Tami Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is John Prendergast. John is a psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, former professor of psychology at California Institute for Integral Studies, and editor-in-chief of Undivided: The Online Journal of Nonduality and Psychology. With Sounds True, John has published a new book entitled In Touch: How to Tune iI to Inner Guidance of Your Body and Trust Yourself.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, John and I spoke about the four markers or gateways of what he calls “inner knowing.” John gave us a taste of each one of these markers: relaxed groundedness, openheartedness, inner alignment, and spaciousness. John also talked about inquiring into and working with our core limiting beliefs and, finally, how we can free ourselves from the deep conditioning we have been exposed to—and develop a sense of deep self-trust. Here’s my conversation with John Prendergast:
John, in your new book, you help people tune in to something you call “our inner knowing.” So, what is our inner knowing? Tell me what you mean by that.
John Prendergast: Our inner knowing is what sometimes has been called “the small, still voice within.” It’s a very quiet knowing that’s different than the conditioned mind. It’s a different quality of knowing. It’s much quieter. It doesn’t explain itself. It doesn’t rationalize itself. And yet, it’s authoritative as well.
Often, we don’t hear it so much in words, as we have it as a felt sense in our body. It can relate to very practical matters—decisions that we’re making in ordinary life, whether we want to take a particular job or be with a particular partner. But it also can guide us in terms of our understanding of our depths, in terms of our psychological process—of our feelings [and] in terms of getting in touch with what we’re actually experiencing. Even more deeply, I would say it is our way of knowing ourself most intimately.
So, our nature has a quality of being and of knowing. Our inner knowing is an essential quality of that. It’s really our inner authority, I would say.
So, any teachers that we look to for guidance—and there are some wonderful teachers—are in touch with that inner guidance with themself. Outer guides are in touch with their inner guides, with their inner knowing. It’s really our inner authority. You could say it’s our inner teacher [and] inner guru as well.
TS: Now, you’re making a distinction between this felt sense of knowing—the still, small voice within; this inner authority—and our discursive thinking. Can you help our listeners know, in their own experience, how they can make that distinction when they’re tuning in inside?
JP: Well, one of the characteristics of more discursive thinking is it’s very strategic, it’s very goal-oriented, and it’s also very judgmental. This is actually the nature of the conditioned mind. It’s what it’s designed for. It’s designed to assess different possibilities and choose the best one. But, it also has a tendency to be very moralistic and judgmental.
So, we can always detect the presence of this more discursive, conditioned quality of thinking because it has a “should” in it—some ideal against which we are measuring the actual. This is one way to notice the difference—it’s just to see that this is our conditioned thinking.
In contrast to that—as I was suggesting before—inner knowing is not making any kind of argument. It doesn’t assert itself in any particular way, and it’s not attached to a particular outcome. It’s not strategic or goal-oriented. It’s much more about being attuned with what’s unfolding in the moment.
So, it just has a much quieter, interior feel to it. It doesn’t explain itself. Maybe that helps a little bit.
And they can feel it—this is one of the things I’ve noticed in my work with clients and my own internal work: the body has a sense of this. It has a felt sense of it—this holistic sense of knowing. It shows up in rather characteristic ways—differently for different people, certainly, because we all have a different approach to self-knowledge.
But it was fascinating for me, over the years, to notice that when people start getting in touch with this inner knowing, they would begin to report and experience sudden, subjective, somatic experiences. For instance, when people would start getting in touch with this quiet inner knowing—maybe a sense of their subjective truth—very often there would be a sense of relaxation in the very core of the body and the very interior.
It wasn’t just [that] once attention drops down—it settles down more and more deeply—both into the interior of the body, but also deeper down in the trunk of the body. So, our seat of attention actually feels like it’s dropping down to different levels. People feel more grounded.
There’s a release of some inner contraction and tension, and a resting more and more deeply in a place of being grounded.
So, that for instance [is] one of the qualities I’ve noticed of this inner knowing that distinguishes it from a more mental knowing, which keeps our attention up in the head. In a way, a very easy way to tell is whether one’s attention is localized up in the head or more distributed more in the body—in particular, more deeply into the interior and further down.
