Entry: A breath for existing in tough times

Wow it is hard and scary times right now. The news here (in the United States, where I am) is so bad, so disheartening, so unrelenting.

I am continuing to write here about explorations in self-fluency because I think, or at least hope, that this work supports a more fluent world, a culture where we can glow and grow more reflection and compassion for each other, but also because turning inward is how I am coping right now.

And, even though this does not help in any meaningful way, I am here with a heart of love for all my trans friends and everyone reading. May we find or make our way to a better world in which it doesn’t have to be an act of bravery for people to gender however feels right. Safety and sanctuary. Candles lit.

Also waving with a hand-on-heart sigh to everyone reading around the world, and especially all friends and beloved blog lurkers in Canada and Mexico, I just want to acknowledge how destabilizing this all feels, to me at least, and presumably for a lot of people reading as well.

Okay, onward to today’s theme. I just needed to confirm how much everything sucks and is generally terrifying and feels so vulnerable right now, because it’s hard to not think about that in every moment.

Let’s make space for that, and whatever else is going on for us, and let’s begin. A breath of entry.

*******************************************************************

Expect to be waylaid, and related explorations

Into the forest

Each morning I disappear into the forest to do a slow meditative movement practice. It’s not a real forest, it’s a rug I roll out onto my kitchen floor, though my kitchen itself is somewhat forest-adjacent.

I can look out the window and see national forest.

Pausing as I type this to blow a kiss to my tree friends; the ponderosa pines, the low scrappy piñon, my beloved juniper companions, the elegant cottonwoods who dance with the wind while remaining so steady and grounded (speaking of goals!), and a distant towering tree whose name I do not know but who has a cool, witchy vibe.

These are my allies in forest time. A vast network of roots.

So in a very specific sense I am in the forest or with the forest, but also the forest is imaginary, and also the forest is a container of space and time for being with this practice.

Using technology to avoid technology, what a uniquely modern situation

Forest time is also how I refer to my use of an app called forest focus that gets you to stop looking at your phone by growing an imaginary tree that only grows if you don’t look at your phone, which is useful for me.

I set the timer in the app for sixty minutes of forest time, and then I either do the practice or I don’t, but either way at least I wasn’t distracted by the outside world, which is its own win.

An hour of be here, I am here.

Nanda Parbat

I like to imagine that my practice is a form of assassin training; I do it to become stronger, more agile, more intentional, more formidable, more grounded. Alert, awake, aware, alive. Rooted in forest time.

Graceful resilience and resilient grace. We trained for this. We are training for this. Like a bobcat.

Deliberate practice for me and for the collective. In service of steadiness and thriving.

And I imagine that the assassins of Nanda Parbat are observing my training, waiting to welcome me to the next level of the league of assassins. I train to train, and I train to calm my busy mind, and I train for the League.

Witnesses

It helps if I let at least one friend know that I’m going into the forest.

Partly to make sure that I will do it. Partly to make sure that I won’t drag it out.

A little compassionate accountability is such a gift. Of course no one will be a jerk if I have an anxiety episode instead.

I know that I am held in love, and also I know that my friends are rooting for me, just like the trees. So much rooting.

So much rooting

A vast network of roots, rootedness and people rooting for me. Witnessing without judging.

Often (for me) it’s easier to offer that perspective or approach for someone I love than it is to grant it to myself. There are people in my life who can give me that grace and I am thankful for that.

Maybe over time it will get easier to root for myself. God I hope so. What a beautiful thought. May it be so.

One hour

A container of time. It holds itself. Into the forest we go.

I said I’d be gone for an hour and I am going to do my best to stick to that, and my friends, the witnesses of forest time, are lighting a candle for me.

Or I am imagining that they are lighting a candle for me, and that this candle will burn for the hour of forest time, because that’s how imaginary candles work.

Here’s to all the powers of imaginary candles. You can light one right now if you like. It always helps more than I think it will.

Self-contained

These are the witnesses, I have called on them to witness, and the beauty of this practice is that they do not need to do anything.

Witnessing is self-contained. It was invoked, it’s happening.

In real time, my friends can either read my text or not, respond to it or not, either way I am remembering in my heart about the existence of these kind, compassionate, loving witnesses who are there as I disappear into the forest to train.

They are rooting for me. They are holding the circle. The candles are lit. Nothing more needs to be done.

Waylaid

At least once per practice, but often many, many times per practice, I get waylaid. WAYLAID.

Right? It feels like it wants all caps. WAYLAID!

Waylaid by the highway robber of memory, sometimes a trauma memory.

Or waylaid by a wave of emotion: sadness, regret, longing, worry, fury, grief, sorrow.

