Author: Ryan Klette

  • Growing self preservation

    Growing self preservation

    Below is the practice exploration suggested by Jessica Dibb & Russ Hudson for the Self preservation instinct. Its good to be connected and in tune with all 3 instincts and how they show up in ones life. I will include practices for social and sexual subtype in another post.

    In essence, we want to feel the instincts as energies in the body even as we are engaging in the behaviors that these energies invoke for us. If you have a morning practice that helps you to cultivate presence and centering, its a good idea to use this to maintain a layer of awakeness that you can use to notice the movements of our instinctual energies during the day. Below are three practices for self-preservation.

    First practice: continue the practice of “presencing” the three centers with the focus on sensation, but take some extra time to focus on the sensing the self preservation instinct. As you sit, find a posture that
    works, and to get in deeper contact with breath and sensation. To review: as you feel at least somewhat established in this, see if you can notice the sensations of self preservation­­. What is your body telling you about needs, well being, comfort, etc? Can you feel the temperature of the room? Are you aware of digestion or other physical processes? Can you feel how your relaxation affects your breath and heart rate? The body is giving so many messages about how we are doing and what we are needing moment by moment. See if you can establish a deeper sense of connection with this intelligence as you go.


    Second practice: Use the awareness cultivated from your sitting to see if you can notice more about your relationship with the three zones of self preservation (Well being, practical wisdom and home) . You may be surprised that some of your “real time responses and reactions” are not exactly the way you might think about yourself. Most of us have self images that do not exactly correspond to what is happening in our more immediate experience. Notice through the day as various needs arise
    around self care, around practical considerations, and around your sense of home, of having a base to operate from. Does your attention flow more easily to some of these areas than others? Where do you tend to get preoccupied? What do you tend to overlook or leave to others to handle? What emotions and narratives arise as you are faced with attending to these areas of life? It can be very helpful to take some notes about this through the day and review them at the end of the day.
    You can support yourself in this endeavor by picking some specific times of day to take on the exercise and build Tiny habit anchors around these times – see what scripts are running in your mind and emotions.

    Third practice: As you gather impressions of your relationships with the three zones, select one of them that you would like to work on. Generally speaking, that will be the zone you feel less confident in, or one that you tend to overlook or neglect. Pick one or two behaviors that you will
    actually do, and like doing, and experiment with adding these new behaviors. It will take presence to remember to do this, and to actually engage the new practice. Pick something “humble” and small so the chances of success are greater. If you take on something too big, too difficult, any failures to follow through will generally lead to superego­inner critic attacks that will convince you that you cannot change. So something you will do, something you CAN do, something you WANT to do. For example, you might commit to taking walks or doing some stretches for the wellbeing zone. You might take on learning about what foods
    work for you better. You might commit to getting a bit more sleep, etc. You could look at various procrastinated tasks for the resource zone—looking at money, getting your affairs more organized etc. You might attend to some element of your home, or devise a practice to feel more grounded at home in other places that you are working or living. And you can enlist some help or company for any of these new behaviors. In other words, don’t be afraid to ask for support.

    Special thanks to Russ Hudson for these practice ideas.

  • real calm

    real calm

    Its easy to lose our reference to what it means to be calm in the first place, what that looks like for us in a very real and personal way. In any given day we are likely to hear (perhaps many times over!), “be calm” or “calm down”, “chill” or some iteration of the above. This just tends to aggravate the situation so lets look a little more at what it means to be calm.

    I think a better word is still. Still makes makes it clear that we feel it in the body. A moment of not moving but whats not moving ..

    For starters, clearly the mind can be moving even when we feel still so what is it that is still then? We can fall back into this spaciousness of being (that is always still) and let ourselves be carried for a moment, in the recognition that we are the way that we are and that really is ok even if it doesn’t feel that way.

    I think this is true calm because in the allowing of what is here in us right now – thoughts, feelings sensations, we can come to rest – attention is anchored in the spacious awareness beyond the confines of beliefs and ideas about how we think things should be.

    A little bath in stillness very often also leads to a state of play. And what a wonderful state to exercise on a daily basis. Moments of good old non-directional play, no other outcome other than the game at hand.

    In this time of lock down, calm and play can help us keep moving forward through what ever challenges present themselves because we feel resourced and resilient in a game state of mind. From here we can find the often non-linear, life affirming responses that keep us going forward in a good way.

  • core story

    core story

    But what ever that that stretch is, we need to be willing to see how we can be in the way of ourselves. You me and everyone without doubt have always got more to give. There is always a new stretch, a movement that we haven’t yet made that probably scares the hell out of us, maybe causes us to freeze and reach for an escape.

