The Seed Group

Introduction To The Seed Group

I love the Seed Group. It is an environment in which my deepest feelings, my best spiritual intuitions, my emotional intensity and my body, all have a chance to express. This meeting with myself has no chance to occur in most social settings. There are usually too many unspoken social taboos. There are also too many restraints we unconsciously put upon ourselves.

The Seed Group enables us to gently drop these taboos and restraints. This is because of the caring support given by other group members; but also because you can learn to trust your own internal process as you witness yourself or others meeting themselves so deeply and creatively.

WHAT MAKES IT WORK?

What we attempt to do in the group is to acknowledge and work with the internal process of self-regulation. This is what keeps our body and mind in balance throughout our life and growth. Self-regulation expresses in our everyday life as such ordinary but powerful spontaneous movements as sneezing, shivering, orgasm, breathing and laughing. In the psychological realm, self-regulation is experienced when we cry or release emotion, or when events from the past press to be felt and released, and also in dreaming. Spiritual experience also appears to be an aspect of this action as self-regulation moves toward expansion and growth.

To work effectively in the Seed Group we need to be ready to make an experiment regarding our own internal self-regulating process. We need to be ready to allow the simple spontaneous activities of our body and feelings more time and space to express. It helps if we are ready to let go of conscious intellectual control, or our striving for particular goals, and listen to what life in us wants to do. So, this is not a meditation aiming at a particular goal. See Without Seed

WHAT DO WE DO?

The group forms into working groupings of three to four people. Each person in turn becomes the ‘seed’. This means they are given the attention and support of the rest of their group. The ‘seed’ takes on a quiet open state of mind and body, possibly curling up on the floor while their supporters keep close physical contact. The aim is to give time and opportunity for the usually ignored urges in the body and feelings to emerge and be expressed. Of course some people may need to work alone.

Honouring simple movement and feelings is important in the Seed Group because all the processes and expressions of life in us show as the swing between movement and relaxation. The heartbeat, breathing, and the movement of the intestines are examples of this. Most emotions, such as crying or laughing, also involve strong physical movements. If we block expression of our basic living drives and feelings, we not only build up internal tension, but we also interfere with the delicate ways our being balances, heals and expresses itself. The wonderful freedom in the practice of the Seed Group reintroduces us to the ability of our being to heal, balance and reach for its own psychological growth. It does this through spontaneous movement and feelings.

So the ‘seed’ remains in a self observant state with the support of their group. The ‘seed’ does not attempt to produce anything consciously, but waits for their body and feelings to declare themselves, perhaps at first as tiny motivations to move, or as slight shifts in feelings. The ‘seed’ occasionally reports what they observe to their group, without making their sessions into a conversational exercise.

To work effectively with ones own deepest self is a learning process, perhaps like learning to swim. So one has to be patient, and there should be no attempt on the part of their group to coerce people to ‘get somewhere’.

WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN?

You might simply be quiet with your supporters for a period of time, with apparently nothing happening. In the Seed Group it is important to realise that as we are not seeking to get to a prearranged goal, whatever occurs while the you are the ‘seed’ IS what is happening. So if you felt bored while the ‘seed’, or felt you were pointlessly taking up other peoples time – THAT is what is happening – and should be acknowledged to your partners.

By learning to observe and allow these ordinary feeling and body states, they can develop to fuller and more powerful expression of the self-regulatory process – really a fuller expression of yourself. When this happens you will experience powerful spontaneous body movements which link with feelings and lead to insight into yourself. The process works at detoxifying body and mind. It does this by clearing out old habits of tension, past emotional traumas. As it achieves this work it moves to personal growth and creativity, opening spiritual experience of yourself as part of the Whole.

GIVING AND TAKING

This is not a commercial package in which you are paying to receive certain instruction, or be healed of your human problems. It is an environment offered you by a number of people who have given of themselves to form a supportive group in which there is an opportunity to meet yourself and others in depth. There are no clever formulas or instruction. No tricks. The Seed Group depends upon how much you can trust yourself and those around you. What you get from it depends upon what you bring to it, and how much you can receive from others in the way of love.

To be a part of the group means being patient with others as they learn to allow their own inner being to express. It also means opening to the support given to you, and allowing it to work its miracle as it softens tensions and attitudes that may have destroyed your own sense of well-being and spiritual awareness.

WHEN WHERE AND HOW MUCH

The seed groups mentioned below are all run on a donation basis. This means nobody is excluded. You simply donate what you can afford. As a group we do need donations to make this work however, and suggest a minimum of £5 per day, necessary to be able to rent a space big enough for the group to function in. This low price is possible because of several factors in the organisation of the group. These are:-

People bring their own food. This is usually shared, although people with special diets may need to keep their food separate. It is important that each person contributes something, and does not simply eat other peoples food. The group and its action is based on mutual support.

Nobody is employed to do the background work of cooking, washing up, etc. So once more, it is important NOT to let a few people do all the work. If you want a commercial group where you are not involved, you will need to pay sixty to two hundred and sixty or much more for a weekend.

Another explanation of the Seed Group

Meditation

The next phase of the meditation needs a particular setting. The meditation is a means of opening to all of the aspects of our being in a way we may not have done before. So we need a setting where we can give attention to what is occurring in our being; where we can explore our spontaneous responses and not be disturbed. The place needs to be warm enough to be comfortable in, and with a blanket or something soft underfoot. Clothing needs to be loose enough to move around in easily

When you are ready, stand in the middle of your blanket. If possible, feel thanks to nature and its processes for your existence – and toward fellow human beings for their shared work and thought. The meditation has now begun. From the feelings of thanks, turn your attention to the idea of a dried seed. It can be any sort of seed, but preferably the type you have already considered and maybe planted. But this time we are not thinking about the seed, just holding the idea of it gently in mind. We are leaving thought behind and exploring another way of experiencing.

