Changing what you've learned

I recently finished reading a lot of Mantak Chia's works and implementing the practices into my daily work. I do find the practices useful, even if a lot of his books are repetitious. Even with that repetition, what I did get was a better sense of his process and how it works, as well as how to cut out a lot of the extraneous features, to still obtain the same result. Seems to me that's really how magic works. You figure out the process as another person describes, then you cut out what doesn't work, add what does, and work it. Certainly, I can appreciate that how Chia has presented his techniques work as they are, but I also could see where a couple steps could be dropped entirely to refine the process and still get the same result. And that shows me that any process isn't set in stone, and is always mutable. It's just dependent on whether or not the person feels confident about changing the process.

What do you think? How comfortable are you with changing what you've learned?

The book game

I read an interesting post today on rune soup about the book game: You pick ten books that you'd have a person read in order to create a specific "type" of magician. So, because I'm in the process of going through all my books, I thought I may as well do the same myself, only in my case, it would be to create an experimental magician. My list doesn't include any references to the sacred cows of occultism, because as I found myself, years ago, it was going off the beaten track in reading as well as practice that really allowed me to challenge the usual concepts of magic.

Book 1 Magical Ritual Methods by William G. Gray

In terms of thoroughness and ability to describe magical processes, William Gray is one of my favorite authors to read, and best of all the doesn't just stick with describing tried and true ideas, but offers his own ideas on subjects ranging from space/time magic to the role of symbolism in magic to elemental work. This book grounds the reader thoroughly in magical processes while also challenging the reader to think outside the box.

Book 2: Initiation into Hermetics by Franz Bardon

Initiation into Hermetics is another favorite book of mine, because the author challenges the reader to practice magic. To truly comprehend the book, you actually need to practice the techniques. At the same time the techniques are open enough to be experimented with, which makes them most efficacious.

Book 3: Relax into Being: Breathing, Chi, and Dissolving the Ego by B. K. Frantzis

The experimental magician needs to balance external work with internal awareness. The practices in this book focus the magician on cultivating more self-awareness, while also breaking down unconscious triggers and blockages.

Book 4: The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs by Daniel Odier

This book teaches the experimental magician the essentials of Burroughs techniques, and also shows them the value of unconventional approaches and thinking about magic.

Book 5: Watchmen by Alan Moore and David Gibbons

I've gotten a lot of ideas out of this graphic novel that pertain to magic. Moore and Gibbons pulled off some very interesting ideas and presented some useful information that can be applied to magic, provided you are willing to use the concepts in that way.

Book 6: Multi-Media Magic by Taylor Ellwood

Yes, I've included one of my own books and why not? in this one you get exposure to pop culture magic, but also some space/time concepts and even the proto theory I'd developed around identity and magic. It's a useful introduction to my previous works and definitely fits the spirit of the experimental magician.

Book 7: The Magician's Reflection by Bill Whitcomb

This is an excellent reference and resource guide for anyone who wants to develop their own system of magic. Since ideally the experimental magician wants to do that, this book would be perfect for providing some ideas.

Book 8: The Possible Human by Jean Houston

The only one of her books I actually liked, it presented a lot of ideas around space/time, inner alchemy, and other concepts that I think would be highly useful for the experimental magician to draw on. Definitely a resource book I still use.

Book 9: Real Magic by Isaac Bonewitz

Another of my favorite books on magic. Bonewitz's painstaking efforts to describe and define magic are useful in terms of getting a better understanding of magic and what one can do with it.

Book 10: The Apophenion by Peter Carroll

I like all of Carroll's works, but his latest one is useful for demonstrating how to create a system of magic around a concept. The experimental magician will find the ideas useful for space/time work as well as playing with the concept of chance.

So those are my ten books I'd recommend for the experimental magician, just starting out. They aren't all on the beaten track of occultism, but they all provide unusual insights and challenge conventional definitions and approaches to magic.

Disillusionment and magic

Recently a friend of mine has mentioned that she's been going through a period of disillusionment about magic and that everything she tries to do doesn't work. And whether she realizes it or not, she's not alone in feeling this way. I've gone through my own feelings of disillusionment about magic several times. The first time was disillusionment with the occult subculture and the second time was personal disillusionment. Undoubtedly I'll probably experience such disillusionment again. And my conclusion about this is that actually such disillusion is healthy, even if at the time it doesn't feel that way. Each time I experienced disillusionment about magic, I ended up working through some serious doubts about the magic, but importantly about myself as a person. When we feel those doubts it can be hard, because we question everything, all our decisions, and we wonder, am I really doing thing, or am I deluding myself? But asking these questions also forces us to really evaluate the choices in our lives, the value of our beliefs, and even if the people in our lives are the ones we really want in our lives.

