I then took that into life and saw that every moment, in every situation, the universe was pulling me into this truth

I took a long time testing and wondering if I could stop it

if I could trust it

What if I broke all of the rules? Would it still be there?

I’m not talking about making up another story about it, but being it completely. Being completely honest to that

No escaping that

No possibility of escaping that

This is what intimacy is about

Being truly absorbed into the present moment

Watching it, being moved in it, moving it, embracing, loving

Being with it, inside of it

Naturally, without affectation

When we see that, in a way, our practice ends

Seeing the impossibility of ever not being held in this great care

We are no longer chasing something out there. Chasing the Buddha, chasing enlightenment

Everything stops, we see the inner workings of all things, see that adding anything onto them is impossible

See the immediacy and the essential aspect of all things

there literally is nowhere to go

We find a wondrous power in tapping into this

See that each mind moment is so fresh

each mind moment

so huge and all embracing

When I started doing the NDBM or, “The Standing Around” work, it was mostly to feel my body and allow it to let go of old trauma. It was to get into my body. To naturally unravel stuff in my body which had not been able to process out of my system. It is as if our psycho-physical system is in the middle of working out several traumas at once, is overwhelmed, and so it cannot complete any of those tasks, like a computer trying to load too many sites at once.

The standing is a way to simplify how we are relating to our bodies. Through simply standing, we attempt to go as streamline with our input as possible, listening to the body, allowing it to work itself out, without a technique, and allow the body to just give us output. We’ve spent our lives giving it input. “Stand this way!’ “Stick out your chest.” “Drop your shoulders.” “Look good for this important meeting.” “Be happy.” “Have good ki!” etc.

So this practice is a way to let go of any ideas of good or bad, through the body, and just see what happens for an allotted time. Maybe a half hour, or better, an hour. Often the process will open up something that has been stuck in my body in a way I could never have conceived. So, if my neck is sore, unraveling that might begin in my ankle and spiral through the body.

This process has been incredibly healing and beautiful for me. And difficult. In the beginning I would have strong wild emotions come out during, and after, the practice. Again, please read my former post about it.

Then, something else began to happen. And in a recent Zoom class, I’m so thankful someone brought it up, as he was experiencing it, too. This post is about that other aspect, a deeper dimension, which was revealed through the standing. I hope it might switch on a light for some of you.

As I stood there in my twenties in Japan, with no idea of how it would go, a bald skinny exposed nerve in samugi, I would try to let my awareness be open, open, open. I began to see that as I did that, in order to let my body open, after some time, my awareness would begin to naturally extend beyond myself to the environment around me. In fact, I began to see that what I thought of as my body, and my self, was so much more fluid and inseparable from everything around me. The trees, the pond, the birds, the people walking by. It was surprisingly natural to not stop my awareness at my body, but to allow it to deepen into the source of consciousness and the entire event at hand. To the entire event of the experience.

I began to get a sense of the environment, its feel and texture and flavor, and I saw that if I allowed my perception to match the feeling of my body with the texture of the environment around me, my body would become transparent, disappear, and I could feel all things around me as me. And in that, there would be a unifying of my consciousness with the source of consciousness. A dissolving of inside and outside. A oneness.

Where I was stuck in my body would often open by linking up my awareness to the environment, as we are inexorably linked and enmeshed. It was as if the body had never been, nor could it ever be, separate from anything again. As if my very healing meant opening to the situation at hand. So what we think of healing and the body is so small compared to our possibilities.

I felt deeply connected. Not in an idea, but as a tactile sense. It felt like grace. Like being embraced by the universe. Where I had been at odds with my life, I saw how, in a cellular way, I was at one with all things. That the source from which everything manifests can be felt and sensed and observed. As if everything is cut from the same cloth, and this can be conscious.

So, if the crow cawed, I would feel the sound inside of my consciousness, feel it as no separation from myself. If felt like echoing from deep within me, within my body. Seeing the moon, I had no idea where I ended and where the moon began.

More and more, I began to, in a sensory way, dialogue with the environment. And the non-directed standing opened that up for me, precisely because there was no agenda, no plan to get in the way of me naturally melting into the garden. It was discovered by accident. My life shifted from trying and doing to melding and receiving. And I saw that this was the most natural, that this unity was trying to happen all along.

New dimensions manifested in my experience. Sensing what others needed, intuition about what was going to happen. Like meeting the trees around me, hearing the pots singing in the kitchen, I could also meet the intentions of others, could know in my body if something were true or false, as it was a sensory, physical experience rather than an idea.

This simple physical practice also brought me to feel equally akin to dancers, healers, and monks and nuns, as it was so wild and creative and free-form. My ideas of spirituality had to open as well, as this was owned by no denomination.

I could also see when I was totally off, feel my emotions more clearly, let them go if needed. Not so trapped by them. This is of course a long integrative process! I’ll be fumbling around, eating from this feast until I die.

Doing this creative, natural standing practice was a gateway for me to open up. I started out of desperation. It saved my life. It awoke my zazen. It gave me great faith in life being lived through me. I think we all can do this, it is not something special. Please have faith that even in simple practices we can discover universal truth. Let’s discover what is beyond technique. A deep clear samadhi is our birthright.

Here is a great Jakugo with a similar flavor which hit me like a lightning bolt when I first read it, a young monk swimming in the mysterious pitch black ocean of traditional koan training. From Hsueh Tou (Setchō Jūken)*:

“As I step slowly along to the sounds of running water

My wandering gaze catches the traces of flying birds.”

You can do it! Thanks for reading! Please share it with someone who it might help or interest.

*Zen Sand: The Book of Capping Phrases for Koan Practice, By Sogen Hori

*This post was originally published on the Zen Embodiment Blog, April, 2020

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We have such talented people involved. It is so amazing to watch them change and grow and become more beautiful.

Joe talks about how the practice can become more subtle, and the practice of Non-Directed Body Movement can be a venue to see how to take our internal process into all of life. Instead of looking for some kind of movement, our whole being can gain the courage to open up to life.

Jun talking about how we subtly find ways to control and that the Non-Directed Body Movement is a way to drop that control and give in to something happening. This process trips us down below our normal level of what it means to surrender or let go.

Camille Talking about Non-Directed Body Movement, Being Okay Not knowing, and Transformation

Jane talking about using the Non-Directed as a space to explore curiosity. What is interesting to me actually? And what is our true strong desire?

Thanks for watching. Come practice with us sometime!

Core

We will have our Whidbey Island Retreat, October 15-19th. (Arriving on the 15th and departing on the 19th.)

Registration is now open. Spaces are limited. So I would not wait to register.

The cost for the retreat is $750.

Deposit ($400) is due at the time of registration.

The remaining $350 is due a week before the retreat (10/8/26).

The fees include food and lodging. Everyone will stay in the retreat location.

Registration must be completed by August 24th.

Please contact Rose Hess at rosehesscontact@gmail.com with any questions.

To register, please fill out the form below and send the deposit to secure your spot

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScCvRzIN1443mhOCCszCCZrFXhDvxbJGIwtFHNYlK9w4FOnug/viewform?usp=publish-editor

The best ways to pay are Venmo: https://venmo.com/u/Corey-Hess-10

International Transfers via Revolut: https://revolut.me/coreyi0jh

For a description of the flavor of these retreats, here are some reflections I wrote after a retreat in Demark.

Thanks!! I’m excited for you all to come meet my family!

Corey, Rose, and Teresa

You can do it! Hugs!

What if I did not reach out? For the answers, for control, etc. What if I did not reach out to understand? What if I did not seek the answers outside of myself?

Instead of reaching out, which may just seem like normal, what if I stayed where I am? ... Maybe it seems boring? Helpless? Maybe we feel out to sea? I feel strange? I am so used to reaching out that not doing that feels like imploding?

“Receive.” “Receive”. “We become like a great mountain” Over and over the Roshi would tell us this.

Many people want to know how to have ease in their bodies. Many of my friends, clients, zen friends. Someone tells them to put their pelvis in this position and that does not feel good. And so they try to put their pelvis in the opposite position, and that does not feel good. Then they try to let go and that does not feel good. How do they find the right position? How do they feel good in their own skin? How do they access a place of ease from within? In this post I will try to address this issue from the idea of receptivity.

