Hello Kin  –

I have noticed that there is this assumption in some circles that if you do enough practices, light enough candles, go to enough therapy sessions, take enough walks, etc. that life is supposed to get easier. As far as I can see, that is just not how it works. Life is life and part of its job description is to challenge us. In fact, often I have noticed that as my practices deepen and my capacity seems to broaden that life likes to match me…to see if I really do have the ways and means to tend my being as part of the larger being of the planet and find the ways through with as much Grace as possible. And sometimes life offers moments of respite and ease, they can be literally just a moment or two of beauty and delight or a whole season of spaciousness. The invitation is not to take any of it for granted.

So many folks are trying to not get stressed, to stay ‘regulated’, not be overwhelmed… but perhaps that is the wrong tact. Perhaps it is more about seeing the ways life pushes and nudges us towards a deepening and growing that we are invited to partake in. That life’s work is to squeeze us a little, okay, a lot, to help us remember our best self and grow back into the largeness of our Soul. The goal, if you want to put it that way, is not to be calm, cool and collected all the time, but to work with it and learn from it and build our capacity to meet it gently and tend ourselves reverently. To find the ways and means that we can ride the waves and when we get dunked to trust and know we can lean into the folks around us (humans, trees, rivers, wild ones) to help pull us back up and into the boat of our steadiness.

I am definitely feeling the squeeze these days and have had some moments of falling apart, breaking down, being bored, and loosing my freakin’ s+#*! It has not always been pretty and I am not always calm and ‘regulated’ and yet my commitment is to keep tending and accompanying myself, to keep finding places of care and connection with my world, to slow down, feel and move. Just like a pearl starts with the irritation of a piece of grit or sand, can we tend our own grit with the same willingness to meet it and dance with it and maybe make some thing of beauty?!? It is not about never having anything bother us but about how we tend the bother and how we meet the impact and deepen from it. So how are you tending yourself and riding this wild ride of collapse and heartbreak that is here collectively and for many of us, individually?

May we meet the squeeze of life with a willingness to be squeezed

May we tend ourselves with tenderness and gentleness

May we stop demanding that life be different and instead offer our soft heart to hold the brokenness and the beauty 

May we bring wild blessings and fierce love to all we encounter

Practice Prompts:

• Check in with yourself about the practices/places/people that steady you, ground you and support you when things get tippy and unsure. Are they still a part of your routine? If not, how might you bring them back in, in such way to feel like ballast rather than demand and pressure. Would it be helpful to make a list of these things to refer to when you are out of whack and tend to forget what support it there?
• Consider where you add more stress to your system insisting that you be calm, cool and collected all the time. Can there be places you are be messy, emotional and express your frustration and anger? There is a lot on our collective plates, it’s okay to be maxed out and it’s important to know how to tend yourself and allow yourself to be tended by others.
• I offer one to one sessions, in-person in Bend, Oregon, and virtually all over the world. These sessions are centered on supporting you finding nervous system capacity and resiliency through various practices including but not limited to Somatic Experiencing®, Continuum Inquiry, Safe and Sound Protocol and various embodying practices.  Respond to this email or schedule a free 20 minute Exploratory Session.

Practice Opportunities:

• Yoga for Resilience, Mondays, 9:30-11am PT, livestream through Body of Insight (no class Sep 15 and Oct 6)
• All Levels Yoga, Sundays… Sep 21, Oct 19, Nov 16, Dec 21, 9:30-11am PT, livestream through Two Dog Yoga
• On Demand Yoga Practices…All Levels… through Two Dog Yoga
• In person Kirtan with Shantala…Bend, OR…October 25, 7:00pm…Ticket info coming soon!

Inspirational Wisdom

Grief Astronomer 

A difficult life is not less
worth living than a gentle one.
Joy is simply easier to carry
than sorrow. And your heart
could lift a city from how long
you’ve spent holding what’s been
nearly impossible to hold.

This world needs those
who know how to do that.
Those who could find a tunnel
that has no light at the end of it,
and hold it up like a telescope
to know the darkness
also contains truths that could
bring the light to its knees.

Grief astronomer, adjust the lens.
look close, tell us what you see.

~ Andrea Gibson