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.
what the bones know
The majority of our ancestors (regardless of how your body is racialized today) lived in reverence to the more than human world. We all come from people who engaged in ritual practices; whose somatic intelligence was intact as they moved their bodies, told stories and sang around a communal fire. Our ancestors trusted the unseen and honored these spirits, protectors, gods, goddesses, and mischief-makers.
ritual acts of care
Can you be with whatever is arising in your body without making it wrong? Maybe call on the support of that which is bigger than you (the earth, ancestors, spirit) to help you in this holding. If it feels right, lay down on the earth, light a candle, place your hand on your heart, or ask for the support of a loved one. All of this is ritual.
between inhalations
The waxing and waning of the moon, flooding and ebbing of the tides, blossoming and decaying of the fruit, and so forth are a kind of breath. In and out, expansion and contraction, becoming and releasing. From a zoomed-out perspective, there's impartiality to the process. The cycle simply is. Tracking this dance orients us. There's something comforting about recognizing the season of a thing. Where things get tricky, however, is not trusting this process in our own 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.
finding wisdom in what aches
My knee is tired. This simple truth lands in my chest like the thud of the old-school yellow pages on a hard desk. There's a heaviness here I've been dutifully avoiding. My knee is tired. It's tired of running, tired of pushing, tired of jumping, tired twisting and bending, tired of extending beyond itself to get just ... a little ... further.
And when I hear my knee, when I can really let these words in, I get it. Yeah knee, I'm fucking tired too.
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.
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.
being you is a practice
Identifying with the practice frees us from identifying with the outcomes. Practice is all the permission we need to do that thing.