Embodiment Hour Tomorrow @ 12pm EST at The Stoa ~ Rhythms of Life
Tomorrow we'll feel into the culture together again. Everyone is invited!
Dear Friends,
I’ve been noticing how my inner state is affected by the rhythms of life around me. There isn’t an inherent “good” or “bad” to the rhythms; Nature has many tempos…what defines the quality of my experience is whether I am moving with the rhythm, in the flow, or moving against it, in resistance to what is happening.
In the case of being in social rhythms with other people, there is also the discernment of being able to find the rhythm for the moment, the rhythm where what’s alive, what wants to happen, can come through. We all know the difference between a conversation, lovemaking, or event where we leave feeling enriched, fulfilled and complete—like something new emerged or something was restored within us—and the same situation where we leave feeling discombobulated or unfulfilled, lacking, like something was there, but we just couldn’t find it.
Awareness of rhythm is key to finding the treasures of life and it’s something we don’t often tune into because the thumping, mechanical rhythm of commercialism, cities, media, entertainment, the school system, deadlines, financial quarters, our calendar…get in the way. Rhythm is found and sensed in the body. Of course, the original rhythm-blocker is trauma. Trauma stagnates and numbs us to our inner rhythms and disconnects us from the deeper rhythms of the cosmos, life, and each other. So much of our current culture, social norms, conversational practices, ways of working, etc. are built out of trauma. So, finding and feeling the natural rhythm of the situation requires very subtle awareness and a willingness to break convention.
As a personal practice—and for the sake of my body, my community, and the earth—I have dedicated myself to being more in sync with the natural rhythm of things and how my desires can help me navigate my way through the world. I want to be moving towards what I want, not away from what I fear. I am learning to discern when I am acting out of scarcity and wounding and when I am moving towards something I desire, or in alignment with spontaneous movement. The other day I spent hours trying to eliminate all non-essential activity, all activity that felt out of sync with my desires and intuition. So, of course I took a nap :) Waking from that nap I watched the old habits arise and I wrote this:
I began to reach for the phone out of habit; before I could think. A pure action arose swiftly from within and my hand snapped back empty. An instruction from my Soul echoing in my body: "That wasn’t yet a pure 'I want.'" I had to agree. I checked and it was an “I want to see what needs to be done, who needs me, what needs my attention, what busyness I can lose myself in now.” I lay in the bed like an invalid without a plan. The ceiling white snd looming overhead. Time stretched out in all directions. Nothing was in my body as I lay there. "I will not move until a real desire arises," I thought. A fear that I might be there a long time passed through. Then a small, quiet request: "I wish to write this poem down." I checked. Yes, that feels true. And here we are.
This requires A LOT from a person living in the culture at this time:
Awareness—the ability to discern accurately your inner experience and what’s actually happening; having the clarity of mind to focus on what’s immediately relevant, prioritize, and incorporate information real time
Knowledge—a curiosity to know more about the way the natural world works, a recovery of rituals and traditions that marked the passing of time in accordance with the Laws of Nature, indigenous knowledge that connects us to the life of this earth, her needs, moods and seasons
Empathy—sensing your own needs, but also the needs of the other person or people you are relating with; sensing capacity, resilience and presence moment-to-moment
Commitment/Discipline/Honoring—you have to be prepared to choose your own need or inner rhythm over what might be happening that feels more important to someone else. Sometimes compromises are necessary for everyone to get their needs met. Good communication and creativity can help smooth over any impasse that might arise. Also knowing when insistence on a rhythm is coming from fixity, rigidity, or trauma rather than a deep knowing.
Surrender—sometimes you have to enter a situation or a space where the rhythm feels uncomfortable to you, being with that discomfort can also be a teacher. Or maybe you really want to finish a project, but the Universe has another timeline. Sometimes you just have to let go and trust. The rhythms are MUCH bigger than us.
Our culture is heavily biased to speed, momentum, hardness, youth, progress, achievement, and domination of anything that is slow, soft, gentle, nonlinear or undefined. I get annoyed with these corporate training and executive-oriented FLOW programs that are nothing more than sophisticated ways of bypassing trauma and overriding the body in the pursuit of ideals of “success” that are capitalistic at their core. These programs are doing us a huge disservice by promoting and capitalizing on the broken inner rhythms of our being.
I heard the mystic and collective trauma expert, Thomas Hübl, say recently: “Real flow feels amazing because real flow is that we’re so close to the original movement of life, which is sacred. We are moving with and as Spirit.” What keeps us from being in flow is karma or trauma in the system that blocks or keeps us numb. He said, “Karma and trauma are degrees of stagnation. The healing work is to onboard and integrate the exiled parts into unity again, not to override them.” Of course, the whole culture of crushing it, rushing it, killing it, etc. etc. is widespread and also a symptom of our alienation from Nature and the Natural order of things.
How many of us sensed this in a visceral way during the earliest days of the pandemic? How many found a kind of peace in “the great pause”? It was such a contrast to the grind most of us had been in. Embodiment is the way to know rhythm in the body; being in the body we get in touch with its rhythms automatically. The body is where we and Nature are not two, but one. We honor this and we honor Her.
