Doris Maranda

NEWSLETTER – WINTER/SPRING 2009

Solstice greetings to All!!! Looks like someone dreamed up a white Christmas for us this year. I returned from sunny, warm California to a chilly -5 C. Mostly, I am appreciating the beauty and softness of the white blanket world as it enfolds us in its mysteriousness and its quietude. It feels like a continuation of the journey I have been on in the “Welcoming Dark” Continuum Intensive which I just returned from on Monday night.

As I entered the amazing cave/womb created at the Continuum studio for our 48 hour allnighter, I experienced a powerful shift in my sensing and how I was locating my body & myself in space. Finding myself pausing at the doorway, then crawling into the room until I adjusted to this new environment, I felt this in a reverse way that it must be for us as infants, emerging from the wet womb/cave in which we hibernated and grew for nine months. With this change in context, there came a different sense of myself, or rather a questioning of who I am or what I am or even the disappearing of identity and form. Somehow that did not even matter.

In my twentieth year of Continuum, I continue to learn new insights into how I have been operating both in Continuum and in my life. For the past few years, with the onset of the deterioration of my hip cartilage and the ensuing hip replacement operations, I who was a doer and a giver have been learning to ask and to receive from my family and friends. It truly has been a gift (even though I didn’t see it that way all the time). In the retreat I realized that in some ways, I have been “doing” Continuum and that it is extremely important that I open up receptivity on the biological level as well. Otherwise, if the tissue is not receptive, no new information and consequently, no new growth or evolving is possible. Learning to receive at deeper and deeper levels allows the penetration and sourcing to take place.

What I also learned in the next few days of the retreat is how strong the habits and the old defensive mechanisms still operate even after this profound insight. It is almost like there is a recoil into the habitual defensive patterns which once served me but now limit me. Peter Levine once stated that we let go of old patterns and holdings when we are resourced enough. I truly feel blessed in the resources in my life, in my community, in the natural world around me and in my inner world. I have never liked myself as well as I do now; it took 71 years but here I am!

As I return to my home and my life here in Vancouver, I realize upon reflecting and sharing with friends, that what I discovered in the retreat is all part of a process. What has been occurring in my life over the past while, especially with my six month sabbatical, personal retreat from January to June, has resulted in my opening up to trusting, trusting that I’m not alone, that I have a community not just of the wonderful people in my life, but also the universe. Increasingly, I have been experiencing that when I attend and participate as fully as I can, I can then trust that the universe will provide and assist me, maybe not in a way that I anticipated but for my and the greater good. Even through the difficult global times we are experiencing, we need to build that inner heartfelt trust that we are part of it all and that it was all meant to be. It is not so much the events we encounter in our lives, but our response to them that we realize our potential both in ourselves and in our world.

With love and blessings for now and for the coming season,

December 18, 2008 Doris

Greetings to All!  

Enjoy the budding of new life, the exquisitely rich colours of our blossoming trees and participate with your own budding of yearnings and desires within.     It is time to dream new visions, new possibilities, new buds from the pruning and letting go of the branches that were leaking out old energies and stifling the new growth which is pressing to come into being.

 The schedule page now has the spring schedule of Continuum classes and workshops in Vancouver and also Emilie Conrad’s workshop in Seattle in June.      Please note the opportunities to get a free introduction to Continuum:    May 3 through Banyen on the occasion of the publication of Emilie Conrad’s book and two free introductory classes the morning & evening of April 25th.    The Summer Newsletter will be coming out later.   Usually I do not have ongoing classes in the summer but last year because of requests, held a small class in the morning.     Please let me know if you are interested in an ongoing summer class and if you are, what time of day or day of the week would work for you.     In addition, I will schedule one or two Retreat Days in the summer.    The last two retreat days have been well attended and received and I find them creative, stimulating and rewarding both for myself and for the participants.   

 With love & blessings, Doris

For many years, I have attended a retreat at the beginning of a new year, usually a Continuum depth retreat in California with Emilie Conrad & Susan Harper.    It is auspicious to begin the new year, dropping down in a community, attending to sensation, following impulse moment to moment, to move, to sound, to explore, to dream, to reflect, to play and to pray.   This year, I decided to take the opportunity to spend a week over new year’s at our waterfront cabin on Cortes Island.  I wanted to give myself an opportunity to attend in my own way to the silence and quiet that is so persuasive in that incredibly beautiful place, to explore and tune into other sentient beings and to follow my own impulses and dreams.    During the week, although there were difficult times, I ended up feeling quiet, restored, lightened and so very sloooowed down.    I offer you this piece, my Ode to Slowness.

Slowing down is not just an outward, physical event, but also an internal one, to a point of the most minimal breath I can take.    To be truly resonant and participate with the biological rhythms around us, one has to slow way down.   “The Earth and the human body have a resonance that links us in a biological field that is different than the technological world.”

The view of separateness prevalent in our culture, possibly creates all the problems in the world.  It leads to a fragmented world view and destructive behaviour.   Children are our canaries and the age at which violent behaviour is emerging is getting younger and younger.    Damasio, a prominent neuro  scientist,  states that research shows the brains of children are changing, specifically the disconnection between the neo cortex and the emotional and sensory areas.  In reality, everything in the universe is interconnected, as quantum physics so clearly articulates.  To restore that sense of interconnectedness, we also need to slow down so we can enter into a state of mutual resonance.

The process of slowing down, attuning to the silence and natural rhythms was enhanced by my being on Cortes Island.  Seeing the old year out and the new year in, the setting of the sun and the rising of the full moon, the birds flying over the water, their shadow reflected on the ocean, the ducks in their V-formation gliding along, the ever-changing patterns of the wind on the lakelike ocean that is Gorge Harbour, the amazing changes in the weather from sunny, peaceful and still to gales of wind and rain pouring out of the heavens.

