Conscious Pregnancies With Kristy Geltz

Friend and mother Kristy Geltz shares her knowledge, wisdom and experiences with pregnancy, giving birth and mothering.

(While still listenable just know we recorded on Kristy’s porch with nearby construction vehicles beeping and the main recording didn’t take so using the lesser quality Wisdom App live recording.) Topics include:

  • Kristy’s bio and background
  • trusting intuition when pregnant
  • (morning) sickness
  • weird cravings
  • home births
  • water births
  • midwives and birth doulas
  • husband’s roles
  • elements of safety, comfort and control in childbirth
  • rebirthing
  • birth trauma
  • skin to skin contact
  • umbilical cord and placenta options
  • post partum depression
  • wearing Sea Bands for nausea
  • chiropractic care while pregnant for fetus positioning
  • cranial sacral therapy for infants
  • breast feeding
  • animal totems for motherhood and fertility
  • parallels of pregnancy and parasitism (I parrot this concept that originates from (metaphysical) remembering and experiencing and I didn’t mention that it’s said we once were able to incarnate without a womb birth)
  • extra challenges of women leadership combined with motherhood
  • needs and wants are the same in small children
  • close bonding stage of mother and child
  • mutual support in childbirth, parenting and throughout all of life
Audio: Conscious Pregnancies With Kristy Geltz

Or listen via Insight Timer (app or website)

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2025/03/07/hidden-dangers-of-hospital-births.aspx

Continue reading “Conscious Pregnancies With Kristy Geltz”

Wisdom Snippets: The Murkiness, Blocks And Obstructions Of Past Life Discernment

During the resolve to not get up from under a Bodhi tree until realizing full awakening, the Buddha recalled previous lives. How did he, and how can we tell what is really and truly an authentic past life? There are scientific studies of past lives, but what follows is about what could be mistaken for past lives, and some of them are pretty far out, perhaps boarding on science fiction for some:

  • mistaking for dream(s)
  • racial, group or collective memories
  • forgotten media consumption
  • imagination
  • hypnotic(-like) suggestions
  • influencing past life memories by wanting to have certain types of past lives
  • mistaking memories of someone who you really admired, or despised, or even a captivating popular figure in a past life as oneself
  • mixing (portions of) anything mentioned here (with partial past life memories)
  • various technological means and methods known and unknown
  • (temporarily) taken over by an entity or spirit and experiencing their memories
  • false memories
  • memory insertions
  • memory distortions
  • parallel timelines and realities
  • relooped timeline(s) with slight alterations
  • (those from “your”) clones, duplicates, replicates
  • ai (or other beings or other technology) with copies of real past lives when detecting the start of a past life recall then splice in an edited version, or something like a deep fake (which could then act as a red herring to seed in higher probabilities for future distorted past life remembrances)
  • What if so connected or entangled in a past life with someone that discerning who was who — individually and both of each other’s memories (and maybe past life recalls at the time) — became difficult?
  • That entertaining any of the above can keep you from discerning past lives(?)

Bonus: a perhaps somewhat related, very short story The Egg by Andy Weir

Ideas on how to address:

[Note: Purely intuitive speculation and for experimentation as this has yet to be put into practice]

What are the major perceptional altering shifts in general and amongst the individual memories in/for each past life? Where and how does the reality seem to significantly and unmistakably change? The big ones might seem to be birth and death; perceived losses of innocence; and anywhere/anything where intense energy is involved. What are the consistencies for all these? What sticks out as incongruent? How does perception itself operate as far as mechanics, fluctuations, (in)stabilities, and the degree(s) of all this over various timespans?

Brief Guided Meditation: Discernment of Meditation Object

Very brief instruction, technique and practice period to help discern when attention is on or off the meditation object. Practice this solo, without external guidance.

Experiment — if need be — by altering, adjusting, and adding just enough so it works best for you.

Stick with this training wheels technique at least for a few meditation sessions with the intent to let go of it after it strengthens and deepens formal mindfulness practice.

Brief Guided Meditation: Discernment of Meditation Object

Or listen via Insight Timer (app or website)

Shawn White’s State Of The Massage Industry

Immediately relevant to the extensive linked list of Healing Modalities and Resources on IntegratingPresence.com I sit down with Shelly and Shawn White who, amongst many things, is a cancer conqueror, massage therapist, entrepreneur and spa founder/owner based in the greater St Louis, Missouri area.

