by Jeff Jacka
Originally written for meditiationflags.org and reformatted for Flagger Weekend 5, 2008
Awareness
The first key to spinning flags is Awareness. Flags increase our physical sphere of influence about 10 feet. Most people are fairly conscious of their own personal space, but spinning flags increases it dramatically, so it’s important to increase our awareness of people and objects in your vicinity. The hidden weights can impact yourself and others. If you are in a crowded area, it is wise to find a less crowded place to spin, or to save the flags for later.
Letting Go
Once you’ve established a safe space to spin, close your eyes and let go. Closing your eyes and letting your flags dance to the rhythms is incredibly transformative (this is where the meditative aspect comes in). It’s not about what you look like or whether “you’re doing it right,” it’s about what it feels like! It’s amazingly freeing to let the music dance you. Loosen your whole body, shake your hips, and move around passionately.
In order to get the more complex moves, the left and right brains have to stop talking to each other and since the left and right arms are 180 degrees out of sync, you actually have to stop thinking in order to get it, a kind of spinning zazen. If you’re stuck or frustrated, remember to let go and have fun with this!
Practice
After learning how to do a figure-eight using your dominant hand, practice with your non-dominant hand. This may be challenging since most of us are not ambidextrous. Try doubling up the flags and putting them both in your weaker hand. Practice with just the weaker hand (for hours). This will grow your brain-body connections. Something else that helps is to find a mirror or window and spin in front of that. This helps bypass our analytical mind, and we become present to just the body’s movements. When you get what the moves feel like, go back to closing your eyes and letting go. It is actually harder to spin slow than fast, so slow down. Find some beautiful music and flag gracefully, or try spinning halftime (half as fast).
Frequently we’ll get tired or frustrated. Go ahead and put the flags away and come back to them later. After a few days your brain-body connections have rewired in your sleep, muscles have healed, and all of a sudden we can do things we couldn’t have imagined. Give yourself some slack. It’ll happen as long as you practice, let go, but most importantly, have fun.
Presence
If you’re upset, depressed, angry, or whatever, find some appropriate music and flag to it! Many of us have harbored anger, resentments, grudges, etc. for years. These can manifest themselves as blockages in our bodies. Acknowledging these feelings and becoming present to them is way of letting them go (put another way: what you resist, persists).
If you’re angry, get some fiery flags, put on some intense music and spin till you’re exhausted! If you’re depressed, get some dark flags, and have a pity party! It’s amazing how good you’ll feel if you just acknowledge whatever it is and be present to it (and how healthy it is for your body to let it go).
Intention & Expectations (magic)
Magic works by setting intentions, and then letting go of expectations. It sounds simple, yet it’s not easy. Spinning an intention from your heart is a powerful way of casting this intention to the Universe. Aftter casting an intention, is to let go of expectations of a particular result. You’ll be surprised how magic manifests itself when you least suspect it. Spin your intentions to the Universe, and let them go. As Rob Brezsny says, “You can have anything you want, if you just ask for it in an unselfish tone of voice”.
Law of Attraction
We attract what we’re feeling into our life. Put more succinctly, stress kills and love heals. When we’re full of love and appreciation, we attract those qualities into our lives. If we dwell on the negative, we’ll attract that kind of energy instead. Once we’ve become present to what is going on with us, we are provided a clearing for what we’d like to create in our lives. The secret is to feel what we’d like to attract into our lives. Practice spinning love, abundance, generosity and whatever else you’d like to bring into your life. You attract what you feel, so why not feel and attract good?
Appreciation
Appreciation and Gratitude are two of the biggest gifts you can give anybody. Tell someone how much they mean to you, and show them by flagging a special song for them. Let the Universe know by dancing a dance of gratitude, giving thanks for yourw lessons and “growth opportunities”. Share with others what you appreciate about them, what you appreciate about your life, and how fortunate you are to have them in it. It’ll make them, and you, feel great!