My answer is, I don’t know about the right way. Because I think of it in a very different way. I can tell you about how I have found a way to be in my body, and how it has translated to my whole life.

The body has been a great teacher for me on what I will call receiving. If I can receive my body, I can get out of the way. I can let go of my conceptual notions of how I should be in a body, and allow my body to teach me how to be in harmony. This is a radical shift from the way we usually function in life. It is a 180 degree turn.

Usually we try to figure out or get a picture of how we want something to be, and then try to make that happen. We try to manifest it. This is a way in which we are trying to impose some order on our environment, our relationships, our bodies. We try to manipulate everything around us all the time so that we may have some feeling of security. Of course we need to plan things like when building a house. We need a plan to follow and then to create it according to that plan. But I can say for myself, this way of thinking about life never worked. It may work in the short term, but in the long run we end up feeling as if we are deeply missing something, or that we are trying to force something that does not want to happen. We intuitively somehow see that our brains do not know how to figure out how to give us real peace. It is the same for the body.

Long retreats, sitting from morning till night and sometimes through the night, in order to survive I had to begin to function in a new way. Instead if imposing my will onto my body which was in such pain, instead of moving from a place of going after enlightenment, energetic flow, huge states of mind, trying to make my suffering stop!, I began to allow something greater to come to me, to shift from doing to receiving. And it was so much better than anything my small brain could have created. Not only did my body heal, but my perspective on everything shifted. I became filled with energy which clarified my mind, brought my life into oneness.

We don’t do zazen. The universe does zazen.

And what does this receiving look like? It looks like not grasping for the truth. It looks like being still and quiet with the moment, waiting… We need to set aside time to explore this. And in the body it feels like transparency. Instead of trying to create a good posture, it involves letting go of an idea of a good posture, and allowing the body to organically bloom into a good posture. Maybe it does not look like a good posture at first, and maybe there is some very old trauma in there which needs expressing. That is part of it. Being receptive involves suspension of disbelief. And it involves trust. And trust in what? Trust in the universe as harmony and truth. It is very scary at first, because we have been doing the opposite for our whole lives. Trying to stand up straight. Trying to look like everything is okay. It seems like turning our backs on everything we know, and being a real fool.

So, this process takes a great deal of courage. Courage because letting go of control brings a lot of fear. It also requires real curiosity to know what is trying to happen through the body, not just our idea. Curiosity because the way in which the universe will begin to flow through us will blow our normal way of thinking away. If we are not curious enough, then we will just stay in our heads for the rest of our lives. I can’t stress this curiosity enough. Often people who are able to give themselves to this do so because of some life changing event or experience, which has driven them to deeply question.

And the most important, is honesty. If we can be honest, our bodies as well as our whole way of being will shift very fast. And like a key, it unlocks all of the unconscious held stuff we hold in our bodies. Stuff we could never reach in the normal controlled, half conscious way of moving through the world. Hours and hours spent standing in the garden in Japan, just me and the bamboo and cherry blossoms and dirt landscape. Over and over, falling in love with this process. Putting everything on the line, in this cellular transformation, from grasping after happiness, to receiving a life and body filled up by the universe. Instead of feeling off in our bodies all the time and looking for a way to be on, or searching for a technique or a position to make us feel better, instead feeling real ease come into our bodies and life. Honesty, because what shows up will begin to change us if we listen to it. If we don’t listen, then we will never be vulnerable enough to allow this energy to flow through us, to be guided by the universe.

And in learning to receive through the body, we begin to be more harmonious with our life energy. As this happens, we start to shine more brightly. We are not as tired. As we harmonize with our bodies we begin to harmonize with our environment. We begin to find harmony with the energy of the room, the forest, the airport, the farmers’ market. If we are highly sensitive, we begin to find more ease in social situations. Instead of the environment being something to defend against or fear, we find ease on a cellular level. We know the terrain. We become more intuitive as our awareness of reality becomes more intimate. Things flow better for us. Everything comes to us. We become full and taut. We are no longer in conflict with the world. We are truly happy for no reason, fundamentally supported. This is so contrary to our normal way of being, defending, manipulating.

I remember a good friend talking about her dance training in Japan. She was walking and talking loudly with her girlfriend as she entered a room. The teacher was there and he yelled at them, “You are not dancers! A real dancer would never walk into a room like that!”. What he meant was, the dancer has to become the room they enter. They have to feel it and sense what the room is telling them. Not force their will presence onto it. The dancer has to receive the room.

It is this attitude of receptivity that has become (for the most part) my normal way of being in life. Receiving the room. Receiving the beach, receiving every situation. Walking in the woods, receiving the entirety of the forest, drinking it all down. Not reaching out to reality and trying to manipulate it. Not trying to control everything that comes my way, but allowing it to fill me up. Once we see that we don’t have to manipulate everything, to create happiness, it is life changing. We don’t have to look out there for happiness.

In Japan, when I would have tea with the Roshi, there was a certain flow to it which was a great teaching to me. My first year in the monastery, I would go in to tea and try to make jokes or to share myself with him, trying to make an impression. When I did this, he would ignore me. After a while, I saw that I was approaching the tea completely wrong. I couldn’t go in with my agenda, hoping to make him think I was so great! And this is what we basically do all the time with everyone in our everyday life. This causes a lot of pain, both physical and internal. In the tea, the Roshi would never allow this. Instead, I had to receive him in tea. I had to be in a position of receiving what he had to offer in the tea. When in this state of mind, then the Roshi would talk to me or acknowledge me. The room would change, my body would change. I felt him meet me energetically by my being open to receiving him. This is his primary way of teaching. Nonverbal energetic giving and receiving. And the whole life there was like that. It was like being forged into a receptive machine. A receiver of sublime truth.

Over time, with the Roshi, this receiving deepened our samadhi, gave us a way of being which would not deplete.

Standing or sitting in zazen in my home, when everyone in my family has gone to sleep, or before anyone is awake. All that I believe to be true vanishes. All that I understand about my body disappears. All that I am convinced must be true falls away. Although I feel that I understand how to stand here, when I actually do, I feel a flower blooming in me which I never could have predicted. And the more I listen to this flower blooming, I want to give myself to it more and more, even if it takes me down dangerous paths of pain and struggle. For I’ve have been caressed by a greater power, a grace beyond my small self. I feel filled up with the love of the universe. And this light I give my whole life to, without understanding it one bit. It’s the opposite of everything I ever thought. It is like I disappear and all that is left is God.

Thanks for reading! Good luck! You can do it!

** This post is an updated draft of a former post.

“It is a certain and necessary truth that one who resigns their will wholly to God will

catch God and bind God, so that God can do nothing but what that person wills.”

- Meister Eckhart

It’s not easy to write about experience and moving through space. It’s very strange, in fact. But a riff here in this post on walking, moving, and relating in space.

I hug my wife and ten year old daughter goodbye, and walk through the yard and then the sidewalk to the parking lot. I’ll walk today to my office. It’s only about fifteen minutes.

Advancing in space, moving forward through the garden, I am standing over the ground. But it’s more like I am wading through a luminous field, a sea of Qi. My lower body is subtly pulled into the center of the earth, my upper body pulled to the heavens. And within that is the central channel, in which I am surrendered. I am not creating it. It is more like I disappear and it shines. I relent, and am formed.

The central channel has its own velocity, its own vector of expansiveness. I am absorbed, functioning, and yet I am not concentrating on anything particular. I am not reducing things down or seeking the truth of things. I am not sending out the scouts to the environment looking for meaning

My awareness is wide open, transparent, and at the same time one-pointed. Each step is complete. Each footstep is a relationship with everything in the environment, a melding of all things. And yet, I am simply walking

At times in my absorption, in walking, absorbing into what is happening, the energy, I lose touch with up and down. My sense of inside and outside has no meaning. Everything is translucent, melodious. Framing me in space, matter of fact. Feeling everything is also a light shining through my own heart

The absorption into the process naturally creates samadhi. There is no need to create samadhi from a technique

The birds sing, the trucks go by, and they are inside of my body. I am the light dipping through the trees, the crows overhead are inside of me

I advance through space, but I don’t move. I am moving and at the same time there is no possibility of movement. All things happen, and nothing happens.