Audio: Shawn White’s State Of The Massage Industry

Or listen via Insight Timer (app or website)

We mostly discuss the ups and downs of the massage and spa industry and Shawn’s methodology for transforming it. Amongst other topics we also touch on entrepreneurship, elevation and service to others. Detailed show notes as follows:

  • Shawn’s vivid massage school experiences including:
    • initial spark of interest
    • interest in body mechanics aspect of massage
    • physical environment of massage school
    • teachers, students, foibles and politics
    • styles and methods of teaching and learning
    • testing standards
    • learning massage in the midst of a cancer journey
    • unlearning, restoring intuition and self-training
    • licensing requirements, pass rates, provisional licensing, wash out, lack of history, dropouts, burnouts, retention rates, culture
  • Entrepreneurship:
    • mentorship
    • experience
    • challenges including:
    • opening to criticism
    • transformation
    • resilience
    • serving
    • switching from business mode to excelling at client experience mode with dedication and giving 100%
  • Reform and solutions:
    • More quality, less quantity of therapists
    • Supercharged dedication to serving others
    • Intending to provide best massage experience of one’s life every time
    • Certainty about one’s degree of client effectiveness upon review
    • Humility to prevent god complex
    • Empathy as tool to attune and adjust massage and keep intuition in check
    • Creativity helps customize and tailor to momentary needs while adding variety with creative passion
  • Inspiration, Encouragement, Empowerment and Elevation at the brink of death
  • Turning hardships, darkness and horror into gifts and opportunities to help others
  • False hope vs. true hope
  • Role models
  • Leaving the world better than we found it
  • Excitement, intensity, passion, authenticity
  • Transforming industry by:
    • starting own spa
    • creating opportunities to pursue dreams
    • professionalism
    • emphasis on education
    • creating own massage school founded on humility, empathy, creativity and purity
    • mentorship
    • sharing techniques
    • preventing hardship by sharing wisdom gained from hardships
    • time as most valuable asset
    • proactive regret prevention
  • How being a facilitator and tool overwrites identifying as a healer

Be that person who remains an ally to the innocence in every heart with the intuitive discernment to know how to hold space for the healing of others without being a place for anyone’s unprocessed pain to hide.

Matt Kahn 10/10/21 newsletter
Continue reading “Shawn White’s State Of The Massage Industry”

Wisdom Snippets: Co-opting Co-V For Concord

Currently the wisest perceptions surrounding the CV thing encountered thus far:

  • Honoring and respecting each and every free health care choice
  • What is your intent for vaccination or non-vaccination?
  • We do not know the long terms effects of getting vaccinated and not getting vaccinated
  • Should guidelines, vaccines and pharmaceutical products be the only options? How can we make it all work together without tyranny or carelessness?
Many worthwhile points about fear — at least on the surface level of this video — which is what I’ve called for the most care for since near the beginning

An Integrating Presence (Three Minute) Meditation And Reality (Characteristics) Contemplation

alternative audio version

Also available on Insight Timer, with or without the free app: https://insighttimer.com/integratingpresence/guided-meditations/three-minute-meditation-and-reality-contemplation

Listen via Insight Timer (app or website)

Meditation:

Meditate continuously for three minutes on an object

Contemplation:

Able to keep attention on the object the entire time?

If not, why is that?

If yes, did the quality and degree of attention change?

Why can’t we lock a consistent, unchanging attention to something without it wavering, or changing, or without distraction?

Perhaps then consider that in life, and especially noticeable in meditation, we sometimes think we should able to keep a consistent, unchanging attention to something. Maybe we can now better see how this erroneous view of deceptively defaulting to expecting constancies in life can result in stress and unsatisfactoriness

An Integrating Presence Three Minute Meditation And Reality (Characteristics) Contemplation

Here’s the video again:

Dharmic Strategies For Empaths

. . . when you yourselves know: ‘These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,’ enter on and abide in them.

Kalama Sutta: The Buddha’s Charter of Free Inquiry (translated by Soma Thera)

While there now exists an entirely new (spiritual) paradigm for empaths, or energetically sensitive beings, (some of which my version of is included herewithin,) can anything be drawn from the Early Buddhist Texts as strategies for those where the characteristic of anukampa, or empathy, significantly impacts their day to day experience?

Empathy in the context of this article means deeply feeling what another is feeling. Experiencing what another is experiencing — at the least, experiencing the most predominate experience(s) of another — to the point where, temporarily, very little difference seemingly exists between the one empathing and what, or who is being empathed. The caveat being there is really no way to know exactly the entirety of another’s experience. Additionally, there often seems to be very little choice involved whether or not to empath.

This is all lovely and wonderful if only the positive and pleasant was all that was being empathed. So naturally, this article mostly addresses what’s being empathed and perceived as negative, unhelpful, unskillful, unwise and unwholesome without intending to attract more nor push it away.

