Doris Maranda

Such a strange juxtaposition! So much of what I am learning is how to be in the present moment with its sensate richness and yet here I am planning and sending out my fall schedule. Such a dance, such a balancing act and both are necessary in order to be in this world.

Spontaneity and spontaneous moments – dropping down, letting go, emptying out, clearing the slate and waiting for the true impulse to arise from deep in the organism, a place that isn’t from an habitual learned mode, that isn’t coerced by a need to please or appease another – that’s the magic.

In the summer retreat day, as people were expressing how beneficial it is to move and be in this way with others, the question arose, “How does one keep this going, how to access this in our world that doesn’t recognize slowing down, organic responses and how to express ourselves from that place. In fact, our world seems to act in so many ways that are opposed to this – speeded up, disconnected from our bodies and from the somatic world. We are influenced by the field and the context in which we live. In fact, we are in relationship, self to other all the time.

In the book I’ve just read by Victor Chan about his journeys with the Dalai Lama, “The Wisdom of Forgiveness,” he speaks to the Dalai Lama’s interpretation of emptiness and in my understanding, it has to do with being in relationship and interconnected, so that there is no “I”, no centre – it’s empty!. This also resonates with Hubert Goddard’s vision. There is no centre, no “Who I am” – there is only “Where I am” – the relationship with other. The polarities, the orientation to ground and space and how we perceive creates and fills in what’s between, again an emptiness, always moving and changing.

Back to our question of how to maintain and access our deeper, inner organic connection to our outer world, I would suggest the following. As one practices and spends time in this realm, it gets more attractive than the habitual, cultural modes, so we begin to prefer it. In this way of being and expressing one is much more connected to and resonating with the organic levels of movement in the field, in the universe. So not only does our world affect us, we affect it!

In the words of Marianne Williamson, from Nelson Mandala’s inaugural speech, “ It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us…You’re playing small does not serve the world….We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us…and as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Except for a few beings, there is no such thing as being enlightened all the time. You lose it, you find it and with practice your ability to find it gets sharper and quicker. It is cumulative and in the resonating we tune into the micro-tubules of others who are moving/sensing in these ways. The field becomes enhanced and richer. As Jesus said, “When two or more are gathered—-“

With love & blessings, Doris

SUMMER GREETINGS! Summertime! When the living is easy!!! This time it really feels like summer. so amazing to feel the heat from the hot sun and the wonderful warm evenings that these hot days bring about, with the still long days of light extending the evening bliss. Sloooowing down even more as people who live in hot climates realize. Moving fast when it’s hot is just not comfortable! Time to spend outdoors, swimming in the ocean, walking the beaches and paths in the woods, taking in the full blooming of the summer plants and trees, sitting in the evening with a good book and a cool drink by your side.

Offering for the summer season: RETREAT DAY @ SOURCE POINT STUDIO, 3263 Heather St., between W16 & W17. SUNDAY JULY 29, 12-5pm. Investment: Sliding scale: $55-$75. Through Continuum’s intricate sound sequences accompanied by movement explorations, we connect to our inner, dynamic fluid selves. We inculcate environments designed to elicit new creative responses, like a “movement tour,” expanding our range of interaction and encouage new “plays” within our bodies and with the environment. We will interweave this creative sourcing into the play of our dreams and dreamtime images, ritual and expressive arts. THEME - Exploring the elements from within and connecting to “other” – how does the eros of water, fire, air and earth interact in the space, in the ordinary space of our lives and in the extraordinary spaces in our dreamtime world and in our creative expressions. Is there a carryover, a leaning and a gleaning from one to the other or do they remain fragmented, separate? We will explore how to bring them together and enrich our souls and our lives.

Emilie Conrad’s book, Life on Land, The Story of Continuum, is here at last! I am almost through my copy and am so moved by Emilie’s heart and gut wrenching telling of her life, her visions and how Continuum Movement came about through all of this. It’s an amazing story. She even has included in one of the Appendices, a Continuum practicuum for those of you who have been hungering for a written exposition of some of the Continuum processes. For more information and reviews: www.continuummovement.com/LifeonLand. Also just released by Bonnie Gintis, DO, Engaging the Movement of Life, Exploring Health and Embodiment Through Osteopathy and Continuum. Both books are being carried by Banyen Books in Vancouver.