Becoming a mother (or a parent) is a beautiful lesson in the rhythms of life. My daughter has taught me so much about surrendering to the energy of the moment. Pregnancy taught me about the innate wisdom of the body. I didn’t have to “do” anything but keep the container safe and healthy as she developed beautifully beyond my cognition or attempts to “manage” the process. Her birth at home was a long (72 hours) and painful process that could not be rushed. Her infancy and care required the surrender of all other “priorities.” She needed all of me: my body, my attention, my softness, my patience, my love, my protection…
But, it was really when she began to express her own will in the world that I felt the way our culture is built without a true sense of the natural rhythm of things and people. I remember one day when she was a toddler. I was frazzled and tired, but managed to get us out to the botanic garden across the street from our house. I needed the garden that day and I wanted to visit certain spots that brought me joy and solace. My daughter was uncooperative and fussy. I was pulling her hand, hurrying her along, when I suddenly realized the absurdity of the situation. Why was I in such a rush? Quickly, I saw the energetic link between my impatience and her resistance. And so, I surrendered. I decided to pass the rest of the time in the garden at her pace. We immediately slowed down and she relaxed almost instantly. She began to follow her curiosity and we had a delightfully playful afternoon that soothed us both. I will never forget it. It was the beginning of a new way of being together in a rhythm that worked for us both.
When she became school-age, I saw the absurdity of the school schedule. I remember a time when she was in kindergarten at a new school. She was having trouble with the transition, but I had some kind of programming in me that I didn’t want to be late. For a difficult week we struggled to get out the door on time and there were many tears and screaming tantrums (for both of us!). One day I saw myself standing in the doorway with my coat and bags, the door already open and me with one foot out. I was giving her a stern warning to get her shoes on, “I will not ask again…” that kind of thing. Suddenly, it struck me as incredibly senseless and cruel. She looked so small and innocent sitting there. I felt the way my rushing energy was hijacking her little limbic system and I felt ashamed. We were late to school almost every day after that (I did explain our process to the teacher, who to her credit, supported it), but we did the mornings at a pace that felt good to both of us. Eventually, when she was a bit older we agreed to try to be more timely and she was ready for that; she even embraced it.
I loved living in NYC for twenty years…loved it with all my heart. And the city certainly has rhythms (mostly staccato and chaos!) which can be just the medicine for people at certain times of life. But, moving to this farm in Rhinebeck two years ago has brought me back into the rhythm of Nature, the earth, the cycles of the moon and my body in a way I was desperately missing. I’ll write more about the farm in the future because I want to share its medicine. I am soaking in the seasons, nourishing a deep body need for rest and restoration (a need I was largely unaware of—or overrode with caffeine and stimulating activity—in the city), and deprogramming so much of the “cosmopolitan self” Bonnitta Roy has been illuminating for me.
Tomorrow ~ What a Chinese Vlogger Can Teach Us About Rhythms
Tomorrow, I’d like to share a clip that has a different rhythm to a lot of the news and media we have tackled during Embodiment Hour. It’s a video by Li Ziqi, a 31-year old video blogger, about her life on a farm in rural China where she lives with her beloved grandmother. Li’s lush videos made her an internet celebrity. She has 16.7 million YouTube subscribers and is followed by 55 million in China. Before she got entangled in a legal dispute with her marketing company, Li was putting out a video a month…all of them seasonal feasts for the senses.
Li’s popularity skyrocketed during the pandemic and lockdown. Her videos, which portray her mastery of traditional Chinese crafts and cooking and the spectacular landscapes of Sichuan, were like a soothing balm to our frayed nervous systems. They were escapist but not in a Hollywood way…escapist into a simpler and quieter pace, and into a place where the garden is always full of fresh food, everything is collected into baskets, tools are made of wood and steel, adorable animals frolic underfoot, and neighbors drop by for tea you harvested, roasted and dried yourself.
The videos are spacious, slow-paced, but not boring, and absolutely a feast for the senses. Each one seems to feature a food and a craft, or some combination of cooking and making, with titles like: “Make a peach blossom crown with silk flowers,” “May the red, red persimmons bring you a happy, prosperous new year!” and “The life of okra and bamboo fence.” Watching them is like a return to the past and a glimpse into the future at the same time.
What I’d like for us to feel into together tomorrow is how the pace of the videos and the way of life she is portraying resonates with us. How it feels in the body to slow down, to pay attention to what we are doing, and to enjoy the fruits of our labor. I will probably only share a clip of about 5-6 minutes, but if you’d like to watch a whole episode I recommend it. ALSO, if you’d like to bring a cup of tea to the experience, let’s have tea together while we get into our bodies!
Please join us tomorrow at noon EST for Embodiment Hour at The Stoa. This week and next week, the link will be available here free to all of my subscribers. It’s usually behind my paywall and The Stoa’s, but we wanted to open it to give more people a chance to try the experience. Please come!