Sacred Thread Update: April New Moon 2022

May 2, 2022/Elizabeth Rainey/

Hello Fellow Body-Mind-Hearts –

This post/newsletter is a little late. I try to send it out on the New Moon but I am a few days behind. Too many things on my to do list along with prioritizing planting my garden beds and taking walks has meant this writing is not on my preferred timeline. Yet, I have also learned not to be so demanding of myself and so rigid that I overtax my system and then resent something that I am committed to and enjoy…writing for you.

How is your relationship with time? Do you feel hounded or spacious when it comes to moving through your day and your ‘to do’ list? Do you have ways that you can shift time?

Our experience of time can change based on the state of our nervous system. I often feel overwhelmed and like there’s not enough time and yet, I have discovered that if I consciously work to shift my perspective and relationship to space in gravity as well as my nervous system state, time will often open up. It often feels like magic.

There is a difference between urgency and agency and they correlate to states in our nervous system. The sense of urgency comes from our sympathetic nervous system being activated and the pressure of meeting the challenge, the deadline, the demand NOW or sooner! The sense of agency comes from finding the place of relaxed readiness that resides in the parasympathetic nervous system when we are feeling steady and safe enough to be able to do what needs to be done without overwhelm. Being able to recognize what state we are in and how we might shift it can create a different relationship to time and how we move through the world. Slowing down and noticing your surroundings, dropping into the felt sense of your body in relationship to the ground and offering a gentle hand to the heart can all start to bring us into a different relationship with space which in turn impacts our relationship to time.

Space and time are connected. Our body is the meeting place. Tending our bodies in space can help us move through time. And, recognizing that our bodies are not machines and that time and technology is manufactured helps us start to tend our own rhythms and cycles. The more we can honor the way our particular body-mind-heart moves and dances in time-space the easier it can be navigate the demands of time from the outside.

I have a tendency to overcommit myself. This comes from a genuine desire to participate in life and yet I can often loose sight of the fact that without downtime and rest I cannot be fully engaged in all that I do. Then the state of urgency kicks in and I become even more exhausted. So, I practice listening to the wisdom of my body and implementing the practices of pausing, settling, re-organizing and deleting things from my calendar. When there is space I have more agency to choose and show up in the unfolding of time. It is an ongoing practice.

How do you work with your relationship with time? Any tips to you have to share?

“Help me to be less fearful of the measure of time, and more fully alive in the time that simply is. Help me to live time, not just to simply use it; to breathe it in, and return it in acts of love and presence.” ~ Avis Crowe

Guiding Lights…
Francis Weller is a psychotherapist, author, soul activist and so much more. His writings and his teachings have impacted me greatly and I encourage anyone who wishes to learn more about how to live a soulful life and bring back the important rituals of grief and initiation and community to plug into his network and learn from him.

May we honor the rhythms and tides of our body-mind-heart being

May we endeavor to move from a place of agency rather than urgency

May we use our embodied presence to work with the sometimes disembodying pace of technology

May we offer kindness, compassion and beauty everywhere we go and in every interaction

Practice Prompts:

Take some time away from clocks, timers, watches, etc. Give yourself some timeless time for an afternoon or a day…go from one thing to another as it suits you, eat when you are hungry, wander in nature. Notice both the joy and perhaps the uncomfortableness of this exploration. Perhaps make it a regular practice.
Begin to deepen your awareness of the felt sense of when you are in an urgent mode and pressuring yourself to do things that don’t need pressure and when you are in a mode of agency that allows you the space and time to do what needs to be done. Explore ways of shifting from urgency to agency…slowing down, noticing your surroundings, pausing, talking with yourself. See if you can find more ease and access to the agency place.
Study with nature…her rhythms and cycles… and let her help you reclaim some of your body wisdom of slower time.
Schedule a free 20 minute Exploratory Session to learn more about what I offer in my private sessions and how I might be able to help you learn the language of your body and ways to follow it’s wisdom.

Upcoming Live Streaming Practice Opportunities:

Inspirational Wisdom:

Gloria Mundi

Come to my funeral dressed as you
would for an autumn walk in the woods.

Arrive on your schedule; I give you permission
to be late, even without good cause.

If my day arrives when you had other plans, please
proceed with them instead. Celebrate me

there—keep dancing. Tend your gardens. Live
well. Don’t stop. Think of me forever assigned

to a period, a place, a people. Remember me
in stories—not the first time we met, not the last,

a time in between. Our moment here is small.
I am too—a worldly thing among worldly things—

one part per seven billion. Make me smaller still.
Repurpose my body. Mix me with soil and seed,

compost for a sapling. Make my remains useful,
wondrous. Let me bloom and recede, grow

and decay, let me be lovely yet
temporal, like memories, like mahogany.

~ Michael Kleber-Diggs

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with Elizabeth Rainey

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