Come Swallow the Moon with Me!

On April 1st of this year, I will be facilitating a new moon healing retreat at the remarkable Chozen Retreat. We have named this retreat “Swallow the Moon” after one of the profound cultivation practices we will experience throughout the weekend. Yes, we will swallow the moon, and in doing so, we will come to know her in a deeper and more profound way than ever before. 

Retreating with awareness and curiosity into the new, mostly dark moon can revive and develop our instinctual and intuitive relationship to the entire world and to ourselves.  It can create a direct experience of the cyclical nature of time, and in doing so, our relationship to time’s ebb and flow. 

When hanging out with the moon our vital functions and other exterior inputs are quieted. As we retreat, we explore, we engage, and we cultivate our archaic consciousness. It is here we can notice the pulse at the center of the stillness.  It is here we can experience the universe giving birth to itself through us.  It is here that we foster the primordial, undifferentiated wholeness, the limitless love, that lies at the core of our existence. 

This cannot be experienced by reading blogs or books or studied with equipment or measured or dissected. It is the domain of connection, compassion, and love. It is a descent into the slow, still dance of the Dao. 

Nurturing our relationship to the moon can assist in assuaging our modern anxiety. When quiet and curious we can learn from the whispers of the ancient wise ones that exist on the deepest level of our consciousness.

The moon also teaches us the beauty of the constancy of change and graces us with a way to truly understand our place in the cosmos.

Moon can connect us in the most conscious way possible to ourselves. It can clarify our thinking, expand our imagination, enhance our senses, ease our embodied emotions, and connect us to our breath and spirit. 

The moon has been a common experience for Earth beings throughout all of our existence, comforting and connecting us to the continuous flux that is our shared human existence here on Earth. 

When we pause and take notice, the moon will likely plunge us deep below our superficial desperations and into the essential core that perfumes us with a positive attitude and awareness that is the foundation of a happy, holy existence. 

Many misinterpret the concept of keeping a positive attitude during our life’s journey as a message to avoid all emotional content. Love is at the very core of our being. It is there to be dropped into at any moment. It is the template on which all human struggles occur. Our emotions, the anger, the fear, the grief, the worry that surge to the surface during our struggle with our challenges, our illnesses, and our physical and emotional selves provide an opportunity for expression and assimilation that when wholly engaged can be healing. 

The deep healing process plays out simultaneously on the physical, mental, and spiritual levels. Struggling with illness is difficult but also allows us an accelerated opportunity for healing and embracing the totality of the human experience in a heightened way. 

A retreat, especially one held with the moon in a space so consciously and lovingly created as the Chozen Sanctuary, allows a similar opportunity to engage this deep healing process. 

Of course, a retreat is a conscious decision and under our control in a way that illness is not. But there is something to be said for the choosing as well. To consciously and intentionally retreat to a place, both internally and externally, with a shared group is a challenge to our ordinary selves living our ordinary lives. The radical shift in the external environment allows for profound and deep internal exploration of all the processes that make us human. To collectively and individually explore and engage the moon through a myriad of meditation and cultivation practices provides the grace and space for the harmonious transformation of the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual for each of us as individuals and for the group as a whole. 

What ultimately animates me about the retreat process is the unknown that will provide unique opportunities for our collective and individual journey.  The mystery of our internal and external cosmos that unfolds and enfolds us all provides an extraordinary opportunity to connect deeply with my whole self, with the whole self of others, and with the wholeness that exists outside of all of us. It is through this deep connection that we can plant the seeds of lasting change in how we embrace the certainty and uncertainty that is the constancy in our lives and the life of our precious Earth. 

Click here to find out more about the retreat!

We still have a few spaces available for the retreat in the Safari Camp! Wake up in nature with our off-the-grid glamping experience, including a well-appointed safari tent and all the programming, activities, meals, and the extraordinary grounds of the Chozen Sanctuary.

Safari Camp: Glamping at Chozen Retreat

Join us at the Summit!

Let me begin by saying this, “ I am blessed! I am deeply grateful”

Twenty-five years ago we officially launched NSEV Healing with a small group of healers and students who committed to spending a year together studying, exploring, and immersing, individually and collectively,  into the extraordinary vessels. It was an awesome group and it was a truly extraordinary year that culminated in a week spent together in Rio Caliente, Mexico. In the course of that year, we developed many of the ideas and materials that are still in use today. 

