Eleven Theses on Sitting in Sangha by Tracy L.

In this guest post we hear from Sangha member Tracy L. who is offering reflections and suggestions for getting the most out of our collective practice together, in session and in life. Thank you Tracy for this rich sharing!

When I was new to meditation and transmission, I sat passively, believing that “allowing” and “receiving” meant letting go of any effort. It didn’t work. My mind kept wandering, and my body’s discomforts were ever-present when I sat inert in the quiet. Boredom often took over as well, leaving me feeling like a vegetable on a chair.

So, I began exploring sitting in a way that worked for me. I learned that a greater capacity to allow and receive can arise with a little effort, that is, from observing, imagining, sensing, intending, moving, and conversing with parts of my body during meditation. Taking a more proactive approach, as strange as it sounds, has made a qualitative difference in the silence and attunement I encounter in my private practice and in a collective sit. 

I credit this realization to participating in the Sangha series of The Cosmology of the Awakened Body. Sitting with Darananda has encouraged me to exercise my creative agency in ways that foster greater resonance with the self without agitating the process of meditative surrender. She is teaching all who sit with her how to dance with the paradox of effortless effort. I am deeply grateful to Darananda for this gift, and for the many others she offers.

As we begin the next round of coming together this Fall, I share my experience of sitting in Sangha, with some practical pointers you might like to consider in your own practice. 

• Articulate the why. Intention matters, and so does sincerity. Why are you here? Why are you participating now, in this season of your life? Why join this space? Why work with Darananda as your guide in the field? Pre-Sangha reflection catalyzes and embeds trust and commitment into the relational process. It may reveal aspects of yourself and your situation you haven’t considered before. It may also clarify your heart’s desire, as it has recently done for mine. 
  
  
• Settle the how. Since my heart’s desire involves relating closely with my inner world, I support my intention with my posture. I sit upright, with my feet on the ground, and I can lean back comfortably into my seat. This position enables me to stay relaxed and awake for the entire duration of the Sangha. I also find the pull to presence the strongest, with my system solidly held by the field, when I am seated this way. But an active posture is not prescriptive. If my intention were different – say, if it were to help my system recover from stress with gentle awareness – then I’d take a posture of surrender, letting my body sink into my bed and soak all the goodness up, instead. 
  
  
• Activate clarity, containment, and coherence. When it comes to the processes of clearing, containing, and cohering that usually mark the beginning of every sit, I’ve had a lot of luck with visualization of movement. To clear my field, I like to imagine a corridor of light passing through me, from above, below, and the sides. Sometimes I’m inspired by nature: I imagine a waterfall or a whirlwind over my body, or myself floating or swimming in a vast ocean. But if active imagining is too taxing, I opt for an internal declaration: “my field is clean,” intending to re-emerge in a clearer, more spacious personal field. And if it doesn’t seem like unwanted or excess energies are dispersing - some days are easier than others, after all - I trust that clarity will eventually emerge in the gathering. Often, it does. 
  
  I also actively imagine during the phases of containing and cohering, with plenty of experimentation along the way. And, after many months of dedicated visualization practice, the sitting experience has become somatic and energetically alive for me, and there are times I can carefully track how energies shift in my personal field during a transmission.
  
  
• Relax into the constellation. I interpret this stage as Darananda opening the door and formally welcoming everyone into the group field. I like to stay at my heart center during the experience. Sometimes, I feel a somatic tug to come closer; other times, the shift is imperceptible. The group field starts becoming vaster to me during this stage, bizarrely akin to sitting in a dark iMax theater the size of a football field, and sensing that I’m not alone anymore, that my fellow sitters and other beings are there with me, and that I’m an integral part of something much greater than the sum of myself. 
  
  
• Allow. Allowing is hard to articulate. The best I can do is to describe allowing as acting as a sieve of awareness for human experience. You are awake, alert, and conscious, and your body-mind is a permeable site where all kinds of experiences can pass through with little or no resistance. Observing and labeling – noticing thoughts, sensations, and emotions as they come, and staying with them until they pass and are replaced – are the key motions. Granted, observing and labeling are mild acts of gripping and focusing, but I find that, over time, these all-too-human ways of holding onto something dissolve more easily in the field’s embrace. And, when my body feels like moving with the energy, I allow it. The movements are spontaneous and probably bizarre, but I’ve never felt they’re out of my control; that is, I know I can stop moving if I choose to. I don’t resist them, however, because I interpret these movements as my body’s natural and organic ways of regulation and integration. 
  
  
• Lean into Embodiment. When I am finding it hard to settle in Sangha, deepening into embodiment helps me cope. I scan my body, feel into it, and inhabit any internal space that feels hollow or needs gentle attention—my feet if I need more grounding and stability, my belly if I’m anxious or disoriented, or my heart area if signs of emotional distress or pain are around. Observing sensations ebb and flow in these areas of the body, and staying with them without forcing things to change, eventually allows me to return to sensing the collective field. (Note: I usually avoid inhabiting my head area, since doing that creates more separation from my material body, but it may not be the case for others). 
  
  
• Follow the Subtle Cues. For most of the sit, and especially during the 1:1 session, I like to follow the subtle movements that Darananda describes in the transmission, even when they don’t match my direct experience.  In hindsight, following the subtle cues probably helped me develop a more intimate relationship with my subtle body. There are times I can keenly perceive the direction of the movement even before the subtle cues are given; I could even detect parts of my body preparing themselves for the movement to come before the Sangha even begins, e.g., sensing energy pooling up here and there, anticipating both the direct attention and release. I take this increased energetic sensitivity, and the ability to map it, as a sign of refinement or progress that arose from listening to my experience and by responding to what felt right to do.
  
  
• Savor the Embrace. There are utterly precious moments in the sit when everything is so silent, so unnaturally still, that even breathing seems like an excess. I was startled when I began experiencing this level of silence in the group field, because it was foreign (and even threatening) to a body-mind like mine that’s used to incessant activity and distraction. But now, pristine silence is one of the most beautiful, ineffable experiences that keeps drawing me back to Sangha. I may be wrong, but it is possibly the closest I’ve come to glimpsing what’s real, what’s beneath all these layers of conditioned identity…
  
  
• Close with Grace. I love the end of Sangha – the parting silence, the voluntary sharing, and the remembering. It’s always different each time, but what sticks with me is a deep sense of gratitude, and the understanding that, in some way, I danced in the mystery of being. 
  
  
• Deepen the practice. The life of the group field is potent, and I find that it continues to live on after the sessions are over. I reinforce the benefits by using the recordings. I repeat one setup and follow it with several 1:1s in the Sangha with Darananda, and I often select the 1:1s based on personal need and resonance from the [spring] pilot and summer sessions. Here’s an experiment: record all the 1:1s as a voice memo entry and listen to the whole set while in bed before you sleep. It’s quite magical, in my experience, to drift in and out of slumber in the group field.
  
  
• Honor your pre/post quirks and rituals. These elements are personal, and here are some of mine: a warm shower before meditation is great—it (literally) clears my head and grounds my body. Tea or coffee is lovely pre-sit, but a full stomach always brings devilish distractions, so I avoid eating anything heavy before a meditation. The more spacious the day, the more insights I reap from self-reflection, so I try to free up my time before and after a session. I love walking my dog after a morning transmission, because mild physical activity out in nature helps with self-integration; plus, the world always seems more charming after spending precious time in the inner world. 

Thank you for reading. May these notes be of service to you.