Now, I’ve also noticed—in addition to this sense of relaxed groundedness—there’s a sense of inner alignment. It’s like things line up inside. Interestingly, people actually start sitting up without thinking about it.
So, I’ll have people I work with—whether they’re students or clients—and we’ll be in dialogue. They’ll be exploring a particular issue. As they begin to home in on this quiet inner voice and their own inner knowing, they actually start to sit up straight. It’s very interesting. There’s a quality of verticality— of uprightness—that people often experience. And with that, a feeling of aliveness.
This, again, is subtle. But, that sense of aliveness very often accompanies this homing in on the truth.
So, I’ll just [quickly] mention two other qualities, and then we can explore this together more if you like. Another quality is a deepening into the heart center. The heart is a very sensitive instrument and has enormous depths. As we deepen in our knowing, very often we see attentions deepening into the heart and that the heart opens. It softens. It opens and there’s an expansive quality to the heart that sometimes includes emotional qualities of gratitude, joy, appreciation, awe, and wonder.
So, the opening of the heart is another way that we know that we’re getting in touch with our inner knowing. Finally, the other major marker that commonly shows up is a sense of spaciousness. It’s as if the space around our body becomes more vibrant and more felt. We feel ourselves held in a greater space and we feel ourselves as that greater space as well.
So, those are some of the markers or clues—particularly in terms of a felt sense that I’ve noticed in myself and others that I’ve worked with.
TS: Now, it’s interesting, John, to think of those as “markers,” as you say, or signals that we’re getting in touch with our inner knowing. It seems like they’re also gateways—if you will—that we could use each one of those signals to actually help ground us, to help root us, to help point us towards our inner knowing. Do you think that’s true?
JP: This is absolutely true. It’s like they’re portals. That’s right. You can go more deeply into any of them and come into more intimate connection with yourself.
For instance, if we deepen in our relaxation and we deepen into this sense of ground, it just keeps opening. It’s really quite remarkable. It’s as if there’s deeper and deeper dimensions of the ground that open—subtler dimensions of the ground. We feel more and more a sense of stability and connectedness and sense of reality—and more and more an expansive sense of depth, I would say.
It seems to me that these portals are open-ended—that they just keep opening. The same is true of the heart. I think there’s no end to the opening of the heart—to the breadth and depth of love and gratitude that we can feel. I certainly haven’t discovered a limit of that.
So too in our sense of inner alignment and verticality. It can be more and more refined. We feel ourselves more and more internally on the mark.
And similarly, the sense of space—like external space—is infinite.
So, yes. I would agree. These are all portals as well as markers.
TS: Now, I’m curious, John: these four markers/portals—this came to you in your work with psychotherapy clients and your work with yourself. You saw that you could group, basically, into these four different categories the most important ways that you could identify, “Yes, inner knowing’s going on.” How did you come to these four markers? Because I think they’re really brilliant. So, I’m quite curious about this.
JP: Well, it’s interesting. You know, I think it just gradually unfolded over time. I think it probably had a lot to do with my own unfolding—my own letting go of old contractions and old stories and an awakening of what I would call “the energy body” or “greater sensitivity.”
So, there were various stages in which that happened. I did a lot of meditation when I was in my twenties. I was a TM practitioner and a TM teacher, and I went on these long retreats in Switzerland for three months and six months. During that time, there was just sitting in that silence and doing yoga. There was a growing sensitivity.
Actually, I should step back. As a boy, I think the sensitivity was rather natural and it unfolded in my late boyhood before my adolescence. When I would be falling asleep in bed at night, I would feel my body become extremely expansive—infinitely expansive—and then almost infinitely small, strangely, to the mind. [Also,] infinitely condensed. The common factor was a sense of infinity.
So, somehow this has been wired in this particular body-mind. As I meditated in my twenties, it returned. Trips to India brought that forth more. As I began working decades ago with clients, I had this sense—as I would sit with people—of beginning to resonate or vibrate somatically and emotionally with their experience. This was really quite astonishing to me, because I hadn’t read about it and it certainly wasn’t part of my training as a therapist. I kept it to myself for a number of years.