Naturally I move from my belly. What comes into my awareness in the environment, I am not reaching out to, but I am right on top of it. By not leaping out, I expand. I am in the belly but also expanded, inside out

My Lower back is full (koshi) and I am allowing the central channel to shine through the top of the head (baihui). This is an incredibly creative process. There is no direct route for this. It must be discovered and digested. I’m not talking about an idea but a cellular process.

My body at times becomes confused as I move, the joints are apparent, conflict and dialogue, the base of the skull, and then I feel into what is happening, I’ve married the experience again. We all must learn to titrate our interacting with what is happening continually, meeting each moment as it manifests. This sounds exhausting, but with time is much the opposite

The flower pierces me, the moon stamps me in emptiness. I can’t tell where I begin and the moon ends

People walking by come into the field, and I become them, am absorbed into them, am drunk down by them. Removing the barrier between self and other naturally is continually emerging. I am entwined in truth and being with others is an expression of that unfolding of truth. There is information in the field of relating which can be perceived and felt into. As someone mentioned recently in a call, it is all karma working itself out

Walking up the hill, my muscles are working, but in fact, the tanden is carrying me up the hill. My efforts cease, I surrender.

At first moving like this might feel like we’re moving forward but going backwards as we are so used to diving out with our attention. People might be very disoriented at first. It is wildly radical to be neutral in space and not reaching out for reassurance. There is a wildness in neutral which cannot be created.

When we are transparent, all things are fascinating. Light shines out of emptiness

That which does not grasp out miraculously expands

The center of the universe never moves. All things come to it

This continual rebirth in space, this fresh mind moment, cannot be held, is complete and continually reborn

The present moment is a lightning bolt, shining ten thousand miles high. Never-ending, the center of all things, could never be lost

All movement is imploded in it, and yet we move and act

Meister Eckhart taught that whoever aligns their will completely with God binds Him, because God can do nothing but what that human desires.

The environment has a texture to it, a palpable texture, and I become that texture continually. The becoming that texture is like a natural weather pattern forming. In this texture is wisdom naturally blossoming. It is not my wisdom. It is just there naturally showing up. Each moment is a revelation. There is no need for anything but what is essential. Each mind moment exploding

When we surrender, our actions contain multitudes. Act, and the entire world moves with us

I have no idea what will happen in the next moment, and yet am connected and grounded

Grasping onto an idea, I become solid and more narrow. Getting small about something, the light dims. This is clear cellular feedback. A compass to act from.

I can think, but that is honestly less interesting than what is happening already

Surrendering into this unknown is a huge process, because our tricks and manipulations give us some positive feedback. We’ve gotten far with our strategies… But we’ve got to be ruthless for the truth

Although it is an incredibly wild time of letting go and facing ourselves, we slowly trust being driven into exactly what happens, and that process brings clarity which needs no outside affirmation

For those that have deeply touched it, they’ll probably feel quite alone for a while. Like we’re off on our own, discovering something no one understands. We must have the courage to allow this to happen, instead of grasping on to something for recognition or stability. We will probably have to abandon all form and technique to discover what is essential.

It may feel as we surrender that the wind comes out of the sail of our progress. That which we perceived to give us energy, to bring us into a focused state of mind, is lost. This is normal, as our strategies have been compressing our experience, which felt like energy. Our good intentions created a pressure. But at a certain point, we’ve got to honestly face what is happening and be ready for what emerges without our expectations. Without willing something to happen. Without leaning or pushing on reality all of the time. This is a big transition. Seeing the big energy comes from letting go.

All of our bullshit makes us feel closed off from the truth, we’ll feel the brutal truth of that, and so we’ll be driven toward the way

We are given into the essential God, or what zen calls the Thing Itself

Sealing in the energy is a bit like a vacuum in space. Like you are an empty vessel which everything is pulled into through the central channel. Think about this and it’s obstructive. Look away and you’re clogged up. So you’re in this essential experience. And from that essential experience comes a different type of relating with space with people, etc. A different kind of connected unity.

So, whatever you think is happening, whatever you are trying to make happen, this is just engulfed in this vacuum. The struggle between these two forces is a natural transitional phase essential to integrating the process.

So whatever romantic imagination we have about ourselves is just obliterated in this process of disappearing into what’s happening. Acting out of that has a freedom, which is so radically different than anything we imagine.

For many people this process spontaneously begins to emerge one day and many of us are kind of like, gosh, I wish I could just go back to being sort of happy. But there’s no going back once this process begins to come through.

For the people who wonder why I’m always talking about the energy and how it relates to practice, well, unless one finds a way to mobilize this internal process and connect with everything through that, it’s just all mental and embarrassing, and those who’ve done the real internal work will sense that surface level understanding from far away. You can’t think or fake your way into piercing the heavens

Yet we’re just people walking, breathing, with our imperfections, with our biological processes, with our DNA, with some of the long-held emotional stickiness. All of that’s included. That’s not separate. We have likes and dislikes. I am slowly learning to be patient. But that isn’t the whole story. Just the opposite. It’s not that we see it and all of our issues totally disappear. We’ll still be working on our stuff for a long time. We’ll still have to get the kids fed and pay the Wi-Fi Bill. Gotta get enough kimchi into our diets, lol. We just won’t look to this type of thing for answers.

I have no interest in people talking about spiritual concepts. And Don’t tell me what someone else said. When it’s real we’ll feel it from you. I don’t want your performative spirituality. The concept you have of yourself shields us from feeling it.

It is hot today, I’d like to get to work a bit quicker. The shirt is clinging to my skin. I’m like a clown putting on a costume. A goofy fool walking to work, A ghost waving at cars as they pass, like an arrow flying through space, penetrated by all things, floating, melting, obliterated, separating heaven and earth. Walking along, living, smelling, feeling, and gone

A couple of people in my classes have asked what to do when, while doing the Qigong or Zhan Zhuang, the energetic internal process is too much?

This is a really good question, and for some people it will make complete sense, while others will have no clue what we are talking about, as we all have different Internal Processes we are working with.*

When it is all too much, it feels like the energy we are working with in our system, around us, our bodies, our essence, our feeling in space, feels overwhelmed. Our system feels over stimulated. Feels like there is too much going on, or out of control, disturbed, like a rock concert or roller coaster is happening in our system without us being able to turn it down or shut it off. We’re out to sea. We’re spacey. We’re inside out.

This is all pretty normal and actually a good thing if used and directed and relaxed into. But it can feel like we have imploded, especially in the beginning. After about a year and a half in the monastery in my twenties, I got really sick, and almost lost my eyesight. In retrospect, this was because I was not meeting my internal process, my internal momentum of energy. It was like I was grinding my internal gears all of the time, like the energy was doing something and I couldn’t match it.

Laying in the dark on the tatami, I saw that I had to sync up with this internal momentum, I had to learn to interact with it. It was like my energy and my breath had to meet, and my body had to manifest out of that. It had a speed, a power, and I had to harmonize with that. I had to meld with that, or I knew I’d be sick again and live in chaos as before. Discovering this and working with it changed everything for me. I am still guided by it at all times.

I am so grateful I had this opportunity at that point in my life to look at all this and interact with this, as so many people are dealing with similar issues but unconsciously.

Here are a few tips for exploring how to work with harmonizing this internal process.

One simple thing I often do, is to completely stop any input we are putting into the situation. Chances are we are missing what is trying to happen in our system, with our energy. We are disrupting it, going against the internal process and momentum which is moving through my system.

-So, stop what you are doing and see if you can feel movement in the system which is happening, and get out of the way. This sounds simple. But it is hidden and often moving at a pace which we cannot immediately fathom. Often extremely slow, like a car driving at us from way out in the desert.

-Does it Have a Direction?

Often there is a direction this energy is trying to move through us, and we are not paying attention to it. We are missing it. We can’t feel it yet. And we’re either hoping for a direction that the energy in our system will take, and trying to make that happen, or we unconsciously become rigid, invested in a plan of how it should go, instead of remaining open. At various times we will get a sense of how to follow this process, only to have it shift. We must adapt at that time, and with fresh awareness, allow it to continue to reveal how to open up to us.

-Let Go Into the Momentum

There might be a momentum to it, a wave moving through us. Chances are, we don’t understand that wave vector. If we did, then we would naturally allow it to open us up. This wave might feel something like a second breath. We have our normal breath, in, out, huffing and puffing. But this second breath is something very different, and we begin to understand that our breath and energy are the same thing. In time, we may discover it is there all of the time, waiting for us to listen, organizing us, healing us, opening us up if we can get out of the way.

