A breath for these tough times

Sending out extra wishes of Safety & Sanctuary for everyone in the path of the hard things, what a scary time we are in, inhaling and exhaling, for compassion, strength, courage, swift and steady miracles.

Announcement / get your copy of Emergency Calming Down Techniques

I’ve been reeling hard lately in some cursed combination of heartache, numbness, political anxiety, winter stuff and some wild panic episodes.

Have been holding on (for dear life) to my Emergency Calm The Hell Down Techniques from a long time ago, and it’s been helping.

I am giving away a copy of these (ebook + audio recordings) to anyone who gives any sum of money to the appreciation funds / discretionary fund in the hopes that we can all keep practicing together, for each other and for the collective, and also for ourselves in these scary times. ❤️

Right Parts

Where am I at home

There is the world of concepts and the world of things, and I live in the world of concepts. I thrive in the world of concepts.

Sometimes I visit the world of things, but I tend to get lost there pretty easily. I tend to get frustrated and demotivated there. It seems like everyone else knows their way around, and I’m always speaking the wrong language or misunderstanding something basic.

You could also say that I have strong absent-minded professor energy, and maybe that’s the ADHD, or maybe it’s the traumatic brain injury, though really it’s always been this way.

I am trying to get better at visiting the world of things more often; paying more attention, orienting myself there, picking up idioms and expressions, being attentive to clues, mapping out a path, taking notes for next time.

Mapping the maps

Last week I crawled under the car to change the oil, which is a very World Of Things activity, so I do it with supervision from someone who is very much at home in the world of things and has the patience and skill to translate for me and explain things slowly and clearly.

My anxiety around this activity is way lower than it used to be, but that doesn’t mean I feel at home doing it.

I consistently have trouble remembering what is where, or which part needs to be turned which way, and in what order, and so on. My mental map of this activity remains hazy. All of this is frustrating to me.

But I keep practicing, in the hope that one day it will land for me, and because I believe that the act of practicing itself has value and meaning. I am trying to learn a new skill; I am trying to acclimate to unfamiliar places.

Surveillance

Beneath the car, I surveyed the damage done to my poor sweet Star Car by colliding with a large elk, and was relieved to see that it all seemed superficial.

But also I took the car to my country mechanic a few days later to get the official checkup.

(Thank you to everyone who lit candles for me, everything went well and there was only good news. The damage was minimal and the fixes were less expensive than I had feared. Blessings abound. Go team!)

Timing

My friend Vincent kept me company on the adventure to the mechanic. I remembered that we also did this last year, and he looked it up on his phone, and it turns out that the third Thursday in April was also Visit A Country Mechanic Day last year too.

So now it’s a ritual. In the books.

Like Goose Day, but for driving way out into the country to a backyard shop that has no name and no sign.

Love a holiday that suggests itself.

Visit A Country Mechanic Day rituals include: coffee, chocolate, laughter. And enjoying the company of another World Of Concepts person in going to visit a World Of Things location.

Panic! At the Disco Auto Parts Store

Anyway, while I was doing the oil change, I realized that the auto parts store had given me the wrong size gasket, and I had a moment of anxiety that maybe I had ordered the wrong one, because I do not reside in the world of things.

That’s exactly the kind of mistake I might make, and that my self-criticism monsters would have a field day over.

The chorus of You Should Know These Things, Why Don’t You Pay Attention. I can beat myself up over that stuff for days if I am not careful.

So I had the wrong part which meant that I didn’t switch out the gasket, which was fine, and I drove to the store to find out if it was my mistake or theirs.

Commotion in motion

And even though I was absolutely covered in grease, or possibly because of this, all the big truck cowboys and mining guys there were tripping over themselves to respectfully flirt with me, which somehow made me feel better about the world and my place in it.

I may not live in the world of things, or even spend much time there, but I can walk into a World Of Things location and cause a commotion, and that’s something. Note to self: always wear leggings to the auto parts store.

