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 on 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, and it helps.

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. ❤

Seasonal sorcery

Solstice and the snow globe

I think of each season as a container for some good healing magic, and so for me Solstice is the door into a period of And Three Months Later, which is a form of a cauldron, if that makes sense.

Anyway, for the solstice I went to a sound bath, and mixed feelings on that, but it definitely shook some things up for me that maybe needed to be shaken. I am not sure.

Sometimes the snow globe needs to be shaken so that everything can make its slow, magical, inevitable descent, and then you can appreciate the moment of after.

There is the experience of shaking and being shaken, and then the resonant stillness. The exhale of ah yes, here we are, in the quiet that is also a form of aftermath…

And other times, maybe the snow globe does not need to be shaken.

How do you know

When is it time to gently and lovingly shake up the internal snow globe? When is too much shaking?

As always this all goes back to Discernment.

Which isn’t so much about knowing when to shake and when not to shake as it is about trusting an intuitive pull towards one or the other, if there is one.

Though sometimes maybe it is about a Knowing. A beautiful Certainty.

A beautiful Certainty, what do I know about this?

A pull in that moment of towards or away.

Or if I still don’t have a sense of things and can’t find my way to my Certainty, then maybe I try one or the other, towards or away, shaking or refraining from shaking.

Or maybe I wait patiently for more intel.

Discernment is a lot about listening and trying things and listening some more, right?

The seasonal wishes revealing themselves

Discernment is really a wish for me for this season, or a focal point.

And really, what is Discernment if not some combination of related qualities, like Trust, Hope, Faith, Quiet, Reflecting, Grounded Presence, Loving Clarity…

I would also add to this list something about [Somatic Wisdom Prevails] in here, along with other relevant qualities and superpowers that I named in my solstice wishes, while skipping solstice stones…

Seasonal as in: SUMMER into FALL. Or at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere. You might be reading this from the other side,

A summer fall for summer into fall, there you go

A couple days later, I had received yet another non-apology apology from someone who harmed me, and this person has a real gift of making shit about them when it is not about them, which really substantially detracts from the apology-offering.

And I was thinking about how I cannot formulate any kind of response while I am so full to the brim with fury and reactiveness and frustration and hurt and needing to protect myself…

More specifically, I was thinking this (“so angry right now!”) as I was walking up the stairs at my friend’s place.

And as my brain was formulating these words — Angry! Right! Now! — something happened in my body. Something happened and I fell.

Summer into falling, a summer of having fallen.

The shape of a fall, the landscape of a fall

My left calf seized up in a cramp, with pain shooting up the length of my leg.

Up my leg? Up and down and in all directions, pain that was searing and reverberating and destabilizing and I felt it in my spine and moving through me…

And as my left leg could no longer support me in the very moment that it was launching me up to the next step, I lost my balance and fell.

Luckily for me, I was progressing up the stairs and not down, so I fell forward which was also upward, and the steps were carpeted and my hands caught me, and so there was thankfully no collateral damage from the fall.

Except that my left calf had gone on strike, and didn’t seem to have any plans of coming back to work.

Even slower than that

It’s funny (in the poetic sense) and beautiful (also in the poetic sense) and very annoying (in the practical sense) to find yourself in this situation.

Which is to say, it is funny, and all those other things, to journal for three days on discernment and slowing things down to be able to better discern, and then to be on enforced bed rest where there is nothing to do but discern.

When I was writing about my solstice wishes, there was a lot in there about Ritual, Slowness, Deliberate Movement, allowing more time and space for Entry & Exit, building better containers for the experiences and tasks of my day so that I am better able to notice how I am feeling in my body and. in my heart.

Go slow, and even slower than that. Celebrate slowness. Live into an ode to slowness.

And then I was forced by circumstances, or invited, if you prefer, to be the slowest snail.

Slowly relearning to walk

It took nearly week of bed rest and another nearly-a-week of moving agonizingly slowly with a cane, and some sessions with a kind bodyworker, and some miracles.