-Feel the Tanden

When the energy feels too big, feels too raw, check back in with the Tanden. You might be surprised to discover that the base of that expansive energy is the Tanden. Like butterfly wings that extend out into space, moving and expressing, but still the root of them is in the base. It can often feel like the expansive movement of this energy is standing on top of the tanden. But we are not aware of the root. To sink into the tanden, rooted while the wild energy expresses around it. Discovering this, we are not so blown away by this seemingly out of control feeling, feeling in our system that it is all springing from the Tanden.

-Remove the Barrier

Is our system interacting with the room, and how can I harmonize with the room or the forest or the mall or wherever I am? Often if we feel too stuck, are overwhelmed in our bodies, it is good to take our awareness to the environment around us. To find a way to become one with the trees, or the room, or even the shopping mall. To remove the barrier between us and everything around us. If we harmonize with the room, then our bodies will align, will sort themselves out. We see that our bodies are just another part of the harmony of the present energetic environment.

-Faith That it is all Trying to Happen

Faith that the universe is on our side, is directing us to open up, align, deepen our state of mind, align with this great life energy. As we do these practices more, we gain faith that even if things open up, that the process will smooth out, the universe is not against us, the energy does not have to be scary. Someone told me once, “Before kensho, energy is very exciting and people have energy problems. After kensho, energy is just energy.” There is some truth to this.

-Bring it Back to Wuji

If you are doing some Non-directed movement and the energy gets too far out there, it is good to do some simple Zhan Zhuang practices to root the energy, to align, to bring us back to the center. I find that the dialogue between structure and unstructured is a great lively conversation. If one dominates too long, then it gets lopsided.

-What is really Happening?

For some of us, there is an urgency to working with this internal process. It is not just something interesting, but something that must be done in this life.

What I am trying to do in my classes is to inspire people to catch that fever which drives us to discover what it actually is that is walking around, standing, sitting, laying down, etc.

If we can discover that great life energy shining through us, it might shock us, penetrate us deeply, and then our lives will be about interacting with that, sharpening it, cultivating it, sharing it with others.

Three things have guided my practice for many years.

-Curiosity

We have to be so curious about what is actually happening. Not our idea. Not our fantasy or even our wish. What is this moment revealing right now. The thing itself.

-Honesty

We have to be incredibly honest. To look at this stuff, to open up ourselves, is really difficult. It is very frightening. But we have to be honest. To face what is happening. Be able to adjust, to adapt, to be moved by this great life energy. We have to be honest with this moment. And continue that honesty all of the time. This becomes easier and easier, as we see the gifts this huge moment reveal. Or we’ll be stuck in our mozo (thought patterns) forever. We’ll stay in our holding patterns.

-Courage

When we have to face ourselves, we’ve got to have courage. Things do not just open up without us being brave enough to face them. Trauma, pain, epigenetic stuff, birth trauma, unresolved karma, physical injuries, etc, it will often only open up if we completely bare all our of ourselves to the moment. It is often like grabbing hold of this moment with the utmost sincerity and allowing it to pull you through to the other side. But I can say that it is worth it. And then of course, the moment will change.

It is often like being molded, like the universe is a blacksmith pummeling us. For years, my mantra was Dozo (Please go ahead), to the universe. Do with me what you will. Just trying to get out of the way. It may feel very strange at times. But what a chance! I must say that having energy be too wild is actually such a blessing if we can learn to lasso it, to ride the ox, to surf its grace. To open up all of our senses and allow the universe to flow through us! To let all of the horses run free! I am excited for you all! I’m excited to keep going myself forever. Please keep me posted. Questions welcome. Lots of love!

I am also open for private consultation in person or online.

*None of this is meant to be medical advice. If you are struggling mentally or physically, you should see a medical doctor.

I am writing to announce our next Quarterly Month Long Online Immersion, July 7th-August 4th.

Please RSVP if you’ll be attending

We’ve been doing these Monthling Intensives since October of 2020. It’s been a heck of a ride! Some of you have been with me from the very first online classes when covid hit. In that difficult time, we found a new type of sangha, a new way to relate across the world. We’ve been blessed to have found ways to practice daily together since.

I’ve seen profound changes in people who have sincerely given themselves to these practices. It’s amazing to see it unfold.

The Month Long Immersions are an incredibly potent container for digging into our practice with the support of a powerful sangha, while being able to go on with our daily lives. Everyone has to find their own way to engage, and participate as they are able. No one except me will make it to every class, Lol!

Practices will include Zhan Zhuang, Non-Directed Body Movement, Qigong, Seated Meditation, Noguchi Taiso, etc

We’ll have our five online classes a week, plus the discord group for discussion and Practice Rooms

The Practice Rooms are such an important part of the Immersion.

A member led class once a week as well as Special Topic Practice Rooms

A weekly theme to help motivate and deepen our process

A Mini Retreat

Buddy Groups for Support and Community

At least 4 Group Practice discussion calls via Zoom

https://coreyhessbodytherapy.com/purchase-packages/p/month-long-intensive

**** I will not turn anyone away if they cannot pay full price. And anyone who would like to help offer scholarship financial support, that is much appreciated.

I hope to see you!!

Testimonials:

“I had an immensely meaningful and productive experience in the month-long immersion with Corey. He presents a straightforward, approachable set of physical practices within which there is an endless potential for growth, exploration, and opening. Corey artfully weaves structured practices and open-form movement in such a way that all bases are covered; stabilizing practices fortify the container in which the subtleties of the inner dance can flourish, and the full permission to explore (in Non-Directed Body Movement) permits novel realizations and latent patterns to emerge, articulate, and resolve. I have been engaged in various somatic/movement-based practices for almost two decades, but in the last few years my embodiment practice has lost momentum as I have been roaming the abstract realms of academia. Thankfully, the immersion with Corey has reignited my practice, and I feel reoriented toward a vitality and fullness that I recall from some of my earliest intimations of the mysteries of embodied experience. The fountain is flowing again, and I am eager to continue exploring the grounded, elegant set of tools I have gained.”

--Carter

I love the classes because they are an invitation for me to go deeper into what is really real, and to inquire into my experience, “what wants to come through”. It helps me cut through all the little dramas of my life that seem so big and insurmountable when they occur in my day to day. The structure and guidance of the class help me drop into the reality of my experience, where these dramas disappear, and I’m exposed to a truth and a way of being that is bigger than my self. From there, the inquiry “what does life want from me? what is trying to come through in my life” leads to such a saner and more practical approach to life than my normal way of handling these little dramas.

--Chris

Here are two photos from our recent retreat North of Montreal:

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There are a couple of different backgrounds people have who come to work with me. Generally, it is the Zen practitioners and the Non Zen Practitioners, with some wild cards thrown in! This post is about how we explore working with these different flavors.

Zen Folks Group

I see a lot of Zen practitioners and teachers. In some ways, these retreats, for those people, are an opportunity to begin to touch this true transformation process beyond the form, as it is common for people to think the form and the essence are entwined and the same.

Also, so many of the lineages of Zen have not brought this energetic essence aspect of true realization as they have spread from the East. Many of the people I work with are even teachers in their own lineages, but lack the essence, have found something lacking in their process, and so they come to do that type of deep homework. To feast further into the mystery, do the internal cooking, touch this source of what they are, knowing that is what will truly help others.

So, many of the people who work with me have come from a Zen background. I am teasing them out of their assumptions, attempting to free them from the constraints, the baggage they have taken on about how practice must be done. I get that primordial huge energy to open up in them, get them cooking, and they begin to realize something beyond Zen, which of course is what Zen is truly about.

Often with these people, I am drawing out the wild wholesale aspect they have locked down in their process. I am getting them to wake the dragon in their experience which they’ve often used the structure and form to control. I am getting the horses all running free. This is an amazing rebirth to witness. These people often know how to profoundly focus. They know how to be still. They know how to do the Zen grind. They have often done deep meditation. But they sense something lacking, something essential and primal missing in the manifesting of their process. I give them the opportunity to find something there when the form has been dropped. When we are interacting with our experience without controlling it. To find something there no matter if the form is supporting them.