 In the course of the next two and half decades, NSEV Healing grew into a global community. We gathered in yoga studios, medical schools, acupuncture colleges, ashrams, the ballrooms of grand hotels, and in exotic locations around the world. While we remain a mildly feral and loosely connected organization on the outside our interior worlds and our lives have become deeply connected. We’ve lived life together, experiencing and processing the death of beloved members, supporting each other through illnesses, and celebrating our individual and collective milestones and successes. Through it all, we were supported by each other and with the wisdom of the ancients manifesting in new ways through our community. 

We’ve grown much larger and more importantly much closer during the past eighteen months of living and caring for each other and others during a global pandemic. We have continued to come together (albeit online) to share, study, cultivate and celebrate! We have continued to explore our interior worlds and the world in which we live, together!

So how can we best celebrate our 25 years as a community?  By doing what we do best: gathering online for a weekend of celebration and inviting all of our colleagues, patients, family, and friends to join us!

Our NSEV Healing community is blessed with extraordinary teachers and healers and 20 of them have generously offered to share their wisdom and healing energy with us at the Summit. We’ll be meditating, cultivating with innovative Qi Gong, Nei Gong, and Lao Gong practices, exploring topics as diverse as The Astrology of the Lunar Phases, The Akashic Records, Polyvagal Theory, and the Holism Reductionism Dance (check out the complete offering below) As we always do,  we will close the weekend with a shared, group meditation and healing session with live music from Jared Bistrong!

NSEV Healing through the years!

Click here to join us at the Summit! It’s free to attend live!

Our Summit Schedule!

Musings on the Way

I have been enamored with the Tao, without knowing it as such, since early childhood. Often, as a young boy, I would sit in the bushes in my yard, stare at the moon and clouds and sing songs to the flowers for hours on end. My young mind would fill and then empty with all kinds of thoughts and thinking. I got into the habit of watching my thoughts come and go, like the clouds. Each month, I would watch the moon grow and die, and felt there was magic in her path and knew that just “being” with her was healing.  No one taught me this, it just happened naturally, as I hung out spending way too much time (according to the ethic of the day) doing absolutely nothing. 

As a young adult, the autodidact in me began to read and study everything I could on philosophy, ancient wisdom traditions, metaphysics, natural healing and acupuncture, sacred geometry, Jungian archetypes, world spirituality, Eastern mysticism, the divine feminine, the extraordinary vessels and just about anything that would nourish my curiosity and soul and expand my growing repertoire of world views.   Along the way, I began the semi-formal study of acupuncture and Chinese medicine. Thirty-nine years ago I became an acupuncturist. As a young acupuncturist, I relied on what I had read and been taught by my teachers. After several years I began introducing some of the wisdom I gathered from my direct experience and study of the extraordinary vessels into my professional practice. I also began an earnest personal exploration and cultivation of the Tao and the extraordinary vessels. 

Hanging with Jung

After what seemed then like a very long time the “written-centric”  way no longer worked for me.  I still found tremendous beauty, power, and wisdom in the written word, the great wisdom of those who had traveled these roads before me. But, my explorations of the extraordinary vessels and my direct immersion into the limitless depths of the Tao began demanding something very different from me. Increasingly,  I  found myself absorbed and returning to my childhood path of just hanging out. A path looking inward and outward with an empty mind and loving heart. A  path abundant with internal processing and external discernment. A path that led to the dissolving of dogma and the embracing of the essential mystery of the Way. 

I now spend many hours daily (the early morning hours before sunrise) in personal cultivation and many more hours weekly cultivating my relationship with the world; as a family member, friend, member of society, and as part of my professional acupuncture practice and teaching.  In the early years, I was hesitant to “go out on a limb” clinging to the traditional texts and rudimentary teachings that I had been blessed with from masters of the Way. In more recent years, as I grew older and much deeper in my process, I started taking more teaching risks, allowing my inner insights, realizations, and inspiration to lead the way. 

I believe, after all these years, my relationship to this path has evolved and developed and deepened.  I have been blessed with directly witnessing other individuals and groups of individuals directly experiencing the Tao. Directly experiencing the essential mystery which is the heart and womb of existence. Directly experiencing the ten thousand things and the no thing which are the Way. That this can be facilitated online and across time and space throughout the globe is something well beyond any thing I ever imagined.

