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.
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.
in this way we find each other
Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh was known for encouraging his students to see “the miracle in the mundane.” He might, for example, hold up an orange and ask those before him what they saw. Yes, it is an orange, but what else?
another lens on healing
To have a body, even one that is failing, means to continually open to delight. Our insistence of joy, even amid the difficult, is an insistence of our completeness. We are not in need of fixing, we are arrived: complex, perhaps grumpy, but unwaveringly in partnership with the full kaleidoscope of our humanity.
in praise of longing
In the practice of somatics there is a saying, “life moves towards life.” How I interpret this is, what supports your vitality naturally flows towards what affirms it.
I like to imagine this intelligence moving me like a river. It will guide me toward my thriving if I stop trying to control it and instead let myself be carried.
where to begin
When we feel our bodies it's so easy to focus on what is not working. We notice the ache across our shoulders, the pain in our knees, the anxiety in our gut. Our awareness of these sensations is usually followed by a common thought: How do I make this go away?
We assess our options: face it head on, or ignore it.
orienting toward ritual
Ritual slows us down. It invites space for contemplation and deeper alignment in our work, projects and relationships. It is the opposite of urgency, and in this way, medicine for counteracting systems that require speed and disconnection. When we invite ritual, we empower ourselves to move counter to this conditioning. We are strengthened. Our priorities shift and our pace changes. This is where our power is.
practice: re-meeting your body
Sometimes it feels like our bodies don’t quite fit. They don’t move how we move. They don’t look or we look. It’s as though we’re buried in a sumo suit of flesh and emotions that don’t accurately reflect who we really are. The real you is less messy, more grounded, less anxious and more confident. The real you is comfortable in her own skin.
i want: a poem for today
When I witness fear and violence enacted against Black and brown bodies, it rattles my body. I do not jump to action, I swim in feeling. I process through writing and being in the natural world. Only after I’ve taken the time to understand how my body is impacted — feel its contractions, tension and strain and taken care of what is needed — can I move with my full self into what’s next.