With the lack of a weekly class schedule, I intend on luxurating in more free and easy time this summer. However, I am looking forward to attending a week long workshop on basics of “Portals of Perception” in July at Edenvale with Hubert Goddard and Susan Harper and the one-day workshop with Caryn McHose, author of “How Life Moves” and assistant to Hubert in his workshops. We have been exploring some of the exciting sequences from that book in my classes this year. And another state of bliss, in August I have booked our waterfront cabin on Cortes Island for a week. I was there for 5 days in June following my 70th birthday celebration and was once again carried so quickly into the deep peace that that heavenly place engenders in my psyche and soul.

Re fall classes and workshop: I am once again on the hunt for appropriate and reasonable rental spaces especially for evenings and weekends. I would really appreciate your letting me know if you have any ideas of spaces for me to check out.

Closing with excerpts of a birthday poem sent to me by Susan Harper, I extend these prayers to you:

May you work well and nest in the earth’s lap of belonging
May there always be a coin or two in your pocket.
May you dance wildly and know courage in the face of fear.
May you find your root voice and may your unique song
fill the air as clouds stream through the mountains.
May you rest in the vastness of spce and the depths of silence.

…may gentle spring and summer winds ripen what grows in your fields.

With love & blessings, Doris

While preparing for my Retreat Day in December, I listened to a tape I had recorded of a talk by Michael Meade in 1994, entitled “Standing at the Threshold.” Michael was speaking of the upcoming millennium. It led me to consider the relationship of beginnings and endings and how the ending contains the seeds of the new beginning.

We are now approaching the ending of 2005 and the beginning of 2006. We are also entering into the beginning of the returning of the light from the time of darkness. Each moment we are saying farewell to one aspect and greeting another. Our lives are full of events and relationships going and coming, coming and going. At the extreme of this, we are born and we die, the two major bookcases of our lives.

Every organism in the universe is constantly in this dance of renewal, of dissolving and reforming into something new. And yet, for some obscure reason, we are so often reluctant to enter into this contantly changing milieu. We resist change, even when we desparately want to rid ourselves of some quality in our personality, a job or relationship that is no longer nuturing or enabling us to grow creatively, in fact, is downright toxic.

I have constantly puzzled upon this seemingly incongruous dichotomy. It was only when I was in my Somatic Experiencing training, that this began to make sense. We cling to these aspects because in some way they are incomplete in our psyche and our bodies (nervous system especially.) They are not resolved and so they keep us “stuck,” like a child who keeps calling out “Pay attention to me.” I find it amazing that in the simple act of “paying attention,” without judgment or demands, with love and attention, things began to shift and change and flow again. This is the process of “open attention” in Continuum. Shift does happen and in the shifting sands, we move “from fixidity to flow.”

It was with pleasure and awe, that I facilitated the rituals of the endings of my classes this fall and the retreat day in December. For many of us, the simple act of attending is much enhanced by enacting out a ritual in a community setting.

Upon reading Deena Metzger’s book, Entering the Ghost River, I was struck by her definition of “ritual.” For Deena, a “ritual” is the act of preparing oneself, in order to come to the doorway (or threshold). The ritual itself does not enact the change or the transformation. Once at the doorway, we surrender to what Deena calls “the Spirits” and what I would call the “Larger Self,” the innate, organic wisdom and intelligence.

We prepare ourselves, we invite and invoke this innate, organic intelligence of the fluid system in the processes of Continuum. Then we surrender and let this larger beingness take us over, letting go of personality and identity. In this sense, so much of what we enter into in the Continuum processes and in therapy, is really ritual.