    Consider for a moment, what might my ‘whole lot more’ look like and where am I in the way? Deep down we know there is more and it can feel excruciating when we don’t pay enough attention to those movements our souls are calling for. Those invitations from life that would make us smile beyond our ears and yet the fear feels real and more often than not stops us for the sake of a safer path.

    But right now there is no safe path. If there is any time to face the fears we have been pushing aside, now is the time. How? my take is the most effective way is to get more intimate with your core story or what ever iteration of it is on play.

    These deeply held [mostly unquestioned] beliefs about who we are and whats possible need to be examined thoroughly so that we can live in a way that dances with life, the good – bad and ugly. Our nature untarnished, ego strong enough to take another step with the divine in hand.

  • Mindset 2

    Mindset 2

    We all know mindset one. That’s binary thinking. On – off. Failure success. The  one that is constantly on our case for not being enough. The controller inside that tells us when to start and end.

    In an addiction, mindset 1 would say once crossed the line  doomed to fail. No turning back . What’s the point. Loose even more control when in the failure zone. Just let it all go and deal with the consequences another time. Its binary and not able to operate in shades of grey. Mindset 1 keeps us in a narrow gaze and not open to the life intelligence in and around.   In this perspective we don’t see  that there can be success in failure and the other way around. It’s simply not so clear cut.

    Mindset 2 is a completely different perspective with very different attitudes about what is possible in any given moment. So in an addiction for instance, we would not need to draw the line between success and failure.  In this mindset its more about playing the game and that means staying in the body. If we find ourselves doing too much of something, this mindset would enable us to wake up and come back to centre at what ever point in the addictive cycle we found ourselves in. It thrives in the grey because life mostly happens in this zone anyway. 

    Mindset 2 is founded in kindness and celebrates micro victories. We can build a new character in ourselves based on these little wins. A character that already embodies all the strength, courage and resources to live a life of authenticity and mystery.

    Ask yourself, did you ever get anywhere by being hard on yourself ? Does that really work when you think through it?

    In my experience all it does is make an enemy out of myself which leads to a whole host of problems I don’t already need.

    Kindness on the other hand means we can be how we are for once without the incessant voices in our heads about how I think I ought to be or how  I’m not good enough or whatever story is running in one’s head. Kindness lets it be just the way it is and relies on all the creative forces  in life to find all the right movements.  

    It’s like we really don’t need to force ourselves into shape. The shape can emerge organically with our attention rooted in kind awareness.  Always coming back to giving a holding space to you first. If we can hold the best and worst  in us, then I think quite naturally we move towards health on all levels. Our work  is to stay in the game and that means we need to start checking  in more.  Staying with the experience in the body. Playing close attention to the sensations we feel and especially the ones that we tend to run from.

    From this place, rooted in kindness but also firmness, we are resourced in all the ways we need. We give ourselves the best chance to catch the life that is only ours to live.

  • 5 stages of grief

    5 stages of grief

    Greg Braden said on the London real channel recently that we are in a collective process of grief right now, whether people know it or not.

    We have lost our way of life, our routines, meeting points and ability to gather socially. Being social creatures, this is a significant loss. Although many people are recognsing many positive aspects from the lock down ( for me whats most apparent is clean air and hearing the birds), we should also be paying attention to deeper emotional experiences that we are going through in both personal and collective capacities.

    That means first of all acknowledging that grief is in the room. We might look to welcome grief like an old friend, she belongs just as she is. I use the feminine because we’re speaking about strong emotion and its the feminine that reminds us how to hold this – with kind attention.

    The next important piece of Braden’s message is a reference to Elizabath Kubler-Ross who has written and researched extensively on death and dying . She identified the stages of grieving that we move through when faced with loss. In this instance, the loss is about our ways of being and moving in the world and ability to meet socially, in person as a central theme. The stages are really useful because we can better orient ourselves emotionally in relation to whats happening collectively. The idea is that we want to aim to move through these stages in a healthy way and that means meeting and acknowledging what we are feeling.

    Here are her stages:

    1. Denial – fear, shock, confusion
    2. Anger – anxiety, frustration, overwhelm
    3. Depression – helplessness, sadness, stuck-ness
    4. Bargaining – looking for meaning, reaching out, making inner deals
    5. Acceptance – meeting life as it is.

    The research shows that we can’t bypass any of these and that the sequence holds true for most people. We can also go ‘to and fro’ while we are moving toward acceptance. To recap the idea is to get to acceptance is quickly as possible in a healthy way by staying with our emotional experience, giving our feeling centre a space to breathe so to speak. The key is just as we are with kind attention. No need to be any other place than the one we are in.

    The reason its a good idea to move toward acceptance is because it feels better there. We are resourced ,connected, rooted and open to the movements in life that will best serve ourselves as well as all humanity.