Often with Zen practitioners, they have used the form to help them to dissociate or to help them to demand reality be a certain way. Or as a perfect formula to abide by that they think if they do it perfectly and by the book it will allow them to get from point A to point B. In these retreats, I am pushing them to honestly look at this. Teasing people away from the love affair with the form, the aesthetic bias, the culture, the heroic stories, the permission for obsession and power games, etc, is no small task.

Often in the form, Zen practitioners find a medium to finally channel their intensity into. But instead of becoming free in their actions (as is the point), the form can become a medium to bind and control their intensity, reinforcing it in a kind of self affirming container they can’t see out of.

People take on all kinds of baggage in training, along with the wonderful aspects they drop.

The Other Side

The other side of who I work with, and I am so happy to do this, is to work with people who are not Zen practitioners. Some have real meditation backgrounds. But many have not. They may be dancers, Sufi practitioners, Yogis, martial artists, embodiment teachers, various Buddhist practitioners like Vajrayana or Vipassana, eclectic spiritual interests, Twitter Posters, plant medicine explorers, artists, emotional and trauma release therapists, Jhana enthusiasts, etc.

These folks often are coming in from a different mindset. Some have real practice under their belt, and they can plug in very well. But others have dabbled here and there, but have mostly just read a lot and window shopped around, curating their own ideas of awakening from various puzzle pieces. Many come in with their own assumptions about practice, retreats, healing, awakening, etc. So that’s quite a mix of people at these retreats!

Many times with the people in the second group, the structure of the retreat, the quiet, the stillness, the demanded honesty, the spartan aspect, the disinterest in their story, their compensations, the disinterest in their identity masks or resume of practices they have done, is a bit bewildering. No one is there affirming the spiritual avatar they have created about themselves or their awakening story. We just tell them to stand there, sit, and see what is truly happening. Don’t talk. I don’t care about all that you are demanding I acknowledge. I don’t care about the contract about yourself you are demanding I sign… This is quite shocking.

I am giving them a chance to zero in more deeply into their experience, prior to the noise they live in, to find something burning below their radar, which will transform them. This is so incredibly radical. There is usually some protest, some mutiny. Some inability to be quiet or some performative rehearsed speeches, some posturing, some tantrums, attempted alpha practitioner coup d’état, painted into a corner, at wits end.

But something begins to move through them. Something which cannot be explained or rationalized, something beyond explanation. They begin to feel they are animated by something beyond their understanding, their entire being is being pulled into something beyond them, and this is revolutionary to them. They might not be conscious of it at first, but feel different. They begin to get quiet. They stop chasing me around asking me questions. They stop blaming everyone around them. It stops them in their tracks. They get more real. All of that noisiness, bouncing around, finally has some gravity to it which magnetizes them into their process. This cannot be figured out.

Everyone is a mix of both types above. We are all discovering this deep process beyond understanding. Something so beautiful.

I have had the huge learning curve of learning to slowly work with people in retreats from both polarities, with wildly different perspectives and needs. I am learning to manage it! LOL! Herding the cats is a wild process!

The work we are doing is important, I think. For people to discover the essence of what we truly are, in creative ways, breaking our assumptions, in this very body, in our normal clothes, beyond religion, touching this Great Life Energy and bringing that to the world in their own unique way.

For the Zen folks, maybe they choose to continue to deepen within the Zen form and become great teachers, giving lectures about koans or shikantaza, etc. The world definitely needs it, if they’ve done the real homework. That wasn’t my karma, but I respect it. Or they may end up working at Trader Joes or being stay at home moms, connecting with each person they meet from a profoundly interesting place, giving people hope about life, covertly cleaning the gunk from the world’s eyes.

And the folks who are not Zen practitioners, well, I hope we start a process within them that continues, matures, cooks down, and comes to a beautiful fruition. The world needs it so much, in all of its flavors.

My entire being responding to something like truth was a very important experience for me. I saw that my cells, when confronted with the energy of something coming from a place of true wisdom, would come alive in that truth. This, I would say, was the beginning of a process which became the path of my life.

These days, I’m very interested in what is happening. This thing right now which is manifesting. I am living here, in this ever evolving light forming.

At some point, my struggle and investigations led me to inevitably see that I could discover the truth in each moment with my entire being. I could feel this. At first I did not have the internal sensitivity to work with this. Luckily, I had a unique teacher, who could guide me in this process. Over time, I saw that each moment was full of wisdom. Each moment was whole. Each moment was complete and ever changing. Each moment was pulling me into it, and in that pulling in, was wisdom. So over time I learned to allow my body to respond to the light, this wisdom of each moment and harmonize with that.

At first this is foreign. Unknown. I touched it only sometimes. I could not track it. But over time, I began to be able to be ushered in by each moment physically, energetically, with all of my cells. This is a process which is like tearing down a whole city of assumptions. Suspension of disbelief, and being led into the unknown. It is not for the faint of heart, but in fact is happening right now to everyone. It is really just what we are. Each mind moment of truth arising.

In each moment, there is being with what is happening, or not. Light is being with what is happening. Darkness is not. In truth, we could never truly be in darkness, but we hold ourselves against what is happening.

I don’t leave what is happening. I am not with this, and then I take a break. I don’t practice and then not practice. My life is this yolking in this present moment, shining to the heavens. This is not an endurance contest I’ve somehow found a magical key to grasp onto. We think it is over there, so we tire trying to make it happen. In truth, being with what is happening is alchemy enough. We all have enough energy right now, in this bag of bones, to realize it. Once we see how huge the present moment is, our faith will never truly fade.

When we see that all things are naturally empty, we see the luminosity of all things. Life comes alive, we can navigate the spaces in between everything. We truly are living in this sea of Qi. Everything talks to us, lets us into its secret. We think it’s a concept, so we don’t feel it.

My experience of life is that of feeling the truth of each moment, and resonating with that. I am continually meeting that. I am continually morphing with what is happening. This is my compass. This is where Grace is bathed in. This is the world of light dancing, the world of Dharma, the life of essence. I have little interest in talking about Buddhist doctrine or, really, spiritual texts.

I am walking through this luminous world, meeting each thing as it arises, like a goofy child. I am not perfect. I don’t look spiritual all of the time. I’m just going about my day, being with each thing.

We think we need to be spiritual all of the time, and so are slaves to shifting moods. Happy one moment, sad the next. The narrative I was writing about myself got ruined when I spoke. We are slaves to good and bad, and so we close the door on reality when it changes.

But each moment arising is enough. Each thing, giving ourselves to it, nothing else. Like a luminous pearl, we can be in the middle of what is happening. The center of all things.

I hope this encourages some people out there to drop their theories, find the shining truth of what is happening, and begin to allow it to transform you. It will take time, maturing, honesty, immense creativity, and courage. But if you can do this, you’ll find your own path.

Lots of love! Hugs!

Core

We have to fall in love with our practice. We have to find a way that what we are doing when we practice is exactly what we want to be doing, and then practice will begin to be what we are doing all of the time, whether we are doing it formally or going through our daily lives.

If practice is a chore, or it is boring, or if you’d rather be doing something else, then I think maybe it is good to reassess what is going on in your process.

What do we really want? Truly want? And how can practice be a way to work on that? How can all of our lives be a part of that?

Maybe you are suffering. You have seen really impressive people who have been practicing a long time, or you’ve read some books about enlightenment, and so you agree to put in some time. But in truth, you’d rather just enjoy life or spend time in other ways, and so practice is something to get out of the way in order to live.

For me, I did not care about Buddhism really or care about the Japanese clothing, or the bells or the aesthetic of Zen. I did not like seated zazen at first. I did not like the unstable or manipulative people in the scene. But at some point, a sempai (more experienced practitioner in the Sangha) told me I had to love my training. I had to find a way to love it. And I really tried to digest that, as I respected this sempai friend.

I set off to change my way of being in practice. I tried to find a way to interact with my seated zazen in a way that I enjoyed it. To enjoy the meals and the chanting, to enjoy the work of the monastery. In fact, I began to change my way of being from someone who was against life, to someone using my life to deepen and explore the joys of training. So the idea of loving my training helped me to open my heart to it. Somehow I had the notion that I had to be suffering in some way in order to get enlightened. If I was enjoying it too much, then I’d be compromising it. I’d become soft in my training.