Experiencing any “thing” or “no thing” directly is profound and humbling beyond words. Navigating the Tao, it turns out is simple. The Way is simple. Dissolving our old, complicated, and habituated patterns of the mind and body; moving through and beyond the ever-increasing distractions of the unnatural, modern world; accepting and letting go of all that we do not need; these things are not necessarily easy. Just simple. 

Simple as in, simply thinking, simply imagining, simply sensing, simply processing emotions, simply moving the body and simply connecting to the breath with simple awareness and simple gratitude and simple grace. 

Simple as simply emptying oneself of one’s self and simply immersing directly into the simple pulse of the simple cosmos as it manifests simply within us and around us. 
 

Why we gather: Entering the Vessels Online

I first experienced the extraordinary vessels as a cultivation practice in 1983. I was in love. My yearning and search for anything and everything extraordinary vessel was on. There was very little in writing and so my quest included asking every acupuncture or meditation teacher I met what they knew of the extraordinary vessels. In 1986 I met a teacher with a family lineage of using the vessels as a cultivation and clinical tool. Over the course of a few brief meetings, I learned the basics of this system. These basics, these very brief interactions, form the foundation of what has become my life’s work.

I began teaching Entering the Vessels, as a weekend workshop, in 1992—twenty-nine years ago. Our first online course was a little over a year ago. I am excited to be presenting it again this summer!

The following is a transcript of the opening session of our online Entering the Vessels Online Course.

Welcome to the NSEV Healing Academy and welcome to our NSEV healing community. We are a community and like all communities, we have our personal agendas, our reasons, our motivations, our desires, our expectations, or maybe we have none of those things for taking this course. But I can tell you that often what our agenda is transforms during this experience. Your professional interests will become personal and your personal interests will become professional.
. But for this way, for this path, this medicine, this healing, this cultivation to be real, it has to apply to everybody, to every being, all ages, all professions, all gender identities, all nationalities, all socioeconomic statuses, all the world's tribes coming together. 

To the health care providers and the healing professionals, I say we have so much to learn from our patients. When we gather together in this way, exploring our personal and collective humanity, our beingness on this planet together, we all benefit in ways beyond description. To the non-acupuncturist, I say, and to all of you really, even when you are not exactly sure what is going on, you can listen to the language. Let the metaphor wrap you, feel the vibration of the language in your being, feel it in your breath, and your spirit. Let it speak to you in that way.

In fact, it is my expectation, I do not know if I would call it my hope, but it is realistic that all of you will feel confused or lost at times, and this is a good thing. This is a moment of what my dear friend, Stephen Cowan, calls, "I do not know yet." It is an invitation to the unknowable into your life. It is inviting curiosity into your being. To the acupuncturist, I say we have amazing and extraordinary and very serious cultivators and cultivation instructors in this course. We all have so much, I know I do, to learn from them. Here we are, acupuncturists, mental health professionals, bodyworkers, energy healers, yogis, business professionals, activists, parents, children, brothers, sisters, seekers of all kinds coming together to explore these ancient wisdom traditions. Coming together to explore these vessels.

Sharing Lao Gong during our first Entering the Vessels Course

We are coming together to explore the most primordial aspects of ourselves, the most primordial aspects of our families, the most primordial aspects of our communities, and the most primordial aspects of our place on this beautiful planet, and the most primordial aspects of our place in this great cosmos. I believe this worldview, this path, this way holds a space and a time for everyone. In prehistoric times, and these prehistoric times still live deep within our being, communities gather around the fire, the life-sustaining fire, the life-gate fire under the moon, the very same moon that we gather under now. They gather to share stories, to figure out how they were going to spend their day, to organize their communities, and to discuss the way of the universe. Like in ancient times, we gather now in a completely different way around this new fire, the fire of our computers and our cell phones, that glow, but still under the very same moon, across time and space, but in the now-ness of this moment, whenever this moment is for you. We are seeking the source of our commonality, the commonality of our thinking, of our imaginations, of our senses, of our embodied emotional worlds, of our breath, and our one undivided spirit.

It is with this intention and with this invitation that I invite you to spend the next six weeks exploring the vessels together with all of us.

Entering the Vessels Summer 2021 is Enrolling Now!

