Jessica Stover 0:00 This recording is an offering of Networks for Training and Development's online university. Rosa McAllister 0:09 Hi everyone, this is Rosa McAllister here for another installment of Muck to Mojo with our intrepid crew from Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, who are part of our Trauma Committee, a group that's come together kind of informally over the past - oh, I don't know, eight months, something like that, nine months. Oh, no, actually more than that over a year now. We've come together to try to lend our help to one another, increase the resources for all of us to understand better the trauma that many of us - maybe most of us - live with. And this Muck to Mojo series occurs on the last Monday of the month at 12:30pm Eastern Time typically, next month it'll be a week early because Memorial Day. But today is April 26 2021. And the series is helping us to try to remember that while we might feel like we're in the muck, we got some Mojo in there, and just a 20 minute help to remember that Mojo. So I'm going to pass it to Lauren, who helps us get started each time with something beautiful from her magical deck of cards. And then she's going to pass it to Jeremy, who's going to be our leader for today. Go Lauren, thank you both. Lauren Hackenburg 1:26 Thank you Rosa. As usual, I had a hard time deciding so I pulled to two cards from the deck to share with you and they kind of piggyback off of each other. So I hope you'll enjoy. The first one is called calm your senses. And the card reads like this. "With the huge amount of stimulus in the world, it's easy to go into sensory overload. Isolate your individual senses, sight, taste, touch, smell, and hearing, and think about how to pamper each one. Try using earplugs or a blindfold to help you focus, what colors, textures, lighting, smells, and sounds relax you? Are there ways to incorporate them in your home, car, office? The science of aroma therapy is based on the principle that sense can be combined to evoke a relaxed state of consciousness. Are there certain scents that trigger particularly happy memories for you?" So that's the first card just thinking about isolating your senses and finding different ways to kind of pamper each one. And then the other card that I pulled from the deck, as I said it kind of piggybacked off of that when I thought oh, this isn't, this is perfect, this would be something how you could, you know, maybe pamper that sense of sight. So because it's all about the eyes. So this second part that I'm going to review is called eye, eye for an eye. Okay eye for an eye. "Your eyes do a lot for you every day, so try giving them a rest every day by doing relaxation eyeball exercises." And this is something you can do right as I'm reading along as the card here guys. So with your eyes either open or closed, it doesn't matter. roll your eyes, your eyeballs around in their sockets by looking right, looking left, looking up and looking down. Again look to the right, look left, look up, look down. Comfort tired eyes too, with compresses. You can use cold sliced cucumber rounds, or spoons that you've let chill in the freezer, frozen shell mask or even hot washcloth. Compresses are especially nice after a good cry, or a stressful day at work - I added that - or to soothe allergies. And so that's it. Those are the two cards that I picked up for today. "Calming Your Senses" and "Eye For An Eye." I hope you all enjoyed, and then I guess now I'll pass it over to Jeremy. Thank you. Jeremy Duke 4:45 Awesome, thank you Lauren. Lauren Hackenburg 4:47 Sure Jeremy Duke 4:49 I definitely enjoyed that, and that made for the perfect segue into some of the things that I wanted to get into. So we'll be exploring a little bit of that, engaging the senses in order to shift ourselves here as we go along, but before I go into what I had planned for us today, I wanted to share a quick story about how I've already had the opportunity to work on a little Muck to Mojo today, in two ways. I just recently lost somebody a couple days ago, and started getting a lot of condolences today, that really put me in a different space of processing that loss. And I'm just so grateful that not only I have these wonderful people in my life that are offering these condolences, but at the same time, I have these tools that allow me to deal with the emotions as they come up. And I can't be thankful enough to the people that came up with them and the teachers that transmitted them to me, helping me be in the best space that I can to be able to present this to all of you today. And then the other way was just about a half hour ago, my printer wasn't working. So usually my computer restarts pretty quickly, I thought oh, no big deal, i'll just do a quick restart and get back on for Muck toMojo. Well, of course, the computer decided it's time to do some updates. So watching the percentage meter slowly climb along, as I'm thinking, well, what am I going to do am I gonna have to call Rosa and tell her, I'm not going to be able to make it or try and do it over the phone? Jeremy Duke 6:34 But again thankfully, you know, using a few tools I was able to get myself to laugh at the situation and you know recognize that ultimately, everything is an opportunity for us to overcome challenges and, and maybe react to things a little bit