Here, With You: Body of Wisdom December 2024
As I write this to you, I’m listening to music on headphones, locked in my bedroom in an attempt to at least muffle the incessant high-pitched squealing of the dryer. A still-functional but incredibly squeaky dryer is just one drop in my capacity cup over the past few weeks. You know when you are already quite stretched, you feel like you can’t take any more, then another challenge drops in that can’t be ignored? I felt that last week when my dog had fleas and a skin infection. That was after the dryer, and all the other everyday things. And yet those are things that I can take action on and impact, resolve before long.
The last few weeks have taught me that my capacity is big, actually really big. It hasn’t always been that way.
If you’ve been feeling on and off crazy, scared, confused, angry, lost, or exhausted over the past few weeks, you’re not alone. The collective energy has been intense post-election. My Coaching and CranioSacral Therapy practices are near full and holding space for people riding these waves has been a beautiful and at times hard experience. If you feel like you can’t quite escape the vortex of uncertainty, know that I am with you.
When I say “with you,” I don’t just mean that I’m in the unknown too, I mean I am with you in the unknown. Together. We’re here together. I offer my presence to meet yours, right here, now.
Post shared by @animamundiherbals
I’m grateful for my experience with somatics because it has gifted me a framework for being able to deepen and expand my capacity. Capacity for challenges and for joys.
What would you like to expand your capacity for?
This question has hit home for me recently, because there are some things I really don’t want to expand my capacity for. I don’t want to expand my capacity to tolerate being a pog in the machine. I don’t want to expand my capacity for tolerating dehumanization. I don’t want to expand my capacity for ignoring injustice, for example.
Here are some things I feel are worth me expanding my capacity for:
Being in relationship with people
Asking for support
Having difficult conversations with people when we have different views/backgrounds/beliefs to better understand each other and connect heart-to-heart
Feeling emotions
Trusting my body
That list goes on. Some of these I’ve been expanding for years. I’m so grateful for how much my capacity has grown because this allows me to be with people. Like really be with them.
There is so much we don’t have direct control over. Especially with so much unknown in the collective field right now. But how I inhabit my own experience, what edges I choose to lean into, this I can shape.
You may be familiar with my background, and how I came to be doing the work I do now. Recent times have been reminding me of my past experiences, offering wisdom and healing. Content warning here as I share a bit of my own trauma history.
In 2016, I had a near death experience and was hospitalized twice. I unknowingly had severe PTSD after that experience, while simultaneously being chronically ill with Lyme disease and other infections. It took me a long time to heal, I was unwell for years after. Eventually, my healing from illness took me to a place where I began to realize that many aspects of what used to bring stability and security in my life weren’t working for me anymore and weren’t supporting my healing. This included my career (as a permaculture designer and farmer), my relationship (with my then husband), and my home (we eventually sold our farm where we lived). Soon after my ex-husband and I split up (3 years after getting sick), I came across the book When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön.
This book feels relevant for these current collective times of division, oppression, and environmental crisis, especially post-election. It may feel like everything is falling apart. Here is an excerpt I opened to that hits home:
“Skandha mara is how we react when the rug is pulled out from under us. We feel that we have lost everything that’s good. We’ve been thrown out of the nest. We sail through space without a clue as to what’s going to happen next. We’re in no-man’s-land: we had it all together, working nicely, when suddenly the atomic bomb dropped and shattered our world into a million pieces. We don’t know what’s going to happen next or even where we are. Then we re-create ourselves. We return to the solid ground of our self-concept as quickly as possible. Trungpa Rinpoche used to call this “nostalgia for samsara.”
Our whole world falls apart, and we’ve been given this great opportunity. However, we don’t trust our basic wisdom mind enough to let it stay like that. Our habitual reaction is to want to get ourselves back – even our anger, resentment, fear, or bewilderment. So we re-create our solid, immovable personality as if we were Michelangelo chiseling ourselves out of marble.”
This resonated so deeply today as I read it. Years ago when I first read this book, I was trying so hard to know what my new life should look like, trying to re-create it at least in my mind as quickly as possible as my old life fell apart. But it took years, and many phases of evolution, for my new life to take shape.
Over the past few weeks in the intense post-election energy, I have felt myself just as Pema writes trying to land, trying to re-create my self-concept. Of course, I still do feel a sense of self, much much more than I felt 8 years ago, or 5 years ago when I went through those major life upheavals. But, it is UNCOMFORTABLE to feel unable to find solid ground. It is so uncomfortable to not know.
How bad will this presidency be? Will my rights as a queer person be threatened? Will people I care about be safe? How bad will climate change get? Those are just a handful of my questions, and I have heard many more questions from others in the past few weeks. Will my job be safe? Will my daughters have access to reproductive care? Should I have a plan to leave the country? Etc.
And honestly, it feels like the election has only stirred up the deep uncertainty that already exists within the collective.
So, reading this excerpt from Pema now, and reflecting on what I’ve noticed within myself the past few weeks, I feel reaffirmed that growing my capacity to be in the unknown is extremely important. Growing my capacity to be with you in the unknown is extremely important.
This is actually something that I feel is hard for many people. Recently, I’ve been blessed to experience some beautiful re-do’s in the sacred communities I’m a part of. When I say re-do’s, I talk about healing by getting to have a corrective experience. Healing by getting to have an experience that provides you now with what you didn’t get to have before. For instance, I felt very alone during my near death experience, and in the months/years following it I felt so isolated, scared, and unable to communicate about my experience or needs. A re-do for me is being able to communicate about my experience and needs and allowing someone to be with me, accompany me, see me, and have my back as I feel the charge and pain of those experiences.