As I turned 180 degrees around in my training, I saw that everything began to give me energy. I loved working on the grounds. I loved the chanting and made it beautiful. And in making it beautiful, something else began to shine. I made it beautiful, and a joy began to shine. I began to be happy for no reason. I couldn’t figure out why I was happy. It was as if I had taken the present moment, and learned how to meet it fresh. I’d fallen in love with it.

And the more I did this, the more my tanden opened up, the more my body opened up. I began to meet the environment in a harmonious way. I began to move differently. My Qigong became much deeper. Whisking a bowl of tea became big, a way to feel into how to connect with this great life energy and joy. My practice became so exciting! Such an adventure! I began to see that I could feel the immense present moment, I could become intimate with it, allow it to guide me, feel it like texture, melt into it. I felt as if I were now living in a sea of Qi around me, supporting me, filling me up.

The present moment was ripe with alchemy. And gifts began to emerge out of this meeting, this alchemy. The world became alive. I saw that things I felt were solid were not solid. I saw that reality was much more precious, much more rich and magical. I also saw that any hard beliefs I had were dissolved in this field of light. And I found the love I had so longed for my whole life. A sense of connection to life. I found the universe guiding me in every cell, and it felt like my life became Grace.

Truly meeting life and feeling it, loving it, began to help others, as I began to shine in mysterious ways which surprised people. So by me falling in love with the training, that began to help others to see that they could fall in love with the training, and with life. Practice was no longer something to dip into and then leave when I got the chance. Practice became a seamless shining of joy. A joy not dependent on circumstances or bound to a specific time or place.

“Your true nature is bright”, the Roshi would tell me, and I found it myself (and we all have to find it ourselves). And that same brightness became a light, a guide to go deeper into the practice, until it led me like a divining rod to some big permanent changes. So anyway, if you don’t like practice, maybe you need to find a way to love your practice. That is a personal exploration, and requires a lot of creativity (Kufu). It can’t be someone else’s practice. Or something you read about and are imitating. It’s got to be something you want to be doing. We’ll be fools together, laughing and goofing off in this beautiful soup of reality. Thanks and good luck!

This was from our class yesterday. I’m getting at the creative aspects of opening up to the energy, opening up in our practice. This alchemy practice is essential.

We have to allow the Central Channel to Open up Organically:

As the central channel begins to open up through the body, our conception of it may be the very thing strangling it and not allowing it to open.

The more we effort to make it happen, the more we get in the way.

It’s more that the energy starts to permeate and saturate the system, filling the central channel as it goes.

It will run into some stuck places along the way and this is where the creative work is.

This is where the suspension of disbelief must be.

This is where we are stuck emotionally.

We must be patient and not want it to rush.

Our Earnestness is often blocking it.

The central channel might not be exactly where we think it is. It may be in front of where we expected it to be in space.

And we are there demanding it open according to that image we have.

Kundalini

For those who have had what they believe to be a kundalini awakening, a strong energetic opening up of the system, this is really the beginning of the long process of doing the creative real work of opening the central channel in a healthy way. Luckily there are practices out there, long developed proven blue collar practices to create a vessel which can handle being open to the energy. But it’s really just the beginning.

Being Continually Reborn in this Unknown

And after the class we were talking a bit more about this revolutionary internal process.

This rebelliousness should be so exciting, so creative!

How do we work on something we cannot conceptualize? How can we relate to something we have no model for? What a gift to have something I cannot understand, and I need to creatively find a way to meet it.

And of course, we are living in this ever changing life energy. We cannot hold on to anything. So there will never be something we can pin down as it. So wonderful, being reborn continuously in this unknown.

Someone in my classes asked for a glossary of terms I throw around. Here are some simple sketches using some of those terms.

Here are Some Tips on Body Orientation:

The lower body should be magnetized to the center of the earth. It should feel heavy, but dynamic. Like we are standing in a lake up to our waist. Substantial. Rooted. But not stagnant.

We should be curious about the bubbling well on the foot. Gradually it will feel like tree roots are growing up from the ground into the foot or possibly growing from the lower legs down into the earth.

The upper body should float, like it is being pulled up from an area on top of

the head above the ears. There should be space in between the vertebrae.

So the lower body is being pulled into the center of the earth, and the upper body is being pulled to the heavens.

One should stack the body from the ground, like a stock of blocks. If a block is pulled out of place the structure will fall, so we find a way to naturally allow the structure to stack upon itself.

We can relax down to the bone. And we can relax into the bone marrow.

We should think of the floor as another wall to push off of to move. Just like we could push off of a wall to push away, we can do the same with the floor. Simply lean into the floor to move, rather than bracing the body and creating fulcrums of tension in the structure.

One should walk around with heavy elbows. When we reach up, say for a coffee cup out of the cupboard or to take something off of a hanger, keep the elbow heavy. If we raise our hand with arm out and the elbow not heavy, we will be reaching from the shoulder.

The pelvis should be relaxed and neutral. If it was a fish bowl, the fish bowl would not tip forward or back or to the side. It is neutral.

Keep the lower back, called the Koshi in Japanese, Ming Men in Mandarin, full during movement. Our tailbone will naturally point toward the floor. If we have an exaggerated pelvic tilt or anterior shift, gradually the extremes will soften in this neutral pelvis.

Be curious about the Tanden/Lower Dantien. I’ve written several blog posts about this. Two or three centimeters below the navel, in the center of the belly.

The Kua, sometimes called the deep pelvis, must be softened and moved through. Most of us are bracing through the pelvis, but over time, something like a decade, the Kua will release.

The pelvic floor is dynamic and slightly raised, but not forcefully clenched. It will be like sealing the bottom of the tanden in fullness.

Tongue should lay on the roof of the mouth. This is natural and should be done all day long. The pelvic floor and the tongue on the roof of the mouth will go together sealing the internal momentum intimately as our practice deepens.

The whole body is released.

Move form the tanden

Release all joints, don’t be extreme in movement. I am not going to end range of joints when I Move. I am keeping them unlocked. Don’t lay on joints, don’t lay on tissue. If I am leaning into any part of the body when I move, I am laying on the body. Instead, lean into the ground to move.

More and more effortless in our movement.

We will stand in neutral. We are not leaning this way or that. We are not over extending. We will not be leaning on the body for support. We’ll be in this unknown neutral.

We focus more on the lower body than the upper body. This is extremely counterintuitive at first. Just keep going.

There is a perpendicular line from the center of the earth through the top of the head. We can begin to organize around that.

Waking Up the Ki

And in this neutral, in this unknown dynamic neutral we wake up the ki. Wake up this latent dragon of vitality in the system.

Over time, it will be like neutral exploding

And instead of making the posture happen, we allow the body to be organized by the ki.

This is not a formula one works on, but as the Ki/Qi develops, it is obvious that this has been true all along. When one has a big spiritual opening, this being pulled into the earth and the heaven will be so incredibly obvious. Our bodies will be completely changed in this. This is nothing other than our true nature being molded by this Great Life Energy.

All of this will be very non linear

We must suspend disbelief

We are constantly reinventing in space

A field always forming, always being reborn

This Liquid life we are swimming through

We are living in this Sea of Qi/Ki. This is not an idea.

Meet the room. Meet the texture of the room.

Allow yourself to completely surrender to the Ki in movement, walking

Like a lightbulb, electricity filling up your spine

Allow the Central Channel to open up. This will be quite non-linear at times, and we need to have the ability to suspend disbelief and allow this process to penetrate us. It will not always be straightforward, so one has to be creative in allowing the process to saturate.

Gradually the heart and Middle Dantian will shine, and as the lower Dantian/Tanden is developed, the heart will shine uninhibited, as will the Upper Dantian. The mind will become penetrated by this light, illuminated and transparent as the sky.

Like a balloon being filled by reality

Allow the ki to shine ever brighter naturally

This is not a doing

We’ll be filled with essence

Something wild and untethered, a great power

This will take a long time to learn to wield

Again, focus on the Tanden. How is it involved? How is it always involved?

Do not pin your awareness in the Tanden and try to put the energy there, but allow the Tanden to mature naturally. At first, look too hard and it will disappear.