So, I gradually unfolded. I would just be sitting with people and—as they would start to home in on what felt to be their truth—I started noticing these particular subtle markers. I’m trying to think of any in particular. I think the heart is what I was aware of first. But, there was a deepening and an opening of the heart as people began to attune with their deeper self.
I think the other markers just began to gradually emerge in my awareness. Probably I felt more spacious and more inwardly aligned and more deeply grounded. I was able to sense that unfolding with my clients.
Also, an interesting thing is [that] over the years, I’ve been working with clients and now students who are more explicitly interested in their true nature and awakening. So, I’ve been working with people who are more—I would say—attuned and sensitive. That has probably contributed to the recognition of this subtle cartography.
TS: Now, I want to actually go into each one of these four markers of inner knowing—or we could say “gateways” into the experience of inner knowing—because I think it will be really helpful for our listeners. So, I’d love—if it’s OK with you, John—to actually take us in to each one and give us a real taste—a real, experiential taste.
So, we could start with the first one: relaxed groundedness. How do we feel right now? Relaxed groundedness.
JP: OK. So, I would invite your listeners to sit comfortably and close their eyes. Take a few deep breaths, and just settle in. Feel the weight of the body being held by the chair or sofa or the floor—whatever you’re sitting on.
Let your attention just drop down and in. Each breath is deepening. Let your attention just drop down from the head into your torso, as if you’re breathing directly into your lower belly. You can put your hand on your belly and feel it move as you breathe.
So, you feel your belly and your hips, your legs. In attention, drop down even further—beneath the ground. Let yourself be completely held by something much greater, much deeper.
Notice what happens as you do so—what happens in the interior of your body. You’re going more and more deeply into the ground. It can help to imagine: as if you’re breathing up from the ground and exhaling down into it. Each exhalation opens a deeper dimension of the ground.
Just rest. Let yourself be held. There’s nothing to do and nowhere to go. Nothing to fix or accomplish or figure out. Enjoy the ground.
So, how does that sound, Tami?
TS: Well, it’s deeply relaxing and I noticed quite a bit of a quieting of the mind. What it occurred to me is that, really, the kind of “knowing” you’re describing is different than I think how people associate knowing. “I have a set of instructions in my mind that are a bunch of sentences, words, diagrams.” You’re really describing something different with the word “knowing” here.
JP: Very much so. Yes. It’s interesting. In a way, the first step is [to] trust not knowing. To know the limits of the mind [and] realize that it’s a useful tool. Then, actually to navigate life in a graceful way and to attune with who we really are. A different kind of knowing is needed, and it’s not going to come from the ordinary mind. It’s going to come very spontaneously, unexpectedly, freshly—as if an upwelling from the ground.
It’s very interesting: I was sitting with one of my clients yesterday and he was doing just what I described before. He came in a little slumped and then he began to sit up. He was describing himself feeling a little ungrounded. His lease was coming up on his apartment and he didn’t quite know where he wanted to move. He described himself feeling a little unsettled and a little ungrounded, and not knowing what to do.
So, I just invited him to actually be with the unsettled feeling, and he did. And this is actually a very important point, because we actually don’t want to jump over our experience. It’s a matter of becoming infinite with it and going through it.
So, if we actually open to a feeling of unsettledness and ungroundedness—if we welcome it, if we become intimate with it—without trying to change it, it will of its own release. He was experiencing this. He said, “Yes, I can feel the unsettledness, but I feel a deeper ground as well.” This is the ground of knowing—[a] reminder of my life is really about being devoted to being and from moving from that. So, that knowing just arose spontaneously, without much thought at all. It was deeply validating and reassuring for him, as well.