Perhaps a (still somewhat broad) guiding question to further narrow this enquiry: How can we aim towards the highest, fullest, most total, and most complete currently accessible versions of the wisest, most wholesome, skillful, ideal and optimal perceptions, views and responses for empathic experiences and phenomena? (And perhaps eventually going and incorporating beyond even this?)

And without paving another way to be down on ourselves for falling short of what’s mentioned, all this also intends to provide options to cultivate and develop greater balanced empathy while ending (programmed) victim/victimizer mentality.

But first some background and context questions.

Continue reading “Dharmic Strategies For Empaths”

Caregiving Roundtable: Caring For The Givers | (9/28/2021 — “Ask Us Anything – LIVE” With Denny K Miu)

For this month’s regular open-audience, open-discussion “Ask Us Anything” — continuing discussions about meditation and related topics — Denny and I talk about caring for caregivers. Topics, not necessarily in order, include:

  • The Four Brahmaviharas, translated as The Four Immeasurables, Divine Abodes, or Sublime Abidings
  • Compassion fatigue
  • Denny’s caregiving journey with his father diagnosed with dementia
  • My experiences with my late grandmother and dementia
  • Pain vs Suffering
  • Survival instinct and survival programming
  • Spiritual practice as care for caregivers
  • “Buddhism” as misrepresentative Western term
  • Dhamma
  • Mindfulness and how it’s like holding the hand of a child while crossing the street
  • Four Noble Truths
  • Five Hinderances
  • Death as one of the Five Daily Reflections

Integrating Presence’s long linked list of Healing Modalities and Resources

What is true, real, authentic non-inverted care, and does this differ coming from men and women? If so, how?

a core question about care

Other related resources:

Understanding Care (There’s plenty in this video presentation I’d like to see put differently, and in a different way and manner, however there is a significant amount I align with so I’m sharing for research purposes)

Corona-19, Hypertension And Qi | (2/23/2021 — “Ask Us Anything – LIVE” With Denny K Miu)

An Integrating Presence Meditation: Breathing 9 Beneficial Energies Into Embodiment

McMindfulness and The Mindfulness Industrial Complex | (12/29/2020 — “Ask Us Anything” With Denny K Miu)

Audio: Caregiving Roundtable: Caring For The Givers | (9/28/2021 — “Ask Us Anything – LIVE” With Denny K Miu)

Join Denny live Saturdays online for Yi Jin Jing and mindful joint, stretching, breathing, and qi exercises via:

Full list of links at DennyKMiu.com

Continue reading “Caregiving Roundtable: Caring For The Givers | (9/28/2021 — “Ask Us Anything – LIVE” With Denny K Miu)”

Redefining Caregiving

For reasons I’m not entirely aware of Sam Damm did not join Denny and I for the September “Ask Us Anything.” Both Denny and I, as well as the Mindfulness Fellowship circle on Insight Timer, admire and encourage folks to explore Sam’s work. Here’s some stuff I personally find of particular interest:

Sam Damm’s website Redefining Caregiving: https://samdamm.com

Sam’s YouTube channel

Sam’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/redefiningcaregiving

Sample episodes of Sam’s podcast:

Relevant to Corona-19, Hypertension And Qi | (2/23/2021 — “Ask Us Anything – LIVE” With Denny K Miu)

Other ways to listen to Sam’s podcast:

Integrating Presence’s long linked list of Healing Modalities and Resources

Irregular Inquires — Investigating The Term “Early Buddhist Texts”

Disclaimer: investigate these questions at the potential risk of wasting time and serenity. BTW, some of these are really more statements phrased as questions.

  1. How helpful and/or how detrimental is the term “Early Buddhist Texts”?
  2. Where/how did it originate?
  3. On one hand maybe it sets up a certain distinguishing category in a distilled type of way, but when does “early” begin and end?
  4. Since Buddhism is said to originally be an oral tradition, do any kind of “texts” really apply to “Early Buddhism” since the spoken transmissions were not written down for awhile?
  5. And what all qualifies as a “Buddhist Text” in this case — commentaries; sub-commentaries; anything in the Pali, Prakrit and similar-type languages? Who all determines this?
  6. What if hitherto unknown texts are discovered (that are unclear whether or not they ought to be called “Early Buddhist Texts”?
  7. Are there any other motivations for formulating and propagating this term, and what was primarily used in its place prior?
  8. Could some newcomers imply that “Early” means not yet developed or mature?
  9. Again, for newcomers, could using “Buddhist” imply these texts are a religious dogma or doctrine when actually “Buddhism” is a Western label for what’s not really a religion in the sense of what usually categorizes religions?
  10. Could “Texts” imply an academic sterilization not implicitly conveying most of the contents consist of transcriptions of spoken discourses by a fully awakened Buddha?