What is it all in aid of? Teaching you how to tap into and light up your anatomy while giving me a chance to practice my storytelling skills, and call a little attention to the Living Ayurveda Course with a free pass to Body Thrive – my 10 week Ayurvedic Habits course… when you register by February 29th. You can see all the details here:
https://yogahealthcoaching.com/bt-coach-apply
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First Lesson: Your Sacred Anatomy
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The first story is the Before-I-had-much-education-on-my-sacred-anatomy story. It starts with a kick-me-when-I’m-down story.
I think we all have a kick-me-when-I’m-down story. A dark night of the soul. A wake up call into a reality our ego would like to take a raincheck on.
Some of us take it as a personal assault from the divine. This batch of folks falls into the demise of those with victim-mentality. I knew enough to know better. Maybe.
My kick me when I’m down story is of the whitebread affluent version. It goes something like this:
I was 24.
I was rehabbing my knee from knee surgery down in Moab, UT. Biking is good for knee rehab. It turns out, mountain biking is good for rehab when you don’t fall off your bike onto rock.
I fell off my bike. Onto rock.
And *&!%-ed up the same knee I was rehabbing. I couldn’t walk and my knee was the size of a football. About a week before I seized the engine of my car. I had no way to get around, 2 part time jobs and a dog. I had no local friends. I’m not a bible scholar – but Job came to mind.
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The Kick Me When I’m Down Story
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About 3 months before I had picked up my first book on Ayurveda. I had a book… not a teacher. About 4 months before my affluent-whitebread-Job experience I had started attending yoga class. On crutches. Because I was rehabbing from knee surgery. About 6 months before I got a little training in Reiki. A little. Enough to know that putting hands on places that hurt and directing positive energy was better than not doing that.
I knew enough to know I didn’t know squat. Besides laying in my tent with my feet on the tent ceiling and doing a downward dog or two, I had no idea how to heal myself. I had no access to my center… and honestly didn’t know I had a center. I had very little skill in tapping into my sacred anatomy. But, I knew enough to know it would have been helpful to have picked up that lesson somewhere along the way.
I had no training in connecting my intelligence into the intelligence that created me. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Which is a little bizarre but all too common. My daughter at age 6 is better prepared for her Job experience than I was at age 24. In fact, she is better prepared than many people I know far older than 23.
The sacred anatomy teachings are not fundamentally complex. The teachings of sacred anatomy are fundamentally primal… primitive… they are fundamentally fundamental. Get it? If you don’t know how you are energetically organized it’s not a straightforward path to putting yourself back together. But, the guaranteed part of being spirit in the flesh is that things will fall apart. Cells will degenerate. Relationships will come and go. You will die. Injuries and accidents are predictably … unpredictable… and in my experience more likely to occur the less grounded and less integrated we are in our sacred anatomy.
The good news is that the sacred anatomy teachings of Ayurveda and Yoga teach us how to put things together within ourselves. We learn how to connect our own dots. And when we align to consciousness and connect the dots, we get more organized and better organized. The more the dots of you and all parts of yourself connect -the better you get at being you. The quicker your body heals.
Meaning you can get much better at accessing the powers of healing… and in the process you will get much better at being you. I’ll get into this more in the Sacred Anatomy Metaphysics Lesson.
My hope is to make the sacred anatomy teachings of Ayurveda and Yoga uber-practical. The point of this series is to streamline the path to tapping into and lighting up your sacred anatomy. And more good news- these teachings are intrinsically nondenominational – meaning you can keep your god, goddess or godless philosophy and still plug in and uplevel your sacred anatomy. And how cool is that.
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Sacred Anatomy Definition
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So, what are we talking about here?
What I’m talking about here is that you are an amazing complicated complex completely radical expression of evolution that has many powers, capacities, intelligences and ways of sensing and acting in the universe. And that is just from being born human.
Sacred anatomy is what happens when you own all that with the power of your awareness.
Got it? Let’s get on with it then…
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The Basics in How You Are Organized
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On the most primitive, fundamental, basic level, your anatomy is whole and bipolar. Your one splits into two, organized by two poles. North and south… just like the earth.
1 person.
2 poles – north and south.