So, to your point: that’s right. A different kind of knowing arises when we’re willing to not know in our ordinary way. That’s why I [sometimes] tell people that I take refuge in not knowing—in simply being open, present, [and] available. Interestingly, almost always when we’re that available [and] that open—and it takes a certain trust, which takes time—a different kind of knowing begins to appear. We feel it as a subtle inclination, I would say. A kind of subtle movement in one direction or another. It’s not coming from our ordinary intelligence in our conditioned mind.
TS: It’s interesting you talked about your client who came in feeling unsettled, because I could imagine someone dropping into this relaxed groundedness and having some type of response of [discomfort]. Like, “Oh my God.” I don’t know. Maybe they feel like they’re dropping into empty space and it freaks them out—
JP: Exactly!
TS: Something like that. And they think, “God, I’d really like to get back on my iPhone and get on web and do something.” Something like that. “I’m not sure I’m enjoying this conversation on Insights at the Edge anymore.”
So, I’m curious: How can you help people when they hit something—even just in this little exercise of dropping down into the ground? They hit something that freaks them out.
JP: Yes, it’s a great question. Well, the first thing I would do is just normalize it. In fact, we’re deeply ambivalent, I would say, to being deeply grounded because it requires a profound letting go of who we think we are and all of our ordinary way of navigating through life. Further, as attention drops more deeply into the body, we get sometimes into some early conditioning where we felt really abandoned or attacked or there’s some trauma.
So, there’s a lot of resistance actually to being this deeply grounded and this open. Part of it is you go at a pace that people can handle. That’s in my clinical work with people. People have to pace themselves in terms of sitting in this way.
But another is just to normalize it and reassure people [that] if you actually stay with this, the groundlessness itself becomes a portal. We’re talking about portals, and everything can be a portal. Our most difficult and challenging experiences become portals actually to the polarity of that particular quality.
So, if we open and learn to tolerate groundlessness, we will get to a profound sense of groundedness as well. If we open to a sense of instability, we’ll find a remarkable level of stability in ourselves. If we open to feelings of terror—and these are actually the most difficult to tolerate, and it can be helpful then to have someone nearby to help you if you can’t handle it yourself. But if you can breathe through and walk through that terror, there’s a tremendous gift there of its polarity in terms of the deep ground.
So, you’re right. There’s resistance. There’s ambivalence. It really depends on the motivation of the explorer and the kind of conditioning that they’ve gone through.
TS: Now, what would you suggest to someone who—when they hit those spots [and] they go back up into their thinking mind as I described, [starting to figure] out what they’re going to eat, et cetera et cetera et cetera. It’s like, “Enough of this dropping down into the torso and into the earth.”
JP: I would say, “See that it’s a defense,” and that the defense, over time, will not work. So, part of it is the self-honesty to see that it may be that it’s no longer tolerable and you need to take a break. In which case, that’s healthy. But more likely, there’s a belief that one will get lost or swallowed in it, and overwhelmed by it.
Or, alternatively, it’s like, “Why would I want to feel so bad?” We can find endless ways to distract ourselves.
So, there’s a certain honesty, I think. People can check with themselves and notice what they’re doing—that they’re going away from it. Also, to know that eventually you’ll need to come back to it. Everything actually wants to be liberated, I would say. All of our conditioned body-mind is waiting to be touched with understanding and with love and with compassion. Sooner or later, we’ll come around to it again. If we’re interested in the truth and we’re interested in living in integrity—and a growing sense of integration and healing within ourself—then we’ll come back to it.
So, be both kind and honest with yourself. Face the reality of it. If you need help, then seek it. Get support for it, as well.
We’re talking about probably the most challenging aspect of conditioning when we talk about actually opening to the deep ground. But also, the same can be true in terms of plumbing the depths of the heart, because the heart is very sensitive. We’re very open as children—very innocent [and] undefended—and we experience a lot of shocks and disappointments. Gradually, the heart tends to close.
In the spiritual journey and the journey of personal healing as well, that will require that attention deepen into the heart again. We experience to some extent the reason why the heart closed, [along with] those difficult feelings possibly of shame or self-hatred.
So, having the understanding that this is part of the process—that we can’t bypass this, not for long, [and] that we actually need to go through it [and] to feel it in order to heal it—helps the journeyer stay with the process.
