the power in recognizing powerlessness
Admitting powerlessness has a contradictory effect. It is not admitting defeat, it’s releasing control. Rather than giving up and checking out, an attitude of powerlessness invites us to unhook from the pressures we put on ourselves to predict and perfect.
reclaiming indigeneity
At the same time, most of us can trace our ancestry to many different cultures and traditions. Being on a journey of reclaiming indigeneity frees us from centering just one. Instead, we're broadly affirming the life-supporting practices that sustained the vast majority of humanity over time. Reclaiming indigeneity invites us to illume for ourselves how these practices might come forward in this time. Our bodies and our relationship with the living planet become the authority.
for those who are letting go
If you are in the throes of letting go, it can feel like without warning the seams of your world are coming apart. As they split, your own skin is removed too. What is revealed, is tender and unsure. The ground below, once a steady predictability you rarely gave a second thought, now wobbles and shifts.
Perhaps you sigh more hoping to lift some of this heaviness. Or maybe you hold regrets that intermittently darken your gaze.
why we don’t follow our intuition
We've all made choices that conflict with our intuition and then looked back and wished we'd trusted what some part of us already knew. We might feel down about ourselves when this happens. Maybe we experience shame, embarrassment, and anger. Perhaps we close the blinds and don't want to tell anyone what has happened for fear of being met with the proverbial "I told ya so."
Following our head over our body is not a personal defect. This is something we've been trained to do -- often from very early on in our lives.
navigating the unexpected
As our emotional landscape tries to settle, internally we may feel like we're in freefall. We're dropping, dropping, dropping, and as we reach for the world that once felt "under control" its construction reveals itself as paper thin. There's nothing to hold on to.
From this perilous place, we vacillate between a desire to recreate or "get back" what's been lost and total collapse. In our body a hot buzz of anxiety grips our throat and belly while at the same time we may feel heavy, dull, and uninspired.
learning to fly
One evening, he wheeled the "Desert Rose," out of our garage. We made our way to the middle of our quiet street and he steadied my new ride, while I perched myself on its banana seat between pedals that seemed impossibly far away.
an invitation to holding complexity
Because thanksgiving is holiday that's rooted in a painful history, we may focus only on what is wrong with it. We feel judgement of those who celebrate, or guilt about our own desire to participate. I believe this day is really about learning to hold complexity.
why i care
I believe your body holds wisdom that is essential for creating the world we all deserve to live in – you know, where no one must hustle or compete to meet their basic needs, where all bodies are deemed valuable and every being has ample space for rest and ease. My intention is not that this sounds like a lot of pressure, but I do get it if holding such power makes you feel a little anxious.
freedom journey
Why do we do the work of coming back into connection with our bodies? So often the wisdom they hold is not immediately apparent. Feeling for ourselves means also feeling the places that are uncomfortable -- our physical aches, the emotions we don't quite know what to do with, the old wounds.
it is the work
There was a time when I felt guilty about the practices my body needed to arrive for the day.
Conditioned by an education system built to support compliant and productive little workers, when I wasn’t pumping out the emails by 9:00 a.m., there was a sense that I should probably hide what I was actually doing. I felt this even when I didn’t go into a formal office, even when I worked for myself.
a new myth
The day the colonizers came, when they looked upon our people it was like staring into the sun. They were so bright. So alive. So gifted. It was painful. The presence of such brilliance was intolerable to these men. It scorched their skin and illuminated their wounds festering with hate, violence and greed.
walking the thread
I still remember the words of my first meditation instructor: “This practice has made me more myself than anything else.” The words ping ponged through my body, “more myself,” “more myself ... ”
More myself, I imagined, would mean being able to reside in my body. It would mean knowing what really matters and making choices from that knowing. It would mean following my inner compass rather than the myriad other voices. I didn’t know how much I longed to feel, “more myself,” until I heard those words.