Hello Beautiful Beings  –

To be honest, I don’t really know what to say to you today. The world seems so unbelievably fractured and beyond repair sometimes. My heart aches right now and some days the practices of ritual and beauty feel so empty. But I also know they are needed. I know they are what helps keep the world connected to a larger web.

To be even more honest, I am scared…for the world breaking itself on the misguided premise that one-upmanship and ‘we are the choosen ones’ is the way forward. I am scared for my beloveds who are and will continue to struggle even more if certain ‘projects’ come about. I don’t like my options and I feel trapped. How about you?

I have to find ways to hold all this pain and confusion and anger as we traverse the collapse of the world as we have known it.  And I have to find ways to hold the possibility of a bigger picture…a wider web than I can imagine. That wider web is not just human by the way…it is a deep knowing that we are not human without our green kin and our elemental kin and our scaled, furred, feathered and hoofed kin. So I find ways, daily, to acknowledge and re-member that I am not at the center of things, that perhaps there is a process going on that is beyond my ken. And what do some of the old stories say about these kind of troubles? What did the ancestors do? Where can I find wisdom?

I texted a friend yesterday in my low state of anguish and despair and they returned my message with so much care and understanding and with the offering of the potent and beautiful actions that are being offered all around us by courageous and wild beings. I so needed to hear this…not to take the ache away but to offer the ballast.

There is an image that seems potent for these times…Indra’s web…the understanding that each one of us is the meeting place of seen and unseen forces, spirit and matter, and this meeting place is in relation to all the other points on the web of being. So that anything we might do in our little corner has a ripple effect out into the world along the vectors of space and time. So what is it that I wish to ripple? LOVE. CARE. LISTENING. BEAUTY. RITUAL.

How about you? How are you finding ballast in these trying times? How do you find ways to cradle the ache? I want to learn from you so please share. 

May we let our hearts break open so we remember our humanity

May we seek wisdom in the stories of old

May we find ballast for the pain in moments of beauty and strength

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

Practice Prompts:

• Allow yourself time and space to grieve and wail about all that is being lost. Find containers, people who can hold the space without trying to fix or change you or the topic and lean in with your pain. See if allowing this might give space for something else (beauty, peace, kindness) along side it.
• Practice leaning into whatever is present in your being…allowing time for the waves of aliveness as pain, as joy, as exhaustion, as enthusiasm to roll through. The key here is rolling and moving rather than sitting and stagnating.
• Stay true to your practices of self-care…the rituals of embodied movement, meditation, art, journaling, singing, dancing, napping. Even if it’s just a few minutes a day…stay true.
• I offer one to one sessions, in-person in Bend, Oregon, and virtually all over the world. These sessions are centered on supporting you find nervous system capacity and resiliency through various practices including but not limited to Somatic Experiencing, embodied movement and sensory perceiving. Please email me or schedule a free 20 minute Exploratory Session.

Live Streaming Practice Opportunities:

• Yoga for Resilience, Mondays, 9:30-11am PT, livestream through Body of Insight
• All Levels Yoga, Sundays… Jul 21, Aug 18, 9:30-11am PT, livestream through Two Dog Yoga
• On Demand Yoga Practices…All Levels… through Two Dog Yoga

Inspirational Wisdom: