The Power of Community
How We Got to the Contemplation Process
I have long appreciated the power of community, but that was not always so. I was trained as an individual, to be the best, and to be in competition with others; I think I am not alone in this. I did well and while I had friends and family who I loved, I did not really understand the power of community. I had a group of yoga trainee friends in a community that I was a part of, and there was a group of 8-10 of us that created and ran the Bexley Natural Market in the mid-70s. This was the beginning of community for me, but it didn’t go as deep as what was to come.
How did I get to be so lucky to meet Martha Marcom and Linda Oshins, and then to partner with Katherine Dufrane and Luann Jacobs in our energy work? I don’t know, but these relationships were the beginning of true community for me that has deepened to this day. These relationships made it possible for Yoga on High to be created, but what I want to talk about here came way before that and was the precondition to us opening that studio.
During a special weekend at the Arc of Appalachia in the late 90s, Linda, Martha, Luann and I attended a program with a shaman and plant medicine teacher, Eliot Cowan. We were all drawn to the program because of his powerful book, Plant Spirit Medicine, which I highly recommend to this day (having recently reread it). I had never met Luann before and was perhaps just slightly jealous of her since she had known Linda longer and they were very close friends. (Can you see the training of competition here—I wanted to be Linda’s best best friend!) As soon as I met Luann though I realized she was a sister and would be an important person to me. Jealousy be damned, we could ALL be besties. It is hard to remember back before Reiki was a part of my life because once it was it was SUCH a part of my life, but those were the days when a few people here and there asked if I had heard of it, and I didn’t know much. Luann was a Reiki Master and when I asked her to tell me about Reiki, she said, “Let’s not talk about it, let me just attune you this weekend.” I had no idea what that meant but since I already trusted her with my life, I was in.
Whenever we had breaks in our Plant Spirit Medicine workshop, Luann took us to a corner or a porch with some privacy and gave us each of the four attunements over the course of the weekend. These were powerful experiences for me and for the first time in my life I felt the chakras pulsing within me along with a sense of connection to everything everywhere. I was hooked and wanted to learn more. She went home to Virginia after the weekend and said to invite her back for a full training and she would come. We did and she did, and Reiki has been a daily part of my life since then.
But after that first training I knew I needed support. Reiki seemed to come naturally to Linda, but I felt a bit dull-normal in the Reiki department, despite the exciting power of the attunements. When I put my hands on myself for self-practice, I didn’t feel much and neither did I when I put my hands on others. Other people in the training room seemed to have better (there’s that competition again!) experiences than I was. And yet, and yet…..I was completely called to Reiki. I knew that if I was to be any good at Reiki I would need to practice, and I knew that I wanted to be in a group with Linda and Martha and a teacher.
At that time in Columbus, I did not know any Reiki teachers, but I did know Katherine Dufrane, who was a nurse, a counselor, and did energy work with her clients. I was one of her clients and I was also her yoga teacher. I knew from experience that her energy work was powerful and yet somehow simple. We weren’t really friends at that point, but we did know and respect each other. I called her up and told her about being attuned to Reiki and asked her if she would teach our small group so we could learn about energy work. Katherine was an extraordinary human and her answer was this, “I will lead our group for the first year and then we will take turns leading after that.” It is only occurring to me in this moment as I write that she must have been hungry for community as well. Why else would she have agreed to such a proposition that she herself turned into a multi-year commitment? She never let us pay her a dime, though we would gladly have done so.
Katherine had graduated from an extensive program at the Barbara Brennan School of Healing and somehow never once taught us any of the techniques she learned there. I’m not sure where or when, but she came to a way of healing she called non-doership that lets the energy do all the work and the “healer” is present with openness, clarity and presence. At our very first meeting she led us through a group meditation she called the Contemplation Process that some of you reading this are familiar with as we have taught it in every single Reiki training we have ever done. In this meditation we formulate and take an open-ended question and let answers come from our minds, our hearts and whatever is the deepest place inside. It is a direct experience of what all parts of us know to be true, including intuitive parts that are vaster than our bodies. In some meditation practices the mind is considered irrelevant or even negative, but we always found it useful to include our minds. We sat in a circle together and asked the question and Katherine would lead us through the process. Then we would take a few minutes to write down whatever had been revealed to us. Then came the part that began to teach me about community at a cellular level. We went around the circle and shared our experiences. What I quickly learned was that our meditations were both individual and overlapping. Others would say things that reminded me of my own experience and might also say something that I had never considered. I was so enriched each time we went around the circle. At the end we would go to the Reiki table and offer Reiki to one of us. Somehow all the questions and responses of our contemplation would be deepened at the table.
What I started to understand in those circles was that we were not in competition with each other, we completed each other. Each one of us was absolutely necessary to the group and our experiences were both personal and communal. Yes, I could do contemplation as an individual practice, but the power of doing it in community was obvious and we kept our group going for years. I can honestly say that what we discovered in that group is the foundation of all that I hold dear at this point in my life.
As for our original small community, Katherine and Martha have both died. And they are still part of our community. Just a few nights ago, the night before my birthday, I had a long and powerful dream. I was with Martha, Richard Freeman and Mary Taylor. We were together, and somehow Richard was holding babies in his big hands, first one baby and then a different one a while later. His palms were turned up and the babies were small enough to be cradled in his hands. He gently massaged the babies in a way that Martha and I knew we would have loved to be have been held as babies and likely neither of us were. But no matter, we were together, and it felt as natural to be with Martha in the dream as it did when she was alive. When I woke up, I didn’t miss her in the way that often happens after dreams, rather, I felt like I had just left her after a long visit, and knew again that some part of us would always be together. This is community too, the trust and knowing that nothing separates us from our loved ones, certainly not death.
And one more thing, if you are reading this you are likely part of this much larger community. We have expanded over the years to include so many others—all of whom are necessary for us to be fully ourselves. We mirror each other’s beauty; we support each other in times of distress and are part of the web of life together.
As you’ll see from Linda’s description of what we are planning for the next few months, we have circled back to this practice. Linda and I are contemplating together regularly with a few other people. Contemplation continues to be revelatory each time in ways we can never predict. While we have teachers we adore and are inspired by, contemplation is a direct knowing, no intermediaries are needed, just the questions and us. If you would like to share this experience with us, we will be offering small groups each quarter this year.
I have also planned for a new meditation course to last the rest of the summer. Click here for those details.