Allow this wildness to animate you

Give in to this wild transformation

It’s okay if you are afraid. And if you are not afraid, at some point you will be. Keep going. Keep facing it

We must give up control to do this and be surrendered to this light

This energy field constantly changing, living in this wild unknown

Vitality being reborn in space constantly

Look at that person, and in an instant they have reformed in space

Being filled with love expanding

We’ll float on this Ki, using it, being filled up, full and taut like a balloon.

Make a movement and see all of life at your fingertips, a great wave of oneness expressing

Gradually and suddenly, we’ll develop one pointedness in our focus. Our entire being will unify our entire being. All cells will come into oneness.

There will be this incredible energy that begins to naturally shine, and in our surrender to it, when we act it will be from this fresh unobstructed mind

But instead, we control and make life small

Because we are attached to our egos, our small selves, we cannot let go of control. We cannot surrender to this unknown. And so we remain small

But as we see the ki grow in this finding it and surrendering, slowly we gain faith in letting go and the joy and unbound freedom it brings

Even though we don’t understand. Even though it does not compute

We being to enter a realm of all possibilities in this life if Ki

We begin to throw it all away, giving in to this process over and over

We’ll finally know for ourselves the truth

And we begin to see when things resonate with this truth and when they don’t. We can spot something that is coming from this place of aligning with this ki, or it’s someone relying on being mental.

We feel it because we recognize it as the truth holding them up

We become so aware of this, our whole body responds to it. When people are not coming from that place, it will feel off to us. Like smelling dogshit on someone’s breath. Even if they say all of the right words, it won’t touch us deeply.

We can’t smart ourselves around that one

When we see someone deeply transforming, it will feel like there is something like truth, something like Essence, permeating them, dripping off of them. They will exude light. This is just a matter of course.

The ki is how we share the realization, how we create a space and soup for people to cellularly transform.

Seeing someone move from this place is so beautiful and shocking. I don’t mean they can do flips or are necessarily a dancer or anything like that. It will be more like everything around them is like a wave coming through them. Everything will sing. Emptiness will follow them around. Our whole bodies will come alive seeing them wave their hand.

So again, who is it that is walking around? What is this body? What is trying to happen? Do you really think it is your muscles holding you up in space? Please discover this never-ending light, this place of no confusion or doubt.

Everyone can do this. No one is left out. Hugs to all of you!

This program is a chance for people interested in a month of ongoing checking-in about their practice and overall process. We meet several times via zoom and can message freely throughout the month. Mentees have all access to the Energy Collective Classes and Discord for the month, as well as customized tips to fit that unique individual.

I’ve found this transformative for the people who take on this month-long process.

Often people do not get a lot of 1:1 time with me in the classes, online immersions, or in-person retreats. This work is about cellular osmosis, and the 1:1 time is unique in that it provides time for a more concentrated soup to soak in continually.

I feel so fortunate to have had so much time 1:1 with my teacher. Time with him dissolved barriers and gave me the chance to drop my conditioning, drive into the source of what we are, and learn to communicate in a much more intimate way with people and life. This more subtle sophistication of interacting with life is all but disappeared in the world today.

Here is a quote from a recent person who went through a month-long Mentoring Program:

“There is a beautiful, unusual thing that happens in my 1:1 conversations with Corey about practice -- the words are secondary, and it feels like we’re playing volleyball at a much deeper-than-verbal level. I just have to gesture at the energy of something, and Corey can sense it very deeply and respond to what I’m actually trying to communicate, rather than the words. This goes in the other direction, too, which is why it feels like volleyball -- Corey is so firmly rooted in the depth of his transmission, and speaks only from there, so by attuning to his words and receiving them through my whole body, seemingly simple words offer layers and layers of information for me to take in.

One of the biggest gifts of the 1:1 mentorship with Corey is how much speed, momentum, and power it injected into my practice -- he is very generous with his time and continually gave me as much as my system could handle and integrate. It is a real gift to have this kind of access to Corey. I have gone through profound shifts, over and over again for years in the time I’ve known him, and it is amazing that I can keep coming back to him after all this time and there is still deeper to go, still more he has to offer. Incredibly grateful for the ones, like Corey, who came before me, went to hell and back over and over in search of truth, and now live in devotion to sharing what they found.”

-Jane Miller, Los Angeles

The Individual Month-Long Mentoring Program is offered on months when we do not have Group Month-long Online Immersions. So, February, March, May, June August, September November and December are all open for Mentoring.

For those interested in learning more about this Month-long Mentoring program, here is the link to the Individual Month-long Mentoring program:

https://coreyhessbodytherapy.com/purchase-packages/p/individual-month-long-mentoring-program

https://coreyhessbodytherapy.com/purchase-packages/p/month-long-intensive

I won’t argue with people, because, honestly, that’s not where my talent lies. Plenty of people are better at that than me. But I will share a bit of my experience, and hopefully show something else, and that I maybe wasn’t even a Zen student for all of those years…

People also want to know how it felt to open up in the way I did. What did it feel like?

So, I’ll just get into it. Here is some riffing on some of that. Just some sketches of feeling. I hope they hit you:

So what that mechanism felt like was that I would stand there and I would feel what was real. But what is it to feel what is real?

Well, at first, I would see how I was not bracing against my experience. I would see how I was blocking my body from feeling good. From releasing. I was bracing against life. I saw that my experience of life was a confusion. I was very open in some ways, and locked down in others. So I had to go to kindergarten and just feel if I could get into my body and release tension.

I had seen here and there what was possible when I released my body. It was like finally meeting reality and allowing it to embrace me. It was surrendering my armor. It was facing what I was feeling, and seeing how the Qi was trying to flow. This felt right. This felt like relief.

It was not easy, but I knew I had to do it. I had had a taste of what it was like to be held in the embrace of the present event. I guess I had tasted that in my first osesshin at Tahoma in c.2000. I’d see that I could let go and something would hold me.

I would sense into what felt like release, like harmony. And that felt like honesty. And that honesty made the Qi flow.

So there was something about being honest, which was the same feeling as the Qi flow. It was like they were the same thing. It was like a red light or a green light. But I was mostly overwhelmed, and do couldn’t tell most of the time if it was red or green. But I’d found my mission. Every day I took an hour of complete freedom of feeling to explore. I called it Non-Directed Body Movement. But it’s not really something to do. It’s just a laboratory.

And so I saw that my job was not to create anything. The moment I created something I felt like I left that honesty. So my job was instead to surrender to that honesty. And surrendering to that honesty created the Qi flow and the Qi flow opened up my body.

So my relationship to the present moment began to feel like embrace and beautiful if I let it in. The present event was something tactile, transformative, alive, directive.

So this is not doing a technique. People ask me, what is the technique? But it was just being honest in the moment, sincerely feeling into what I cared about. What felt real and honest in my body. We all think our moment to moment experience is invalid. But we must begin to trust being honest with it. In other words, meeting the present moment cannot be hiding what we are feeling. It must be facing exactly what we are experiencing and allowing it to reveal.

As I kept doing that day after day, I saw that the body opening was really only a part of this. So the body would open, but also I would just naturally align with the energy of the present moment. And with the environment. This felt to me like the truth of each moment.

So the truth, honesty, energy flow, all become the same thing. And I saw that my job was to surrender to that. And when I did that beautiful things started to happen.

As we are more connected, more aligned with reality, everything will begin to come to us. We’ll be like a magnet. We’ll become intuitive, even clairvoyant. We’ll leap up to answer the phone before it rings. This is not special but just natural as we meet reality. This is not something to get stuck on, but does happen.

But I wasn’t confident yet. It took me a long time. I wasn’t confident because I would surrender and then I would try to take control. I’d surrender and then I’d try to be good or I’d try to be skillful or try to then do my zazen on top of that, trying to Do it. And this lasted a long time. A couple years in this chrysalis. And in the monastery a couple of years is a long time.

And then in the midst of this inner stand off, I got deeply sick one time and in my desperation I somehow necessarily let that honesty totally take over me. And that changed my life completely. I really saw that I had to listen to this directive bigger life moving through me or I’d be sick or die.

But then I still had to put in the time to really be able to do it. We are so afraid. and so I kept going with that day after day, more and more honest, more and more right with what is happening. I had more faith to let go. More faith to surrender into this energy, this honesty. I was less afraid.

So again, honesty and energy and truth felt like the same thing. Somewhere along the way I started to have more and more confidence in this and I started to let that take over my seated meditation, my standing, my life in general.

