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.
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.
what is beyond one body
I did not sleep well last night. There is a heaviness in the air, and I can feel my mind trying to move through it.
It wants to do the right thing. It wants to do the helpful thing. It wants to be assured that it's good and of service.
This is a place I know well. I call it the spinning place. Round and round I go trying to undo what cannot be undone. The more heartbreaking the events that have occurred, the more destabilized I feel.
joy comes first
Do you remember the fable of the Grasshopper and the Ants?
As a child, I watched this story over and over shuddering at the foolishness of the Grasshopper. My 5-year old self promised to never be like him. I would always be a hard worker. Otherwise, the risk was clear: starvation, exile and death. That wouldn’t be my reality.
As I’ve looked back on this memory I’ve wondered, is this where I first learned the importance of hard work? Is this where I learned to distance myself from my joy?
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.
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.
cultivating your care team
Contrary to what we’re often sold, our personal wellness requires the care and attention of the collective. When we’re feeling vulnerable, we may default to pulling in and hiding until the storm passes (my go to) or sharing our challenges with a ton of people to explain why we're "off" … and later regretting it. This makes sense. Sadly, in our western(ized) society, which is structured by the illusion of individualism and the false idea of a meritocracy, we’re simply not shown models of how to lean on others (and be leaned on in return) in a healthy way. We’re told that needing is “weakness.”
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.
decolonization begins in the body
As a brown girl with short curly hair, DDD breasts and a tummy, what’s been reflected by our media, government and culture is that this body is not enough.
burn it down
We’re standing with our feet in the fire. The natural tendency is to want to put the flames out — reach for the bucket, stop feeling and start doing. While that may alleviate some pain in the short term, engaging in actions to push away feelings of “less than” is a tool that systems of inequity use to keep internalized structures of oppression intact. Our suffering becomes our fault.