And now blessedly I am back to movement, although I still can’t jump or bounce, which is hard on someone (me) who loves a good deliberate tiger pounce.

And I can’t do too much in the way of balancing when on the left leg. Playing with this in very small doses.

So not yet at 100% and also my sense of freedom of movement, of play and embodiment in body has returned to me, and my thank-you-heart is full to overflowing.

Every day noticeable improvement, and every day appreciation and wonder for the healing process, even though sometimes I am also very [shakes fist at god] around the healing process, and also around stairs.

Back to the themes

So I had been naming or invoking these wishes around being slow and deliberate, around releasing anger, around letting some things go and letting other things come, and around presence with the process.

And then I found myself inside of a ten day container of being mostly incapacitated.

So that was interesting and extremely not fun, and yet I still welcome the message of slowing it down, and slowing it down even more than that, and my plan/hope is that maybe now this can begin to come in with less violence and more grace.

What else is here

A lot of fear came up for me when I was finally able to walk for a block or two again but with constraint, without ease in the movement.

In each moment I was hyper-aware of the fact that I simply cannot take a larger step or a faster step should I need to.

There are so many aspects of navigating city sidewalks that require one or both of those being a necessity. So many unexpected moments, and from any possible direction.

It could be a car suddenly rounding a corner, or too many people on the sidewalk, or encountering someone in a moment of mental instability, or someone who could be dangerous to me perceiving that I can’t run.

Entirely unprepared

And obviously all of this is in the realm of things my disabled friends navigate every day, and of course I had forgotten about this phenomenon or at least the felt sense of it, since the last time I was out of commission, that’s how it works sometimes.

Anyway, it was challenging and scary for me, moving with the knowledge that I will be completely fucked if I am in a situation that demands moving with any amount of agility or speed.

The beauty and terror of being alive really. Heightened by being a wounded animal.

Anything could happen, and might happen, and I am entirely unprepared. This is always true, I just felt it much more acutely.

The fear of the many what ifs, and what this is really about

My bodywork support person thinks, and I agree, that this situation with my leg is a delayed trauma response, from the many nightmarish things I went through this year…

Three different experiences of being trapped in an enclosed space with a friend (three separate totally different friends!) while they were breaking from reality or seemingly breaking from reality.

Also one of them attacked me during a break from reality, and another went no contact with me, both of which were devastating, but the one-two punch of both was too much to withstand.

So it’s possible and very reasonable that my body is producing a lot of self protective energy in response to the emotional load of all this.

And this might also have taken the urgency and form of kicking-ninja energy in a response that caused my calf to seize up and stop working.

So reasonable

All of which is so reasonable, because I was so focused on the other person’s crisis that I didn’t get to tend to my own crisis, and I don’t have anyone else in my life who can be a tending-to-my-crisis support, so it is all on me.

And as a result, I lost relationships that were special to me, and my dance community, and so many other big losses that I haven’t been grieving yet because I am too busy trying to figure out if I am safe.

Let’s breathe and apply Acknowlegment & Legitimacy, and make space for the big feelings, for the stories, for the unpacking of the stories, for returning to body and breath and right-here right-now.

Strange parallels

Some of you will remember all the way back to December Solstice, when I also was mysteriously injured a few days after my solstice rituals, when a wasp or some-such stung me on the face, and my forehead swelled up like it had swallowed a golf ball…

And I think in some way my body was trying to protect me by making sure I couldn’t come into contact with my former-friend turned assailant, because I still hadn’t fully understood what happened to me, and might have tried to meet up and make peace.

Either way, strange and interesting and possibly wondrous parallels, depending on how much perspective and distance I have available to me.

I mark the day with ritual, do some work on naming the themes and the desires, and then my body [goes through a something that is tumultuous and disruptive], and then the healing process reveals what it reveals.

Depending on how much perspective and distance I have available to me…

It’s like the snowglobe thing again…

Both in the sense that sometimes a shaking up is useful, and sometimes you are just shaken.

And in the sense that sometimes getting close and zeroing in is what helps me, while sometimes zooming out to get distance and perspective is what allows for more closeness with myself.

