Album Notes

These meditations are a response to repeated requests from class participants who've asked me to record the meditations we do in our classes so they can do them at home.

Wendy Palmer, an aikido teacher of Conscious Embodiment says “Statistics say it takes anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000 repetitions to establish an alternative response under pressure. The odds are that without giving the body and the limbic and central nervous system–an alternative pattern to the impact of stress, our bodies will revert to the most familiar (fear/anger/anxiety) response. Understanding that we need to relax and stay interested when we are criticized is very different than being able to do it at the moment of criticism.”

While 5-10,000 repetitions may seem daunting, consider that each of us breathes 17-23,000 breaths in one day. Because we cannot "think" our way to more life giving responses through mental affirmations, we must train a new response pattern through moment by moment breath practice while also deepening awareness of how habitual responses show up in our bodies. We cultivate behaviors that are less rooted in our habitual personality stress pattern. Thus, any self-development or spiritual practice includes regular meditation.

The meditations are grouped in the three centers of intelligence which include the mental center (fear center), the emotional center (image center) and the body center (kinesthetic center). Regardless of our type, we have access to all three centers and it's useful to cultivate a deepening capacity to live from each of the three centers for each offers different ways of experiencing the world.

As a teacher/facilitator of the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition, I've learned exemplars of each type describe the narrative of their type dynamics with remarkable clarity. I owe a deep debt of gratitude not only to my teachers, but also to students and class participants. These meditations have been shaped and informed by their experiences and feedback. Together we have learned meditation practices which are an elegant harmony of clearing the mind, opening the heart and attuning oneself to the wisdom of the body.