Abington Woods
Radical Wholeness is certified by The Embodied Present Process (TEPP)
In our everyday lives, we are cultured to emphasise getting our tasks done and these doings have been recognised as our achievements. The quality of this culture has been over thousands of years, to focus on the activities of the brain in the head, to instruct the body to take actions. We have believed that our intelligence resides in the head brain. We now understand that the nervous system in the body is sensitive and attuned to the world, continually sending messages to the head. We are wired so that our thinking receives the body’s messages to inform its responses and come to alignment and oneness. So at a time when we see more instances of stress, anxiety and reactivity, we can really learn to invite our thinking to come into alignment with our being, the core of our being in the body, our gut instincts and our hearts.
The primary wound of our culture has been of the sense of separation, of disconnection between people and the systems we live with. Our brain-thinking wants to bring us a quality of living that we thrive in. When our thinking is out of synchronicity with our wishes and needs, we experience tension, which gets expressed as feelings such as irritation, disappointment or anxiety, which in general come from fear and vulnerability inside. In Western cultures, we are conditioned that feelings such as fear and vulnerability are impossible to be with, the fear that we don’t matter or that we can be so easily wounded. As a result, we become reactive and express ourselves in ways of control, which have been accepted and historically repeated, to change the world around us, by forcing it to be a way we can tolerate more easily. When we aim to control our own and other people’s behaviours, such actions tend to result in various degrees of reactivity in those whose actions we don’t enjoy (the “others”). We are all familiar with our own angry expressions and how it is to witness other people’s, thus reactions can escalate. We can create compassion towards all of the aliveness we experience.
We can begin to heal the wound of separation within ourselves, practise listening in the body and create resonant awareness. Instead of trying unsuccessfully and inauthentically to change everyone else, so we can feel more comfortable, we can bring our attention within, to meet the sensations in our bodies when we experience all of the input from life that flows towards us, through us and around us. When we listen in to the body’s sensations, we can start to experience the world as part of our being and vice versa. We are already whole and we can experience wholeness when we soften and let go of the thinking and tensions that block us from sensing our innate relationship with self, others and the world.
Inevitably, we are already part of and attuned with the world. Every inbreath is a gift from plants and phytoplankton, every outbreath we gift to these beings who photosynthesise and energise. Every food that nourishes us is a gift from the Earth’s soil, air, water and Sun-light. We are nothing without these gifts, so we can begin with the amazement and gratitude for the miracle of being alive. Let us imagine ourselves as small and fleeting as a leaf, as well as inextricably part of the whole wondrous universe.
The practices we offer on the Radical Wholeness Weekends are gentle exercises which allow us to sense where in our bodies we might have blocks to experiencing the world within us and where our attunement to the world and each other is tense or solidified.
These practices are developed by Philip Shepherd https://embodiedpresent.com and creatively and gently invite us to experience the life in our bodies and integrate this awareness into our everyday lives. Creativity, play, gentleness and awareness draw us away from control into fluidity, union, connection, openness, spaciousness, groundedness and centredness. With these skills, we can have effective tools for living authentically in our real autonomy and deep inter-connected wholeness.