Practice Foundation and Sequence
Because Awakening in Life is a path that embraces the continual integration, mutual influencing, and embodiment of awakening to timeless presence (release) and embracing life through intimacy and engaged response, students are encouraged to cultivate and make use of the following practice foundation and sequence, regardless of what practice one might currently be undertaking.
Cultivating familiarity and proficiency in this foundational embodiment practice will empower a practitioner to ground all practices, experience, and insights in and through the body. By doing so, it is much easier to integrate the results of one’s practice into life, and to bring life into practice.
This sequence further strengthens the fluidity of practice and life, allowing more blending of the 'two' by softening the perceived boundaries between them. This protocol allows us to move more smoothly in and out of formal practice, with a less jarring, and instead a more palpable feeling of cohesiveness and connectedness with practice and life.
Take a few moments to start and end practices in simple presence. Essentially this means letting go of any practice or technique or goal and just sit. Technically, one could see this as a practice, a practice of no-practice, but it does support the move to a spontaneous way of practicing by revealing the ways in which we habitually, unconsciously feel we need to do something else or be something else than we are right now. When this unconscious movement relaxes, we start to free up energy and we become more actively and openly presence, and from there spontaneous practice can arise, taking whatever form (or formless) is needed.
An important note: even though the above are strong recommendations for a path of Awakening in Life, one principle supersedes all of them:
Do what is most useful and meaningful in practice as an appropriate response to life. In other words, as mentioned in this guide before, ultimately the goal of Awakening in Life is not to follow a prescribed path, nor to check realizations off a list, nor to fit a certain behavioral mandate on how to live. The goal is cultivating presence, embodiment, intimacy, and responsiveness in life. As such, we practice to cultivate capacities and insights that help us to do/be this, and because of this, the above practice foundation and sequence can be incredibly helpful to practitioners.