better than we would have yesterday. So I just wanted to share that with you real quick. But again, what, what Lauren gave us was beautiful there, just seeing the Susquehanna River behind her. Which by the way, is actually one of the oldest rivers in the world. I recently found out it's actually older than the Appalachian Mountains. But just the beauty of spring this time of year, it's literally the perfect season to talk about Muck to Mojo, because the themes of spring are initiation, and action, and growth and rising up. I mean, we just think of all the, you know, green things coming up from the ground, all the flowers, we're at the point in the season, where just about all the trees have at least started to bud. So spring is in full swing here. It's the best time of year to start something new to initiate something to get in a new habit. And especially to get active, I can't recommend enough getting outside and just getting moving anyway that makes you happy, whether that's walking, biking, skipping through the daisies, whatever works for you, just to get out in the sun and let it hit your skin, get some natural vitamin D going, you know to once in a while take your shoes off, and feel the soil underneath your feet in between your toes. Now to enjoy the sunrises and sunsets, which are the balance points of the day. And as Rosa alluded to, before the recording here, the full moon can be a powerful source of inspiration in nature to allow us to be energized, and it's a full moon today so if it's a clear night, I highly recommended getting out to enjoy that a little bit. Jeremy Duke 8:54 So we're gonna work with the color green as well, I mean, studies have shown all kinds of ways in which just being out in nature, just viewing the fractal shapes of branches and roots, and plant growth and animals is healthy for us just getting the color green into our irises and retinas is, is health promoting for us, it's relaxing, it's the way we evolve. So getting out into that environment as much as we can, and doing it in a way that we enjoy is just really critical, and it's such a great time of year to do it. Jeremy Duke 9:34 So with that introduction let's get into a few practices here where we'll be doing some different Qi Gong things but we're going to use a little bit of color and a little bit of sound in the process to engage our senses in this process. So to start what I would like you to do is to put one hand over the other, it doesn't matter which one goes on top. But to center the hands with the center of the palm over each other, and then let your hands rest gently on your belly just under the navel. This would be on the point, Chi Hi, or conception six, if you're into nerding out about those kinds of things. So just take a good, relaxed, balanced posture, whether you're standing or sitting, let the hands rest underneath the belly. Just notice the alignment of your spine, your head over your shoulders, your shoulders over your pelvis, we're going to engage what's called embryonic breathing. I love this one because it's so simple. Jeremy Duke 10:51 So embryonic breathing has five qualities to it. So the first one is slow, let your breathing slow down just a bit and try not to force it, try to just have the intention, and then allow it to happen on its own. If you can get that slow breath down into your belly to the point where you can feel it moving underneath your hands, hey, that's a good bonus right there. Just allowing it to slow down a bit. Have your eyes open or closed. As you feel it starting to slow let it become long. Again not forcing it not counting just intending to become slower and longer. Moving into the next one which is deep, let it go deep into all the lodes of your lungs. Relax lower in the belly so that the diaphragm can expand the way it wants to. Slow, long, deep and smooth, smooth like silk. Not like sandpaper, smoothly in smoothly out. Smooth at the turn the pause between the in breath and the out breath. So smooth, deep, long, slow and soft. Just allow your breath to soften ever so slightly. Your entire torso and abdomen to soften ever so slightly. Just this in and of itself is a good centering, grounding practice. So that's embryonic breath, the idea being this is closer to the way that we breathed when we were a baby, slow, long, deep, smooth and soft. Jeremy Duke 13:41 While you enjoy the embryonic breath with the hands just below the belly, close your eyes if you haven't already, and just imagine a sunrise in front of you on a clear day. The glory of the sun and all of its colors emerging from the horizon. Imagine emanating from this sun color green coming to meet you. Not at any particular point but over your entire body. Green washing over the space around your body. washing over your skin hitting your eyes, soaking into your skin through your pores. Feel it penetrate your entire being, just letting it wash over you, a beautiful gift from this sunrise. Just take a few breaths, and just notice how this color green, the color of spring, how it feels to you, what effect it has on you? I could give you some associations sure, but just see how it feels to you. What's your relationship to the color green? How does it feel in your mind's eye? Take a deep breath and release the visualization, feel into your body. I like doing those kinds of things, just