Meeting the World: The Holy Work of the Yangwei

““No one yet has made a list of places where the extraordinary happens. …It likes the outdoors. It likes the concentrating mind. It likes solitude. …It isn’t that it would disparage comforts or the set routines of the world, but that its concern is directed to another place. Its concern is the edge, and the making of a form out of the formlessness that is beyond the edge.”
”

— Mary Oliver

Differentiating the undifferentiated. Fashioning form out of the formless.  Easing beyond the edge. Embodying the single cycle within the limitless swirl.  Creating some thing out of no thing.  Consciously creating context out of the contextless.  

Such is the deep and holy work of the Yangwei. 

Existing boundaries are the pre-existing differentiating work of those who came before us. Moving beyond the existing boundary allows us to engage our own capacity for “boundary making”, our own capacity for the creation of context. 

An elegant and engaged and unpolluted Yangwei responds with innate intelligence to all manifest contexts within time and space.  Our Yangwei allows us to navigate gracefully beyond the edge of our existing, comfortable contexts into the less familiar, less differentiated world.  A harmonious Yangwei moves confidently and quiescently into the undifferentiated wholeness that enfolds and embraces us all. 

The creative process (the process of creation) moves us and requires us to move from the direct experience of the world in its formless form of undifferentiated wholeness or less differentiated wholeness towards the making of form, the creation of context, of meaning.  To an extent each “creating of form” is a re-creation of our original forming of ourselves. To an extent each “creating of context” is the re-creation of the original formation of our cosmos. It is a process of that must be expressed at its earliest stages symbolically, then metaphorically and finally, when at all possible, through the formation of structured language, structured process, structured institutions, and structured structures in the way of gates, roads, buildings and the world we “live” in. Each structuring, each making of a form out of the formlessness, moves the edge and requires us to reach further into the depths of our undifferentiated space to move beyond the edge. The human capacity for doing so (stored in the Chong., Ren, Du)  has become less fluid, less graceful, as we “settle into” and “settle for”  the boundaries we have constructed. 

“Our capacity to meet and creatively define and construct our world has become calcified, rigid, tamed, more civilized.”

Our capacity to meet and creatively define and construct our world has become calcified, rigid, tamed, more civilized.  We “know” what we “like” in advance of the experience. Our ideas are constructed and rigidly adhered to, no matter the reality of the world as it flows at us. We export our expertise to navigate the world to outside “experts”.  There is a comfort to be found in all of this to be sure. There is a sense of security or order. The Way is mapped and therefore safer and more predictable. But the Map is not the territory. Our ever-increasing reliance on preexisting and pre-constructed maps of the Way has deeply constrained and contacted our capacity to engage the world and navigating our Way with grace and ease.  We are embodying this hyper-contraction and it manifests in our lives and bodies as a deep sense of isolation, depression, stress, stiffness, pains, headaches, and a loss of connection with the world in which we live. 

We can, by cultivating our Yangwei, that deep place where we meet the world, with curiosity and careful attention, clarify our thinking, liberate our imaginations, and enliven our senses. We can dissolve these habituated and calcified patterns and once again creatively and easefully make ourselves at home in the world.

Learn more about the Yangwei and all the extraordinary vessels with Entering the Vessels, Dan’s upcoming 6-week online course!

Jared and Dan talk sound.

I hope you enjoy this excerpt of a conversation I recently had with my friend, Sound Healer, Jared Bistrong. Jared will be presenting a live sound healing workshop online, April 24, 2021 2pm-5pm . Sound Immersion Workshop Link

Dan: When did the didgeridoo come into the picture for you?


Jared: The didgeridoo came in about two years after I'd gotten into the drum. I had a friend that I was drumming with, my best drumming partner. He was a traveler. He traveled the world a lot.
One summer, he went off to New Zealand and to Australia. He always came back with some new instruments that he would buy from somewhere, some exotic instruments. This time, he came back with a didgeridoo. He was already playing it. It was good. Immediately I could tell it was a powerful instrument. 

At first, I didn't take to it that much. Then I decided I wanted to start blowing on his one day. I immediately got started getting the sound. I was like, "Oh, this feels really good."

At that time, there weren't really any didgeridoos for sale anywhere. In fact, there wasn't even the internet. It was pre-internet. It wasn't like you could just go and buy. There weren't didgeridoos around. Nobody had seen a didgeridoo. You might have seen it on-- who knows? Probably, never. Even to this day, people haven't seen didgeridoos.