Right Parts Rick

There was this old-timer working there who said to call him Right Parts Rick, and he confirmed that someone there had given me the wrong part, even though I’d ordered the right one, which also made me feel better about the world.

It was a world of things person who had screwed up in the world of things this time, not me.

Of course, he explained, he would never have given me the wrong part, that’s why they call him Right Parts Rick, and that next time I should just ask for Right Parts Rick.

Right Parts Rick would never give me the wrong part. Imagine being so at home in the world of things for decades that you just call yourself Right Parts. Incredible.

Vegas

Right Parts Rick said that I should be a dancer in Vegas, even though the $3.45 refund wouldn’t get me there.

I laughed.

This man looked like he was eighty, but he still has game, and I respect that.

Right Parts Rick knows what’s good.

It Solves Itself

Here are some the things that have gracefully and elegantly (or not) Solved Themselves this month, channeling the beautiful superpower of It Solves Itself:

It was time to take my car for a checkup and I just wasn’t doing it, but then I had a collision with an elk, so it had to happen.

And my country mechanic, who is honest, kind, thoughtful, affordable and every possible quality you could want in a mechanic, but very hard to schedule with, fit me in right away because he loves me and was worried about me.

All of the above maybe

My electronic gate was being fussy, and someone very kindly offered to fix it because they felt bad about their colleague driving into it, and so it just got fixed, and I didn’t need to do anything.

I had a wish about making friends out here in the wilds, and this month I suddenly made a bunch of new friends after five years of being out here not making friends. I am not sure what changed other than everything? Attitude shift? Trying new things? Magic? Luck? All of the above maybe.

Also I was brave and joined a hiking club, which turned out to be awesome, but then other friends came into my life at the same time, seemingly out of nowhere. IT SOLVED ITSELF.

You already have it

Oh, and I had this big ongoing wish in process about Mojo Back / Groove Back, and didn’t know how to go about this.

But it turns out that all I had to do was visit the auto parts store, and all is right in the world again. What I thought was a big complicated wish was actually almost ludicrously simple. Go see Right Parts Rick.

Superpower of you already have the right parts. Of course you do. Or someone else knows where the right parts are. It all works out.

Superpower of the thing you are craving is not distant, it is not beyond the horizon, it was right around the bend, or it was there all along and you just forgot about it for a while.

Forest yoga

My hiking friends invited me to forest yoga, which is basically a combination of every single thing I love.

Being around trees, in fresh mountain air, breathing deliciously, being in community, experiencing a sense of harmoniousness and of joy, moving my body, looking up at the sky, feeling playful and embodied and alive.

There were fifteen of us in a clearing, surrounded by glorious ponderosa pines.

We watched the blue sky. We observed the blue sky between our toes, legs in the air.

A forest delight

At the end of an hour of slow steady movement sequences, we were given fifteen minutes to free-form wander and channel childlike curiosity: pick up a pinecone, toss some pine needles, meet a tree, climb something, move slowly and be alert to everything, stay playful.

I put my nose right into a ponderosa pine while hugging it and inhaled its magical scent of vanilla and reassurance. A forest delight.

Then we rested on our pine-needle covered mats and watched the sky between the trees and that was class.

Grounded, Undulating, Focused, Ready

I loved yoga in a forest clearing so much that I went to another class, and the theme of that class was GROUNDED, UNDULATING, FOCUSED.

This turned out to be the best possible remedy (for me) for a day of anxiety and heartache and reactiveness.

What beautiful qualities, what useful superpowers. Earth under my feet. Moving like a big cat. Stretching, extending, feeling a building up of kinetic energy ready to be unleashed.

I might be a world of concepts person but I maybe most of all love the world of being a big wild cat out under the big wild sky.

Moving powerfully, breathing steadily, perfectly fine with causing a commotion when I am ready to pounce.

Readying for the readying

These are the themes for me right now.