Without trying to be completely rational or scientific, what might it feel like to be a seed? Does it feel like a seed to simply stand with arms by sides? Does it feel like a dried up seed with arms raised above ones head? Watching this subtle sense of what feels unlike or like the seed, experiment with body positions until you find a position which feels for you like an expression of a dried seed. There is no ‘right’ position, only what feels right for you.

Don’t struggle with this meditation – enjoy it. Once you feel reasonably satisfied with your position, imagine what a dried seed might feel like inside. Is it waiting, sleeping, unconscious? Whatever you imagine it to be, allow your own inner condition to be as nearly like it as you can. Then check over details. Do the limbs and head feel right for a dried seed? Can you allow yourself to dwell in the inner condition?

THE GROWING SEED

The next stage is very important, so do not move into it until you have satisfied yourself with these first stages. Next we move gently into what may be called imaginative, spontaneous, or intuitive meditation. To do this we allow our body and feelings to express, just as we have done so far in finding the position of the seed, but more flowingly now.

So, give your body and mind permission to express themselves freely and without prior consideration, in expressing the seed receiving rain in warm soil. The seed absorbs the moisture and the process of growth is triggered. The seed puts out root and stem and becomes a seedling, then progresses through its whole cycle of growth, blossoms, seeds, and dying.

When doing this meditation give yourself at least fifteen to thirty minutes to complete it. Unlike many forms of meditation this is without struggle, and usually the whole sequence of growth flows out of us as we allow our being the freedom to express.

And there are surprises in it too. Many people find the meditation has its own dynamic, and they can only grow to a certain stage, or the unfolding story throws up unplanned details. These details of how our own growth in the meditation occurs are relevant to our own life situation. For instance, finding it difficult to put down roots might point to your difficulty in staying in any one place, and so on.

The meditation is an exercise in allowing our own unconscious feelings and wisdom about ourself and life to express more freely. So it can usefully be practised regularly. I would not suggest every day for most people, but certainly once or twice a week. Each period of meditation will produce something slightly different, enlarging on or continuing the theme previously dealt with. Only a personal experience of this amazing ability to produce the new can convince one of the creativity we each have within us.

VARIATION FOR THE GROUP

There is another form of this seed meditation which is a great pleasure to use, and is helpful in developing a new ease and warmth in relationships. I have used it with a number of groups, and if it is led up to slowly and time given for people to feel their way in without a sense of rush or pressure, it leaves them feeling much more in contact with themselves and others.

This is basically the same as already described but done as a small group of three, four, or at the most, five. The members of the group need to have already experienced the seed meditation done individually before they attempt it as a group. This is not absolutely necessary, but it helps. It helps also if each person has at least once practised two other meditations – the Earth and Water meditation.

These are done in just the same way as the seed meditation. The instructions I usually give are as follows: Stand in a relaxed open manner, and hold in mind the idea or word ‘earth’ (or water). Just as you did with the seed meditation explore what postures and/or movements express for you the feelings and movements connected with the earth from which all growing things arise. Allow yourself to explore the meditations, letting spontaneous fantasy or movements to arise if they occur.

After the individuals have established themselves in these three (seed – earth – water) meditations they come together as a group and decide who is going to be the seed, and who earth and water. I usually suggest that when they are ready, the seed takes up their dried seed position and waits for the stimulus toward growth to arise out of the relationship with the persons in the role of earth and water. When and if this occurs, then the course of their meditation is the same as doing the seed alone, but with added dimensions. How, in terms of human relationship in the meditation, does the growing seed take up the water and minerals and lift them to the sun and build a form?

To the earth and water their meditation is similar but reversed. How do they penetrate with water and warmth, in human terms, the enfolded seed, to release its growth? And then, how to enter into the life forces of the plant as it unfolds?

It asks more of us

Some people are at first reticent or have never explored these possibilities in human relationships, unless perhaps they trained in drama or dance. If the meditation is entered into enthusiastically though, it becomes a learning and growing experience. The seed grows and releases warm feelings and pleasures in its own unfoldment that touch the earth and water and involve them in the drama of its own experience.

It is very rewarding and helpful for the group to share what they experienced after the meditation has finished. The actual meditation should be entirely non-verbal – although some groups are vocal in that they feel the expression of sounds, humming or emotive sound a part of their experience. But the sharing of the experience at the end is a release and completion of what went before. Then, the group can allow someone else to be the seed.

The seed meditation used in these ways is an extremely simple way of starting or developing one of the most important aspects of yoga -namely, allowing the emergence into consciousness of material from our wider awareness. It does this in a gentle way acceptable to a large number of people. This leads to a gradual expansion of consciousness as we touch more parts of our nature, bringing about spiritual growth.

We learn to work with the spontaneous process in us, active also in dreaming, which brings to consciousness parts of ourselves otherwise ignored. As we integrate piece after piece of our inner life we literally grow as a person. We absorb into our waking self more of our personal past, more of our heritage as a mammal and life process, more of the treasures of culture and spirit left us by humanity. Our life of spirit has begun.

Being a seed in a group gives us a social opportunity to receive a sort of powerful healing we seldom receive in our society – the healing of touch. Laying on of hands has always been recognised as a way of helping a tired or sick body back to health. Modern doctors and nurses are now recognising the importance of this. They are learning to hold patients’ hands, to be warm, to touch. In the seed meditation the earth and water can gently relax and open the seed with their touch. So the meditation is one of healing as well as growing.

The group meditation is of enormous help in learning to touch, to allow into ones own experience, a part of someone else’s inner life, and to help another human being begin the miraculous process of exploring the height, depth and music of their own being. So make yourself a seed bed and grow a little.