Worlding Practice
Dear dreamer,
One thing has been helping me calm my nervous system this week:
Pretending I’m living in a world underwater.
This is a feeling that’s very familiar for me personally—in my peak diving years, I once swam down to 90ft underwater on a single breath of air in my lungs alone, and hung out around 110ft below with a scuba tank another time, plus countless other dives immersed in the ocean.
During The Dreaming Canvas last Sunday, the wonderful weaving of our group’s dream images brought forward in me this vision of the world underwater. So I have been continuing to play with that image this week.
I find that it immediately helps me slow down. When the fast-paced world of waking life becomes imaginally flooded with water, the things that previously felt like they were falling fast are now slowly sinking, sending a trail of bubbles up to the sky.
I delight in the sensation of moving my limbs as if I were underwater. My breathing slows and deepens too. I soak up the depth of the color blue. I imagine the immersion cleansing me.
And this reminds me of a practice I made up one day, and would like to share with you now. I refer to it as “worlding,” and I invite you to set aside 20 minutes today or in the next couple of days to give it a try.
Imagine a place you would really love to be right now. It could be a real place, a fantastical place, or a mix of both.
If you like, take a couple minutes to write about this place in as much detail as possible. What do you see, smell, hear, feel in this place? Are there other people or animals there? What colors fill the landscape?
Begin to let your body move as if it were in that place. Stand up and take a walk pretending to be there. See the landscape in your mind’s eye. Feel the sensation of your body moving through it.
This practice is essentially what we will be doing with our dream landscapes this Sunday in The Dreaming Body, plus direct guidance to find the movements your dreams are offering. We will gather at 9am HST, 12pm PT, and 3pm EST, and I’m looking forward to what your dreams will add to this unique swirling.
Love,
