Hello Fellow Body-Mind-Hearts –
The tag line for my work is ‘Reclaim Your Resiliency’. My goal is to support folks in finding the simple and profound ways they can hold and tend the complexity of life; the horrible beauty, the heartbreak and the gifts, the sheer magnitude of being alive. This can be so challenging when our nervous system is dis-regulated and our capacity to be present has been diminished by past traumas and chronic stress. Add to that living through the collective trauma of a pandemic, massive ecological upheaval, deep seated social inequality, conspiracy theories and a cruelly divisive political landscape and things get hard. Really hard.
It has been said many times that we teach/offer what we most need to learn…
And so here I am wondering where my resiliency is? Perhaps it rolled under the couch with the kitty toys!
Where is my capacity to be with all that is breaking me apart? I know, it’s full of chocolate bars and chamomile-lavender tea.
Where did my ability to ride the waves with grace and aplomb go? Ah, that’s right, it’s flowing in the tears I cry daily while I shake and moan.
How do we find our way through this crazy wild chaotic time with grace and ease? Well, perhaps we need to redefine what it means to have grace and ease! Often it gets interpreted to mean we don’t get ruffled, we are cool and not impacted as things get hairy. But, as it has been said to me numerous times this week, there would be something very wrong with me/us if we weren’t crying, shaking, angry and scared right now.
It may be that grace is a little more rough and tumble than we’d care to admit. Maybe ease is relative and not always easy. And very possibly we need to become friends with our own messy, rough, unpolished and imperfect process. That’s not to say we don’t lean into our resources, friends and practices, or that we don’t endeavor to find moments of relief and beauty. But it is simply not a smooth and linear process of growth and presence. It is a complex and juicy dance of losing and finding our capacity to be present with the whole of life and death.
It is our reclamation project that is sometimes inelegant and often tiring but always full of Grace. This can be our offering to the world that needs our authentic truth and presence now and always.
May we honor our tears and fears even as we seek out moments of rest and beauty
May we allow the inherent wisdom of natural rhythm to support us in our dance of presence
May we bring compassion and kindness to our own wounded and tired body-mind-hearts
May we continue to seek out the resources that are the container for our beautifully messy process of being
Practice Prompts:
- Take a moment and put a hand on your chest and heart space. Pause and simply notice what you are feeling. What is the sensation in your body and the emotion in your heart. If tears arrive, welcome them. If shaking shows up, give it time to shake. If loneliness is found in the corner, sit with her. Offer yourself the same presence and love you might offer a dear friend.
- Practice generosity…ample time to rest, to connect with nature and loved ones, to trust the rhythm of life even when it feels chaotic and sharp.
- Make a list of the resources that nourish you…the practices that support you…the people who can hold your messiness with love…the simple foods, places, activities and people that give a glimmer of ease and release. Literally write a list that you can refer to when life is overwhelming and you can no longer think clearly. Then pick one, just one, to do when you have lost your faith.
- Schedule an online Resiliency Session with me. Sliding scale available upon request. Please allow me to support you in this wild time with support and guidance to access the wisdom of your body and resource your nervous system. I offer this from my lived experience.
Upcoming Live Streaming Practice Opportunities:
- Monday 10-11:30am PST All Levels Yoga via online streaming through Seattle Yoga Arts
- Sunday 10-11:30am PST All Levels Yoga via online streaming through Two Dog Yoga Studio
- Yoga Nidra Practice, Sunday, Sep 27, 5:30-7pm PST, via online streaming through Two Dog Yoga
- Full Moon Mandala Practice, Thursday, Oct 1, 7-8:30pm PST via online streaming through Seattle Yoga Arts
- Continuum Moving Inquiry Playshop, Monday, Oct 5, 6:30-8:30pm PST via online streaming through Body of Insight
- Tending the Nervous System: Honoring Trauma & Cultivating Resilience in the Classroom (and other places) Workshop, Oct 16-18, via online streaming through Seattle Yoga Arts
Inspirational Wisdom:
“Here is what my prayer sounds like right now: I evoke all those beings and sources of refuge who have ever loved me to come sit with me because it is now that I feel most alone. I evoke the Blessed Mother, the Sacred Father, Spirits of Light, the essence of wisdom, my teachers and elders, the communities who have always caught me when I have fallen, the ancestors who have never stopped holding me, the sacred earth who helps me to stand, silence which wraps me in the space to be with my heart, and I call upon my own innate compassion. To all those I have evoked, I offer my grief and what seems like my perpetual mourning in this body. I offer my fear, my numbness, and I offer my inability to dream beyond my shutting down. Most of all, I offer my fatigue. I am tired. Today precious earth let me lie upon you and remind me of my body and my heart. I want many things but I need only one thing now- to give up what I cannot hold to you. I pray that I evolve past my belief that my pain is mine alone to carry. To my sources of refuge whom have been evoked, you have taught me over and over again that this is not the truth. You have taught me over and over again that it is not my pain, but our pain. You remind me that my worship of isolation is not conducive to my liberation. I want to be free and so I offer what I struggle to hold to you right now knowing that you are only here to share this heaviness with and to love me. I am afraid of the world. I am afraid of people. I am afraid of what I must do to survive in the world. Even these fears, I offer to my sources of refuge. Today my precious sources of refuge, in your love, offer me rest. In your love, never abandon me. In your love, haunt all others who feel lonely and tired. Please continue to haunt me in this life, in death, and into all my lives to come until one day I become a source of refuge for other beings. Yet it is also my prayer to become a source of refuge for beings right now in this life. Please continue to take care of me so I may take care of others. May I and all others in this realm and beyond be blessed forever. These are my prayers right now.”