to see how it affects me without going off of some lists that somebody else made up because you know, we're all unique beings. We all have a unique makeup, unique history and unique psychology, unique energy. It's always good to check in and let yourself be the authority at times. Jeremy Duke 16:21 The color green is also associated with the liver organ in Chinese medicine. That's one of the string associations in that system. And I know I've experienced some extra liver congestion moving into this spring. I feel like just like the name of this program, Muck to Mojo we're all coming out of so much kind of congestion and stagnation and lack of movement and lack of moving forward from the last year that I think the kind of nature of spring to want to move through that stagnation to get going to get forward on our projects is even more important this year. Jeremy Duke 17:11 So just a few times we're going to do the healing sound for the liver, which is the sound "shoooo". Now if you're somewhere in public or in your office where you don't want to do this loudly, you can absolutely do it quietly. Just the important thing is to try to feel the vibration of the sound not in your throat or in your mouth where you might normally feel it. But try to feel it down in your abdomen on the right side of your ribs where the liver actually is. So if you want to take your right hand and put it behind your head, just to open up that area a little bit extra, we're going to do just three of this "shoo" sound just to vibrate that organ and get things moving for us. So here we go. "Shooo". All right excellent work. If you were able to feel that in the area of the liver congratulations, that gentle vibration of the internal organ is a wonderful way to help it do its job. And if you didn't feel it that's okay, sometimes that kind of thing just takes a little bit of practice, and it could be a sign that that sort of exercise might actually be extra beneficial for you to get to that kind of internal awareness. So thank you for trying that with me, Jeremy Duke 19:20 i'm just gonna do a quick self massage series to end this here to kind of get us back into our outer awareness that our blood flowing through our brains, which we're going to need for the rest of this afternoon. So just take your hands and keep them about an inch away from your head, as if you were kind of giving yourself a massage backwards over your head, through your energy field just take a few waves. This will help move any stagnation in our head and gall bladder channel, bladder channel where things tend to get blocked up as we get a lot of things on our mind. Few more, good. Now take the thumb put it up by the flap on the side of the ear, so not in the ear itself, but on the flap, push the flap closed and then let it pop gently open 1,2,3. And finally, take either the index finger or the middle finger, put it on these points here beside the nodes on the bone, give that point a few circles, there's a large intestine point. Work those circles up the nose of the bridge of the nose to this point here on the inside of the eyebrows. And then bring those circles across the eyebrow ridge. Circle the entire ear, and then let the hands trace down the neck and drop them. And give yourself a good sigh of satisfaction and a pat on the back, because hey, you took some time out of your busy day to do something good for yourself. So kudos to you. And that's what it's all about to me. Jeremy Duke 21:43 I'll quote a Qigong teacher, Hedwig Cooper, I believe is Swedish and I'm gonna butcher her lovely accent here. But one of one of her tag lines is "don't torture yourself, nurture yourself." So that's - that's something I try to remind myself here whenever it's time to turn Muck into Mojo. Thank you all very much for playing along with us here, I appreciate y'all, appreciate the committee and, and Networks and especially Rosa. So thank you for giving us the opportunity to do this. Rosa McAllister 22:22 Jeremy thank you so much. I love this, "Don't torture yourself." I'm telling myself "nurture yourself, Rosa" Jeremy Duke 22:29 You can hear it in the accent. Rosa McAllister 22:33 That was so good. Lauren, that was perfect. And I love how it's like we don't plan what Lauren's going to pull and what we're going to do, but it always matches up absolutely perfect. So thank you so much Lauren taking us to the Susquehanna River and beautiful Central Pennsylvania. Jeremy, thank you that was absolutely perfect and beautiful for at least may selfishly, I'm feeling a little more Mojo. So thank you everybody for joining with us. Whether you're joining with us live here today on a beautiful April 26 in 2021 or whether you're listening in at some later date, these are all going to be available as podcasts through our our Networks channel. Thanks everybody, join us again and remember keep that Mojo flowing even when the Muck comes in. Jessica Stover 23:26 Thank you for listening. We hope the information provided was helpful. Don't forget to stop by our website and take advantage of all we have to offer. If you want to be kept informed of upcoming events, subscribe to our channel to be kept up to date on our future programs. Click on the link provided in the description if you wish to receive emails about our upcoming events and offerings. Transcribed by https://otter.ai