I have a brother that's in the tree business, the same brother that actually introduced me to the drum. He's played a big role in my music and sounds. 

I was home on vacation and went to his place where he had all of this wood. He had wood stacked up everywhere. He had a pile of bamboo that was left over from Hurricane Andrew clean up because that's what the business he was in.

I grabbed a couple of pieces. I made my first didgeridoo right there. We just kind of broke it out. I made my first one. And then--



Dan: So you made your first didgeridoo out of bamboo that had been destroyed in Hurricane Andrew?



Jared: Salvaged. Yes. Yes. Destroyed

.

Dan: And salvaged. It's really interesting, because the didgeridoos, traditionally, were found instruments correct?



Jared: Yes. They're found instruments. Yes.



Dan: -- that had been eaten out by termites. 



Jared: Yes.



Dan: What was it? It wasn't bamboo, originally. Were they bamboo?



Jared: Traditionally, they were from the eucalyptus tree.



Dan: That is right. But they had been found, originally. I just find the correlation in modern times - in its own context - from the ashes of Hurricane Andrew. For those who don't know, Hurricane Andrew was the great hurricane of our lifetime, right, in Miami. So you made your didgeridoo. Then what?



Jared: Well, I made my didgeridoo. I came back to school. I was up at Florida State University. At the same time, I had started teaching writing classes. 

I was just getting ready to become a teacher. The didgeridoo was my teacher in the sense that no one had seen it, and the sound is fascinating. Once I started playing, I picked it up really quickly. Within a couple of weeks, I was already circular-breathing and playing.

I carried the didgeridoo around everywhere I went. A lot of people asked, "What is that?" "Well, you play the didgeridoo." Then the first thing that people have when they hear the didgeridoo is questions. It put me in a position where I had to know what I was talking about or, at least, sound like I knew what I was talking about.

I was practicing all day. This was my development as a teacher talking in front of a group, sounding teacherly, right? It just put me in a position where people had questions. They were very interested.

Then I began making them. I drove down to Miami. I had a pickup truck. I loaded up a hundred pieces of bamboo. I brought them back to Tallahassee. A friend of mine and I just started making didgeridoos.




Dan: So you're playing what you're making.



Jared: Yes. I was playing what I was making. I still am today. Over the pandemic, I've made about twenty-five didgeridoos

.

Dan: A lot of other instruments too?



Jared: Yes





Dan: You have a strong natural curiosity. You follow that curiosity into depth. You share that curiosity with others. Others' questions initiate and instigate and inspire your own curiosity even further. 

Now, you have this deep relationship with the drums and the didgeridoo. For anybody who has ever seen Jared play or experienced him in person, he becomes a conduit. He transforms when he plays the drum and when he plays the didgeridoo. There's a commonality between the two, but there's also a difference. Jared, 
since I've known you, you've kept acquiring new vehicles for producing sounds - we call them - instruments. Yes? 



Jared: Yes.



Dan: I know you just keep adding them.



Jared: I sure do. This is how I see it. The foundation of my sound healing practice is two main instruments. The drum, that for me, will help cultivate that expression of energy, right, that represents the Yang.



Dan: Right. Yes. Yes, the "dai". We call it the "dai" but the expression. Right. 



Jared: That's right, the "dai". This is something that I grew up doing, right? It is expressing myself in the physical. And so the cultivation of that yang physical energy was sports and all that type of stuff and then the drum.

 On the other hand, the didgeridoo, for me, was a very internal journey when I first started doing it. It demands such a level of breathing. You shut your eyes. You travel the universe. You go inward when playing. Very yin.


Dan: How far were you in your playing the didgeridoo when you became capable of doing the circular breathing?



Jared: Just a couple of weeks. It's very intuitive. It was an intuitive thing for me. When I teach people to play the didgeridoo. I always tell them, "What happens is people get stuck in their head. It's not something you do from your head. We have to get rid of overthinking. The head gets in the way. Then people can't get in touch with that intuitive side. It's a natural thing. You can just sit there and play. Naturally, you'll pick up the circular breathing, because it's a natural kind of impulse that comes. That happens.”

