7 Embodied Jewish Practices for Centering

Centering is an embodied practice that helps us feel more aware of what is happening in and around our bodies, where we are in space and time, and what choices we have available to navigate this complexity. For many, the physical sensation of centering is felt most strongly just below the navel, radiating out from this gravitational center across body and spirit. We center in our bodies through attuning to our presence and positionality in spacetime, and in our purpose and intention — or kavanah — by reminding ourselves of what we hold dear and what we’re working for in this world. Check out the guide here.

High Holidays 5783 — 10 Embodied Practices for Cultivating Awe

What is our own experience of awe? Is it an experience of wonder? Or of suspense? Or of fear? For us here at Mitsui Collective, it’s a full-body experience. So we wrote up this simple guide for cultivating awe during the High Holiday season from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur — AKA, The Days of Awe. We invite you to try out the simple practices that follow: to explore and cultivate your own experience of awe, both to deepen our own ability to recognize its nuances, and come to better recognize how it may manifest in the world around us. Check out the guide here.

Tu b’Av 5782 — 15 Embodied Jewish Ways to Express Your Love

We’ve always been big fans of Tu b’Av here at Mitsui Collective. For this year, we put together this short guide to embodied Jewish expressions of love through our five main senses. You’ll see we’ve also organized these fifteen embodiments into three categories, based on the fractals of “body” that we think about at Mitsui Collective: loving yourself, loving others, and loving the earth. Check out the guide here.

Reflecting Resilience: An Embodied Guide to Hanukkah

Reflecting Resilience is Mitsui Collective’s new guide to bringing embodiment more deeply into your Hanukkah practice. Each night, we showcase artistic and reflective offerings from our friends on themes relating to embodied wisdom and experience, along with an embodied practice and reflection prompt to try out. Check out the guide here.

Land Acknowledgements Through a Jewish Lens

As Jews / folks in relationship to Jewish community we have an ancient and complex relationship to land, indigeneity, and diaspora. Our tradition therefore compels us to acknowledge all indigenous peoples who have been and continue to live and exist in relationship to the lands where we currently dwell. This guide is adapted from the land acknowledgement created for Bend the Arc’s Pursuing Justice 2020 conference, planned and led by Koach Baruch Frazier, Samia Mansour, and Yoshi Silverstein.

Version One: full written Shema (PDF)

Version Two: ה׳ substituted for G-d’s name (PDF)

7 Minutes: A Daily Embodied Omer Wellness Practice

The Omer — the 7 week / 49 day period from Passover to Shavuot — lends itself beautifully to numerous layers of interpretation and practice. This year in particular, as we cope and manage with the COVID-19 pandemic as best we can, it’s more critical than ever that we each do what we can to develop and/or maintain a wellness practice. For the year 2020 / 5780, Mitsui Collective is producing this series featuring daily 7-minute opportunities for introspection and intentional focus on caring for ourselves, each other, and our environment in this incredibly challenging time, based on the cycles of nature, Jewish wisdom, and the Hebrew Calendar.

Read the full introduction with linked posts, peruse the blog, and follow Mitsui Collective on Instagram and Facebook to see daily posts when they drop.

Is Self Care Self Indulgent? A Jewish Movement Perspective

Published June 18, 2018
With everything going on the world, from the macro issues of climate change, refugee crises, violence against black and brown-skinned bodies; to the micro issues of violence and injustice perpetuated against our neighbors, our families, our friends — when we are in a time some are calling a moral emergency— is it self indulgent to spend time on caring for my self?

Read the full post.

How Movement And Nature Can Breathe Life Into Your Spiritual Practice

Published June 13, 2018
Are you a Jewish mover and shaker? Literally. Do you move? Is movement part of your Jewish practice? What does that look like, and how does leading a more movement-rich life yield benefits for both ourselves as individuals and for the communities and ecosystems in which we move.

Read the full piece [originally published in The Forward]