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This material provides a brief Introduction to the technique offered on this site

The technique is offered free of charge.   

The Overview below gives a deeper background for the technique.

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THE INVITATION

This website invites you to take a journey.  If you accept the invitation, you’ll feel yourself move, though your body will remain still.  You’ll feel your self-awareness recede into new territory.  If you continue exploring this territory, you may find that both your sense of self and your view of the world have shifted.  The blogs on this site explore how self-awareness, personal identity and the perceived world are related.  The rest of this section functions as a travel guide for the journey.  But like all travel guides, it’s only a preview.  You can’t appreciate the destination until you actually take the trip.

THE DESTINATION AS A CONCEPT

By the mid-1970s Eastern practices such as acupuncture and meditation had introduced Western culture to the concept that a field of life force energy animates human biology.  In 1995 the US National Institute of Health coined the term, “biofield,” and began accepting grant proposals related to “biofield therapies.” The Institute of Health defines the biofield in this way: “A biofield is claimed to be a massless field that: (a) is not necessarily electromagnetic, (b) surrounds and permeates living bodies, (c) affects the body, and (d) possibly is related to Qi or Chi, Korean word is Ki.“

THE DESTINATION AS AN EXPERIENCE

The mind can consider the Institute of Health’s wordy concept above, but the thinking mind can never experience the “biofield” or life force that powers it.  This energy has to be felt.  Deep Embodyment is a technique that allows you to explore your life force, not as a mental concept but as a sensation. You won’t feel this sensation as something separate from you that the mind can restrict with the label, “my life force.”  You’ll experience yourself as a field of energy that’s a more direct and deeper way to know who you are than any of the thinking mind’s culturally conditioned concepts and limiting labels.

THE WORLD “OUT THERE”

Science in still trying to understand what the external world actually is.  But science is quite clear on how we perceive the world.  Reflected light waves hit our retinas and soundwaves tap our eardrums, allowing a representation of the external world to come all the way into our brains.  Then, our neurology somehow translates these swirling waveforms into objects separated by space… the perceived world.  Though the world is a neural fabrication experienced completely inside our brains, we perceive it as being “out there.”  This projection of perception takes self-identity along for the ride.  Here’s why…

PROJECTED IDENTITY

As a toddler, you were given labels for the objects in this neurological creation called the world.  When your name labeled you, you began to conceptualize yourself as one of these objects.  As your thoughts began to reference the past, you populated these memories with objects and people “out there” including your objectified identity.  Over time, this identity acquired a belief structure often called the ego.  The ego is sustained by an ongoing story connecting memories and imagined futures subjectively perceived “out there” where your projected identity is the story’s main character.

REDUCING STRESS

Projecting identity generates stress because self-awareness abandons its natural home in the body.  The technique reduces this stress by anchoring your sense of self back home in your energy field.  Stress is also produced by the ego’s constant past or future thinking that disconnects your awareness from your body, which exists only in the present.  Deep Embodyment anchors you in your energy field, which can only be felt in the present moment.  Within the relative peace of the present moment, past and future thoughts are perceived “from a distance” and their stress is more easily managed.

LESS THAN MEDITATION

Traditional meditation directs awareness away from the past and future thinking that maintains the ego’s ongoing story about itself.  The long-term goal of many meditation techniques is to eventually reach a state of being totally severed from ego identity.  Deep Embodyment offers less because it promises no future results.  Its only goal is to feel the body’s energetic spaciousness in the present.  But as a by-product, thinking fades for the simple reason this website invites you to test:  The deeper you focus awareness on feeling, the shallower, less structured and more “distant” thinking becomes.

MORE THAN MEDITATION

Traditional meditation redirects awareness to specific targets – an external object, an internal sound, the breath — but never the whole being.  Even “mindfulness,” which directs the mind to witness its own thoughts, ignores the body.  Deep Embodyment incorporates the wholeness of being by directing awareness into the spaciousness of the body’s energy field.  The targets of traditional meditation are difficult to focus on out in the world.  Deep Embodyment focuses on a target that’s always available… you.  This allows the technique to be carried into daily activities as a portable stress reduction tool.

USING WITH MEDITATION 

Deep Embodyment and most traditional meditation techniques differ in how awareness is directed.  But both reduce thinking.  So, for those frustrated with traditional meditation techniques, Deep Embodyment is an alternative for quieting the thinking mind.  On the other hand, many individuals are quite satisfied with how their meditation technique reduces stress by quieting the thinking mind in their solitary practice.  For them, Deep Embodyment’s portability allows it to augment their solitary practice by increasing presence and reducing stress during the busyness of their daily activities.

THE PARADOX OF TECHNIQUE 

Some of the most respected teachings on the nature of consciousness caution against all structured techniques.  Krishnamurti taught this, and Eckhart Tolle appears to hold this position as well.  The rationale is that all techniques harbor the assumption that practice makes perfect… eventually.  This fuels the belief that nothing in the present moment is as good as what could be obtained in the future.  However, without a structure to offset the tremendous momentum of the thinking mind, any attempt to slow thinking, to become present, or to occupy inner spaciousness is significantly handicapped.

RESOLVING THE PARADOX  

The targets of most meditation techniques – a repeated mantra, a guru’s picture, etc. – remain unchanged throughout a practice session.  Targeting the breath actually becomes more difficult as the body relaxes and breathing becomes shallower.  But as a Deep Embodyment session continues, energetic spaciousness grows stronger as a background sensation, even when thinking periodically captures awareness.  At some point this energetic sensation is “louder” than the voice in the head, and focus effortlessly gravitates to the sensation.  The technique has eliminated the need for itself.

WHAT TO EXPECT

The technique is typically experienced as a sequence of sensations:  First, you’ll feel yourself gently fall back from projected thinking.  As you enter your inner space, you’ll feel it expand from the front of your body to the back.  This reverses how your sense of self has been “pancaked” forward to the very front of the body by non-stop thinking.  Next, you’ll feel your inner space expand into its true vertical orientation.  This reverses how you identify with the ego’s story of who you are as if you’re watching a horizontal, widescreen movie.  Finally, you’ll begin to feel the full expanse of your inner spaciousness.

SUMMARY

Deep Embodyment corrects a problem that most of us don’t know we have:  Conditioning starting in childhood gradually projects awareness and identity into a neurologically-created world “out there.”  The technique allows you to reclaim an inner identity that’s your birthright.  The technique’s portability allows it to reduce stress out in the world and supplement other forms of meditation.  The technique can also be used in place of other forms of meditation to slow non-stop thinking.  Deep Embodyment generates an ever-increasing inner sensation that can eventually replace the need for the technique.

POSTSCRIPT: THE MIDDLE GROUND

Few of us will totally sever identification with egoic thinking no matter how long we practice any technique, including the one offered on this site.  However, Deep Embodyment offers a middle ground by enabling your sense of self to periodically retreat from the ego’s projected identity.  And because you can switch to this deeper and more grounded identity throughout your day, the contrast between thought-based and energy-based identity becomes stark.  So, whenever you find yourself lost in thought, your sense of self will know that way back home is to… Feel Your Life Force.