A crisis of faith is healthy because it forces us to stop taking our beliefs for granted and really dig into the core of those beliefs. The disillusionment I've felt has made me question why I believe what I believe as well as whether or not its really good for me to have those beliefs. And when I've come through it, I've felt a stronger connection to what I believe, and a better understanding of the place of those beliefs in my life.

What about you? Have you felt disillusioned and how have you dealt with it?

Is magic anecdotal?

In my previous post about scientizing magic, one of the commentators inferred that evidence regarding magic and specifically spiritual entities was anecdotal and as such is not verifiable data. I disagree with that claim. Any magical working, including working with spiritual entities, involves a process. That process can be replicated by other people, which means it can be tested and verified by other people. Even putting that aside, if there are multiple anecdotal sources its rather cavalier to dismiss that evidence as unverifiable and unprovable, simply because that evidence doesn't fall into the scientific process. As is, open any book on magic and you will find that there are processes that can be replicated by other people, and as such results that can be verified by multiple people, if they choose to do so. As such, claiming that magic is only anecdotal data is a bit fuzzy, especially if other people can replicate your process and verify whether it works.

Magic isn't science, but magical practices can be verified by being tested. Obviously people wouldn't practice magic if they weren't able to get something out of it, but they also wouldn't be able to share their processes and practices if magic was only anecdotal. There would be no way to verify that magic worked if there weren't processes that could be replicated by other people.

Spiritual and life coaching services

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technology and magic

My apprentice recently told me that wanted to learn technomagic and I asked her to tell me what that is. Now before any of you leap in with an answer, I'll tell you that I asked her because I wanted to find out what she thought technomagic was, and also what she thought technology itself was. I've noticed that when most people think of technology, they usually think of computers or some other form of I. T., or perhaps mobile phones with mobile applications. In fact, it seems for something to qualify as technology it has to has operate on batteries or electrical power and do some kind of computational activity. Now I know that actually technology doesn't have to be a computer or mobile phone or even need to have electrical power to qualify as technology, but it seems to me that when people about technology the focus is on the electronic as opposed to anything else.

My definition of technology is that technology is any tool that makes a task easier to do than would occur if a person was only utilizing his/her hands, or feet. For example, a shovel is technology according to my definition. I could dig at the Earth with my hands, but they would get sore quickly, and I probably wouldn't be able to dig very far. A shovel, on the other hand, is technology that enables me to dig the Earth much more easily than just using my hands. The shovel is a tool, but its also technology.

Any tool that can be used to make a task easier is technology. And technology is important, if only because it makes our lives easier. And if we look at the process of magic, we will find that there is generally some kind of tool that is used to aid in the realization of that process. The tool could be a sigil, a staff, an athame, or it could be a form of contemporary technology, such as a computer or a mobile phone. But a tool is only effective when you actually know what you using it for. Just having technology doesn't mean anything, unless you can actually meaningfully integrate it into your process.

Technology is an aide, but its not the magic itself. Technomagic, which could be argued to integrate the latest forms of technology into magic is only useful if you actually understand what you will use that technology for and how that technology will interact with the process you use to work your magic. In and of itself technology isn't inherently magical. What makes it work as a magical tool is two things: 1. The meaning invested in utilizing it as a magical tool. 2. The understanding of how the tool will actually be used in your process to make the process work. These two factors need to be considered with any kind of technology, in order to make the technology an effective part of your magical process.

Endings and beginnings

Today I helped a couple of my friends pack up a truck. They are moving to Seattle. For the last year and a half they lived next door to me so I got to know them pretty well. In thinking about them leaving, I also got to thinking about the changes in my life for the last half year. I got a divorce, started writing again, got involved with someone new, helped my friends move, and a variety of other things. You know, life... And there's not something overtly magic or mystical about all these changes, but when I think about the element of time, I also think about endings and beginnings. Time isn't just the awareness of the rhythms of the universe, though that certainly is a big part of it. Time, or at least human awareness of time is the marking of events, the recognition of endings and beginnings, the significance of connections and their changes. Life is change and time is how we mark it.

So I watch s other people's lives are changing and also see my life changing and I mark it with time, I mark it with dates...I find a way to make the when significant so I can remember the what. And that makes time significant as tool and as an event.