I would just be in my life, sneaking out to buy cookies in the evening or driving to get the donated vegetables, and let this honesty, this Qi flow, this truth, directive truth open me up. So I was there giving in more and more to that, and my understanding of it started to change from it being meditation or being Qi flow to it actually feeling the universe showing me, ushering me into it. Like being pulled into something. Something I could not quite be with but felt magnetized to.

My life took on a kind of physical meaning and coherence. You can see this with people of practice. They will take a step and it just makes primordial sense. All of our cells respond. Watching it, our hairs stand on end. The flowers, the wind, the environment is in agreement, it’s filled with essence.

Can you feel this aspect pulling you into it yet?

And so truth, the universe showing me, honesty, I felt all of this gratitude and forgiveness and love, and it felt like God. I felt embraced. Light and joy came with it. Love started to be more and more part of everything around me, it felt like it was directing me towards this, guiding me. I began to deeply understand the Vow to Save all Beings. Compassion is not a concept but a cellular recognition.

Of course the central channel was opening, my heart was opening, this was a physical internal alchemy process. I was there chanting and balling my eyes out. I was in the middle of open heart surgery. It’s difficult! But so beautiful!

The energy of each moment was guiding me to that. So I was this zen monk living in the monastery, but I was surrendering to this directive truth, the universe guiding me, magnetized to it. I was not really a zen student. I was really just deeply going for it and letting my system surrender, release, release, release.

At the same time, there was this part of me that was like, is this okay what I’m doing? I’m way off the map here! I’m way out of what I imagined this would be. And that was the true benefit of having a true teacher. It was someone looking at me, completely wide open and surrendering to something as I had no idea what was happening, and him grunting at me exuberantly to keep going! Yosh! In the midst of this, I would go see him and we would just laugh and cry tears of joy. Just nothing there.

At a certain point that gained incredible momentum, and it took me deeper and deeper into it until I totally let it overcome me. I took it to a place of complete combustion. I had a profound experience of touching the artery of the universe. After that I was just changed forever.

But people want to hear a bit more about the mechanism. What did it feel like? Let me try to say more about how that went.

What if you let the Qi have total permission to express in any way? You let go of any directing of it? And what if you saw that you had to let go of all ideas to do that? Who has the courage to do that? Who can be wide open?

And you slowly gain confidence in that unknown.

In the midst of it, you feel like this ghost, this transparent field being taken over, being made translucent by God. You are giving up control to be overcome by God’s, or the Dharma’s hand guiding. I found myself floating on the wings of the Dharma. And joy in that translucence, that Qi flowing, with no obstruction, is unmistakably right, and we see that I am not important. I am not important. There is no need for me. There is only this light there shining, loving. We are living inside of this huge life, and we slowly surrender to it.

I’m not at all talking about someone who has a sudden realization in their bedroom one day. That’s nice but just a little hint. I’m talking about a huge cellular transformation process.

The more I gave in, the more Qi there was, the more the tanden developed. The more the heart opened. So giving in to the process was completely necessary, as it was just what was absolutely needed to happen, and it gained momentum, became sharper and sharper, until, like a balloon being blown up, it burst.

No force could have created this.

The process has to mature on its own.

And I was this ghost, this light, wandering around, the ground pulling me into the center of the earth, the heavens pulling me up. Having no idea what was happening. Functioning just fine. Working just fine. Being with people, using my brain, just fine. But also gone gone gone gone.

But what about this mechanism when we leave the practice? What’s pulling us into it? Everything seems to pull us into the process that’s happening, the Qi flowing. We are like a missile locked in.

As it gains momentum there is no leaving it. It has its own momentum. If we try to leave this magnetism, we are pulled back into it. It is trying to happen. It is natural. It is just the way things are. The thing itself. We find that there is no practice and then leaving it. It is just what is happening, and we are drilled into it more and more. Our whole life, our every moment, becomes this process.

Surrendering more and more and more until I was ready, I made a choice to give in no matter what, and my system was able to let it happen, and I finally touched it, and everything changed.

I will add here that you must find the confidence to allow all of this to happen and recognize that it is. You have to be able to self reflect and see your bullshit. And see and know things are changing. And when the process takes off, you have to be willing to suspend disbelief and give everything to it. This ability, I have found over the years, is unfortunately pretty rare. I’ve literally seen people with incredible essence refusing to allow the process to blossom. Sort of half enlightened and refusing to go any further and allow it to obliterate them.

It’s not about finding a way to not be hit by lightning. It’s about finding a way to be hit by lightning and being totally wide-open and okay with it.

We think we can’t surrender. But we can.

This is all trying to happen.

After we’ve truly touched it, practice takes on a whole new meaning. It becomes really just this honesty. There really is no practice but being honest. And then we must practice for a long time to allow it to complete.

After that, instead of reaching out to understand life, I found information floating in the air to touch and interact with. The old Masters from the koans were there holding me, ushering me deeper. Time and space changed. Form changed. My sense of energy changed. I feel I am living in this magical realm.

I’m nothing special and don’t need to be.

What I thought was Qi flow was so much more than that. It was reality, God, The Dharma, Buddha, the Dao. I don’t really care what it’s called.

So I hope you see that what I discovered was not Buddhist or Zen. I saw in my training that we do not need Zen. We only need to give ourselves totally to what is happening. I do think monastic training is a wonderful venue for working on this, and I am incredibly grateful to the Roshi, but I saw that one could, if honest enough, do it anywhere.

We can all touch this place. The realization is beyond the teachings. I feel like what I experienced had nothing to do with religion or any culture. I feel that in my work I am attempting to share the essence and give people a way to grapple with their experience. Often people who don’t live in the monastery who practice feel like they never get the essence into their bones. They have to start over for every retreat. But I feel with these energetic body practices, people can do that cellular homework in their lives. I guess I feel like it went so that others don’t have to go.

I thought my training would do one thing. And instead like a tidal wave the universe had its way with me.

You can do it! You can realize why you were born. You can find your own way. I hope this inspires you. Hugs!

Some of you are living two lives

You are a person walking around, working, eating, going to a job, surviving

But there is this hidden life you also have

You don’t show it to people

Unless it spills out accidentally

You are afraid of this second life

If you allow this second life through

you become overwhelmed, fried

But if you do not let it through,

You are locked up, banging against life, a pressure cooker

So you are living half pressure cooker, half uncontrolled and overwhelmed.

You’re like an alien walking around in this skin bag trying to act normal

While being hit by lightning all of the time

People, spirituality, tells us to relax, to get centered, find control, but there is this aspect there that we know we must face.

Something immense

It’s not about just turning down the volume

We feel this huge life

At a certain point, that need to face it hits a critical mass and everything must stop until that is done.

For some of this, that is the Great Doubt

And so we are drawn to practice, often with great resistance

And so we do these practices, we do this time, to begin to face it.

A container to be able to look at it.

In this body, I step into the unknown and feel, slowly testing, being burned, being blown wide open, like a live wire!

Can we let it be there? Will I explode? Will I die?

Slowly we are able to be with it.

Let the horses run free.

Let the wildness be there.

Open up the box

There is so much energy in that. So much power.

Like hitting a primordial vein of existence

As we see, over a long time, that we can let all of that wildness come through,

that it is okay to let it all rip,

Our cells begin to be spacious enough to be with it

see the joy in it, the liberation in being wide open.

Like finding the sun shining from inside of us

Like allowing a black hole to implode and then bursting open

This is not something easily conveyed, like hearing with your eyes, seeing with your ears

Over time, more and more confident, our faith grows, our experience changes us

We’re on a mission that no one can do for us.

We have teachers, mentors, to know where we’ve been and to encourage us to keep going

We know we’ve got to give in to it, more and more.

There is no turning back.

There are no half measures.

We somehow know when we finally truly face it, we will be obliterated

But we must face it.

One day, we’ll feel down to the atoms of existence and be shattered

Be penetrated by everything

And when we come through it, we’ll have touched something invincible

Something unknowable, a complete shift in perception

I believe in you.

If you don’t know what I mean by the two lives, at some point you will.

You can do it.

You can find this light, this liberation, our birthright.

All of your intensity, all of that going through you, is not a problem.

It is the Universe, God, there waiting for you to finally listen.

I’m offering a canvas for you to explore, a space to face it