Everything I don’t know how to solve is going into the wishing cauldron of It Solves Itself.

Beyond that, I keep practicing, I keep wishing, I keep training, I keep breathing and hugging trees and taking in their scent.

Staying ready. Big cat stretches. Big cat yawns. Prowling for the joy of prowling. Becoming someone who can recognize the right parts, or go to the places where the right parts already are.

What would my grounded tall tree self do? What would my powerful big cat self do? One breath and then another breath. One wish and then another wish. It solves itself, let’s keep playing.

Come play in the comments, I appreciate the company

Leave a pebble (o) to say you were here, so I know I’m not doing this alone.

Also it feels good to pick up a pebble and place it somewhere, I have noticed.

You are invited to share any Right Parts style stories of your own if you like, or name any wishes that are in process.

And of course you are welcome to share anything that sparked for you while reading, anything that helped, clues received, or anything on your mind, wish some wishes, process what’s percolating…

I am lighting a candle for us and our beautiful heart-wishes. What a brave thing it is to allow ourselves to want something better for us and for the world.

Or if there’s anything you’d like to explore further or toss into the wishing pot, the healing power of the collective is no small thing, companionship helps.

Whatever comes to mind or heart. Let’s support each other’s hope-sparks…

Housekeeping note: You can subscribe to posts by email again!

If you aren’t seeing these updates in your in your email and want to, you can can solve that here.

This will pop up a new page on Follow.It that lets you subscribe via email, newsletter, or RSS reader. They say “expect 50 stories a week”, and that’s a very imaginary number, once a week is the dream.

I am emailing copies of the Emergency Calming Techniques package!

Anyone who gives to the Discretionary this week (more info below) will get my Emergency Calming Techniques package by email as a pdf. I am only checking email twice a week because I no longer have wifi at my place, long story, so be patient with me but if it doesn’t show up within the week then let me know!

I have some ideas for the next ebook too but if you do too, shoot me an email or share in the comments.

A request!

If you received clues or perspective or want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously.

I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to the Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing the many broken things.

And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share this with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it and you so much. ❤️

A breath for these tough times

Sending out extra wishes of Safety & Sanctuary for everyone in the path of the hard things, what a scary time we are in, inhaling and exhaling, for compassion, strength, courage, swift and steady miracles.

Announcement / get your copy of Emergency Calming Down Techniques

I’ve been reeling hard lately in some cursed combination of heartache, numbness, political anxiety, winter stuff and some wild panic episodes.

Have been holding on (for dear life) to my Emergency Calm The Hell Down Techniques from a long time ago, and it’s been helping.

I am giving away a copy of these (ebook + audio recordings) to anyone who gives any sum of money to the appreciation funds / discretionary fund in the hopes that we can all keep practicing together, for each other and for the collective, and also for ourselves in these scary times. ❤️

THE ELK ON THE PATH

Ultimate

Driving down a dark and winding mountain road, I came around a bend and in front of me stood the elk.

I have seen elk before, but really only as a blur. They are massive, powerful creatures, and they move so fast that it’s almost as if you sense them more than see them.

Something flashes before you on the road, and you think, well that was a freebie. Alive.

Safe and well. The ultimate that-was-a-freebie.

Once

Once, standing in my kitchen, I heard a reverberation that reminded me of thunder, but also of an earthquake.

Turning to its source, I saw or perceived a blur of large motion as it whooshed past my front porch.

And then, turning my head back to the window, I recognized the majestic elk, disappearing into the forested hills, having vaulted over my gate like it was nothing at all. All grace and speed.

Blessed by a swift visitor. Later I read that they can jump up to eight feet in the air vertically. I believe that, though can’t imagine how they measure it.

This was the opposite of that. This elk was motionless. This elk was standing his ground.

Here is what I remember

Here is what I remember:

My foot on the brake, trying to slow to a stop before reaching the elk. The elk not moving.

