Living in Not-Knowing with Jenny Beal and Ann McIlraith β Exploring the Transparency of the Body
Mar 10, 2023
In this edition of the Awareness podcast, Ann McIlraith describes her journey to the non-dual understanding through exploration of the body. She explains how T’ai Chi brings a feeling of openness and transparency of the body. The body can teach us so much, and T’ai Chi takes you beyond the body.
Jenny and Ann discuss how the practice of T’ai Chi relates to the investigation of the body that Francis Lucille teaches, and the discovery of our borderlessness through which the feeling of separation that resides in the body dissolves. Ann describes how in group work, the sense of being contained in a physical body disappears and you are experiencing the energy field in which all the physical bodies are moving. It’s a way of transcending the body while inhabiting it.
“When you’re feeling that your heart will burst with joy, when you’re feeling love, or beauty, when something touches you completely – that’s it. It’s simple.”
About Ann
Ann is a T’ai Chi teacher and she also teaches the Release technique from Lester Levenson.
Ann was brought up in a devout Catholic family. But when she felt nothing at her First Holy Communion, having expected the presence of Christ within her, the letdown was devastating. Then when she was nine years old, at a time of sadness during her father’s last illness she had a glimpse of the universal peace our true nature and she knew that all would be fine.
As a teenager, her search for a deeper understanding outside the Catholic faith led her to books on yoga and meditation and she tried to teach herself. Then later, a photograph she saw in the library of two people in a T’ai Chi posture conveyed such a sense of serenity and peace that she decided to explore T’ai Chi, and trained with John Kells for 18 years. She loves T’ai Chi as it is a spirituality based on experience rather than faith.
A friend introduced her to the work of Lester Levenson and she trained in The Release Technique, and The Sedona Method. Learning to release her limiting beliefs helped her enormously on a practical level. This teaching also helped her put into words the experience of not being a body or a mind but something beyond.
During the Covid pandemic, she came across Francis Lucille on YouTube. His experiential approach resonated deeply with her and she finally felt a resolution of the inner confusion that had bothered her since childhood. She is so grateful for the journey and the homecoming to herself.
Learn more about Ann at https://www.annmcilraith.com/
