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The Fourth Sacred Season–Integrate
“Integrate: To form, coordinate, or blend into a functioning or unified whole; to incorporate into a larger unit.”
—-Merriam-Webster Dictionary
OK, so you’ve experienced all 12 Stages…now what?
By experiencing all 12 Stages you have now created and developed the strategies to be able to consciously observe yourself and your life.
In the season of Integrate, you can consciously choose which seasons can be blended together to create the season, stage, experience, and internal reality of your choice. You can revisit a previous season while still keeping the perspective from a different season. For instance, you may be in Discover surrounding a situation–using language like “I don’t know why this is happening” “Why doesn’t this end?”–and still have the underlying consciousness of Awaken–wondering “Where is the gift in this suffering?”
It makes sense that you are never completely immersed in one Season at one time. As a highly complex creature, you will pull wisdom from your being to form a customized plan to live out the situation. The Season of Integrate is truly an opportunity for you to create “a more unified whole.”
Next Week: Dr. Katie will begin a five part series of Nutrition, Stress Management, and Self-Care for the Holidays!!
Stage 11–Descent
Gift Giving/ Prophet Like
Sponsorship/Service
When you first hear “descent,” you probably automatically think hellfire and damnation. Not the case this time…
If you read my last entry, Stage 10, you learned about Ascent, when you experience nothing but pure immersion with Spirit. You are then able to incorporate this experience and understanding into the deepest aspects of your being.
Now being in this experience of actually BEING love and light and actually BEING one with The Universe, do you think you would be able to DO much?
Probably not…
Stage 11 allows you to take the experience of Stage 10 and bring it to a more embodied place. Your motivation is a pure desire to share your gifts with the world to give the world a more complete experience.
We really are all One, and you act with this understanding as your basis.
We are renewed beyond our limits and sense of self and enter into the world again. We know that we are part of all we perceive and responsible for all that we know. We live without being attached to our circumstances. We love and we serve. We participate in a larger circle of life, knowing our gifts and having a burning desire to effortlessly share them with the world, in service. Our inner thoughts and desires are magically and naturally matched by our outer experience. For extended periods, irrespective of external circumstance, I can find a place and experience compassion, empathy, love, forgiveness, and altruism. I long to serve others with the gifts of my soul. This is how I am, when I do what I do.
—SomatoRespiratory Integration Workbook
Adapted from The SomatoRespiratory Integration Workbook
Next Week: Stage 12–Community
Stage 9–Light Behind the Form
Energy Beyond Form
Filled with Love/Filled with Light
From our place of emptiness and gratitude, we can truly appreciate our energetic fullness. Our inner sense runs as follows, “I sometimes feel the energy within my symptoms, underlying my emotions, within my spirit. Sometimes I feel the energy between people, and the primary organizing subtle energy fields to which my body is connected. I feel the energy in people’s words, their eyes, or their being. I am more sensitive to love as a basic energy of the universe and find it all around me, and within me. I am grateful for this energetic awakening. I experience gratitude for the love within me and in the universe.
–SomatoRespiratory Integration Workbook
OK, so you released all of your old “stuff” in Stage 7, and you felt the emptiness and gratitude in its space once the “stuff” was gone in Stage 8. When you feel emptiness and gratitude, what is left to come in and take over?
Love, light, and energy…
In Stage 9, you begin to feel the energetic connection that flows within yourself and between yourself and others. Your thoughts begin to dissolve into energy–at this point, there are no words. Because you are SO connected to others, you often begin to experience psychic and intuitive events. You might begin to realize that you are not who you thought you were–that there is more to you that you have ever experienced before. You truly understand that YOU are responsible for your vital life force and how you express it in the world. You acknowledge and feel gratitude for your energetic flow rather than manipulate it. This experience of energy is filled with awe, wonder, and a simply observe and experience it.
Stage 9 feels very similar to Stage 8 in the essence of gratitude. However, the experience of energy is more specific in Stage 9. Filling the emptiness of Stage 8 with the love and light of Stage 9 allows to you have the ability to experience the energetic strands within the events, circumstances, and people around you.
“Thank you for this life force and may it continue to flow through me.”
“Help me experience my energetic connection within myself and others.”
Next Week: Stage 10–Ascent
–Written by Dr. Katie Fahnel, D.C. of Body Harmony Chiropractic, a partner of The Healing Loft. Visit the Contact Information tab above to reach Dr. Katie. Comments are welcome to this post! Please leave them in the comment section below.
Stage 8–Emptiness in Connectedness
Emptiness/Beingness
Effortless Flow
“After the discharge we are emptied. Rather than a space of nothingness, we find ourselves in a place of possibilities. We enter into a state of gratitude, vulnerability, connection with our external rhythms, and alignment with events around us. We welcome serendipity as a natural way of life. The sentiment is, “I do things because they feel right–not to move towards pleasure and avoid pain. I do things because it is the time to do them. I know that I will be supported by an abundant universe in my choices. I experience peace when at times my thoughts, inner noise, or static cease. I sense more room in my body for breath. I sense the rhythms within and sometimes around me. I feel gratitude for my connection to others and in a greater cosmic plan.”
–SomatoRespiratory Integration Workbook
Stage 8 is the first level of BEING. It is the doorway to later states of consciousness. You are eager for the connections that await your new awareness. You might experience the “newness” of being separated from what you were previously connected to; however, you feel content with the separation and even excited with the energetic freedom. Donald Epstein likens this time to the space in between grabbing the bars from a trapeze. It is stillness and openess rolled into one. In this space, it is easy to become more observant of your own rhythm and the rhythms that surround you. You may feel more connected to your environment and be able to sense your alignment with others.
