Change Happens in the Moment Before: listening practice for Elul 5784
Daily listening practice, September 5-October 1 (2-28 Elul)
9-9:30am PT | 12-12:30pm ET
Free, on Zoom - contact me at evapeskin [at] protonmail [dot] com for the link to join.
"stand each thing on its clarity on its absence / and return the Creator / to Their Dwelling Place."
Sefer Yetzirah (The Book of Creation) 1:4, translated by Rabbi Jill Hammer
The month of Elul prompts reflection into the dual nature of teshuva, or spiritual-material return -- both a process of coming back to myself and sensing into where I have strayed from my values, and an accounting of what kinds of repair, redistribution, and reimagination are required of me as I move through the portal of the new year and my name is written in the Book of Life. During this month, it is tradition to listen to the shofar every day, to awaken our hearts, bodies, and minds to the call for justice.
Join me for an expanded interpretation of this tradition in the form of embodied practice for the month of Elul, drawing on my research on time as an embodied sense. Over the past year, I have been learning about the relationship between listening and singing. Either can occur at any moment, and time spent preparing to sing and to listen is a magical practice. By magic I mean the transformation of reality through embodied presence and intentional action. I am approaching this moment as a kind of magical preparation for the Days of Awe, the time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur when we are instructed to take spiritual inventory of how we have departed from ourselves, make meaningful material repair, and commit to bringing our actions into alignment with our values in the next cycle.
Each practice will include gentle movement, guided listening, singing/sounding, and reflective inquiry prompted by the source texts I have assembled - Pauline Oliveros' Quantum Listening, Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed, Walter Benjamin's Illuminations, Robyn Maynard and Leane Betasamosake Simpson's Rehearsals for Living, Simpson's Noopiming, and Jill Hammer's Return to the Place.
No prior knowledge is required, everyone is welcome.
30 minute daily practice:
Move, listen, sing, reflect