There are a number of universal human experiences that society has taught us to avoid. All of them seem to involve the Unknown. Death. Illness. Those are two big ones. It is one thing to be in the Unknown - to be chronically ill and not know what’s wrong, when or if you’ll ever be well. To have survived near death and all the questions that can bring. To have experienced a loved one’s death and wonder why or worry you may lose a loved one, but when? All of this can be very hard. Yet, it is a whole other experience, a much harder experience, to be in the Unknown ALONE.
We need to sit with death, with sometimes being unwell, and with the unknown. We also need to dance with it, make art of it, sing to it. We need community and culture that surrounds, meets, and supports people while they (we) journey through the unknown aspects of being a human. We need to stop pretending as a culture that death and suffering doesn’t exist. We need to expand our capacity to accompany each other. We need to do it together.
I want to weave sanctuaries. I want us to weave sanctuaries together. I want us to layer each other and ourselves in so much care and support that facing the unknown together is beautiful and soul-quenching. A foray together into The Great Mystery. I don’t think we’re here to not die or to never suffer. To live in avoidance of uncertainty. What if much of what we are here for is relationship, love, beauty?
Nicole and Abbey: Photo by @amandalucia_photography
Somatic Tool of the Month
An underlying discomfort with the unknown feels to me like a major root of human suffering. At the same time, embracing the mystery can fill us with a sense of wonder, connection, and possibility. I’m thinking of nights laying on the grass looking up at the stars, writing music or making art and receiving from the co-creative field words, chords, shapes, colors.
This practice is about mapping your somatic or embodied experience with the unknown, the mystery. You can practice this simply by scanning your body, bringing to mind the feeling of Unknown, and seeing what you notice. Alternatively, you might write in a journal what you notice, or even draw a human body on paper and color the body with shapes/textures/shades that represent what you notice inside.
While you try out this practice, be kind to yourself. Take a break if it feels overwhelming. Listen to what you need.
Here’s what you can try noticing:
What do you notice when you sit with the words “The Unknown”?
Do you feel tension, loosening, or both?
Do you feel warmth, coolness? Stillness, rigidity, buzzing, tingling, vibrating?
Do you sense any emotions? Or a sense of emotional numbness? Where in your body does that live?
Do you feel a sense of being inside your body or outside your body?
Are there certain locations in your body that draw your attention? Colors? Textures? Shapes? Do images or memories come to mind?
Is there a movement or posture your body has an impulse to express?
Repeat this practice with the phrase “The Great Mystery” and any other concepts/ideas around the unknown you wish to sense into.
If you like this practice, you’ll find more like it in my self-paced course, The Somatic Journey Toolkit.
A recent offering for a sacred tree friend
Rooting in Ritual
On an evening soon, I encourage you to connect with your inner light through the practice of candle gazing. This is a practice is passed down through multiple traditions. In Pagan traditions, candle or fire gazing is known as scrying or “seeing,” and opens the participant to receiving answers to questions through focus, stillness, and quiet. In Ayurvedic traditions, candle gazing is called Trataka, “to look” or “to gaze,” and is meant to cultivate focus, insight, calm mind, and intuition.
This time of year approaching Winter Solstice and the longest night of the year is a special, sacred time to practice candle gazing. In many traditions, this time is an opportunity to contemplate the womb-like gestational space of darkness, as well as celebrate the return of the light with the rising sun which marks longer, brighter days to come.
If you would like to practice in community, we’ll be candle gazing among other practices for our upcoming Sacred Sisters Winter Solstice Circle, and we’d love for you to join us.
For your candle gazing practice, set yourself up in a comfortable position with a candle nearby around eye level. Bring the space around you into complete darkness and silence if possible, take a breath, and light your candle. Set a timer if you like for your practice, or practice until you feel complete. Gaze at the flame. If your eyes become tired, you might soften your gaze, taking in the flame’s glow rather than its brightest center. Or close your eyes, relax for a moment, and return your gaze to the flame.
While gazing, you might:
Contemplate on the light within you, continuing to burn even through the darkest times
Allow the light to be an anchor for you in the quiet, stay connected to love and peace as all else falls away and you practice just being
Sit with a question and simply notice what you notice without seeking an answer.
A post shared by @jamesapearson
Invitations into Offerings
I would love to weave with you on your healing journey. Here are some opportunities for our paths to cross:
Somatic Journey Toolkit - For folks feeling dysregulated and disconnected, who desire resilience, ease, and liberation from the stuck patterns in your nervous system, this course is designed to help you:
Feel more confident, at ease, and resilient in your ability to regulate your nervous system and emotions
Feel more free, having shed layers of stuck emotions and survival energy
Feel more authentic and connected to your needs, emotions, and desires with a stronger, more stable, embodied sense of self
12/3 Sacred Sisters Circle: Winter Pajama Party - Join us as Carrie guides us in an evening of child-like play and regenerative rest. Wear your favorite slumber party pajamas!
12/17 Sacred Sisters Circle: Light for the Long Night: A Solstice Ritual - Join us as Nicole guides us in celebrating the Winter Solstice through rituals of making beauty, breath, movement, candle gazing, meditation, and song.
1:1 Somatic Coaching - Let’s center your body and nervous system as anchors in your healing and personal growth. I help people who want to spend less time living in survival mode and are ready to shed the accumulated lifetime of stress and conditioning and come back home to their hearts and bodies.
Photo by my amazing wife-to-be @amandalucia_photography
