As we round out our exploration of TCM, I’ve asked our guide, author and teacher Ann Cecil-Sterman, about the frequency or quality of the acupuncture channels during meditation; how do they change when we practice?
Her respect and her brief response will move you to have a seat on your cushion and become more intimate with your own inner terrain.
Agnes Martin, Gratitude, 2001. Gazing at this painting is a meditation in itself.
EB: What are the channels of the body, and what is their function?
ACS: The energy channels that allow the existence and continuation of human life are common to all humans. We call them acupuncture channels, but they’re really the human channels, a manifestation of the divine as humanity.
Through the channels flows our existence, our interest in the world, our experiences of love, creativity, contribution, care, reproduction, participation, and then, our exit to the ethers. A person’s individual channels contain the plan of a lifetime.
There are over sixty channels, vibrating in the body, each with a unique life-force.
Over our lives, we encounter challenges in the form of various lessons, to expand our consciousness and impart wisdom. If these challenges are met with resistance or resentment, the body will demonstrate that resistance somatically.
The body always reflects our present state of mind: When we’re in resistance, we may become tense, experience headaches, back pain, eye strain, gastric upsets, tight muscles, a clenched jaw.
And when we are intimate with our tendencies, clear in our choices, listening well to the lessons, we find ourselves open, fortified, spacious, contented. This is what happens in meditation. Channels open, energy flows freely.
If and when we’re willing, the resistances we notice can swiftly move us to change.
Through channel activation, we’re reminded of our inherent clarity, the beauty that exists beneath our constructed resistances to life.
EB: How can we practice activating these channels?
ACS: Through your practice of meditation, via acupuncture, or a channel practitioner, your prioritization of meditative attention on these rivers of energy allows them to flow freely—which we experience as a calm state, reminding us of our own inherent nature. Our work is to open to our own natural freedom, our limitlessness.
From a recent post, on the aim of practice: to see ourselves with kindness.
Your simple invitation: Listen to what’s quietly flowing within you.
Shall we sit together? Today’s audio concludes with a meditation, for when you’re ready; short and quiet.
Notice as you sit, your channels are humming with remembrance. Any resistance dissolves into rhythm. Which is when the life you’re meant to live can flow through you. This is the work. To feel what’s always been moving through you.
Thank you for your practice.
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Paid subscribers, I’ll also soon begin sharing with you sneak peeks into Hold Nothing, my new book, coming out this fall. Here’s early feedback from an author I admire, and a peek at the art on the cover.
“More than a book; Hold Nothing is a luminous braid of personal story, grounded guidance, and evocative contemplations. Elena’s words blossom from the depths of silence. With generosity and warmth, she guides us in cultivating an inner garden we can harvest to nourish our true self and feed the hungry world.”
—Mirabai Starr, author of Wild Mercy and Ordinary Mysticism
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