The center? Your heart.
To connect to your sacred anatomy the first thing to do is to, well… connect.
To connect you can move your awareness to your physical body. Let your body relax and expand. If there isn’t any space in there or it’s hard to feel – connect to your breath. Let the breath start to open the space of your body. Gentler is better. Once you’re in – go down. Just like a seed. Once you’re down and in, go up and out.
Repeat. You can do this while you are reading… or listening… or take a break, press pause and then come back in a minute.
Get good at this. The center is the middle – but the center wants to expand and connect with the poles. When you connect the poles and repeat, the center expands. Living in a moment by moment expansion, that is based in your body energetically is the entrance to your sacred anatomy.
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Inner Body Flossing
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Inner Body Flossing is what you just did. It’s a quick path to lighting up your sacred anatomy and it’s a gateway practice. Meaning it’s a practice that opens the gate to your sacred anatomy. And believe me, there are gates that look like walls, but are really gates.
Most kids and adults I know know they should floss. I’m talking dental hygiene. Dental flossing is important, don’t get me wrong, but inner body flossing takes precedence in my personal hygiene. What you learned about in the Basics of How You Are Organized is Inner Body Flossing.
Here is the simplest sequence to open the gates to your sacred anatomy:
When you wake up in the morning hydrate to eliminate. (elimination = defecation)
Once you’ve eliminated, floss your inner body.
This will start to light up your sacred anatomy.
Once you get how your sacred anatomy is organized… once you get the most primitive systems theory to your own anatomy…. you get the precedence of inner body flossing practice. Then, you start to live an expanding relationship to life in a moment-by-moment experience. It’s a total game changer.
Here are a few of the benefits on tapping into and lighting up your Sacred Anatomy. You:
Turn on your power to stimulate whole system and cellular healing
Boost your Immune System in a long term building gentle kind of way
Optimize your cellular communication
Defuse negative internal reptilian mental patterning that naturally emerges during crisis
Meditate your way into the great abyss of peace
Now then, let’s recap and tie this Sacred Anatomy lesson up in a bow.
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The Kick Me When I’m Down Story: Lessons Learned
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Lesson 1:
If you want to rehab your knee on a mountain bike, choose an ecosystem with dirt and grass. Don’t choose trails made of ground up rock surrounded by boulders.
Lesson 2:
You don’t know when you’re going to enter your version of Job’s Story. Be prepared. Being prepared means you start to invest time and energy into knowing your way around your Sacred Anatomy. Let me be exceedingly clear. These are not skills that we can quickly pick up during a time of need … or crisis. This is education you can raise your hand and volunteer to learn as an adult. And start to sit in the driver’s seat of your physiology.
Lesson 3:
Expand. Down. Up. Out. Live expanded. Give your heart some breathing room.
For the next Sacred Anatomy Lesson, we will talk about Systems Theory.
To Apply to be part of Living Ayurveda Course 2016-2017, click here.
casey
Posted at 06:06h, 20 FebruaryThanks! So nice to have this. Just so happens I’m rehabbing my knee!
Cate Stillman
Posted at 18:10h, 20 FebruaryCasey,
So glad.
Diane
Posted at 17:41h, 03 FebruaryI think I am at the starting point you were at when you knew zip, zilch, zero. When you say “Once you’re in – go down. Just like a seed. Once you’re down and in, go up and out”, what exactly are you doing? A full body scan with the minds eye?
Joshua Zimmerman
Posted at 01:46h, 04 FebruaryCate, this is really rad-
Currently reading “The Book Of Secrets” by Osho and he alludes to the Tantra…Totally connected with Sacred Anatomy. It’s actually the core of his teaching. It’s been a pleasure following you!
Kimberly
Posted at 13:42h, 04 FebruaryThank you for sharing Ayurveda, I am getting in tune with my sacred anatomy and it’s life changing.
Kathy
Posted at 23:52h, 04 FebruaryThank you Cate, you are such a gifted speaker and teacher. I am so grateful our paths have crossed. I really enjoyed this teaching as you described the technique of tapping in to our kundalini energy so eloquently, really you are so beautiful. Thank you with heartfelt thanks for everything!