We Get Busy

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We get busy. We get busy and forget to breathe, to pay attention to life. That we’re right here, right now. We lose connection. Maybe we never had it. But we want it, yearn for it. You, me, we, people, life.

Transformative work can bring you back into your body, put you in touch with your cells, with yourself on the cellular level. You can breathe, relax, relieve pain, tension, and stuck places. Find the spaces you can’t feel into, that are numb, tight. You’re suddenly aware of qualities you’ve embodied—a wooden board, a bungee cord.

Bring your awareness into your body. Feel yourself breathe. In the moment. Settle into your Self and feel gravity hold you, right where you are. Feel. You’re alive. Breathe. Let it go.

Let go of the grip of now of then of centuries past. You were gripped by what you feared and tightened against, or learned to please, squeeze, or run away, or stay paralyzed, frozen, tucked in, tucked away. It was reaction, safety, protection, wanting affection.

Let those toxic layers get cried away, yelled out, coughed up, shaken out, drawn away, melted down. New skin, new shape, new ground, purpose, meaning. Ease in.

It can be refreshing, soothing, plumb the depths, release the pain. You’re the explorer. You and your body carve the path. Keep breathing. It all unfolds as you grow.

[cross-posted at Mundo Lifework]

I Carry the Country Within Me

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After living on a Farm in Tennessee (my version of Isak Dinesen’s, “I lived on a farm in Africa”), and walking the dirt, chert, gravel, and asphalted roads day after day, year after year—falling in my share of puddles along the way—learned their crooks, dips, and turns, and became accustomed to walking in the dark. Of course, it was much easier when we got flashlights, but even they were no guarantee on very dark nights. I witnessed the stages of the oak trees and their leaves from sprout, to bud, to leafing out, and then their turning and their fall. These were the trees through which we carved out our roads that connected us to each other and to the outside world. Continue reading