So life changes, there are endings and beginnings, transitions...

The psychologizing and scientizing of magic aka "Prove it"

I've been reading some different posts in the blogosphere about magic, psychology, and atheism, and I've been mulling over my response to what I see as a trend toward trying to psychologize and scientize magic in order to make it legitimate, at the expense of writing off other perspectives that aren't rational and thus don't fit in a neat little scientific box that can be conveniently labeled and explained. I mention Atheism, because I've noticed that most of the posts have been written by atheists. And just to be clear, I don't have anything against atheism per se, but I do have my own perspectives and observations to offer, which run counter to their perspective. There's this prevailing attitude that believing in gods or spirits as real entities in their own rights is out of fashion and not really tied into the experience of the numinous and that it's to perceive them as psychological constructs or archetypes that can be interacted with as metaphors, but not treated as real entities. And that may work for some people, but I think that when you exclude the possibility that such entities could be real, you also exclude some possible avenues of manifestations. I wonder how much the denial that an entity could be real is based in trying to find comfort that such beings are just psychological constructs as opposed to real entities that could effect a person's life.

It seems to me that by psychologizing magic, it makes the entire experience into a mental masturbatory routine, with little substance to add beyond mental confirmation of one's dysfunctions or lack thereof. By trying to explain a magical experience or result as a psychological or even psycho-physiological result what avenues of possibility are being written off because they can't be explained or if they are it's written off as irrational beliefs?

The effort that goes toward scientizing magic, ends up treating science as the holy grail that can be used to explain and categorize magic. Science is treated as an objective truth or knowledge that can be used to disprove the irrational aspects of magic, while focusing in on the privileged rational explanations, which usually tend to be focused on an anthropological or psychological explanation.

What's forgotten is that even science is a subjective experience. A theory in science is never considered 100% percent fact or true because scientists recognize that there can always be some information that's missing that would change our understanding and consequently disprove a theory. More importantly, however, and what is less acknowledged is that science is ultimately derived from human observation and experience, neither of which is objective. This means that any information we have is ultimately derived from a subjective experience that could be disproven at any time.

The on-going trend to scientize magic, to get rid of the irrational comes at a cost that is rather steep, in my opinion. It comes at the cost of utilizing non-rational perspectives, which while not rational, are nonetheless valuable because the suspension of disbelief can open doors that a more rational perspective would write off because it doesn't fit within a scientific or psychological explanation. The other issue that occurs is that magic is relegated to a mental feel good phenomenon, with no tangible results. It's something people do to find comfort, as opposed to being a methodology that produces real, tangible changes.

While I won't deny that a lot of where can magic occur is in the mental or conceptual phase, I will also say that I've manifested very real, tangible physical results for myself and other people that weren't just based on psychological or scientific perspective, but utilized non-rational perspectives as a means of accessing possibilities I'd have otherwise written off if I just relied on a psychological or scientific model of magic. I do find value in deriving some of my methodology from science or psychological perspectives, but I don't think they even begin to accurately describe, define, or otherwise provide a full and coherent explanation of magic, nor should they.

Also just because I rely on irrational perspectives and approaches doesn't make me any less skeptical. However I've found that such perspectives have proven themselves time and time again. Writing them off in favor of a rational explanation purely because that rational explanation says it isn't possible seems at best foolish and at worst dogmatic.

What it really boils down to is that while I my derive some of my techniques and methods from a scientific or psychological perspective, I wouldn't use either to try and label or define magic, because in doing so I unnecessarily limit what I can do. Likewise I wouldn't use magic to define or explain psychology or science because the magical perspective wouldn't adequately describe, define, or demonstrate a coherent understanding of such disciplines.

I recognize that for the atheist magicians these perspectives are useful for explaining magic, but I find their definitions to be rather dull and useless. There is something lacking in such approaches. I suppose they could say I was a superstitious fool, but magic will never just be in my head, nor will the entities I work with just be archetypes, and I'm perfectly happy with that perspective.

Time as a necessary illusion

Tonight I did another visitation with the spider goddess of time. Before I did so, Elephant briefly reminded me to stay present, even and especially in moments of feeling boredom. When I visited the spider goddess, she showed me a new technique where I could create a silver thread of time to an event or person, if one hadn't existed before. This approach complements the editing technique I learned from her the last time I visited. The main difference is that you are essentially creating a new connection as opposed to editing an existing one. You can even create context specific strands of time. In other words, if there's a specific context that you want to create for a situation or person then you put that into the strand that connects you to the event or person.

