Portals to Possibility

In a difficult moment, sometimes something opens unexpectedly.  What a blessing this can be.  Not that the difficult experience is necessarily a blessing.  It may or may not be.  However, the opening – the discovery of a portal to possibility – can be a blessing.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

In hurt moments we often feel compressed.  Maybe we have hurt feelings or experience a disconnection in one way or another. Whatever the situation, we might feel sadness, fear, anger, shame, or some combination.   If we have an embodiment practice, we might notice stress arising somatically – a tightening somewhere such as the chest, belly, or back. Perhaps we become numb to our emotions or sensations.  We might notice stress in our thinking: either the pace of thinking might pick up, seem internally louder, or the content of our thoughts might feel distressing.  

A powerful contemplation to try on, is:  How do I treat myself when I feel stressed or hurt? 

These internal experiences are a part of the human experience.  Recognizing when we’re stressed is an important step towards discovering how to become responsive to our experience.  Being responsive to our stress does not imply figuring it out alone:  sometimes responsiveness means realizing we need support.   

It feels important to me to acknowledge that the situations I am writing about are within a context of privilege.  For those who are in dangerous situations right now, whether that’s interpersonal, systemically oppressive, in a collective situation like a war or other ongoing emergency, the space to reflect may be much more limited or not possible at all.  

This awareness of our state of stress itself can create an opening.  We often have habitual ways of coping with stress or feelings we find difficult.  These strategies may have been around a long time; perhaps since childhood, or they might even be ancestral patterns.  Stress responses tend to operate under our conscious awareness.  This is not necessarily a bad thing.  Whatever our coping strategies are, they are part of how we made it to this moment.  And what worked for us in the past may not necessarily be how we’d like to consciously choose to respond to stress going forward.  

Pausing to consciously acknowledge our stressful state may help us shift gears and make more contact with our felt experience.  When we have the capacity to compassionately and curiously turn towards how we are in our bodies, breathing, and emotions, we deepen self-contact.  We can potentially learn something about how the sacred life force is moving / not moving through us in that moment.  Shifting our orientation towards our experience can create the possibility of discovery and inner restoration.   What was stuck can move.  What was hidden can come into the light of presence.  What was hurt can be tended to.  What was too much can gradually be included and integrated.  What we've held alone can begin to be shared.  When more of us is included in our wholeness, more becomes possible for us.  

Identity as a Verb

I've long been interested in various systems to explore identity, such as yoga, the enneagram, astrology, archetypes, defensive character structures, Myers & Briggs, personas, and ego / essence.  I've found each of these useful.  And, my experience is that each system can become an obstacle if I fixate on a identify definition which I perceive as 'me' or 'not me.'

The ancient tradition of yoga suggests that we may not be who we think we are.  For example, a quote by Ramana Maharshi is: “The question, ‘who am I?’ is not really meant to get an answer, the question ‘who am I?’ is meant to dissolve the questioner.”

What is particularly interesting to me is shifting identity from a noun to a verb.  Verbing identity is a process of exploring how we organize ourselves in a given moment.  Habitual ways of organizing were originally developed in response to something from the past (our past difficulties, early environments, or even ancestral or cultural difficulties).  Habitual, repetitive ways of organizing identity can unconsciously continue to frame our perceptions and eliminate our conscious choice as long as it is invisible to us.  

Inquiry about how we are verbing identity can be through any system, such as the ones I mentioned above in my first sentence, with the intention to use the system as a gateway to understanding how we are relating.  Inquiry in service of what we want for ourselves, connected with somatic presencing, allows an unfolding self-intimacy resulting in new possibilities we can gently move toward as we become aware of them.

How cool is that?!

Solstice & New Year's Contemplations

 TO KNOW THE DARK BY WENDELL BERRY 

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To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,

and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,

and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

Feel free to explore what comes up for you, whether or not it seems to be a direct answer to the question.  Take what resonates for you, and leave the rest…

Wonder Question:  

How can I connect with and embody the sacred life moving through me and us, which is ever emerging, structuring and re-structuring, and available for to me to express as creativity?

Related to the Solstice / Season of Long Nights here in the Northern Hemisphere:   
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• What healing aspects of light and darkness can you connect with as a resource in your life?

• What supports and sustains you (on a physical, emotional, mental and/or spiritual level)  when you experience times of darkness?
• How are you supported by your past experiences?  What aspects of the past (personal, ancestral or collective) are you presently available and supported to turn toward, for purposes of healing and restoration?  Can you connect to a felt sense of resilience of those who have come before you / us?

The great conjunction, Jupiter & Saturn, occurs in the sign of Aquarius on January 21.  Jupiter will be in this sign for nearly a year, and Saturn will remain here for around 2 1/2 years, so these qualities will remain and ripen for some time...  How do you relate with these qualities in your life:
 
Jupiter – healing, magnification, expansion
Saturn – pruning, grounding, structuring
Aquarius – air, breath, fixed nature, communication justice, balance, the collective

• What part of your life is emerging a whole new way of being for you, going forward? 
• How can you befriend the qualities of Jupiter, Saturn and Aquarius?
• What support, practices, rituals, connections, etc. are important, alive structures for you?  What habits / rituals support you and what need to be pruned or changed?
• How do you integrate to stabilize your expansion?
• What aspects of your life feel resonant personally and with the collective?   Another way to wonder about this is, what are you doing / how are you being collectively that also feels good and replenishing to you personally?

