Hi friend,
How’s your breath? How’s your heart?
We’re rounding out the launch week of All Parts 2.0 with 10 things…lately. Below are 10 somewhat random ideas, thoughts, and resources that have been coming into my orbit lately. I hope they serve you in the way you need.
In case you missed it, I’ve upgraded the paid subscriptions to include a ton of exciting new resources and ways to stay connected to both your Self and others, including:
Unlimited access to all past 15 Day Practice recordings and other guided somatic practices, as well as automatic sign up and access to all future 15 day practices
Access to all live and recorded educational content, including online workshops (the first of which is coming up on April 14th. Learn more and sign up here, or upgrade to paid for access to all past, present, and future workshops).
Special community discussion boards for paid subscribers only
My intention for this community is to grow into a space where we can explore all parts of our human experiences, together. It’s a space that is never intended to take the place of therapy, but instead to be a complement to any 1:1 work you’re doing, either with me or with another therapist.
I’d love to hear from you in the comments which of the 10 ideas resonates with you most right now. I always love to hear from you!
Xx,
The forever evolving part
10 things…lately
#1
Our bodies are constantly in a state of upregulating or downregulating in order to meet the demands of the present moment. Upregulation increases the energy in the body by producing hormones like cortisol and adrenaline and opens up the blood vessels so that oxygen and blood can pump more readily into the systems of the body we need to meet the challenge at hand. When we need to meet a deadline or have a meaningful conversation with another, for example, we need to be able to upregulate appropriately to find focus, presence, and engagement.
On the other hand, downregulation is our ability to calm the system down; to suppress or reduce a response to a situation or stimulus. On a cellular level, downregulation helps to suppress the response of a cell to hormones like cortisol. This gives our cells an opportunity to say “no thank you” and instead to rest, recover, and renew.
This time of year - the transition into Spring - is always dysregulating for me. Seemingly overnight I go from quiet hibernating bear to excitable fiery hummingbird. It’s a welcome change, but one I’ve had to learn to titrate into so as not to overwhelm my system. Sometimes this means more quiet yoga and breathwork, slow walks, and reading under the shade of a tree to invite in more yin to cool the yang (downregulation). Other times, it means an intense HIIT workout, 5 minutes of breath of fire, and tensing every muscle in my body to allow the yang and fire to move (upregulation).
During times of transition, our bodies feel the shifts of change around us. This can confuse the nervous system. That’s ok. It’s normal as our bodies wake up from their long winter slumber.
Can you honor the transition by giving your body what it’s needing at any given moment? Can you honor the new found energy of Spring, slowly, so as not to burn your Self out?
#2
The irony that some of the biggest financial decisions in life are emotional. Having a child. Buying a house. Choosing a career. You can cross all your t’s and dot all your i’s before these major life decisions, but the catalyst for actually taking the leap is nothing but sheer, unadulterated emotion, whether we recognize it or not.
I wonder what might happen if we all learned to honor our emotions as the powerful change-starters that they are, instead of trying to manage and control them all the time.
#3
Forgiving another person after they’ve hurt you is one of the hardest human things we could ever do, and yet it is necessary if we ever want to live fully free from the trauma that lives in our bodies. As Elizabeth Bruenig says, “forgiving someone for hurting you is excruciating, because it requires you to follow an unjust wrong with a personal sacrifice.”
In the world of trauma, we must get curious about what exactly that sacrifice is. In the case of childhood trauma, for example, we are forgiving the person who harmed us not because they deserve forgiving (often they don’t), but because the unjust wrong has caused a shell around us that keeps us from our Selves and from true intimacy with others. What’s required in the process of forgiveness is the sacrifice of our more protective parts that have kept us safe for so long, but that we recognize as no longer serving our higher Selves. The sacrifice is a surrendering of the walls we’ve put up around our Selves. This is excruciating. And it is the only way.
#4
Beyonce’s new album, Cowboy Carter. Because, well, duh.
#5
During our last 15 day practice, a major theme that came up was rest as part of the practice. The kriya for whole-body well-being has a savasana right in the middle of the set.
Sets like this used to frustrate the hell out of me. At the time I was accustomed to more western vinyasa yoga, where savasana felt like the big reward after 55 minutes of chaturangas and willing my leg to stay balanced while beads of sweat dripped down my face. The unconscious belief being that I’m allowed full-surrendered rest only after the effort was done. A belief so deeply ingrained in our culture that I didn’t think to question it.
What if we were able to fully surrender to rest not as a reward for a job well done but instead as a necessary component of the job itself?
#6
The realization that our traditional school system teaches our kids at a young age that dysregulation is normal and the ability to disconnect from our body’s natural rhythms is rewarded.
Semesters that start out slow and low-pressure, only to be bombarded at the end with three 10-page papers and 2 exams due within the same 7-day period. I don’t know about you, but this didn’t teach me about sustained curiosity and consistent effort. It taught me to conserve all my energy by coasting and doing just enough until the very end. When I returned home after exams I would be so burnt out that I would sleep in my parent’s basement for 2 days straight.
It’s taken me years to unlearn these unhealthy dynamics around work and productivity.
This is not normal, and our young people deserve better.
#7
I recently started diving into Emerson, Thoreau, and transcendentalism (is anyone surprised by this? Yea, me neither).
What is surprising, however, is that although these men lived in Concord, Massachusetts- a mere 10-minutes from where I grew up- I got hooked into the seminal works of these two by first studying Vedic traditions and yogic philosophy derived from a culture a world away from my own.
In American Veda author Philip Goldberg explains that Emerson may have been the first leading American to articulate a viable spirituality apart from traditional Christianity, and also among the first to recognize that religion is compatible with science. He also was the first to articulate spirituality as a pillar for social activism. Goldberg says:
“He backed the claim with his own transcendent experience: ‘Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.’
...His was a leading voice for the rights of women, Native Americans, and the enslaved Africans in the South. But his views on those hot-button issues were not ordinary; they were built on a Vedic foundation that flipped the prevailing religious assumption about human nature on it’s head - from original sin to original bliss, one might say. ‘Emerson took the revolutionary notion that men are essentially good, not fallen, one step further,’ Robert Gordon told [Goldberg]. ‘All human beings are essentially divine.’”
#8
Jenny O’Dell explains in her book, How to Do Nothing, that in health and ecology, “things that grow unchecked are considered cancerous…yet we inhabit a culture that privileges novelty and growth over the cyclical and the regenerative.”
Can we remember that linear growth is not our natural way of being in the world? Can we stop shaming ourselves when we don’t meet this unnatural expectations? Can we actually see it for what it really is, which is a cancerous toxicity that is killing our ability to be present and connected to the people and earth around us?
#9
My husband and I saw Julio Torres’ new movie, Problemista. It was so good. So funny. So quirky.
Perhaps not the main takeaway but one I’ve been thinking a lot about since is that sometimes we have to say no to the easy path in order to say yes to our true path. There will always be seemingly easier routes tempting us at every turn we take. We must stay the course, even if others’ don’t understand. Developing trust in your Self and in your vision is how you begin to build the life you want and deserve. Stay the course.
#10
Commit fiercely to compassion. Always.
That was so beautiful and filling…like a lovely warm breakfast. Thank you. 🙏🏽
#3. I’ve been taking a deep dive into forgiveness lately. I’ve been wondering whether we’re making our lives more difficult by using the word forgiveness. When you write of forgiveness, what, exactly do you mean? Giving up anger and/or resentment? Something else? I think it may help to say what we mean without using the (confusing) word “forgiveness.”