Intro 15:58:14 [musical interlude] This recording is an offering of Networks for Training and Development's Online University. Jeremy Duke 15:58:36 All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Networks' Healing Circle Call, which is always the first Monday of each month. My name is Jeremy Duke, I'll be your host tonight. And I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for tuning into this call, for taking some time for yourself to settle down from your day, however it was for you, to do something good for yourself, to explore something new. There's always a big thanks and Mahalo to Rosa and Jess and the rest of the Networks team that makes this possible for the rest of us. So I've got something that I'm excited to share with you tonight. Jeremy Duke 15:59:30 But before we get into that, I'd like to take a few moments to settle into our body, settle into our space. So however you're sitting, if it's possible to sit a little bit more upright, maybe a little closer to the edge of your chair. With your feet flat on the floor. Just take a few moments to notice the feeling of the bottoms of your feet on the floor. The feeling on the heel, the feeling on the edge of your foot, the feeling of your toes, and most especially the feeling of the ball of your foot, the center of the ball of your foot against the ground. How it's making contact, just put your mind there, the center of the ball of the foot touching the ground. Just putting our attention on this point will help us feel a little more centered. Jeremy Duke 16:00:58 And to take this a little deeper, put your attention on the breath. The breath is a doorway. We're going to use this doorway to open into a different space. By putting attention on the body, the body loves our attention just like we love attention from others. The body loves attention from us. We use the doorway of the breath to accomplish this. Jeremy Duke 16:01:31 So just notice the way the breath coming into the body tickles the edges of the nostrils. Notice the way it soothes the sinuses, moves gently down the throat, it fills our chest, fills our lungs. Now let the imagination take the breath even deeper. Bring the breath down through the diaphragm into the belly. Jeremy Duke 16:02:33 Let the breath fill the belly and let it move the belly. And with your mind and your attention on the belly, full of breath, full of life, use your imagination to sense a smile beginning to grow inside the belly as though your belly had the ability to crack a smile. Jeremy Duke 16:03:08 The feeling of a smile, the feeling of contentment, happiness, joy even, radiating in our stomach growing wider and growing brighter. And as the smile in your belly widens and grows imagine the smile moving upward, through the belly, through the diaphragm, into the chest into the heart space. Let that smile grow in your chest, let it grow inside your heart. Jeremy Duke 16:04:24 As that feeling of contentment and happiness fills the chest, let the smile again grow and again move upwards onto your face. Allow that inner smile that traveled from your belly to your heart settle into your face, which is now smiling, beaming, filling your headspace. And with your mind's eye let that smile on your face turn downward into your body. Let that smile, radiate its joy back into the heart space. And also further down into the belly. Jeremy Duke 16:05:31 Allow your belly and your heart and your face to all be smiling at each other. A happy family. Take a deep breath and let the images go. Jeremy Duke 16:05:57 Nice work. All right, now that we've shown our body some love. Let's get into my topic for the evening which is: Transformation. Transformation might seem like a strange topic, at first glance to be talking about here as we edge closer to winter. As the weather has finally gotten cold, and all the living things in nature are resting, hibernating, dormant, flying south for the winter. But in certain traditions, the wintertime is actually the perfect time to talk about transformation. This reason is it offers us a chance to slow down for a minute, to take a breath, to move away from some of the external things that we do the rest of the year. Some of the socialization, some of the activity, some of the projects. It gives us an opportunity to do what nature does at this time of year and go inward. Let's see what's going on inside us to give our internal world some attention. The classic image of transformation is of course a caterpillar turning into a chrysalis and eventually emerging as a beautiful butterfly. I already mentioned the seasons, always changing from one into the next. We all know the weather - how it can change radically from one day to the next or even one hour to the next. Jeremy Duke 16:08:07 I see all of this as a microcosm for the past year, for 2020, the year in which we've seen a lot of change, we've had an unprecedented opportunity to settle down and have more time to ourselves more time in our homes. I think now, as we enter the winter season, and as we sit in between Thanksgiving and Christmas, yes, we can take the opportunity to be thankful for