And so, I invite you to consider as you stand on the threshold of this coming year, what is passing in your life and out of that seeding from the composting of the dark time just ending, what is emerging in your life right now. What would your life be like for this new seed to emerge and what does it need to grow and prosper? What do you need to let go of for this to happen? How do you want this enacted and witnessed?

With love and blessings for many fruitful endings and beginnings,

GREETINGS FOR THE SUMMER SOLISTICE & ABORIGINAL DAY!

As the warm summer days lengthen, enjoying the beauty & lusciousness of the trees & plants coming into the fullness of their blooming time, I am about to go on another healing journey. Tomorrow I will be having surgery that will give me a new hip and assist me in regaining much of the range & strength in my weight bearing activities that have been curtailed for three and a half years. Arriving at this decision has not been an easy one and I have processed and run through fear, despair, hope, and even shame & failure. “If only I had taken care of myself better, done more Continuum, been more faithful to the arthritis diet, etc., etc.” You know the drill. Then last week, there was a switch from feelings of anxiety and dread to my feeling ready and prepared to enter into this unknown situation. I don’t know for sure what will happen and all I can do is prepare myself with the inner resources and support that I have in my community. According to Emilie Conrad, preparation is so very important. I am also grateful that there is this alternative available. In my Winter/Spring Newsletter, I referred to the interview with Benjamin Zander, the conductor of the Boston Symphony who spoke on The Art of Possibility. I was very taken with his ideas, especially with the one in which the conductor receives his power by enabling and assisting each member of the orchestra to come to his/her full potential. This spoke to me of my teaching of the Continuum process as well as the work of Somatic Experiencing in my Counselling practice. It also confirmed my sense of true intelligence and spirituality in which decisions are made for the benefit of oneself and of all beings.

Recently, I read the book by Benjamin and Rosamund Zander on “The Art of Possibility” and was able to more clearly understand their ideas. We live in a culture which they entitle, the world of measurement, where survival thinking is rampant and competition and comparing reign. In this way of thinking, you have to be calculating and look out for Number 1 because there is scarcity and you may not get your share. However, if one takes the stance that the world is invented and the above thinking may be an illusion, then it opens up the world of possibility which is based on abundance and connectedness. In this way of attending and perceiving the world, I create a context and let life unfold. (Sound familiar to those of you who have taken Continuum!) It allows one to accept feelings like fear, frustration, sadness, anger and let them move through you. Then, one moves into “And what else?” Herein there is expansiveness and unthoughtofbefore possibilities emerge. Practically speaking, this means that I will not be able to teach Continuum this summer. My plans are to resume my Continuum classes & workshops in late September or early October. I intend to hold workshops in Kelowna & Victoria later in the fall. Penny Allport holds classes and workshops throughout the summer in Steveston and on the Sunshine Coast at her retreat place so please contact her for more information: penny@swarainspiritations.ca.

Please pray for me and hold me in your thoughts and prayers during this time. My friends and family have been wonderful and supportive and I am learning so much about receiving and asking. I feel so touched and held by my community and the many circles of which I am a part. “I” truly becomes a “We.” In closing, I want to offer you some words from “Divine Mother—The Matrix” which has inspired me in the past. I wish for you to feel the abundance and wisdom of the cosmos within yourselves.

I am the intelligence from which the universe emanates And in which it abides. The ignorant believe that I am merely nature But the wise experience me as the true Self within themselves. They glimpse me in their own hearts When their minds become as still and clear as an ocean without waves. With love & blessings, Doris June 20^th, 2005

