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The Sanctuary of Welcoming

What an extraordinary experiment!

We welcome perceptions without trying to fix them or change them. We practice welcoming ourselves, and each other, in our brokenness and in our Wholeness. We include and accompany the orphaned aspects of ourselves back home into the sanctuary of belonging.

Is it possible that even feeling unsafe can be safe with us?

The Practice of Welcoming and iRest® offer life-skills in the form of meditative self-inquiries that shift our perspectives and create a new track in the way our nervous system fires and wires together. Instead of addressing “the human condition”, and our conditioning as a problem, this practice establishes updated pathways of synaptic connections in our nervous system. The more we practice walking down the new pathway in a “little and often” manner, the more the previously habitual route becomes overgrown.

Neural pathways are like the arroyo, where energy in the form of water creates channels in the landscape. Over time, these channels turn into deep and narrow grooves, with no alternative routes for the energy to travel. Our reactions and perceptions which have become embedded behavioral patterns in our nervous system are like this. As we become aware of these established grooves in our neurocircuitry we learn to honor and respect them. Then, neither caught up in, nor swayed by our ever-changing states, we’re able to remain a witness to their aliveness.

We come to understand these states as the primal self’s attempt to feel safe and secure. Thankfully, the landscapes of our body and mind are adaptable and accommodate new energetic currents effortlessly.

It’s because of this that the contours of what we perceive have the ability to soften. The contracted definitions we hold of ourselves can burst at the seams. We foster the ability to see through the mirage that simultaneously held us “safe” and captive. While separation and individuation are necessary developmental stages in our evolution, as we grow, our sense of separation can confine us to a limited repertoire of reactions which keep us separate and prevent our experience of freedom.

The invitation is to observe, welcome, and be present with all phenomena that arise in the foreground of Awareness, without getting tangled up in them. As we strengthen our ability to not identify with these perceptions, space opens up. A new perspective is revealed when we allow this space to remain unfurnished and free of conceptual clutter. Ultimately, we learn to live in Not-Knowing.

The observer dissolves into observing, then into pure Being.

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About the Author

Nöle Giulini

C-IAYT

Nöle is an iRest Certified Teacher, Senior Trainer, and Supervisor. She teaches iRest® Yoga Nidra workshops and retreats in the USA, Germany, Switzerland, and Denmark, as well as the first Level 1 training in Germany. She is an artist with a degree in Art, Psychology, and Art Therapy. She has also been certified to teach...

Learn more about Nöle Giulini

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