Headless Meditation

Hi, thanks for being here. I thought that we could meditate with this archetype we call Chinamasta, one of the more wild archetypes that we have been working with. Chinamasta, if you've ever seen an image of her, is headless and there's blood flowing. And in some pictures, she's holding her own head and drinking her own blood. Ah, wild. How did we get here? And so her origin story is sort of interesting. It begins with Parvati and Shiva, and they are engaged in an intimate moment where Parvati is on top of Shiva. And in the throes of pleasure, Parvati, sweet Parvati transforms into this ferocious version of Kali, like, you know, the badass. And so in this form, and with her, two friends join, two Dakinis accompany her. So from Parvati, we now have a ferocious Kali and two Dakinis. And then from there, one of the stories goes that these three ladies were down in the river bathing and the Dakinis say to this new ferocious creature, mama mama, we're hungry. And what does she do? She cuts off her own head and feeds them with her own blood. And so, you know, there's if you can get sort of back past the like creepy gory, what is happening there, version of this or vision of this, you have this essence of love and care for others. And this quote that I keep coming back to is by Krishnamurti, love is where I am not someone who has cut off their own head so that they can feed their friends, like, whoa, that is a radical kind of love. But she's still got that, you know, that badass edge. So don't feel sorry for her. And so that's the essence that we're working with here. We've got wildness, we've got, you know, this radical care and love. And we're also headless. So in order to work with this energy, with this essence, with this archetype, we need to work hard to ground. So as we sit, we'll be using the hands and we'll be using the head to cut using the hands and using the heart to kind of tip toe into a headless meditation. So I'm so glad that you're here. So glad that you are undertaking this work with me. Settle into a seat, whatever shape feels good, close the eyes, and we'll bring one hand to the floor and let your fingers, your fingertips sort of root into the floor. Feel the earth. Feel the earth to your bones. And with the other hand, like bring it right to the center of your heart. And so with one hand, you're feeling that, you know, the quality of earth. And with the other hand, you might feel the pulse of your own beating heart. You might feel the movement of your body with your breath. Settle into that. And as you've rooted your your one hand into the earth, feel your body sort of settling into the earth. And as the body settles into the earth, roots into the earth, can you let your awareness sort of drop into the belly of the heart, the bottom of the bowl of the heart. So we're grounded. We're stable, we're safe. And from here, can you start to soften the skull, soften the top of your head, your scalp, relax all of the muscles in the scalp, your follicles don't have to work so hard to hold the hair in place. And can you let that sense of true softening releasing start to slowly trickle down the forehead, the eyebrows, over the eyes, over the cheekbones and the nose, over the mouth, around the jaw, down the chin. And at the same time, like letting that softness of the back of the skull sort of drop down the back of the head to the base of the skull.

And so we're soft, we have relaxed a little bit of control over the head and the skull. And can you imagine this space where the skull is, where the head is, amidst a starry night filled with stars, filled with limitless possibility. And if at any time it starts to feel weird or freaky, like check back in with what's grounding you in the heart and in the earth. And that starry sky where your skull sits in space. And we'll start to like relax any effort that's been required to imagine a starry sky in the space where the skull is.

You might sort of rediscover the contact that you are making with earth in your body and in your hand. You might sort of rediscover that contact that your other hand is making at the heart and can you still feel the pulsing of your own breath and the beating of your own heart. And you might deepen the breath just a little bit. And we'll release both of the hands to the earth and like make good contact with earth, hands, backside, grounded. A couple of deep breaths here, full breaths here.

And then we'll let both hands make their way back to the heart, a way that feels natural. And we'll take in a couple of breaths here and then we'll join the hands and we'll bring them together right at the center of the forehead, the space between the brows and oh your head is still there. And take a couple of breaths in here. I'm so happy that we did this together. Thank you for being here. Jmo.