A Sangha is a community to share sacred practice, and I mean sacred in a wide sense of holding a special place for something. “Make it sacred” says meditation teacher Sarah Blondin – what does that mean? It’s not about religion or anything dogmatic, it’s about appreciation, gratitude, and given something your full attention. She means that for anything that we do throughout the day, any small act is meaningful if we give it meaning. By giving every small thing meaning, our whole day becomes more meaningful as opposed to when we rush through it.
Such a community can be centered around many different activities, whatever brings you together with people, whether it is a community of learning a certain skill, of being there holding space for one another, or of practice and contributing action to a meaningful outcome.
My communities this week
This week, several meetings with different meaningful communities have reminded me of the support I have and the power community has for each one of us. I had a meeting with the community of Embodied Mindfulness Coaches with Carina Nickerson, a meeting with the female researchers at the Computer Science and Engineering Department at Chalmers, and a meeting with Conscious Impact’s volunteer community. Each of those meetings has nourished me with
- a knowing of meaning for how we show up in life,
- the capacity to hold space for my own and other people’s struggles as we do so, and
- a deep sense of purpose.
Our community is a place to lift us up and to remind us that we are enough, that everyone faces challenges and that we have each other’s back and show up in support of one another. We may get reminders that we are strong enough to face the adversities in life, that we are capable of showing up. No matter whether our mind sometimes likes to tell us the opposite. Knowing that we are not alone in that either, our minds speaking to us about how we are not enough, can also be a relief. That doesn’t mean we listen to that voice and buy into it. It just means it is a reminder that we are all doing this inner practice (unless we choose to distract ourselves from it and disengage).
Conclusion and take-away
You are a beautiful soul cocreating with the universe, or whatever you call the beautiful force of life flowing through us. Doubt sits in the head, and our nervous system is connected through the body. By fully getting back into our bodies and feeling the full force of life energy running through us, we can loosen doubt’s grip on us. Embodiment coach Ilan Stephani teaches a way through shaking it off that I refer to in this little video – I encourage you to spend a few minutes on this practice.
Then we can focus on embodying and fully expressing the creative energy that life gifts us.