Awareness in the Sanctuary 2022 - Yearning - 2 - Inner Voice

The psalmist - Ben Shahn

Awareness in the Sanctuary 2022 - Yearning - 2 - Inner Voice

Body-Based Meditations to align with that which we yearn for

“Eyes, Atlas, Jaw” as taught by David Kaetz, GCFP

Rabbi Donna Kirshbaum introduced the 2022 Awareness in the Sanctuary series with a meditation on yearning (paraphrased):

What are the spiritual tools that sustain us in this time?

Yearning is something I have to cultivate more of before tapping love and faith and other spiritual tools. Yearning is basic to Jewish life and life on earth.  Yearning is a spiritual status, unlike desiring or wanting.  I may desire a person, thing, state of mind, state of the world. Yearning is older, deeper.  Yearning leads to its own fulfillment by activating a need to be known and touched by love. 

In “God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness and Embodied Spiritual Practice”  Jay Michaelson writes that in the Jewish understanding, spirit and body are not separate at all;  that spirituality is a deep rich experience of ordinary reality.  Reality …, is simply waking up. And the body is always present here and now.   It is both the best vehicle for waking up and how holiness expresses itself in the world.

We are called the people of the book, but we are equally the people of the body.

This week, your own voice becomes the spiritual tool for exploring how you listen to the world, outside and in. The vibrations of your voice reveal tensions in the neck, jaw and body that may interfere with how you perceive and process words, music, the sounds of nature.

If you can lie down, you’ll go deeper into the meditation on sound. Sitting is also fine. We will be making sounds but fear not! This is not a singing lesson. A quiet hum will be all you need to feel into the way you experience sound.

Awareness Through Movement® is Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais’ life work and gift to humanity.  The practice is a form of body-based meditation of simple, small, and extreme low-impact movements.  Enjoy these lessons as a gift from Bethlehem Hebrew Congregation to our friends and neighbors.

The BHC summer Feldenkrais series, Awareness in the Sanctuary, is in its fifth year. Lessons are appropriate for people of all abilities, body types, levels of fitness, faiths and spiritual orientations. Led by BHC member and Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner® Jacki Katzman with special introductions by Rabbi Donna Kirshbaum.

Lessons are free. Please consider a donation to Bethlehem Hebrew Congregation. Suggested donation $15/lesson. Send checks to Bethlehem Hebrew Congregation, PO Box 395, Bethlehem NH 03574. Or online.

Align your senses and body with your inner sun, Thursdays in July, 9:30 AM, in the BHC Sanctuary and by Zoom (register here):

  • July 7 - Lesson 1: Inner vision

  • July 14 - Session 2: Inner voice

  • July 21 - Session 3: Inner compass

  • July 28 - Session 4: Inner alignment

Jacki Katzman