A certain moment in which I understood, or maybe we both understood, that I was not going to be able to stop in time.

And the moment of realization that the elk was not going to move from the path.

That collision was inevitable. Nothing to be done but meet.

Receiving

And then we both just sort of received the slow collision.

You could say that we softened into collision.

I don’t really know how to describe the collision because I don’t remember anything about what it felt like.

The part that is clear in my mind is that I saw the elk fold to the ground like origami. Then it bounced right back up and vanished into the ravine, as if it had been a figment.

Lights, breath, action

My body seemed to be in working order, my car seemed to be functioning as well.

I did not feel brave enough to venture out to look at it, but the lights were still on and all systems were go, and so I drove home, aware of the many miracles.

The many miracles

There are easily a hundred different ways that an elk collision on a dark winding mountain road with sheer drops into a ravine could have either killed me or totaled the car, or both.

I am lucky to be alive. I am lucky to not be experiencing pain.

Similarly I am glad and relieved the elk seemed to move easily and lightly as it disappeared into the darkness.

And my car feels good to drive.

The next day I gathered all possible courage to take a look. The headlight casing is broken, some cosmetic damage, a lot of elk hair. One part will be expensive to replace, but I am lighting a candle to support my hope that my mechanic will give me only good news about everything else, amen.

Mr Carr’s thoughts on cars

The person who taught me how to drive was Mr Carr, which is an amusingly apt name for a Drivers Ed teacher.

He was a kind and thoughtful teacher, who noticed things, and would lend me books about topics he thought I would like (people living off-grid in New Hampshire, I think, is the one I remember most), and I was lucky then too.

I was an anxious driver, worried about everything. And Mr Carr pointed out, correctly, that you cannot possibly prepare for every scenario. And also that you can train for many of them.

You cannot, for example, do much, if a plane suddenly crash-lands on the freeway while you’re driving. Some things are beyond your control.

Some things, many things

Some things are out of your control. Many things, probably.

Other elements, like paying attention, gathering information, training yourself to react calmly, getting to know your instincts, can be trained for, or finessed, over time.

Attentiveness is a form of training. Breath is a form of training.

We trained for this

We trained for this. It is good and useful to train.

And also, shit happens.

More specifically, shit happens that really challenges all your training. So part of the training is knowing and remembering that you will get waylaid.

Path medicine

My friend Cate said:

Elk is the medicine of stamina. Pace yourself to maintain stamina.

So there is the medicine of stamina, there is the medicine of the path and what is in it, there is the medicine of [you cannot prepare for everything and also you can train for many things].

Naming the medicine

There is the medicine of surrender and receiving the collision.

There is the medicine of miracles. There is the medicine of shit happens.

There is the medicine of colliding. I am still learning about this.

Quiet

Things have felt very quiet since the collision.

I am sleeping again. And doing brave things, even though I don’t want to.

Some days I feel floaty and unfocused, like my nervous system can’t remember how to sequence things.

Other days I feel remarkably focused, as if all the noise has disappeared.

Either way, I am slow-moving these days, but moving slowly feels indicated, so I am going to trust that path.

Attuning to the truth of things

In the morning guided meditation I listen to sometimes, they say, you cannot control everything, you do not control everything.

I am trying to stay attuned to the truth of this, while I continue to train.

How can I react with grace to what is in front of me on the path? How can I be more compassionate with myself in moments or situations when I am questioning my reactions.

That’s also part of the training, and the medicine, apparently.

Fifteen minutes

I have been setting fifteen minute timers for Bravery Ops, reminding myself that fifteen minutes is a container of time to experiment.

When I don’t want to be brave, which is often, I look at these words that I wrote on a card:

Guess what, I am so fucking brave, and I only have to be this brave for fifteen minutes, and nothing scares me because I calmly experienced a collision with a massive elk who could have destroyed me and my car, but I emerged unscathed, and if I got that lucky, I can also be this brave right now.

