“Sovereignty”
“Sovereignty” - created August 17th, 2021
THE MANDALA PROJECT - How it came to life
If you know someone whose day would be brightened by this Mandala, please pass it along! Even more magical, with a love note from you!
The Mandala Project: #56
Beloved Aikido master and Leadership Embodiment teacher Wendy Palmer was a guest on the Tracking Yes podcast in March of 2022. She shared a tremendous amount of practical wisdom about holding your centre with presence, compassion and clarity when aggressive or disruptive forces are coming at you.
Very shortly after our interview Wendy became ill and passed away in December of 2022. I was deeply grateful for the chance to talk with her when I did, and I love that this Mandala has guided me to bring her wisdom in once again.
It beautifully reflects her belief in cultivating a steady, empowered sense of self, out of which you can move in a grounded and spacious way and express your clear essence in the world.
THREE THINGS THE PERSONALITY SELF WANTS
In her book “Dragons and Power”, Wendy shares that to be able to respond to life effectively, it helps to understand what influences are acting on us when we lose connection with our essential nature.
She says, “The power within us is like a dragon. In order for our dragons to become protectors they need training. We need to have a way to keep our dragon energy from running wild and becoming destructive.”
When the personality is in charge:
• the head wants control
• the heart wants approval
• the belly or the gut wants safety
When we want to be in control, our perception becomes narrow and judgemental by necessity. We become rigid because we have to be very certain about ‘what’s what' if we’re going to control things.
When we're trying to get approval, we spend a significant amount of our life force in doubt and second-guessing. We’re hyper self-focused which makes it hard to truly connect with life and others.
And then there are the protection strategies we developed in childhood to try to create security. When we’re defending against life, we’re vigilant instead of relaxed and engaged.
These strategies take a lot of energy to sustain and they create stress in our being, but if we treat these parts of ourselves with kindness, compassion and acceptance, they can start to be integrated and healed.
MAKING THE SHIFT TO CONNECTION
The stress hormone cortisol narrows our perception and inhibits the parts of our brain that govern big picture thinking, creativity and risk-taking. But we can train the body to shift from narrow to expansive. This allows broader perspectives and enables our interactions to be more thoughtful, creative and inclusive.
When we're centered, we move from a desire to control to a level of perception that’s spacious and wide. We’re willing to include more than our personal agenda, which opens us up to see more.
When we move from needing approval into compassion and connection with others, the focus goes from, “What do I want?" to, “What can I offer? What can I bring? How can I contribute something helpful into the space?”
And when we move from needing safety to relaxing in the world, we connect with our innate courage and develop a sense of trust and confidence in ourselves and life.
Wendy says, “What we really want to be able to do is make the shift from separation to connection. We are going to lose it, it’s a guarantee. And then we recover to it, and we lose it and recover again.”
CENTERING PRACTICE
This is a simple and powerful centering practice. Give yourself a moment with it and notice how it creates an immediate shift in your being:
Settle into your chair and take a few present breaths.
As you inhale, lengthen your spine and send your energy up and out the top of your head. Think vertical.
As you exhale, keep the extension, but soften your chest and breathe down into your body, and think of something that makes you smile.
One more time:
Inhale, uplift.
Exhale, soften, settling in, thinking of something that makes you smile.
Now straighten your arms, and imagine little lights in your fingertips. This fires your extensor muscles. And then think about the space around you. Pay attention to the room behind you, to the sides. To the space above and below you. This opens you up a little bit.
Ask yourself, “What if there was a little more ease?” Just wonder for a few seconds.
THE SCIENCE BEHIND IT
Anytime we tighten up or fire flexor muscles, we get cortisol, which shuts down the creative part of our brain and makes us feel separate, and then we think we have to somehow manage our life to survive.
Telling ourselves, “Don't worry" is a mental form of control that doesn't do any good.
But when we fire extensor muscles, when we uplift, sit up straight and open up, testosterone begins to be released. When that chemical hits our brain we’re connected with the creative, courageous part of ourselves.
And when we think of something that makes us smile, we get a little bit of oxytocin, cousin to dopamine. It's the feel good chemical, the connector chemical. So we actually want a cocktail of testosterone and oxytocin that will counter the cortisol.
Through consciously activating different muscle groups in the body, we’re generating different chemicals, and those different chemicals change the brain. We’re using the body as a shortcut—which allows us to make a shift much more quickly.
We’re enabling our mind to follow the body, instead of the body reacting to the mind.
Wendy says, “The personality, which is our ego, the part that's trying to get more stuff and have less pain and all that, it’s very horizontal. ‘I'm dealing with you. I'm dealing with stuff. It's out there in front of me.’
Both Tibetan Buddhism and Aikido talk a lot about heaven and earth, big, connected energy. So we go vertical first, we inhale and have a sense of up-liftedness, connecting all the way up to the cosmos, and then exhale, connecting all the way down into the earth. This helps us establish a connection to a more universal self, and then we can bring that energy outward horizontally into dealing with the thingy-ness of the world.”
May this Mandala remind you to connect with the wonder of your unique being as you powerfully co-create magic with the thingy-ness of your world.
You can find our Tracking Yes / Dragons and Power conversation here.
If you’d like some quick, at the ready guided practices to recover to your centre in challenging times, Wendy recorded some super helpful ones here: 7 Short guided practices for recovering to center
Want to collaborate to create some magic in your life?
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