Afterward the spider goddess and I discussed time itself. She pointed out something that she has said before. The sense of time a person has is dictated much more by awareness of natural rhythms and cycles than an actual force of time. The conceptualization of time as a force is a useful illusion that has its own rule, which can be used to manipulate the awareness of time a person has. It's something I can understand. I know that my "age" is more or less an arbitrary number used to explain the physiological process of aging and that day and night are terms used to understand the changes brought about by the rotation of the Earth around the sun. The concept of the flow of time seems to be more of a comfort illusion than an actual reality. The word when allows us to situate a place and space as much as a time. Even the spider web is another concept tool for the illusion of time. It works, and certainly something happens, but her point is that time isn't so much of a mysterious external force, so much as its a perception and explanation and a method for sorting out and indexing changes. We create time to explain and understand the changes that occur in and around us, but you have to wonder if time would even exist as a concept if there was no one thinking about it.

Review of In Search of Time by Dan Falk

This book presents a "history" of time, with a heavy focus on physics and how physicists throughout history have approached and tried to conceptualize and explain time. The author does an excellent job of presenting a wide variety of both contemporary and historical perceptions of time. I enjoyed reading this book because it provided some food for thought on how I understand and conceptualize time. I recommend it to anyone who finds the concept of time fascinating and wants to learn what others have to say about it.

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5 out of 5

Magical Experiments - Sex Magic Radio Show

Here's the link to the radio show on sex magic, with special guest Tannin Schwartzein, the pink sphinx of Babalon. It's quite a good show, with both of us weighing in on the questions people asked in a previous post, but also discussing sacred sexuality in general.

Meditation and the relationship to the body

I've been doing a lot of research and practical applications of meditation from various spiritual systems, and the one thing I find consistent is that for meditation to really work, there must be some interaction with the body. The body is the gateway to experiencing meditation, which makes sense as a meditation is really an altered state of physiological consciousness. I put it that way, because it seems to me that there is a tendency to discuss and conceptualize meditation as a state of mind or consciousness that is separate from the experience of the body. But you really can't separate the body from meditation, because you are rooting yourself in the experience of changing your physiology to accomplish an altered state of consciousness. This is why breath plays such a role in meditation. Breath is the key to accessing the body and bringing it into a state of physiological receptivity for an altered state of consciousness. By focusing awareness on the breath a person becomes aware of the body and can slow it down enough to enter into an altered state. Or alternately a person can do some kind of excitatory activity to achieve the same level of awareness. In either case, the body is the foundational core by which meditation is achieved. It's worth remembering that if you want to make meditation a part of your tool set.

My e-newsletter list

If you like reading my posts on this blog, you might also be interested in my e-newsletter list. Each week, I write an article about magic. However, it's not just limited to articles,  I also post occasional exclusive offerings for classes, books, and tarot readings.  So if you're interested in knowing about those, please join my e-newsletter list. I'm also doing a little contest. Whoever joins will be entered into a drawing for a half hour tarot reading.

Radio show and book review

On Sunday at 4:30pm PST - 7:30 EST, I'll be doing the sex magic radio show with a guest co-host. We'll be discussing the practical aspects of sex magic, but also examining the balance between pleasure and practicality. Review of Spiritual Cleansing by Draja Mickaharic

This book isn't explicitly for the magical practitioner, so much as its for a lay person, but nonetheless I was impressed by the thorough attention to detail and focus that the author provided. The author covered a variety of techniques and its fair to say that even experienced magicians could get a lot out of this book. What I liked the most was that it was very easy to follow the instructions provided. I'd recommend this book to any practitioner as a resource guide for magical and psychic cleansing techniques.

5 out of 5

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Questions for the radio show on sex magic

I'm doing the next radio show on magic experiments about Sex Magic. If you have any questions you'd like me to answer and discuss, please leave a comment below and I will answer your question on my radio show.

Process is not control

In a discussion I had with one of my students, I brought up the point that the process is not control. It might seem to be contradictory to say that and yet also say that when you know the process of how you do a given magical activity, you can then make changes to the process, but actually it makes complete sense. I'll explain why. The first issue to note is that for the most part control is really based on insecurities, on tension and stress that we don't want to feel and try to repress. Control, in most circumstances, arises from this stress, and we will act out that stress and tension re-actively as a way of trying to assert control of not only our internal awareness, but also our external surroundings.

