Open Hearts for Uncertain Times: Body of Wisdom, November 2024
Theme of the Month: Open Hearts for Uncertain Times
There is a quiet tension between myself and the land I sit upon. On a blanket, the sun on my back, crunchy leaves scattered across the browning grass, breezy yellow leaf coins twinkling above. There is a tension because the land seems to know how to let go better than I do. Here, sitting with her, is a good place to remember greater ease.
If you read my last email, you may remember that autumn is a season both of letting go and receiving inspiration. They’re intrinsically linked. Writing to you is a fertile ground for my own exploration of letting go to co-create. Co-create rather than create, because I’m not writing to you alone. I write with the sensations inside, with echoes of the breathwork practice I did in community this morning, with the falling leaves, with threads of relationship to every living breathing being on this beautiful planet.
As I weave each day, in my own journey, listening to clients, connecting with friends, family, community, and fellow spaceholders, I seem to sense in myself the common themes being worked out collectively. With a divisive election approaching, with communities reeling from impacts of climate change, with violence and genocide ongoing and escalating in the Middle East, this polycrisis, phew… I hear people sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, questioning what is real, who to believe, what to trust. I hear people sucked in and out of the us vs. them vortex. I hear people trying to figure out what to do. I slip in and out of these states myself, at times more or less able to discern the gripping conditioning and survival energy from glimpses of remembering my true nature.
A post shared by @abigail.rose.clarke
I have this image of two people caught in the us vs. them paradigm, a paradigm largely manufactured by corporate interests to divide the working class along lines such as race, sexuality, gender, education level, age, etc to keep us from forming a united multiracial democracy that holds elite interests to account. They’re sitting down together at a table, somehow miraculously slipping out of their layers of personal defense, and getting real about the vulnerability, need, humanity inside underneath it all.
While we may know some things, isn’t it true that there’s also a lot we don’t know? What would happen if these two people sat together in the “I don’t know”? I don’t know exactly what it’s like to be you. I don’t know for sure that I can trust the words that politicians speak. I don’t know how to resolve the conflict between us. I don’t know, but I am here, resisting the urge to know it all.
I don’t know…
I’ve had the opportunity lately to sit with various people who are dear to me and really be witnessed in my own “I don’t know.” It’s a dynamic, at times uncomfortable, tender, and curious space. Here’s a poem I wrote to explore…
Will you sit with me for a while in the “I don’t know”?
Unsure of where this moment is supposed to go
Loosening and gripping, to and fro
Between receptive/soft, and seeking/trying/can’t let go
Can we watch as the layers of conditioning unroll?
Trying to figure it out, get it under control
Doing it wrong, don’t belong, I want to hide in a hole
Don’t even know who I am anymore
I want to meet you here
Where I witness my fear
Where I let “letting go” steer
Where my body lets you see my tears
Airy and open, finally, my heart
“I don’t know,” a good place to start
“I don’t know,” remembering the art
With “I don’t know,” I do my part
Being in the “I don’t know.” By leaning in and learning how again and again, I do my part.
My sense is, the “I don’t know” is a fertile ground for letting go of conditioning that is so wound in and through us, that it keeps us from accessing our true nature. That from the space of surrendering and releasing control, not just alone but together, we remember our interconnected, co-creative, powerful, yet humble truth. New connections, inspiration, and possibilities for healing, collaboration, and solidarity emerge.
All I know is, I can’t do this alone. I’m here to lean into doing it together. Like the grassroots community organizations rising out of the murky mud of uncertainty in Western North Carolina, finding each other, working together via mutual aid to heal and restore the people and land. I’m here for it.
By visiting my own “I don’t know” regularly, I keep my heart open and stay receptive to how I can best serve on this wild, beautiful, at times soul-crushing journey of collective liberation and commitment to saving from destruction this gorgeous life-giving planet we call home.
A post shared by @comicblues
Somatic Tool of the Month
Enjoy this somatic tool, a guided somatic meditation from my self-paced course The Somatic Journey Toolkit.