You can watch the full interview here:

Jared & Dan Talk Sound

Check out Jared’s online NSEVA Sound Healing Course Here:

https://www.nsevhealingacademy.com/courses/Exploratory-Sound-Immersion

The dance of the Tao, living cycles, and cultivating sleep

This is an excerpt from Chinese Herbs for Peaceful Sleep, an online course with Daniel J. Atchison-Nevel

A very important concept that we are going to discuss is that life is experienced and lived in cycles. Sleep itself exists as part of that cycle, is a cycle of its own, and has many cycles existing within it. In this worldview, human bein exist and may be viewed as the interplay between the descending Yang forces of the heavens from above and the ascending Yin forces of Earth from below. This interplay evolved out of the undifferentiated wholeness. Out of the undifferentiated wholeness evolved the first division and then out of this division evolved the dance of the descending Yang forces from above and the ascending Yin forces from below. The dance of the Tao. 

This interplay between the descending Yang from above and the ascending Yin from below birthed and continues to birth an endless series of cycles. One of the ways we can view human beings is as a focal point existing within these cycles and as part of the cycles. So this is our worldview. We view humans as these embodied fields or these focal points. It is a critically important point to remember that we are simultaneously embedded in the whole and contain the whole within us. That means, we are inseparable from the whole, we are part of a whole, but we also contain the whole within us.

We are also simultaneously moving through the world, and receiving the world as we move through it. We are moving through the world and we are receiving the world as it moves through us, and these are very important principles to keep in mind as we move through all of this information. So as the world is moving through us, as we are moving out to the world and as we are receiving the world as it moves through us, we are constantly relating to and reacting to both the world out there and the world in here.

There is really not a difference between the world out there and in the world in here. It is really just a point of focus. Where we are placing our attention at any time? In reality, we are always embedded in the whole. We are either focusing and attending to the world outside of ourselves or we are focusing on and tending to the world within ourselves. Now, in reality, and in our everyday activities, both of these are going on simultaneously. Even as we are reacting to exterior phenomena, we are having interior world reactions that are happening, and even as we focus inward, we are reacting to things as they happen in the outside world.

When we sleep, the primary balance of what we are doing shifts from moving through the world as we do in the awakened state to receiving the world in our sleeping state. It is not that we are not still a little bit moving out into the world but primarily we are receiving the world when we sleep. This is one fundamental difference between being awake and asleep. We are in a more Yin, more receptive state as opposed to our awakened state, where we are more Yang, acting out into the world. When we consciously place ourselves in a meditative state, we are moving from a more active movement through the world state to the receiving the world state. In a meditative state, we may move from an inward focus to an external focus, from a moving in the world state to a receiving the world. state. There is an ebb and flow to this, perhaps moving in and out, acting on, and then receiving. Sleep is different. It is a steady movement from acting on the world to receiving the world. A steady movement from focusing and tending to the exterior world to focusing on and tending to the interior world. 

This is one of the reasons, from our worldview, that makes quality sleep critically important. When we sleep we are meeting a deep primordial need to focus our attention on really cultivating, paying attention to, and tending to our inner world. When we do not have peaceful sleep when we are not cultivating quality sleep dissonances and imbalances from awake time do not get addressed and tended to. Disharmonies arise in our relationship to our interior world. These disharmonies can manifest in our awake lives as mood disorders, diffuse anxieties, stress patterns, and a variety of functional disharmonies including autoimmune and immune disorders. 

To learn more visit Chinese Herbs for Peaceful Sleep 

3 Breaths to Reduce Stress

I’ve been sharing this quick meditation with so many family members, friends, students, and patients these days I decided to record it and share it in this way too. I find myself personally doing this meditation multiple times a day and find it invaluable in living life to the fullest and with the greatest ease during these uncertain and challenging times. I welcome you to give it a try and please let me know if it helps! 

Learn more about 3 Womb Cultivation in our online Entering the Vessels 6 Week Course! Now Enrolling! Click here for more information!

Speaking the Vessels: Extraordinary Vessel Haiku

The extraordinary vessels are one of the world’s oldest systems of energetic theory and practice evolving originally in ancient China. A simple but profound yin yang paradigm, extraordinary vessel theory represents an integrated, holistic worldview where the universe is viewed as constantly giving birth to itself.

The eight extraordinary vessels are the primordial fields at the root of the interplay of yin and yang as manifest in the dance between the descending yang forces of heaven and the ascending Yin forces of earth.