Waylaid by having too many ideas and needing to write them down, or remembering something I need to tell someone, and making a note about that, and so on, until…

And then suddenly

And then suddenly, almost without noticing how, I have stopped being the assassin of the forest, and I find myself pacing, or eating every single available snack, or urgently needing to comb my hair, or having a meltdown. Or all of these at the same time somehow.

Sometimes, while in this state of WAYLAID, I forget entirely that I had been training in the forest at all.

Though other times I know exactly what I am missing out on, and then I am upset with myself for missing precious forest time.

However, if I have learned one thing over these past five years of this practice, waylaid is part of forest time.

Waylaid is part of forest time

It is not separate from forest time.

Waylaid is an aspect of forest time, an element of the forest.

Let me share some examples of ways I have been waylaid just in the past week, maybe that will help with context…

Esmerelda

When I was little, my dad, a great storyteller, would tell me bedtime stories about Esmerelda Butterfly.

He would make them up and spin them out, sometimes Esmerelda Butterfly would visit her good friend the bear who lived in the forest. Esmerelda Butterfly and the bear would have elaborate tea parties. I loved these stories.

“Goodnight, Esmerelda Butterfly”, he’d say to me when the story was done.

Oleanader, Ash

Once when I was newly in love, I was walking in Agua Caliente park, in Tucson, admiring the trees (mesquite, oleander, ash, so many tree friends), hand in hand with this person I was in love with, and they were recounting the story of the day we’d first met, years before.

“What did you think my name was, before you knew what my name was?” they asked. “If you could have guessed, or given me a name, or somehow just known my name, what was my name to you?”

I immediately had an answer, no need to think it over: ROBIN.

And they were delighted with this answer, with this name that is not their name but very easily could have been. A right-fitting name.

A butterfly floated in front of us in that moment, the most gorgeous, graceful butterfly.

“Esmerelda,” they said, looking at me. “How did you know?” I asked. “You just look like an Esmerelda,” they said. “You’re always a little bit Esmerelda to me. That’s what I would have called you in my mind if I hadn’t learned your name.”

Waylaid by the highway robbery of memory

When I am in my practice, in the forest that is not a forest, and I remember how Not-Robin knew me as Esmerelda, in the very moment that the butterfly passed my face.

I remember the exact feeling of the butterfly passing in front of my face, and being called Esmerelda. I remember how that felt like a sign, like being recognized. But also a sign that our love was meaningful in some way beyond just how joyous it felt in the moment.

And sadly I am unable to remember this beautiful moment without also remembering how a year and three months later they suddenly and mysteriously vanished from my life without a word or a goodbye.

Which sends me hurtling down a thought-vortex about how maybe this love was not meaningful, or not meaningful beyond that moment?

Or maybe it was very meaningful, but the meaning includes this very painful meaning too, and how I do not even know what would it be like to experience love without the pain of loss being tied to it so directly. Which makes me cry.

And so

And so in one moment, I am doing my practice and focused on deliberate devotion towards thriving, and in the next, I am questioning whether anything means anything, and whether all signs are a lie.

And, regardless, whether signs are a lie or not, what was the point of this big love that disappeared so swiftly? Did I lose myself in love because of the butterfly?

The questions are too big, the grief river is overflowing, and I have forgotten about the next piece in the practice, I have forgotten the forest and the training and what I came here to do and all of it. All of it.

This is what I mean by WAYLAID

This is what I mean by waylaid.

This person saw me and knew me and treasured me, and also they chose to vanish into thin air.

All this happened years ago, but something in forest time elicited the memory, and I got ejected from the forest, or lost my way, or stumbled off the path of forest time. I was there and then I wasn’t.

Waylaid.

Track days

I have another ex who raced motorcycles, and here’s what they said they learned from track days:

You need to be consistent in everything you do, you need to be thinking ahead, and you need to have a zero tolerance policy for physical distractions while training.

For example, if a tiny part of your mind is thinking about how a tag on your clothing is scratchy, that might be the tiny part of your mind you need to avoid an accident. You need all your focus. So no scratchy tags, for example.

I think about this often during forest time because my training clothing is too big and needs constant adjustment, and then I get anxious, but also I am thinking about track days, and then I get waylaid again.

There is a good lesson in this: find a training uniform that fits properly, reduce distractions, keep a clear line of sight.

Expect to be waylaid

The biggest shift in my practice happened on the day when I decided to stop resisting being waylaid, and to expect to be waylaid instead.

What do I mean by EXPECT TO BE WAYLAID…

I think about it like I do balance poses in yoga.

Let me explain…

Balance: what is it?

Balance poses in yoga are very miserable if your goal is to never fall, or not wobble. Because you will and it will be frustrating.

Guess what though, wobbling and falling is literally part of balancing. There is no such thing as balance on its own, there is no balance without shaking, falling, tumbling, and all the things that feel like the opposite of balancing.

The more I resist those, and attempt to become the person who can magically maintain a position and never falter, the more I fear falling, and the more awful it feels when I do.