And then it’s one step and another step. Sometimes renaming the steps so they don’t seem as daunting, sometimes doing alignment, sometimes breaking things down into even smaller steps.

Quests versus locations

I have been sitting with this incredible sentence from PJ Vogt, from the Search Engine podcast:

“The real questions that haunt me don’t tend to be resolvable; they aren’t quests you get to go on, they’re places you just have to live for a while.”

This is interesting to me because right now all my questions feel like quests. But what if they are locations, and I just need to spend time in them…

Considering, for example

My questions have to do with, for example…

I am considering what the elk who wouldn’t move from the path was trying to tell me, if anything.

Or what it tells me that I didn’t freak out and just kept my foot on brake and stayed the course and we just both received the collision. I could have swerved either way, but I did not, which is fortunate on a steep mountainside.

I am considering questions that have to do with trust and vibes and right timing.

Resetting

Since the collision, I have been sleeping much better and also not thinking about the mysteries of heartbreak, so I am trying to imagine or at least pretend that this elk collision was a sort of cosmic resetting that solves and resolves.

I have questions about this too. I have questions about what it means that I am so slow-moving these days, and if that is a good thing. I have questions about We Trained For This.

But also I think PJ is right, and I need to stop focusing on clues and quests, and receive the reality of this moment, hang out here for a while.

It’s either a cosmic resetting or it’s not, but either way, my next steps are the same.

But either way my next steps are the same

Yoga, meditation, journaling, snacks, deep self-treasuring, gentle recovery, go see my country mechanic who adores me, get hugs from the best chiropractor, get back in the saddle, let the elk medicine be absorbed.

Those are my next steps, yours may vary. Everyone is different and needs different things. I bet you have some good clues to follow.

It is interesting and comforting to me though to realize that I don’t need to adjust my next steps very much.

We do the things that help. Sometimes it gets sticky because the vibes aren’t right, or it feels like something is missing. Okay, into the wishing cauldron it goes. May a lovely, simple, elegant solution arise to this too.

A candle for this.

A candle for this

A candle for all the miracles that have been, a candle for miracles incoming. May we have many more opportunities to exhale, fill up on gratitude, and say, “Wow, that was a freebie”.

You are welcome to leave pebbles or light imaginary candles in the comments, and I will also gladly take all well-wishes! Also any clues you might have or fun theories you want to spin about the medicine or meaning of an elk encounter are welcome too.

Come play in the comments, I appreciate the company

Leave a pebble (o) to say you were here, so I know I’m not doing this alone.

Also it feels good to pick up a pebble and place it somewhere, I have noticed.

And of course you are welcome to share anything that sparked for you while reading, anything that helped, clues received, or anything on your mind, wish some wishes, process what’s percolating…

I am lighting a candle for us and our beautiful heart-wishes. What a brave thing it is to allow ourselves to want something better for us and for the world.

Or if there’s anything you’d like to explore further or toss into the wishing pot, the healing power of the collective is no small thing, companionship helps.

Whatever comes to mind or heart. Let’s support each other’s hope-sparks…

Housekeeping note: You can subscribe to posts by email again!

If you aren’t seeing these updates in your in your email and want to, you can can solve that here.

This will pop up a new page on Follow.It that lets you subscribe via email, newsletter, or RSS reader. They say “expect 50 stories a week”, and that’s a very imaginary number, once a week is the dream.

I am emailing copies of the Emergency Calming Techniques package!

Anyone who gives to the Discretionary this week (more info below) will get my Emergency Calming Techniques package by email as a pdf. I am only checking email twice a week because I no longer have wifi at my place, long story, so be patient with me but if it doesn’t show up within the week then let me know!

I have some ideas for the next ebook too but if you do too, shoot me an email or share in the comments.

A request!

If you received clues or perspective or want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously.

I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to the Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing the many broken things.

And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share this with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it and you so much. ❤️