According to Nature, You Make Sense: Body of Wisdom, September 2024
It has been a long while since I’ve written a blog. Here I am, re-emerging. Trusting, allowing, and listening to my seasons.
The past 6 months to a year have been a transformational time for me, and part of why I’ve cocooned (at least from the internet). While cocooning from my online presence, I’ve been diving into deeper layers of my own healing, opening myself to more intimate friendships, and exploring relationship in sacred local community.
My practices in Somatic Coaching and CranioSacral & Somatic Therapy have deepened and expanded as well. It’s been a gift to receive an abundance of amazing clients, while simultaneously stepping back from what can become a tiring cycle of content creation. A reminder that there are many different ways to do business.
I also invested a lot of intentional energy into creating my first self-paced course: The Somatic Journey Toolkit. A response to a need expressed by clients for more support between sessions, this thoughtful, empowering course puts the wisdom of self-healing into your own hands whether you’re working with me, someone else, or diving into the work on your own. A+ feedback from clients working with it so far - more regulation, healing emotional releases, and feeling much more empowered.
I also gradually let go of focusing on supporting women entrepreneurs. I still enjoy that work and do some of it. Yet right now there are more true things for me emerging on the horizon.
One of those is a monthly newsletter, though I wish I knew a better word for what I intend… a reaching out, inviting in, soliloquy of healing, poetic expression woven with practical somatic elements to support your nervous system, sacred monthly ritual of writing. That’s what I intend.
So here is the first of hopefully many.
Theme of the Month: According to Nature, You Make Sense
If I could write a list of the most healing phrases I’ve found myself saying to clients (and myself) over and over again, it’s this… you make sense.
You make sense because your nervous system is brilliant, a result of eons of generations of life learning through experience.
You make sense because you are biologically designed for community and connection, so the complex survival strategies woven into your current physiology arose with genius so you could be nourished by any connection available (even if there wasn’t a lot available, or not the healthiest kinds available).
You make sense because you’re experiencing some degree of struggle living within oppressive systems and a culture that has moved sooo far from our roots that sometimes we forget, we are nature.
This is a poem I wrote:
Broken
Sometimes I feel I am broken
Just incapable of letting it go
Damaged beyond repair
Damaged beyond salvage to be unbroken in a damaged world
Too broken to be anything but revolutionary
Too whole to turn off my writhing parts
Too lost to pretend I’m found here
Sometimes I feel completely right
Right where I am meant to be
In relationship, in harmony with earth and the cosmos
Interconnected, webbed with totality
Too peaceful to be wrong
Too loved and loving to steep in despair
Too present to believe anything other than the moment
Wholeness doesn’t fit in broken systems.
Healing from systems, healing the systems
Re-aliving mechanized, un-alived systems
So they sense my aliveness, my unbrokenness
And we re-emerge as whole
**
I wrote this poem because I can’t unsee the systemic causes of the pain and trauma within myself, my clients, my community, the world. When you find yourself feeling broken, caught in shame or self-blame for not being able to measure up to the expectations of this death march culture, please remember this.
You are not broken.
You make sense.
You are a beautiful, living, breathing being interconnected with a rich world of beautiful, living, breathing beings. You belong here. (And maybe the current systems don’t).
As I continue my journey as a practitioner/human, one of my goals is to bridge the gap between the modern paradigms of “success” (such as capitalism, the health industrial complex, hustle culture, individualism, consumerism, etc) and paradigms of new/old life-giving ways of being, like supporting each other in community, nurturing and protecting our children, resting in gratitude for having “enough,” resisting systems of oppression, celebrating our connection with land and each other through life and earth-honoring traditions.
It is exhausting to support people to heal one by one, as if this is an individual problem, without inviting everyone in with so much love to the bigger picture where we are all suffering at the hands of oppressive systems and the myth of separation. Our individual healing is intertwined with it all. Let’s come together in solidarity and create change from the inside out.
A post shared by @earthlyeducation and @earthlyguy
Somatic Tool of the Month
Enjoy this somatic tool, taken straight from the Somatic Journey Toolkit. Take this email with you out into nature, whether your backyard or into the woods, and see what you discover…
Regulating with Nature
Your ability to self-regulate can be deeply enhanced by nature. You might even think about your time in nature as co-regulation, or regulating with another. Nature is full of beings, and when we perceive her as such, we find many new friends and resources to support our regulation and healing.
Take a walk in nature. During your walk, practice your self-awareness skills to support the process of your mind quieting.
You might find your mind to be busy at first, and walking can be very helpful to support a somatic processing of whatever is here with you today. As you walk, be sure to check in with your body, your breath, orient to your space, find space between thoughts, use your tools to gradually find a more restful, softer space inside yourself.
Here are some simple prompts to bring to your awareness to regulate with nature (while walking or sitting):
How does the earth feel beneath my feet? Notice how this feels in your body. Connect with the great web of life beneath the soil surface - fungal mycelium, roots, millions of microorganisms per tablespoon of soil, worms, bugs
Pay attention to the direction and quality of light, where does it fall on the path, leaves, your skin. Does it ripple, reflect or illuminate your environment?
Notice the plants around you. Let yourself tap into their energy. Are there any you feel particularly drawn to?
As you practice your awareness with these prompts, your body, and quieting the mind, notice any changes that take place. Do you feel more settled? Peaceful? Connected? Are there emotions that have come up? Sometimes getting quiet and having the support of another (including nature) can also create enough capacity for emotions to surface.
Play with letting your intuition and body guide you on your walk in nature. Stop at a place you feel called to. Stop and touch the trees. Consider yourself surrounded by many living beings, not alone.
A post shared by @animamundiherbals
Rooting in Ritual
Throughout human history, our ancestors used ritual to root into values as community. It’s easy to forget, to be pulled away by habitual ways of being. Ritual provides sacred structure, an opportunity to remember our intentions. To shed what is not serving. To invite in something new.
This month, consider a ritual for rooting into your values. De-conditioning from the values of the dominant culture we live in is hard work, even while we may be creating something new, we still have at least one foot in the old. We still need to pay the bills. So the ingrained paradigms of “success” creep in again and again.
Check in with yourself - How could you free yourself from this conditioning and root into your true values through ritual?
Allow your ritual to be nourishing. Here’s what it could look like for you:
Each morning, you pour yourself a hot cup of tea and sit outside listening to the insects and birds, letting the sun touch your face.
You slow your breathing, quiet your mind, connect with your heart.
You invite what you most value, truly, to surface. See what words, images, emotions arise. Do you value love, friendship, family, community, liberation, joy, nature, gratitude, play, connection….
Allow one word or image to stay with you as you step away from your practice. See how it may return to you throughout the day, especially when layers of conditioning surface telling you you’re not enough, you’re doing it wrong, etc.
A post shared by @kkellyyoga
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
Sacred Sisters Circle: 2 Year Anniversary!! - Join us for sacred dance, art, ritual, and sharing to celebrate the power of women gathering.
Sacred Sisters Circle: Grief Mandala - The lovely Alicia Barmon will guide us to explore grief and joy together in community.
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.