everything that we have, even though the holiday maybe wasn't what we wished it would be, and what we expected it would be, or what it always was for us. Even this is different, even some of our most cherished traditions. So I it's more important, at this time, and in this year, more important than ever, to understand how things can change from one thing into their opposite. How the flow of change, both outside of us and inside of us, and point us in the directions we need to go. Now our perception of all this going on can radically change our experience of it and the actions we take through it. Our own body in one second, as well over a trillion chemical reactions going on at all times. Jeremy Duke 16:10:01 So the transformation in our own bodies is literally constant. It's on it's beyond imagination, everything that's happening just under our awareness. Even in what we are aware of, take for example, our digestion every day, a couple times a day we're taking in food, turning it into a different form in our mouths, taking it deeper into our body where the digestive organs can turn it into completely different form, usable by all the cells of our body. Taking some time for appreciation just for this miracle, the fact that our bodies exist. The fact that we're here, sitting here, right now, listening to this call, in the bodies that we have, these miraculous bodies, talking and listening over this incredible technology that allows us to do that. These are windows into going into transformation in terms of the body, in terms of our minds, in terms of everything going on around us and politics and culture and society. Jeremy Duke 16:11:36 If we can learn to align with nature, with our nature, we can learn to navigate the stormy seas until they become calm again and pleasant to sail. So an effort of aligning with the flow of transformation, I'm going to share another brief meditation with you. This comes from the Yi Quan tradition in China and it aligns with the elements of the Chinese system. You may be familiar with the elements of Western systems: earth, air, fire, water and ether. Chinese elements are wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. But in actuality, these elements aren't necessarily things at all per se, but rather processes, constantly changing from one to another, constantly adjusting their interrelationships. So with that context, let's go ahead and enter the meditation. Jeremy Duke 16:13:04 Once again, allowing your attention to settle on the breath. and sensing the feet flat on the floor. Let's go into our imagination, closing the eyes and imagining that we are deep in a beautiful old growth for us. Perhaps you can imagine a time where we were hiking or camping or otherwise spending time in the woods that you truly enjoy. Jeremy Duke 16:13:45 Taking in the sights and smells of the trees, imagine a gentle rain falling in the forest, the raindrops spattering on the leaves, creating a general backdrop to your forest experience. And just spend about a minute listening to the rain falling on the trees. Jeremy Duke 16:14:40 Now imagine as you walk through the woods, you come upon a campfire, a roaring, welcoming bonfire. And just as you approach the bonfire, so too does rain approach the fire and listen to the sounds of the drops of water falling on the fire, making a sizzle as it touches the embers and burning logs. Spend a few moments listening to the rain falling on the fire. Jeremy Duke 16:15:46 Good. Now let that image go. Imagine yourself standing on a patch of bare earth, bare ground. Once again, listen to the rainfall. Imagine the rain falling listen to the sound of it spattering against the bare earth being soaked into the earth like a sponge, nurturing the earth. Let that image go. Now imagine yourself standing on a stone or perhaps a cliff, if comfortable there. Maybe on a large boulder. Stones are considered the metal element. And as you stand on this stone on this cliff, imagine the rain again falling and the sound of it hitting the stone... Jeremy Duke 16:17:33 And let that image go. And now see yourself standing in front of a pond: tranquil, placid, comforting. And again the rain comes as you stand in front of the pond and you listen to the sounds of the rain hitting the surface of the water, joining the element falling from the sky as it sits in the air. Jeremy Duke 16:18:32 And let that image go and gently come back to awareness of your body, awareness of your surroundings. Jeremy Duke 16:18:50 Okay, I hope you enjoyed that meditation. It's a simple one that you can do within a matter of minutes when you feel the need to increase your ability to flow from one thing to the next from one moment to the next. I again thank you for joining us on tonight's Healing Circle Call. I applaud you for being here. I thank you for joining me across this space wherever you are. We remember that the Networks Healing Circle is the first Monday of each month at 8pm. And we'll talk to you again soon. Blessings to you, mahalo. Outro 16:19:46 [musical interlude] 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. Transcribed by https://otter.ai