NEWSLETTER – WINTER/SPRING 2004 “SEASON’S GREETINGS”   Such a poignant, rich, meaningful & full time of the year.   Many cultures and traditions interface – the Christian – Christ’s birth and our culture’s Christmas, the pagan Winter Solstice, the Jewish Hanukkah.  The music of Christmas pours from the radio and our stereo collections, lights flood many houses, buildings, cranes, boats and yards, the stores and billboards are constant reminders with their decorations and exhortations to buy gifts for one’s loved ones as there is only so many more days until Christmas.   So many Christmas concerts and functions as well as the parties and gatherings put on by friends and the multitude of tasks that accompany this season.   The common question is “Are you ready for Christmas?”    For many people, it is also a very difficult, even depressing time of the year.   Expectations, disappointments and negative family experiences leave their imprint.   For some, like Scrooge, Christmas is humbug!  Perhaps rejecting the predominant commercialism, it is difficult to find some meaning and the songs for joy and peace leave us empty.   Personally, I loved Christmas as a child and when my children were young, I was caught up in their excitement.   Then, some years ago I realized that I wanted to find a meaning in this time of the year that spoke to me personally and to the many experiences that have come into my life.  I wanted to develop both for myself and with my community of friends and family, our own ways of celebrating and ritual that incorporate the traditional paths.   That has been and continues to be a challenge.

 “Are you ready for Christmas?”   I offer you this challenge, the challenge to find your own meaning within the culture and the traditions. I also offer you the gift of suspending your beliefs, of questioning and being curious and attending to yourself throughout this time and in the new year to come. Seasonally, this is the dark time of the year, moving into the Winter Solstice and the return of the light.   In that vein, it is a time of hibernating, of dreaming, of gestating and renewal, in preparation for spring and the new seeding into one’s life of what has been laid fallow.    Let yourself, as Terry Tempest Williams expresses so beautifully, “become a caretaker of silence, a connoisseur of stillness,” so that you can “slow down and recover the rhythm in the heart that moves the body first, and the mind second.”  “Open the space” and let yourself have “time to breath, to dream, to dare, to play, to pray, to move freely, in a world our minds have forgotten but our bodies remember.”  Wishing you joy, peace, love and re-membering! December 12^th, 2003                                               With love & blessings,     

                                                                                         Doris 

CONTINUUM

VANCOUVER  NEWSLETTER FALL 2004

EMBRACING THE MYSTERY – Sobonfu Some, wise, earthy woman from the Dagara people in West Africa, gave a talk here in Vancouver last week on African Mysteries.  According to Sobonfu, mysteries have a life of their own and they bring our inner life into play so that that intrinsic life can be expressed outwardly.   Pema Chodren said in an article in the Shambhala Sun, “A warrior accepts that we can never know what will happen to us next. We can try to control the uncontrollable by looking for security and predictability, always hoping to be comfortable and safe.  But the truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty.  This not knowing is part of the adventure, and, it is also what makes us afraid.”   

FEAR – of???  What do we do when we feel threatened?   It is very much an unconscious, automatic reaction which often doesn’t even make logical sense in light of the situation which has created this fear.   I do think that we are prone to our safe, known habitual patterns but I also know that this fear response can be  triggered by a present situation that recalls a past event that is still unresolved.  When this happens, we very much feel isolated, alone, overwhelmed and confused as to how to handle our response.  The Somatic Experiencing model has been a welcome adjunct to the Continuum process in helping myself and others deal with situations like this.  We do shake up the habitual patterns in our Continuum gatherings, sometimes deliberately and sometimes, it happens as we are delving deeply into our sensorial selves where the implicit memories are residing.   

 Listening to Sobonfu, I was reminded of my experiences in Bali.   The Balinese people don’t hold much value (if any) in “individuality.”   There is not a “evil person,”  there is EVIL which to them is disconnection.  When evil occurs, the village as a whole takes action in ritual, ceremonies and prayers to heal the situation.   Sobonfu addressed issues like raising children, grieving for the dead, “mentally ill” and disabled people who act as messengers to the village that there is an issue needing to be addressed.   I was struck once again with a society that is a real community, that holds and supports individuals and families so that spiritual growth, healing and day-to-day living can thrive.   How we lack that in our culture and how we need to listen to those cultures who honour community as part of life so that we can create circles of community for ourselves in the midst of this culture we were born into, a culture that esteems individuality, achievement and success. 

Reach inside, follow your deepest desires, embrace the mystery and let it flow outward, a bit at a time.                                               August 18^th, 2004                  With love & blessings,     Doris