But the essence of balance is not to not-fall. The essence is to be okay with the wobbling, don’t give it the power of bothering you. Wobbling is how we learn about steadiness.

The point is to play, not to achieve

When I can remember to consider balance as a form of play where I can only learn about what it even is by playfully testing the edges…

When I make my goal to fall out of balance as often as possible and laugh about it, to make myself wobble intentionally…

That play at the edges of balanced-not-balanced is where all the learning happens.

Then balance poses become a form of playful exploration.

And I can’t be doing them wrong, because I’m not trying to get anything right. I’m intentionally hanging out at those edge-places of falling out of balance, getting curious about what tips me over, what brings me back up. Add some fun sound effects, it helps.

Expect to get waylaid

Anyway, I had the realization that the more I resist getting WAYLAID in my practice, and perceive it as a flaw in me, that I can’t stay focused, the more I fear it.

And the more I fear it, the more it happens, and the longer it takes to get back in flow.

This is how I decided that of course part of Meditative Assassin Training in the forest includes getting waylaid.

How else are they supposed to train you to be able to react calmly and gracefully to being waylaid in the real world?

As predicted! Here we are! Right on time!

Now when I get waylaid in my practice, I say, “Oh, there it is. Getting waylaid! AS PREDICTED. I’ve been expecting this.”

And then I get back to practicing much faster, because I am not in a state of resistance, or judging myself for the experience that I’m experiencing.

What else does this remind you of?

If you’ve taken classes with me over the years, you know that one of my top ten approaches when it comes to anxiety or any big emotion (internally getting waylaid) is to practice Not Being Impressed.

Of course we start from the practice of Acknowledgment & Legitimacy, and we can do this at the same time as Not Being Impressed.

We can also do this at the same time that we are applying any techniques on the physical level (breathing techniques or tapping/pressing on acupressure points, or doing legs up the wall, or dispersing energy through shaking out the hands, and so on…).

We can approach on the mental and emotional levels while also working on the physical simultaneously.

A sample script (rewrite as you like to suit your needs)

“Hey, anxiety, I see you. There you are, right on schedule.”

“You feel huge, and yet you are small in comparison to the entirety of me and my existence; you are a temporary and momentary experience that is moving through me. You are smaller than I am, even if doesn’t necessarily feel that way in this moment.”

“It is reasonable and understandable that you’re here, given the circumstances, even if I don’t like it, and just FYI, I AM NOT IMPRESSED.”

“You will come and go until we are done with this cycle, and I get it, it’s just a visit from The Big Fear, it’s here, I’m naming it and noticing it, and also: I am not giving it any power.”

Easier said than done, of course

That’s why we practice.

Same principle though. The more we resist and fight the fear, the falling, the moments of waylaid, the larger they grow in scale in our minds, and all the more reason to worry about these moments.

Expect to be waylaid means that getting waylaid is not taking me away from the practice, it’s part of the practice.

I am not worried about what if I get waylaid today, because of course I will, just like I will wobble in a balance pose, that’s how I know I am testing my balance.

And I am not going to waste more time being upset by all the ways my internal world can jostle me while I am practicing. I expect to be waylaid when I am in the imaginary forest. It’s part of the training.

The gentle art of Not Being Impressed

The better I get at NOT BEING IMPRESSED when I get waylaid, the faster I can return to my movement practice, and the less likely I am to get sucked into a cycle of stuck the next time it happens.

And the true practice is not being impressed.

Sure, I got waylaid. It happens. That’s how we train in the forest. We get thrown off our game, we pace and take our snack break, we get back to it. No big deal. Just another training session.

I practice Acknowledgment & Legitimacy (there it is, this is happening, it makes sense that this is happening, I don’t have to like it, it’s so reasonable that I don’t like it!), and I practice Not Being Impressed, and I practice Praise, and giving myself a billion sparklepoints at least for showing up.

Showing up is the win

Showing up to play and to wobble is such a big deal.

Good job, bravely going into the forest again. Good job, getting waylaid. Good job, recognizing the pattern. Good job, remembering that straying from the practice is part of the practice.

You’re doing amazing, sweetie. And so on.

And we keep practicing.

Where do we go from here?

It’s a lot of complex themes, I know. None of this is easy.

It’s not easy to show up for [whatever your version of forest time might be], and it’s certainly not easy to stop resisting things going how they go. These are just some seeds of ideas to play with, or to plant for later.

There are also probably a thousand things you could apply this to, if you want to, which you might not, which is also fine. Everything in right timing, and of course take what appeals to you and discard the rest.

Thank you for thinking about these themes with me. It is courageous work to turn inward and observe what we are going through as we go through it, and to think about what we might shift in our approach, and to wobble together, heroically, in these wild times.

Lots of love your way.

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. ❤️