The Body: Gateway to What's Real
While deconstructing thoughts was a crucial first step, a true breakthrough came a couple of years later during an intensive nine-day retreat, Energy Body: Receptacle of Mind and Matter.
It wasn’t an instant fix—our minds are expertly trained to keep us tangled in mental chatter. Yet through this focused practice, I discovered a profound truth: embodiment is the gateway to what’s real.
The Wisdom of the Body
Our bodies are guileless; they hold everything that has ever happened to us. When we tune in deeply, we can ask questions and receive remarkably clear answers about how past experiences continue to shape our present. Through mindful awareness, we have the ability to transform the quality of our lives—moment by moment, breath by breath.
Finding Anchor in the Elements
The Energy Body retreat was instrumental in cultivating mindfulness of body, concentration, insight, and self-care. A core teaching involved focusing on the characteristics of the four elements: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.
For example, consider hardness (an Earth characteristic) and its opposite, softness. These energies are always present. In practice, you might start by noticing the hardness of your feet on the floor. Once you open to that experience, you begin to notice the felt sense of the bones and their inherent solidity.
When we are healing, trauma and dysregulation, the breath, in my experience, can at times be an elusive anchor. Focusing on these elemental characteristics can be much easier when practicing concentration:
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Try focusing on Hardness/Softness, Heaviness/Lightness, or Warmth/Coolness.
The Embodied Truth: Moving Beyond the Mind's Stories
“To be mindful is to truly be present with your body and your mind.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
Hello everyone,
Have you ever stopped to truly question the thoughts running through your head?
Recently, I was reminded of a powerful teaching from Ajahn Chah, shared by Jack Kornfield in his book, A Wise Heart. Ajahn Chah would consistently ask his students: “Is it true?” Over time, this simple query taught them to “deconstruct every thought, plank by plank.” When I took up this challenge myself, the results were revelatory: I found that many of my thoughts weren't true, and more critically, I realized child parts within me were clinging to them and creating stories, thus energy constructs, based on false information. These energy constructs were hanging out in my aura as unresolved experiences and informing my future experiences.
"Thoughts are not nothing – they are less than nothing."
Dennis Maurer
NOVEMBER 2025 EDITION
The Monday Night Sangha Newsletter
TESTIMONIALS
Your instruction and guidance are concise yet gentle. I truly appreciate your input. I attend many group meditations and no one is teaching what you are teaching.....Carolyn
I am new to meditation and every time I attend one of your sessions I always feel less stressed. At the October 20, session I felt unwell at the beginning with a bad cold. I felt so much better afterwards....Giuliana
Thank you for the lovely, gentle practice last night. So nice to see you and what nice people that joined too....Anna
NEED A 1-ON-1 SESSION?
Try my reasonably priced 1-on-1 or small group sessions for helpful instruction that can enhance
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A Personal Reflection
Including this energy body practice with regularity, helped boost my efforts in healing trauma. What makes this practice successful? When we practice compassion, metta, insight meditation, and use naming as a method of giving space to reactivity, there is a subtle vibrational energy to naming anger, for instance. When recognizing anger as warmth (a characteristic of the element fire), the quality of the vibrational energy changes. It's much more neutral. This has a powerful effect on boosting equanimity and healing.
Research Spotlight: Why Coming Home to the Body Matters
Modern research confirms what ancient teachings have long known—awareness of the body cultivates balance, resilience, and healing. An example of this would be the body scan meditation. This is a practice of moving attention through the body and has been shown to lower cortisol, the stress hormone, and improve sleep quality. Doing this for 10 minutes before bed would be a very helpful practice.
Another helpful tidbit: Just 20 minutes a day of mindful body awareness can lower stress hormones and increase self-regulation, according to findings shared by Mindful.org. This can be done in daily activities and does not necessarily have to occur during meditation.
What are you noticing in your body today?
Exploring Hardness/Softness
Next Week
We'll be exploring embodiment in our next Monday Night Sangha session on 11/24 at 8:30pm to deepen your connection to these foundational energies. We will spend time focusing on the hardness of our feet first, then intentionally shift our focus to the softness in our lips. Switching focus between these two contrasting felt senses is a powerful catalyst for connecting with the energy of the body. You will experience how this practice can clear your mind and cultivate concentration.
Highlighting Self-Love
In QiGong one of our embodiment practices is to bring awareness to different organs in the body with loving attention. I will teach this practice at the December Monday Night Sangha session. It is a very self-loving practice and very healing.
Excerpt From Codependent No More By Melody Beattie
“To honor the self is to be in love with our own life, in love with our possibilities for growth and for experiencing joy, in love with the process of discovering and exploring our distinctively human potentialities.
Thus we can begin to see that to honor the self is to practice selfishness in the highest, noblest, and least understood sense of that word. And this, I shall argue, requires enormous independence, courage, and integrity."
With loving kindness and peaceful presence
Susan Keller
Conscious Calm Presence