However, control can be healthy, in a very specific way. Control is healthy when it is applied to a person's reactions and responses to a situation. While we don't have even complete control of our reactions, we do have some control and with conscious work we can acknowledge the triggers of those reactions and then make an informed choice as to whether or not we want to re-act or consciously choose. We can also modify the unconscious triggers, provided we do the necessary internal work. In that context, control is healthy. It becomes unhealthy when we try to control everything else, and creates blockages and tensions, because such control is usually indicative of unresolved issues.

The second issue to note is that in order to truly understand a process, you first have to submit to the process. You need to do the process step by step, and learn how it works. You can't change it until you understand it...actually you can try to change it, but the results are usually disastrous. So to understand a process you need to submit to it and do it. Only after you've worked in a process, and come to understand its mechanisms, can you begin to change it. Even then you don't control it, so much as you understand how it works, and so can see where you can make modifications to improve the process. We call this personalization, but the magician must still submit to the process to test its efficacy.

You might wonder then what the point is for doing magic, if you're not more in control as a result, but I'd argue that control is a fixation and obsession that tends to stay further out of reach when you try to grab it, as opposed to when you let go, trust your process, and work your system, as best as possible. The reality of magic is this:

Magic is one process, among many, with a variety of sub-processes that can help you balance your internal life, and provide you more awareness of possibilities in your life. It's up to you to make the deliberate and informed choice. A deliberate and informed choice can only occur when you actually understand yourself well enough to know if your choice is an automatic one based off unconscious triggers, or a conscious one based off awareness and understanding.

Let go of control. Process doesn't need to be about it. Process, instead, can help you make a deliberate and informed choice, because you understand how your process works and also your place in it. And making a deliberate and informed choice is more effective and powerful than trying to control everyone else and every situation.

In fact, if you find yourself using magic to solve situations that come up in your life, it's time to stop and critically examine what is calling those situations into your life. You will likely find that it is actually you calling those situations into your life, and usually because you need to learn something. So stop, examine the situation, own your feelings and responses, and then make a deliberate and informed choice on how to handle it. If that includes magic, then that's fine, but recognize how your internal issues feed into the situation, before using magic. Otherwise whatever results you get will only temporarily work, until you actually deal with your level of responsibility for the situation.

Trust your process and work your system...and make informed and deliberate choices. That can be the most powerful magical working you ever do, and it doesn't even need to involved anything overtly occult.

Update on experimental work

I've been continuing to integrate Laban into my morning daily moving meditation. The body movements take up the focus of the thoughts, and a rhythm is created, out of time, out of the tightly monitored world, into a place where all that matters is the rhythm of movement and the stretching of the body. My spatial and kinesthetic awareness of my body and how it moves has changed in what I would consider to be subtle ways. There's more awareness of my core and how each movement comes from the core than there was before. The benefit, beyond feeling healthier, is a sense of being more in touch with my body, and more able to connect with it for that deeper meditative work. I've also been continuing to work with the time strand editing technique, using it edit different connections to places, people, and situations and I'm seeing some changes in that direction, with the connections I have. I haven't applied it as much as I could to business interactions, but I will give it a try and see what happens.

Review of Magical Techniques by Draja Mickaharic

I just discovered this author's works recently and already I'm impressed by the depth and breadth of his writing as well as his attention to detail. Magical Techniques provides information on lesser known magical practices and tools that can be used by the magician to aid and enhance his/her workings. From his chapter on how to make chalk, to how to use feathers, to magic with orgone accumulators, there's something for everyone. He also provides some good anecdotes, both his own and of other people and how they used the different tools he discussed. This book is a definite must for the practical magician.

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5 out of 5

Does foundational work need to be done before experimentation?

I was asked this question by a reader by of my e-newsletter (Link to sign-up). When I first started practicing magic at 16, I didn't have a teacher. In fact, I self taught myself. Right from the beginning, I'd replicate the instructions on how to do different packages, from different books, but once I "got" the concept, I would start to experiment with the practices and concepts, to see what else I could do and also to personalize the practices to enhance their effectiveness in my life. I did and do a lot of learning of how other people approach magic. I think it's essential really, because you can't begin to personalize your own approach without understanding what other people have. This is why I emphasize having a broad foundation to draw on, so that way you get a variety of experiences and practices to temper your own perspective. But I also think that just sticking to what other people have said or done leads to stagnancy, so you need to be willing to test and experiment and personalize what you learn, and after a certain point, also depart from what you learned and actually develop your own practices, based off your own ideas.

Experimentation occurs alongside the foundation building practices. As you learn and practice a particular technique, think about how you can change it and adapt it. What would you do differently and why? Then try out your variation and see what happens. Respect the foundation, but test it as well.