This 7-minute recorded Heart Coherence Practice is a gentle practice intended to bring your body systems into greater harmony with each other and with the rhythms of nature. My experience with this practice is of greater heart resonance, more balance in my autonomic nervous system, and co-regulation with earth’s rhythms. Enjoy.
A post shared by @blackliturgies
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’s ritual is about mobilizing to take small, cumulative action. One pattern I notice in myself that I’ve been learning to soften over the years is the urge for instant gratification. Especially when we live in a society of “fast” (food, fashion, technology, etc), anything we can do to slow down our pace and align more with nature helps.
Nature is cumulative. Imagine an acorn sprouting in the spring, the impossibility of this moment without the preceding cold winter, without leaves dropping and worms eating to form fertile soil, without the tree growing to maturity then taking up nutrients to grow the acorns and imbue them with life-giving substance from which they too can grow.
So many collaborative and cumulative actions to reach this point. Even including the cycles of rot and decay that create fertility, and the dead cold of winter that prompts dormancy, rest, and restoration.
When I remember that my actions are cumulative, and when I see myself less as an individual and more a member of a collective whole, I find myself less paralyzed by the weight of the world. I feel more in touch with my personal responsibility to keep going with my seemingly small actions that do ripple out and contribute to the cumulative repair.
Here is a not at all comprehensive list of ideas for small actions you could take to contribute to our collective healing.
Take pauses this month to feel into what small actions you can take. Notice and reflect on what it feels like in your body after taking action. Sense into the cumulative nature of these actions, unfolding over time, rippling out into the lives around you. Imagine what could be created within a month’s time, a year’s time, a lifetime, a few generations' time.
Connect with the land where you live. Listen.
Take more breaks to rest and breathe.
Honor your capacity. We all have different capacities based on our health and histories. If you need to focus most on your own healing, focus on that. If there’s space for more relationships, see where you can weave more with collective change and healing.
Make a batch of nourishing soup, nourish yourself with some and drop some off to a friend who recently had a baby, who is grieving a loss, or who is financially stressed.
Set up a recurring donation within your means for a mutual aid organization rebuilding after Hurricane Helene, or an organization providing medical aid or fighting for human rights around the world.
Attend a protest for an issue you deeply care about.
Let the people you love know you love them.
Learn and educate yourself about historical patterns of colonization, oppression, and division and strategies for counteracting them and creating alliances that steward the earth and center people care over profits (the organization White Awake has helped me with this a lot).
Learn about the indigenous tribes whose land you live on.
Lean into community, especially community that provides each other with mutual aid, safe spaces to heal together, aiding and protecting those in need, and stewarding relationship with the earth.
Learn about growing or foraging for food, storing rainwater, or other resiliency skills.
Buy food from local farms, especially those using regenerative practices such as rotational grazing, no-till, certified organic, etc.
Spend money in ways that align with your values. Use cash or check especially for local businesses - keep the resources in the local community rather than exporting through credit card fees.
Shop for what you need at thrift stores rather than buying new (I also find this to be extremely fun).
Ask for help when you’re having a hard time.
Remember the ritual. Small steps. Think long-term, cumulative.
A post shared by @earthly.systems and @earthlyeducation
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
11/5 Sacred Sisters Circle: Heart Medicine - Join us as Amanda guides us through sound and art to embrace the magic of heart coherence (help us hold each other and transmute the energy of election night)
11/19 Sacred Sisters Circle: Nourishment in Motherhood - Nicole Heatherly is back from maternity leave to guide us in a deep dive into nourishing ourselves as mothers - whether mothers to be or mothers of any age. This circle is open to all women whether mother or not and also is open to babies in arms (babies not yet crawling or walking).
11/5 Sacred Sisters Circle: Winter Pajama Party - Join us as Carrie guides us in an evening of child-like play and regenerative rest. Wear your favorite slumber party pajamas!
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.
Photo by Amanda Lucia Photography