From “Red,” Terry Tempest Williams says,

“it takes time to slow down and recover a rhythm in my heart that moves my body first and my mind second.”  “There is no such thing as wasting time.”  “Time is something encountered through the senses not imposed upon the mind.”   “What we know…is translated through the body,” leaving “our minds free to wander” and to wonder, allowing new possibilities to emerge.  “Space is the twin sister of time.”  When we slow down, the shape of time and space shifts, spaciousness enters our realm and there is time “to breath, to dream, to dare, to play, to pray, to move freely, so freely, in a world our minds have forgotten, but our bodies remember.”

How do I translate this, carry this emergence back to city life?  It is in a practice, in making time for that remembering.   If you want a plant to grow, you have to attend to it and nurture it, give it what it needs.  So too this seed we plant within ourselves.   It is also very helpful to practice in a group on a regular basis, to be in the resonant field, amplifying my individual experience.   It is the reason why I keep teaching ongoing classes (for my sake as much as the participants).   And yes, take the opportunity to spend time (if you can, at least a week) in wilderness, in a natural setting.

With love and blessings for the new year,    Doris

For the past couple of weeks, I have been pondering upon a theme for this newsletter.   Then I had some news a few days ago which I am inspired to share with you and which provide a theme!    A few days ago, I learned that the engineers’ report on our complex had come in at $41 Million dollars to repair the buildings in the apartment complex where I live.   It may also be that the land will be sold to a developer who will buy us out (at a reduced rate from market value of course) and all the buildings will be torn down.   In either case, it means losing a great deal of financial security I had by purchasing my condo plus perhaps losing my home, maybe even having to move from Vancouver.    This news has certainly rocked my security boat and left me feeling overwhelmed, particularly coming so soon after my second hip surgery. 

Things happen – a friend of mine was merrily going along in her life; everything was great.    Then coming home from a walk in the country last spring, she was run over by a marathon cyclist, and is now recovering from multiple fractures in one leg and arm.

Sometimes it is so difficult to see the meaning in these situations.  

In my experience, one tends to move into coping and survival strategies (which definitely have their place.)   However, the question is:  How can we move through these events in a “response able” way, keeping our hearts & minds open to possibilities, how attend to the vulnerability as well as the calm eye in the heart of the storm in our core and stay with our creative and spiritual resources that we have been cultivating in our lives.   These difficulties do provide “grist for the mill.”    (Sometimes I could use a little less “grist!” ) 

Let’s see how we can move from the grist into “a dance born from the ability to dream.”    (Connie May Fowler, River of Hidden Dreams)

Emilie Conrad speaks of the importance of learning “adaptability” so that our organism develops the ability to respond to external events in our lives and in the environment, that this denotes a high level of intelligence.  My first Yoga teacher, Joel Kramer, defined “responsibility” as “able to respond.”   As he said, we can’t do much about what comes to us, but we can in our response to these occurrences.  

I have faith that this situation will be resolved for me and the learning and the meaning will come.   Even though I’m not looking forward to going through the process, I know I will call on my internal resources as well as my external resources, which includes my family, friends and you in the community of which I am a part.     I am grateful  for you all being in my life, sharing in the journey.  

With love & blessings,                                              Doris

Life presents us with many challenges. Recently, I chose the quote on my email signature to convey some of my thoughts on this: “There are two ways to meet difficulties: you alter the difficulties or you alter yourself to meet them.” Phyllis Bottome. Someone once asked me what the goal of Continuum is. My response was, “If there is a goal (having difficulty with the word “goal”) it would be adaptability, enhancing your ability to respond to any situation that presents itself to you. In Somatic Experiencing, we refer to resiliency – enhancing and restoring resiliency in order for self-organization and coherence to flow throughout our body systems. In order to do this, we sometimes have to deal with what Michael Meade calls the Second Agreement, i.e., our adaptations (for survival & to fit in) to our families & culture. In his recent talk in Vancouver on Fate & Destiny, Michael stated that in order to arrive at and reclaim our First Agreement, i.e., our true destiny, the one we were born to live for, we must clear out what is getting in our way in terms of the Second Agreement, which is where therapy and growth processes can assist. Of course, there is always the danger of getting stuck there & exiting out of our lives, still clinging to issues in our families. I bring a Balinese statue of Saraswati to my teaching altars as a Balinese healer told me that she is the one who helps you find your own true path.

During my 12 days of a Continuum retreat in January, I finally got that even though difficulties present themselves both to myself and to others in my community of family & friends, no matter how challenging, it is still possible to maintain a hibernative state within oneself. Yes, at times, I flip out, get hooked into associative memories from the past, yet I return to that place within of peace and calm. It feels like I am pregnant with that inner hibernative state and the more I attend to and nuture it, the more it grows and I carry it with me. Cultivating this state within, I am about to undergo surgery for my other hip replacement this coming Monday. I have been advised to allow one year for the soft tissue & nerves to heal. So, I am planning to have a 70th Birthday celebration in June 2007. We will rent a hall & DANCE! I am so looking forward to that. I ask for your prayers and heartfelt thoughts to be with me on Monday. Practically speaking, this means that there will not be any Continuum teaching in

Vancouver this summer (possibly a retreat day in August if all goes well with my healing). Penny Allport has Continuum classes & workshops in the summer (www.swarainspiritations.ca) so please check into her offerings . I look forward to moving with you again in the fall.

With love & blessings for a glorious summer,   Doris May 14th, 2006