Sometimes I need to play with both, moving back and forth.

Discernment into Guidance

On Solstice I pulled a card on the theme of PERSPECTIVE.

Which is exactly what I am considering with the snow globe and with experiences in my life taking different shape or eliciting different narratives depending on when and how I view them.

It is also related to using instinct, which is also about Do Less and Move Slowly, because that is the only way to ease into instinct, and to be able to discern between my actual instincts versus fear-perceptions and story and trauma response.

Back to Discernment. Back to Do Less To Get More. Back to More Entry and Slow It Down and Move Even More Slowly Than That.

And something about nothing is wrong

Or: what if nothing is wrong?

As in, if I can operate under the assumption that there are no problems and no contradictions, and then figure out what my body knows, what my instincts say, what is next…

If my calf going on strike is not the crisis I think it is, or it is except actually it is a useful crisis (not fun, just useful), and if I can bring this perspective to everything else…

This too asks me to slow it down and go even slower than that.

Slowness as sorcery and sourcery. As in: sourcing what I need, naming what I want.

Discernment and Perspective and [Trust More but Also Be Less Trusting!] are also forms of sorcery and sourcery.

A candle to illuminate, fire to eliminate

What are my wishes for a summer of sorcery?

On Solstice, I always ask the same questions:

What needs to be eliminated?


What needs to be illuminated?

And is the answer fire or water or something different or sometimes both?!

And so on, back to intuition, discernment, guidance, experimentation, staying receptive to the idea that there are no contradictions, and so on.

And you are also welcome to ask these questions and name your summer sorcery-sourcery wishes, or if you are reading this from the southern hemisphere, then your winter wishes…

What do I know about my Summer Sorcery wishes and themes

I wish to let the summer delights ensorcellate and inspire me…

While still holding onto my sense of intuition and trusting in that, which means staying grounded.

Yes. I wish to stay grounded and keep re-grounding. To stay attuned to the clues in my body before my body needs to get loud enough to get my attention.

I wish to move more slowly and with greater perspicacity, so that I can read the signs that are there and not blow past them this time.

Which is not to blame me, because first of all, we aren’t victim blaming. And second of all, maybe I saw them and maybe that is a story I am telling myself to make the things that don’t make sense somehow make sense in retrospect, you know?

Another not-a-contradiction

I got a really good clue last week about how it is so brave when we allow ourselves to try new things, and also, at the same time, even as we do this, the value of still trusting in the intuitive wisdom of an internal No Thanks.

This might be part of what I had trouble with over this past year, trying to stay open and receptive, so that I could be a loving friend and a source of grounded stability for people who were out of reality.

And what actually happened is that I wasn’t taking care of myself or protecting myself, and I need to develop a keener sense of cautiousness.

I still want to be brave and try things and love again. And I want to check in more with my internal yeses to make sure I haven’t wandered into the bad place.

What else is on the wish list?

Clear the decks! Clear the path to clear the path!

Invite more Loving Clarity through staying receptive and curious and channeling good, layering on pleasure, resting more lusciously.

Yes, luscious rest is better than enforced rest, but also what got me there is what got me there.

Tell me more…The real question

The real question is not “how will I trust anyone ever again after this happened to me”, although that feels pertinent.

The real question is what will it look like and feel like to learn to trust myself.

What is the shape of that process? And while I don’t have an answer to this, I am hoping that all these qualities and wishes we are naming for Sorcery and Sourcery will help me source the resources to be in that process.

And just like the snowglobe that sometimes needs shaking and sometimes needs to rest, part of this is about cultivating a healthy sense of mistrust, and part of it is about attuning to the quality of trust in my heart, so that I can listen to what I know and believe it.

May it be so, or something even better

Here’s to choosing life and aliveness, and being here, even when it is so fucking hard (and often it is), and to learning about ourselves, and finding some sparks if we can, or staying receptive to future sparks if we can.

I love you, I love that you read my thoughts here, thank you for that. It means a lot to me.

Let’s source some wild joy, some loving clarity, or whatever is needed most, let’s play.