TS: OK. So, I really do want to go through all four of these bodily qualities of inner knowing. I think we’ve done a good job on relaxed groundedness. So, pick a second one, John!
JP: All right. Well, let’s go with the heart because I was talking about that.
So, again, I invite you and your listeners to at this time bring your attention to your heart center. This is right in the middle of your chest. We’re not speaking of the physical heart, of course.
Imagine that you can breathe directly into your heart center. Just take a few slow, deep breaths. Reach back. With each breath, let your attention drop in a little more deeply into the heart. This is just about noticing what’s here. It’s not about changing anything. Breathe in, and attention dropping in.
So, there are many levels to the heart and a lot of the heart is concerned with whether we feel loved or liked by ourselves and others. So, we may begin to encounter some of those levels. It’s different for everyone. But, there are subtler and subtler levels, with the breath and the attention dropping in. You may feel attention moving back—further and further back, into the heart. It’s good.
Very often, as we go further back, we actually get to younger and deeper levels developmentally. We may begin to experience a native innocence, a simple joy to be alive, a spontaneous love of ourself and others, a gratitude for being.
If we keep going, it’s interesting: the back of the heart opens up into the vastness. We usually don’t sense behind the heart. Feel your attention moving all the way through and out, opening up. This is what I think of as a “universal heart.” This great heart—or universal heart—is actually able to meet and hold the suffering of humanity. The human heart can’t bear it. But this great heart can, not only bear the suffering, but—in some mysterious way—transmute it by welcoming it. This is available through all of us.
When we open to this deepest dimension, we feel ourselves as an instrument of service and of love.
So, what do you experience, Tami?
TS: Yes. What I’m tuning into is I can see how this approach might be quite challenging for people—even though it might be deeply rewarding. Maybe the most rewarding type of work they could do—to tune in at this level—but it can also be quite challenging as we’re going into the heart. As you mentioned, people can find such heartbreak there.
JP: Absolutely.
TS: Once again, I’m curious to know more [about] how you suggest people work with that.
JP: Well, in a way, it’s the same principles.You’re right. Leading this visualization for your listeners—it’s actually not how I generally work with people. I think what’s important is to meet people where they are and not to try to go break through defenses [and resistance], for instance—but to meet them gently.
So, that would be my counsel. As we begin to gently explore the depths of the heart, we will encounter wounds. We will encounter scars, disappointments, and heartbreaks that were there before. It’s really important to be gentle with oneself. The quality of attention that we bring to our experience is the most important thing.
That is to say: Is it affectionate attention? Sometimes, it’s spoken of as mindfulness. But for me, I prefer to call it “affectionate attention.” Can we attune with that quality of attention within ourselves and then bring it to our most intimate experience?
One of the things that’s very important—that I mentioned before—is that we not have an agenda to fix or change ourselves. We know what it’s like when others try to fix and change us, and it’s no different. When our interior sensitivity can feel that agenda coming from the conditioned mind, it will keep its distance, it will recoil.
But when we come with a genuine curiosity, a genuine affection, and a genuine willingness to be intimate with our experience just as it is without trying to change it—quite paradoxically to the mind—it begins to unfold. It’s a process of thawing or melting. As I suggested earlier, everything is willing to be met within us and around us by this quality of attention.
So, it can take time. It’s important to be gentle with oneself. It may bring up very strong feelings. It can bring up strong feelings of grief, for instance, buried and suppressed. If grief arises, it’s really important to let ourselves feel that—and, in fact, to feel whatever emotions arise as well.
One point I would add here is that as we explore these depths of the subtle body, we’re also encountering the subconscious mind and core beliefs. For instance, when attention drops deeply into the heart, we may encounter a feeling of self-loathing or a feeling of shame. Very often, there’s an accompanying belief around that about being flawed or lacking in some way. So, the complementary practice is to actually inquire into the truth—to do a heartfelt inquiry into the truth of whatever associated beliefs [we have] as well.
