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![810th Week: Cultivating A Sense of Connection](https://www.nancynapier.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/bigstock-154232591-768x512.jpg)
810th Week: Cultivating A Sense of Connection
As we collectively continue to be met with powerful challenges of loss, grief, change, and concerns about the future, having practices available that allow us to ground ourselves, re-center ourselves, and orient to a more heart-centered perception and awareness is more important than ever. One of the practices that I have found comforting during difficult times is to remember that I am part of a much larger context of connection and to orient my awareness toward ways of experiencing that sense of connection.
For this week’s practice, I’d like to share one of the approaches that helps me feel more grounded during times of distress and uncertainty. It relates to something I say all the time, which is, “We’re not in this alone.” As much as we may feel disconnected at times, from an energy perspective, and from the perspective of collective consciousness, it’s impossible for us to be truly alone, impossible not to be connected to our larger collective presence, comprised of each of us and of all our earth-kin.
Read More “810th Week: Cultivating A Sense of Connection”Week 645:Perceiving With Your Heart
I recently finished reading a book that consistently brought me back to the importance of learning to shift awareness to the heart instead of emphasizing the brain—to perceive the world through heart intelligence rather than just cognitively. Read More “Week 645:Perceiving With Your Heart”
![816th Week: Return to Silence](https://www.nancynapier.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/bigstock-Hand-Of-Buddha-Image-63663790-768x512.jpg)
816th Week: Return to Silence
Sitting in my living room on a Sunday morning, I’m filled with the gift of silence. No city noises disturb the quiet this morning and that is a great gift. It has gotten me to thinking about the brain research I’ve mentioned before that reflects the benefits of silence in fundamental and literal ways.
One of the benefits of having quiet time, time spent in silence, is that we gain access to our default mode network. This is the aspect of brain activity where we allow our minds to wander, to think deeply, to listen to our internal experience. All it requires is for us to move away from distractions and give ourselves quiet time to simply be present to our awareness.
Another reason to seek out times of silence is that research has shown that two hours of silence daily can lead “…to the development of new cells in the hippocampus, a key brain region associated with learning, memory and emotion.” In addition to this, we know that noise pollution raises blood pressure and creates stress for both body and mind. According to researchers, “Just as too much noise can cause stress and tension, research has found that silence has the opposite effect, releasing tension in the brain and body.” These findings were reported in the Huffington Post by Carolyn Gregoire and shared by Daily Good a while back.
Read More “816th Week: Return to Silence”![770th Week: We Cannot *Not* Be Connected](https://www.nancynapier.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/bigstock-Deep-red-and-orange-Japanese-m-145959572-768x512.jpg)
770th Week: We Cannot *Not* Be Connected
As I write this practice, I’m sitting on a train headed for New York City from Connecticut. I spoke at the Unity Church in Norwalk, CT this morning and some of the things I talked about there I’d like to share as this week’s practice.
There were several themes to my talk this morning. One was the over-arching practice of subtle activism, which may be done through use of prayer, affirmative thoughts and feelings about situations that need support, healing at a distance, and more. The underlying theme that arises when talking about something like subtle activism is that of collective consciousness, and the fact that we are all interconnected whether or not we’re aware of it.
One of the things I asked people to sense into was how it felt to know and experience that all of us in the room were part of one energy organism, with each of us contributing to the radiating quality of presence that was the collective environment we generated together. In past practices, I’ve invited you to pay attention to the focus and quality of your thinking and feeling, knowing that where you resonate becomes magnetic to what you attract. This matters because resonating with a feeling such as gratitude supports an experience of well-being, where resonating with a feeling of anger or resentment supports those states of being. This is because we are part of collective fields of information and presence all the time and, because of this, we are affected by similar feelings and experiences of countless people all around the world.
Read More “770th Week: We Cannot *Not* Be Connected”Week 624: Finding Home Base
Each time I teach a Somatic Experiencing® training, I am touched yet again by the impact of people’s experience when they discover the power of the body-mind connection and the importance of grounding ourselves. Having a “home base” to return to in the body is an invaluable resource for re-centering and stabilizing ourselves on a moment-to-moment basis. Read More “Week 624: Finding Home Base”
![898th Week: Adapting with Compassion](https://www.nancynapier.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/bigstock-Lying-On-The-Ground-Maple-Foli-170951552-768x512.jpg)
898th Week: Adapting with Compassion
During my morning stroll through Facebook, I came upon the following story, posted by Upworthy. As I read it, I began to think about how important and uplifting it is when we can adapt to adversity, change, or unexpected developments with new, creative, and compassionate responses. Here’s what I read on FB:
“My dad has a massive vegetable garden and it is his life. Whenever I ask how things are going, he tells me about the garden. Periodically he will text me a picture of the things he’s harvested and ask when I’m coming to pick them up. And for a while, the biggest bit of garden gossip has been his nemesis, the gopher. This gopher was consistently ruining his day by pilfering the best of everything just before my dad could harvest it. Anytime I talked to him, all he had to tell me about was ‘that damned gopher.’ He dreamt about killing the gopher, his truest enemy. He tried to train the dog to hunt the gopher, but the dog is a pacifist. He led some of the barn cats to the holes, but the barn cats have unionized and refused his offered rate. He then laid no-kill traps (can’t risk having poison near the crops) with eventual gophercide in mind, but then suddenly he was faced with a cute and terrified animal and didn’t have the heart. He released it. ‘He was SO scared, he’ll never come back.’ The gopher was back the next day, with a vengeance. That was some weeks ago. Today, my dad sent me pictures of his garden, and I saw a squash gently laid by the gopher’s hole, like a package left on the doorstep. I said ‘Dad, what’s that squash doing there by the gopher hole?’ He said ‘Oh, he likes squash best.’ In an effort to appease the gopher, my father now gives him a little squash everyday, like leaving an offering for a garden spirit. This apparently works well as a compromise; the gopher has stopped stealing, content to have his meals delivered to his door.” Originally posted on FB by filmnoirsbian.
Notice your response to reading this story and, in particular, notice the response of your heart-based awareness. Next, imagine how your life would be, or how our collective life would be, if we all could arrive at this kind of resolution. In the story above, a response that embraced collaboration rather than combat arose, with some compassion thrown in.
This story reminds me of the inescapable fact that we live on a planet that thrives on cooperation and active collaboration. For sure, there’s also competition but as Elisabet Sahtouris, the evolutionary biologist found, while young species may emphasize competition, more mature species move toward expressions of cooperation and collaboration.
Read More “898th Week: Adapting with Compassion“