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The Naka Ima Experience

Marty finds new confidence in his body at Fall Creek

Hey friends of the Wilder Tribe! Marty here. We finally know what we are doing, at least for a few months anyway. We are moving to Lost Valley. There are lots of fun things to say about Lost Valley. Most of it you can find on their website at www.lostvalley.org. But we wanted to share our experience of the personal growth workshop they do there called Naka Ima. The name is Japanese for "here now" and the basis follows that Buddhist philosophy of being in the present moment. I found it very powerful at getting me in touch with my feelings and with my body. I stood in front of a whole room full of people without my shirt on. Those of you who know me well understand how incredible that was for me. beth is up here now, and she will be at Lost Valley with us. She wrote a bit about her experience of Naka Ima.

beth's Naka Ima story

So we all participated in this workshop called Naka Ima. Marty, sager, and ming san did it in August; i went soon after i arrived in Oregon in September. It’s not so easy to describe Naka Ima. It has to do with being present in the here and now, learning to be aware and accepting of who we are in order to connect with ourselves and each other.

For example, you might start a day off with a short meditation to ground yourself and focus your awareness on your body and its sensations and feelings. Then everyone will start milling around the room, pausing with other individuals for a moment, meeting their eyes and perhaps holding hands. You try to stay present with your own self while also connecting wordlessly with the other person. Later on you start having the chance to put words to that connection, tell that person something about how you feel or about you’re perceiving them, always with one person sharing and the other just listening, saying thank you, and moving on.

But the silent communication itself was very meaningful to me. Most of our day-to-day experience doesn’t include gazing silently for minutes at a time into the eyes of another person, noticing details of their color and movement, feeling the other spirit looking out, perhaps seeing ourselves reflected in them.... Even though i didn’t know any of them i felt my self responding differently to different people, feeling my heart bloom open wide with some of them. Some people i felt immediately drawn to, others subtly put off by, and i learned to feel that in my chest, a softening or hardening. There were shared moments in which i inexplicably felt like laughing or crying and saw a similar response in the other person. Just sharing a look became an opportunity to see and be seen, to open and trust, to silently negotiate the boundary of where our gazes met and how far they mingled and reached in to the each other.

There were lots of other kinds of exercises, too, but i guess i can say they centered around experiencing our own selves, whatever they might be saying in the moment, and sharing that experience with other people. I saw folks laughing and crying and dancing with an immediacy i rarely see, and i saw them connecting with each other joyfully and fearlessly. What a vision ­ may it happen more!

Over the course of the weekend we envisioned our lives as we want them to be, or needs met or our hurts healed, our beauty shining through. We were invited to see ourselves already living in that vision ­ just for a moment, what if it were true?! Maybe being willing to accept and actually feel our need and then being willing to believe and envision that it can and will be fulfilled are the big hurdles. Maybe once we see it, it can and will become real. Maybe once we see it, it already is real.

That’s the idea anyway, and it seems powerful to me.