I find—by encouraging people to sense those sensations as they are, to feel their feelings just as they are, and to inquire into their limiting beliefs—that this is really a very gentle and effective way to help people become more intimate with themselves and to unfold into their deepest nature.
TS: Well, let’s talk about this inquiring into our core limiting beliefs. You write in the book In Touch that, “The grandmother and grandfather of all core limiting beliefs are these two sentences: ‘I am not enough,’ or, ‘Something’s wrong with me.’” This is often what people get down to as their core limiting beliefs. I thought, “That sounds right to me!”
I’ll just pick—I don’t know if it’s the grandmother or the grandfather here—but, “Something’s wrong with me.” So, let’s just say—my mysterious listener out there who’s listening, who might have this idea—meaning this is something very intimate in my own life experience. Let’s just say someone has this sense. “Something’s wrong with me.” How do I inquire into that?
JP: OK. So, the first thing is to make sure that the formulation is very simple and very resonant. For your listeners and for you, I would say, “Does that really say it?” Does that really capture the belief in the simplest and most direct way? If it doesn’t, tweak it a little bit so that it does.
So: “Something is really wrong with me.” OK, well, maybe saying, “I’m really screwed up,” says it more directly. It has more juice. It needs to have juice and resonance. You know that it has juice and resonance because you’ll feel it as a reaction in your body and as an emotional reaction as well.
So, “Something’s really wrong with me.” It’s interesting: there’s immediately a somatic contraction that you can feel subtly—[as well as] a sense of shame and maybe self-loathing as well. This is very, very common.
The first step is to recognize what the belief is and to distill it in its clearest form. The second is to notice the impact in your body and with your feelings. The third is actually to bring your attention to your heart center and get quiet. Then, ask yourself, “What’s my deepest knowing about this?” This belief that something’s really wrong with me.
Then, to be quiet—not to go to your mind for an answer. Just wait. The answer may not come as a verbal response. It may come as a feeling. It may come as an image. It may come as a direct knowing. But generally, it comes pretty quickly when our attention is quietly centered in the heart.
So, what comes to you, Tami?
TS: Oh my, John. I think you’re getting into such deep stuff here. But I think my sentence is something like, “I am an alien.” When I put into my heart and I asked about it, I saw an image of a mother and a baby being held very lovingly. I thought, “No, I’m not.” So, it was a very healing image that occurred to me, of real tenderness and love.
Yes, I think I get the sense of what you’re pointing to here and how these core limiting beliefs—and in the book, you write about them [and] how they can introduce noise into this system, such that it’s harder for us to really attune in the way you’re describing here. I think that’s an important thing to talk about, because I think a lot of people who might try to drop into their body and listen to the wisdom of the body—it’s not easy. They find a lot of noise.
JP: Absolutely. Yes—it felt really important in the book to talk about this, because otherwise everyone would be dropping in and easily attuning to their true nature, moving absolutely gracefully through life. We know that it’s not case. Actually, maybe with a few exceptional individuals it is. But for most of us, we have a fair amount of conditioning—psychological, mental, and emotional conditioning—that impacts our body, our feelings, and our thinking. It does create a lot of static in the system.
So, to decode that quieter signal—that sound—we actually need to clear the static more. Not perfectly. I don’t think we’re ever entirely clear of noise. But we can reduce the noise. We reduce the noise by being willing to be with our experience as it is.
So, this is a process that actually takes time. It’s not a quick fix at all. It’s not a fix! It’s actually a way to be intimate with one’s experience.
I think of the body as being like a musical instrument. [For] most of us, our body is pretty out of tune and probably not too well cared for. So, it’s like learning to play a musical instrument. We begin to learn to listen to the body. We understand that it’s going to take time. We’re patient. We realize that there’s going to be conditioning [and] that we’ll be going through difficult feelings that have suppressed—uncomfortable sensations that we have not wanted to experience, as well. Not to mention all these horrible stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and others as well.
So, it’s kind of learning the landscape of that and relaxing—realizing that this is a process. It takes some commitment and dedication and time to begin to feel one’s way through.
