the Sun

By Lorrie Bogner as induction for Cloud Shifting

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Blog #3A Imaginal Field: Refrigerator an Archetypal Portal

Anavami Center

Anavami CenterMark-marking this week continued to cultivate somatic intelligence as we access the Imaginal Field. By becoming-like other things, we expanded the felt-body response by cultivating vision into the unknown through imagination. It is an ancient portal that the age of reason has upstaged, and yet is alive in science and all the arts, music, performance, literature and every aspect of life that is carried to artistry, like architecture, landscaping, cooking, parenting or even politics.

This shape-shifting is becoming easier as we recognize how many ways we slip into each other and address other with empathy and compassion. It is an ancient way of learning, expanding perception and gaining new insights. Through Marking, we soften the demarcation of inside and outside, experiencing more and more how our defined physical body is really integral to a greater biosphere.

In the arts, an archetype creates an immediate sense of familiarity, without need to ponder why a character or event is understood. Archetype can be defined as an emotion, character type, or event that is notably recurrent across the human experience. Consider the archetypes of things around you. The chair that holds you for comfort and ease to do things like eat, work, converse or travel. It is a structure adapted to human body, a kind of a container to easily enter and leave. It has a history beyond function and culture denoting social status and even termination of life. Our inquiry is interested in the metaphor and poetics of archetypes in relation to the Imaginal Field.

Anavami CenterYour home, a safe private place, like a nest or a shell, is what Gaston Bachelard marks as the place to dream. In the introduction to his book, The Poetics of Space. Richard Kearney says, “Poetics, for Bachelard, is not a matter of anonymous floating signifiers; it signals a relational dynamic between beings, involving vital dimensions of intimacy, secrecy, desire and repose.” And later, “Imagination is at its best when it is incarnate, elemental, opening out into time and space, even when the space is elsewhere—before being, beneath being, beyond being, more than being.”

This week we explore universal archetypes as organizing principles, which unite physical matter with consciousness. We used opening a refrigerator door, that everyday utilitarian object, as the start for everyone to step into a unique Imaginal Field. My refrigerator contained containers, preserving sustenance and enjoyment. This container has a physical inner structure but also a metaphoric structure related for me to the psyche. I thought of how different the freezer compartment is from the shelves on the door or the vegetable bins. The archetype of refrigerator gave us a poetic fulcrum to investigate being in our marking.

 

Majio

 

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