Related to the Gregorian Calendar New Year...
 

• What did you learn in 2020?  What was lovely about it?  Is there anything you will miss?  What awarenesses awakened in you?  What did you learn?  What did you let go of?   What do you appreciate about yourself and your life?  
  
• What qualities do you want to embody, or begin to embody in 2021?  Are there simple steps, practices, or rituals you want to create to support your evolution?

Wise Body: Nature's Expression through Us

Sometimes we ask someone, how old are you?  We tend to think of how old our particular body is, and how many years since we were born.  I am 56 years old or 20 years old or 80, etc.  

Another perspective involves taking a longer view.  Our ancestors have been around for about six million years, and the modern form of humans for about 200,000 years.* Each person that is born comes into life at a particular moment in history, and carries the benefits and wisdom developed up to that point.  Our bodies carry the impacts of whatever historical and collective trauma experiences were not yet able to be fully integrated.   We also carry resilience and wisdom and a healing impulse.  Our bodies are an expression of nature through us as individuals. 

What's it like to contemplate nature and the environment not as out there, but also as in here, and right here as my body and yours?  I find it interesting to note how and when I do feel interconnected and a part of nature, and also when I don't, and to wonder about that seeming gap.  In those moments, am I simply numb to the connection between me, my body, my emotions, and nature?  Are you?  Are we all numb, to some extent?  

Numbing is not wrong.  It's a protective function which is one of the symptoms of trauma.  When something is too overwhelming for our nervous systems to process or was too overwhelming at some point in the recent or distant past, numbing allows a portion of the nervous system to be put aside in a sense, so that functioning can continue.  Discovering how we experience numbing and disconnection from our bodies and from nature is a healing movement, and a foundational step to heal the disconnection and move toward wholeness and integration.   

Integrating and deepening our connection to our bodies is easier together.  You're invited to join me for a yoga class, or an embodiment session, if that resonates for you.  Visit my website for details and information. 

* From an article on University Today.

Yoga as Unity

In the tantric philosophy of yoga, yoga means wholeness, to yoke or join together.  This is distinct from the classical yoga definition which orients to the goal of kaivalya:  to abide in one's soul (and not placing as much value on the more transitory aspects of humanity, such as our bodies, emotions, and thoughts).  

Personally, my practice of yoga and meditation is geared toward the tantric aspect of wholeness and integration, bringing our souls / essential selves fully into our bodies, our relationships, and into the world.  One of the ways we can practice to embody the tantric philosophy of wholeness and interconnectedness, is to join together the different aspects of ourselves. To be human includes how we:

- Inhabit our human bodies

- Befriend and connect with our emotions

- Discover our needs and values

- Honor our vulnerabilities as well as our strengths and gifts 

- Honor the past and how we got here

- Be in touch with love and purpose and light and possibility

- To include the places where we have less development and unconscious patterns, (both personal & collective)

- Open to learning and to witness our impact on others,  

- Align our actions with all these aspects of ourselves in a way that serves our connection, sense of belonging, growth, love, and serves the well-being of all of us.

It's not a small goal, this turning toward wholeness!  Living our yoga is a process not a destination.  Every moment is an invitation to start again.  Unity is a process, and the first step is with our most intimate circle of intimacy - our own selves.

Our practice is quite simple really even as practice includes all aspects of ourselves in some way.  Breath and movement and stillness, sensing and feeling, refining our perception, discovering, and most of all caring for ourselves compassionately. Each of us is an inseparable part of the whole that is comprised of each of us, all other species and nature itself.  We practice to remember, to turn toward the embodiment of this yoga as unity: day by day, moment by moment, breath by breath.

You can find my current classes, and other ways to work with me, here.

Writing to Bridge the Gap: Little Soldier

Marching through the world

Pushing on
Moving on
Marching on
Carrying on

Like a little soldier

-- too young to be a soldier --

but a soldier none-the-less

who does what must be done.

"Scared" is an Invitation to Self-Connect & Align with Your Inner Guidance

"Scared" is a feeling,
as well as a reflection of the current state of our nervous system.
Like all feelings,
fear needs to be included within awareness
and fully responded to
for us to be at home in embodied wholeness.

Fear blocks us from self-connection,
responsibility, and empowered actions
especially when we are numb to it or avoiding it.
What we are actually avoiding is ourselves.

When we are scared or anxious, our fear needs attention,
and connecting with it supports us to recognize
and align with our inner, felt wisdom of “yes” and “no.”

When we choose an  evolutionary path,
continually choosing to open to discovery, connect,
and expand capacity for love, contribution and fulfillment,
we continue to discover pockets of fear within.

 How people discover their inner blocks
- fragments of fear -
may vary from person to person.
For me, interactions with people
tend to show me my inner blocks.

Presencing fear-blocks,
which is another way to say trauma,
especially through connection with someone
who is sensitively attuned to feelings / energy,
allows fear which was fragmenting and blocked
to release into our wholeness
and re-join our greater flow.


Contemplation questions to wonder about:

- How do I notice when I feel stuck, anxious, defensive or afraid?

- When  I notice any of those states, how do I experience that in my body?

- How can I support myself ( or receive support ) to sustain attention with my experience in a friendly way so that I can connect more deeply with myself ?

- How can I appreciate myself for my willingness to engage on my path of discovery?