Now, the rewards are enormous. We’re just getting perhaps little tastes of what they are. But, approaching one’s experience and becoming increasingly intimate with it in this way is—for me—just remarkably rich [and] fulfilling. It’s a beautiful path, I think.
TS: Now, John, a couple of times you’ve used this word “conditioning”—that we come into our heart and find a lot of conditioning, for example. What do you mean by that—that use of that word?
JP: Well, a lot of things. As human beings, we’re brought up in a web of conditions. Some of them are cultural. Some of them are familial. Genetic—our bodies are conditioned. So, it’s just the impact on our particular body-minds that various environments have.
So, we’re deeply conditioned as human beings. Some of this conditioning is very burdensome and constrictive. For instance, if we have been abandoned early on—if we haven’t been met with kindness and haven’t been held tenderly in the way that your image of the mother and child might reflect—that leaves an impact on our system. The impact is somatic contraction and an emotional reaction. Also, a lack of clarity mentally. Confusion, I would say, and becoming more judgmental.
So, these are the hallmarks of conditioning. There’s somatic contraction, emotional reaction, and a very narrow or distorted way of seeing and way of thinking.
The de-conditioning process is to undo that in a way—or to allow its undoing. How to do that? Well, if we’ve been abandoned, then we don’t abandon ourselves. We become intimate with ourselves. We give ourselves the quality of that loving attention and wisdom that wasn’t given to us. We question our distorted thinking and begin to come into clarity. We accept our feelings and begin to embrace them if they were suppressed by others.
So, we take on the responsibility of healing and use the resources that are available to us in our life. We become gradually less identified and [accepting] of our conditioning. We feel ourselves just increasingly free—lighthearted, grounded, present, and affectionate—in our life.
TS: OK, John. I want to make sure we touch on the final two qualities of inner knowing. Let’s go with inner alignment!
JP: OK! Inner alignment. So, again, sit comfortably. And I would say if you’re lying down, sit upright comfortably. Again, take a few deep breaths. Feel yourself settle down.
Imagine that at the very top of your head, your body is suspended by a very thin, strong wire. Feel that line running right down through the core of your body and deep into the earth. In fact, beyond the earth—just extending without limit below.
Then, experience the same above your head. Feel that line extending far beyond into the heavens.
Just let your body align with this verticality. Feel your natural uprightness.
Very often this sense of verticality—of inner alignment—is associated with a feeling of being in integrity. Everything lines up, or lines up more so. What you do, what you feel, what you think in your deepest sense of self.
It may also help to remember when you felt yourself to be very much in integrity—honest with yourself and others. There’s a feeling of a quiet vibrancy and aliveness that accompanies the sense of alignment. You may feel a current of energy upwelling, ascending—or down-pouring and descending.
So, the sense of aliveness, of inspiration, and integrity gives a little flavor perhaps to your listeners of what this is like.
Do you have the sense of it?
TS: I do. I do.
JP: Good.
TS: And, finally, let’s talk a little bit [about] and if you could give us a little taste of spaciousness.
JP: OK. So, feel into the interior of your body. As you breathe, feel a sense of space. In fact, it may be easiest to feel it first in the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet as a sense of liveliness and energy. It runs up from the hands into the forearms and upper arms. Up from the feet to the legs and pelvis. So, the body begins to feel more like energy. Into the torso, the belly, neck, and the head.
As it feels more like energy, there’s also a feeling of more space. It’s not as dense. More openness.
Then, direct your attention to the space in the front of your body, as if you’re breathing in from that space and exhaling out into it. Then, same behind the body: inhaling from the back space, exhaling into it. Left side: inhalation, exhalation. Right side: breathing in, breathing out. Space above the head: inhalation, exhalation. The same with the ground beneath: inhaling up from the ground, releasing, exhaling down.
Not letting go of directing your attention, just feel the global sense of space all around—all directions simultaneously. Then feeling space within your body and noticing if there’s any boundary in this sense of space. Is there any interior or exterior?
Then just rest—first in this space. Nothing to do. Resting in this limitless spaciousness.
