Holding space for the heavy and difficult content of this course requires your body to be nourished, tuned and rhythmically balanced. The practices below are basic recommendations that can help you with four Ds: to de-center your ego, to disarm affective landmines, to declutter your gut, heart and headspace and to disinvest in harmful patterns. The practices may feel very different each time you do them, so we suggest that you commit to repeating them more than once (ideally on a daily basis through this period). You may want to stick to only one of the practices and/or try them all, and repeat at least one of them consistently. 

Food:

For this week you are invited to observe your relationship with your food cravings by maintaining a bland and simple diet and restricting your access to excessive variety of tastes and textures. Pay close attention to your cravings when they come: these are compulsions to be comforted that you have created over time.  We don’t even notice the cravings, we act on them. Keep in mind that the amount of energy required for you to identify and interrupt these cravings is a tiny percentage of the amount of energy that will be required to identify and interrupt cravings for: EPIC-A. What are your cravings compensating for? How do you justify succumbing to them?

Sound:

A few times a day for the entire week develop a practice of inhaling deeply and then exhaling slowly while making an “SSS” sound. Do it for at least 3 consecutive breaths every time. As you do this, notice if there are certain parts of your body that are feeling heavier or lighter, perhaps tighter of looser. This exercise might be helpful if you are noticing cycles of strong enthusiasm or elation followed by exhaustion and depression. To a certain extent this could be a sign that your nervous system is trying to adjust to new perceptions/receptions of reality. With some practice and discipline, you should be able to find the balance and steadiness of moods as you unlearn old patterns and learn a different way of holding multiple moving layers of complexity within and around you. 

Movement: 

This exercise is about the depth of colonialism in the music we consume. The invitation is to allow yourself to show yourself how familiar, warm and fuzzy colonialism is and how much you enjoy it. Listen again to the 4 chord song by Axis of Evil, sing and dance along to it. Notice how the familiarity of the songs in your body and your vocal chords can be experienced as both delicious and annoying. As you do this it might be helpful to practice “acceptance without endorsement”. Notice how you may experience this differently if you are looking at the video or not (i.e. just focusing on the tunes).