You can probably recall a time when you experienced a release and enjoyed the space created by its void. In that space, you may have felt vulnerable–yet secure–and grateful by the possibilities that filled it. What sort of new opportunities are coming up next?
Please feel free to leave comments below this blog post. Visit the CONTACT INFORMATION page to contact Dr. Katie.
Next Week: Stage 9–Light Behind the Form
The Season of Awaken
Awaken is about joyous and grateful acceptance of reality, rather than the CONCEPT of reality.
So if you’ve made it this far…congratulations!!! You’ve sorted through a lot of “stuff.” With the last stage, Stage 7, you finally realized that the “crap” you’ve been carrying around until then doesn’t work anymore–and GLADLY released it!! This marks the transition from Transform into Awaken.
Awaken is about expanding beyond yourself, beyond the things and people who will benefit you. It involves the experience of the space around you and within you. Your thinking mind drops away, and you can experience the true nature of reality beyond the form of structures as you know them. Your focus is on the energy of life and love. You no longer feel you have to get love but instead give love, live in gratitude, and find the gifts in your situations and relationships.
You truly connect to your gifts and feel your responsibility to share
these gifts within your community.
When in Awaken, you remember your core nature and honor the same in others. Your relationships, experiences, and awareness of the Energetic deepen, and you feel the field of Oneness.
**DISCLAIMER: People involved in the spiritual world are quick to jump into Awaken. Of course!! It feels wonderful! It’s lovely! It’s heavenly! You’re singing with angels and communing with the world, and, yes, it’s an absolutely beautiful space to be in…when it’s APPROPRIATE!! If you falsely try to jump to Awaken (more accurately “pseudo-Awaken” before you’ve done all the work up to then, most likely you’ll end up back to Discover–and very quickly!! The more you have the strategies and refinement in place within your nervous system, the more aware you are of what Season is appropriate…more about this when I discuss the Season of Integrate.
Next week: Stage 8–Emptiness in Connectedness
Stage 7–Resolution
Acceptance
Discharge of bio-electric energy is associated with a discharge of mechanical energy. This may be a discharge of the muscular system, or fever, coughing, sneezing, or vomiting. Crying, screaming, and laughing are also discharge phenomena. When the discharge occurs after the previous six stages, resolution can occur with the discharge. A sense of accomplishment, satisfaction, peace, and inner strength accompanies the process when resolution occurs. The sentiment is, “I am so ready to scream and not only discharge, but resolve the recurrent energy pattern distracting me from who I really am! I am fully committed to do this now. I must let go of this now!
–SomatoRespiratory Integration Workbook
To dis-charge means to eliminate a charge. Successful discharge is bringing the BodyMind from a state of distress towards ease. This result is RESOLUTION!! All of the uncomfortable build-up and preparation you experienced in Stage 6 is officially released–in an empowering way–as you move into Stage 7.
If discharge occurs at an earlier stage of healing–say Stage 1 or 2 (read earlier posts), you often focus on what was lost. When this happens, the tension between your True Self and the disconnected parts of yourself increases. You feel discharge at that time is an unwelcome event because you still have attachments or a need to those parts of you that you are giving up.
When discharge occurs in Stage 7, your focus is primarily on the wholeness of your being that is eliminating something you no longer need and does not serve you. It is then a welcome event that you have prepared yourself to expect.
As the discharge process develops, you begin to feel the alternating building of tension and release of tension. You have mixed emotions of relief this can finally happen and disappointment that it has to be uncomfortable. Then the rhythm begins to take control of your physiology, and you lose complete thought and control over it. The end of Stage 7 is characterized by a completion of the discharge with a sense of resolution.
Once you have completely resolved the old energy and patterns held within the BodyMind that no longer serve you, all that is left is emptiness….
Next week: Letting Yourself Go…Moving from the Season of Transform to the Season of Awaken
Stage 6-Preparation for Resolution
Stirring the Soup/Getting Ready
Making Changes
The alienated, traumatized, denied, or redirected consciousness or energy is moving towards discharge and resolution. We feel the tension building within ourselves as this process advances. We feel ready to do whatever it takes to get on with our lives. We have a sense that there is something more waiting for us, and also a sense that we are not yet flexible enough or knowledgeable enough, or just not enough for what is next. We feel hungry for what’s coming, but in this stage, we just need to actively prepare. The sentiment is “I am ready! I am so ready that I am determined to do whatever it takes!”
—SomatoRespiratory Integration Workbook
OK…I want you to think of the time of build-up right before you sneeze … or before you throw up … or just before a long overdue bowel movement … maybe when you were just about to break-up with that jerk boyfriend.
These are all comparable to the feeling in Stage 6. It’s that preparation stage when you know you’ll feel/live/think better…AFTERWARDS…but everything leading up to it…not so fun!! Stage 6 is all about preparing to discharge and resolve the energy behind the aspects of yourself that aren’t working. You also know that you will do whatever it takes to get yourself prepared. This is often when you may start to make major changes in your life but not from the Stage 2 consciousness of escape (See post on Stage 2).
In Stage 6, you understand that leading up to that point of resolution is quite uncomfortable but you know the payoff is worth it!!
There is a build-up of tension to create the momentum and grounding of the Bodymind so that you can release your old patterns and energy without it being a violent discharge!!! The build-up of tension helps you know that this release or discharge is a welcome thing and highly appropriate in the event of your healing journey!! And it feels oh so good….
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Body Harmony Chiropractic 