In this worldview, we are all viewed as embodied fields. Each of us is a microcosm of the macrocosm. The extraordinary vessels are our microcosmic primordial fields in which we relate to and process the primordial fields of the macrocosmic world. The extraordinary vessels were used in cultivation practices (shamanism, alchemy, qi gong) long before they appeared as part of acupuncture, where they are the deepest, most primordial pathways.

Throughout history, the extraordinary vessels have been explored, understood, and expressed in limitless ways. We have very detailed descriptions that are utilized in a clinical context that include somatic and non-somatic signs and symptoms and comprehensive anatomical and physiological descriptions, the more metaphoric, poetic, and symbolic language used to describe their manifestation as primordial fields and the direct experience of their essence that is experienced through cultivation. 

Today we utilize the extraordinary vessels in a clinical setting to assist in a wide variety of health and wellness challenges. We also continue the tradition of exploring and engaging the extraordinary vessels through cultivation practices that harmonize the breath, our embodied emotional worlds, and our minds. We also carry on the tradition of expressing and communicating these direct experiences of the vessels that occurs at times with these cultivations through art, poetry, and prose.

I offer these haiku as small tastes of the spirit and essence that emerged from my cultivation and direct experience of the extraordinary vessels.

Check out Entering the Vessel! Enrolling now!

Why we gather: Entering the Vessels Online

The following is a transcript of the opening of our first session in our online Entering the Vessels course. Our Winter 2021 course is enrolling now!

Welcome to the NSEV Healing Academy and welcome to our NSEV healing community. We are a community and like all communities, we have our personal agendas, our reasons, our motivations, our desires, our expectations, or maybe we have none of those things for taking this course. But I can tell you that often what our agenda is transforms during this experience. Your professional interests will become personal and your personal interests will become professional.
. But for this way, for this path, this medicine, this healing, this cultivation to be real, it has to apply to everybody, to every being, all ages, all professions, all gender identities, all nationalities, all socioeconomic statuses, all the world's tribes coming together. 

“When we gather together in this way, exploring our personal and collective humanity, our beingness on this planet together, we all benefit in ways beyond description.”

To the health care providers and the healing professionals, I say we have so much to learn from our patients. When we gather together in this way, exploring our personal and collective humanity, our beingness on this planet together, we all benefit in ways beyond description. To the non-acupuncturist, I say, and to all of you really, even when you are not exactly sure what is going on, you can listen to the language. Let the metaphor wrap you, feel the vibration of the language in your being, feel it in your breath, and your spirit. Let it speak to you in that way.

In fact, it is my expectation, I do not know if I would call it my hope, but it is realistic that all of you will feel confused or lost at times, and this is a good thing. This is a moment of what my dear friend, Stephen Cowan, calls, "I do not know yet." It is an invitation to the unknowable into your life. It is inviting curiosity into your being. To the acupuncturist, I say we have amazing and extraordinary and very serious cultivators and cultivation instructors in this course. We all have so much, I know I do, to learn from them. Here we are, acupuncturists, mental health professionals, bodyworkers, energy healers, yogis, business professionals, activists, parents, children, brothers, sisters, seekers of all kinds coming together to explore these ancient wisdom traditions. Coming together to explore these vessels.

Sharing Lao Gong during our first Entering the Vessels Course

We are coming together to explore the most primordial aspects of ourselves, the most primordial aspects of our families, the most primordial aspects of our communities, and the most primordial aspects of our place on this beautiful planet, and the most primordial aspects of our place in this great cosmos. I believe this worldview, this path, this way holds a space and a time for everyone. In prehistoric times, and these prehistoric times still live deep within our being, communities gather around the fire, the life-sustaining fire, the life-gate fire under the moon, the very same moon that we gather under now. They gather to share stories, to figure out how they were going to spend their day, to organize their communities, and to discuss the way of the universe. Like in ancient times, we gather now in a completely different way around this new fire, the fire of our computers and our cell phones, that glow, but still under the very same moon, across time and space, but in the now-ness of this moment, whenever this moment is for you. We are seeking the source of our commonality, the commonality of our thinking, of our imaginations, of our senses, of our embodied emotional worlds, of our breath, and our one undivided spirit.

It is with this intention and with this invitation that I invite you to spend the next six weeks exploring the vessels together with all of us.

Entering the Vessels Winter 2021 is Enrolling Now!