Then be the space. You’re no longer an object in space. You are the space.
So, that’s a little taste of spaciousness. This will emerge as we let go of who we think and feel we are. All of our old stories that are associated with emotional reactions and somatic contractions—it’s like the body becomes more and more lively and open and spacious. It’s as if the body expands, really. At some point it may even feel like our physical body is in this space and we are this space.
So, space opens up and it deepens in and through the body. It’s very different with spaciousness than being disassociated and spaced out. This is hard for the mind to understand, but actually we’re very grounded in this spaciousness. It’s very intimate. It’s very grounded and very open.
We feel an intimacy with all of life—with what we call the world. Even to speak of a separate world and a separate self actually doesn’t feel as if it’s true. It’s like you feel an intimacy with our experience and that this is who we are—all of this.
TS: OK, John. So, let’s say someone has a sense now of these four different bodily qualities, if you will, of inner knowing. How do I actually use this in my life? Let’s say I have a difficult decision to make. I’m not sure about something, and clearly I want to tune to my deepest knowing. How does this help me? How do I do it?
JP: I think what’s good is when we’re facing a puzzle or a conundrum, [is] to actually get quiet. There’s an art to sitting with a question. So, it’s important to formulate as clearly as possible what our question is. Then, sit with it. Pose it to ourself and then just sit quietly.
Listen to the body. Notice what comes up. We’ll notice an inclination—a certain subtle movement in one direction or another, often. If we don’t, then maybe it’s not time to do anything. But if we notice this little inclination or movement in a particular direction, then it’s good to try it. Try it out and act on that. See how it works.
So, it’s a matter of resonance, I would say. Very often, if we begin to move in a particular direction and we notice ourselves feeling more deeply relaxed, grounded, aligned, openhearted, and spacious, that’s pretty good evidence that we’re moving in the right direction. If we’re not feeling that and feeling the opposite, then that may be a good reason to sit and check in more deeply with what’s going on.
It may be the right direction and we still might be afraid to do it. So, fear doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the wrong direction.
But it’s kind of learning that sense of that inclination, I would say—that movement. Very often, it will have one of those four qualities invited to it.
TS: Now, just two final questions. Here’s the first one: The subtitle of your book, How to Tune In to the Inner Guidance of Your Body and Trust Yourself. I want to talk about this idea of trusting oneself. How do you think people grow in self-trust?
JP: One, by listening to themselves. Secondly, by acting on what they hear.
So, it’s a process. We really need the experience of testing out what our inner signals appear to be directing us towards. As we find ourselves moving more gracefully in the world—with less suffering—we gain trust in this inner knowing and this authority. We rely less on others and know that here is, in fact, a kind of inner GPS or inner guidance system that becomes trustworthy.
That just keeps deepening with experience. The more we act on it and are honest in our self-observations—notice what happens—the greater our trust will grow.
It also brings greater intimacy with others. I haven’t even talked about relationships, but as we attune with ourselves, we’re also more in tune with others and much more open to intimacy—genuine intimacy.
So, we feel more authentic and we feel more intimate with life.
TS: Now, just one final question, John, before I let you go. Our program’s called Insights at the Edge. And I always like to know what someone’s current edge is. What I mean by that is your own kind of growth edge, if you will.
JP: Well, it’s interesting: in the last week, I just felt another dimension of the ground opening. It’s been slightly unsettling and also very liberating. [It’s] difficult to talk about—a kind of mysterious, dark depth that’s coming more into conscious awareness. It feels like my edge is a deeper surrender to that. Any residues of control and strategic thinking nearing my edge is to see those and let those go.
TS: Thank you so much. And thank you so much for your work! John Prendergast—the author of a new book, In Touch: How to Tune In to the Inner Guidance of Your Body and Trust Yourself. I really think this is a great contribution, John, and it will help people so much. You have so many good pointers and exercises in the book. Thank you so much for being who you are and writing the book! Thank you.
JP: You’re so welcome. It was a delight.
TS: SoundsTrue.com. Many voices, one journey. Thanks for listening.