Some further thoughts about process

In a discussion I had recently with one of my magical students I elaborated further on the difference between chaos magic and experimental magic. Chaos magic, aside from being associated with servitors and sigils, is also about paradigmal piracy. You determine what paradigm works for you, you adopt it for as long as it's useful, and then once you've gotten your result, you move on. Experimental magic, on the other hand, is focused on a more processed oriented approach and so recognizes that in order to really under a paradigm, system, methodology, or whatever word you want to use, you've got to spend time learning the system, learning how the methodology works, before you can really begin to use it successfully. Consequently process is built into experimental magic much further than in chaos magic. And, if anything, the issue with chaos magic is that while you might be able to get a result one time from using a system to address an immediate need, without fully understanding it, you can't really know the process or know if you'll get a result that meets your needs each time.  That kind of understanding doesn't occur over night, or in a single working. It occurs over time, with study, practice, and yes experimentation. To really understand a paradigm of magic, it needs to be something more than just a convenience to be used because it fits an immediate need.

This is why I've never used Voodoun in my workings. Sure, I could pick up any of the books I have on it, sketch out a ritual and do something, but I don't understand the system enough to really feel comfortable doing that, nor do I really want to offend one of the Lwas just to get a result. If I really wanted to integrate voodoun into my magical practice, I would need to study it for a while, do rituals strictly in that system without integrating other practices in, and experiment within the process of that belief system. Eventually, if I knew about it, I could begin to incorporate external elements.

So experimental magic is less about rolling a dice and picking a spiritual system for a day and more about really getting hands-on experience with a given system, and process plays an integral role in that, because it's process you need to learn to really put it all together.

The hand-parting

On Sunday, my ex-wife Lupa and I did our hand-parting. We've ended the marriage in a very amicable way and are still friends. In fact, we both recognize that we make great friends, but lousy spouses. Since the hand-parting happened, I've noticed a definite shift in my sense of identity, as well as on an energetic level. In my chest, when we did the hand-parting, I felt a loosening up of energy, a final uncoiling of everything that had previously held us together.

Since then I've felt a wide range of emotions. There's some lingering sadness, and also a lot of relief. There's a lot I learned in this marriage, in the life we shared together, and a lot I take away in recognition of that. The biggest lesson I've learned is to be honest with myself as completely as possible, especially if I hope to have a good relationship with someone else. That applies to friendships as much as any other kind of relationship, but it was in my marriage to Lupa that I really learned this lesson...and she expressed similar sentiments at the hand-parting, which tells me I was in good company through this.

Seriously though...For what this relationship with her was, it was what I needed, when I needed it. I wish Lupa the best in her life and I'm glad we're still friends.

How to use breath work to undo physical stress

I've been feeling some physical tension in my shoulders and neck lately, and decided to do some breathing meditation to help me undo the tension and stress. I've found that using meditation to do this has been very helpful in allowing me to undo a lot of physical stress. The way to utilize meditation to undo stress is to focus on feeling the physical sensations of stress, while also focusing on your breath. The normal inclination is to avoid pain, or ignore it. But ignoring pain or avoiding it isn't really a solution and ultimately can lead to further problems. Learning to sit with pain seems to go counter to every instinct we have, and yet by sitting with your pain, and feeling it, you can actually begin to undo the cause of the pain. I breathe in and as I do so, I bring my attention to a focal point. When I breathe out, I guide my attention to the stress point, and begin to massage it, visualizing whatever I needed to visualize to help me understand the tension I feel. I breathe in again, drawing more attention and energy to a focal point, and then breathe out, releasing it to that place of tension, where it continues to work to untie the tension I feel.

Within a few breaths I can feel the pain begin to loosen it's hold as muscles relax and unclench. I feel the pain, but instead of letting it define me, I define its healing with my breath. It continues to loosen up because the breath work provides a rhythm to approach the feeling and releasing of it. Memories and emotions may arise with the release of physical tension and stress, and I will sit with them as well, acknowledging and feeling them, so that I can learn and let go.

This is how I undo physical and sometimes emotional/mental stress. I use my breath and consciousness as a tool. I choose to feel the pain, to embrace it, and thus release it, because I no longer feel compelled to be held down by it. Instead of avoiding it, which actually increases its hold on me, I surrender to it, and in surrender come to understand it, and thus come to peace with it. And all it involves is breathing and focusing your awareness on the tension you feel, so that you can gradually loosen it and let it go