Here, while I stir my morning concoction of hot water with fresh lemon, I greet the vase of sunflowers and the sunflowers greet me.
Here, a blend of organic coconut oil and castor oil softens into my beaming skin.
Here, before bare feet meet the earth, I begin the day by connecting to the inner embodied spark of the divine by moving a hand to my luminous heart and a palm to reverently blanket my womb.
Today, I say yes to myself. I say yes to being alive in my life.
My heart and yoni celebrate with an expansion of breath.
Thank you, thank you.
The aliveness of embodied presence is the only consciousness compass I need.
Let me relax into that radiant trust.
Let me reassure the rushed parts of me, who I envision as frenzied mail-messengers, that all is well, because right here and right now, all is well.
Let me notice the hurried timelines zooming through my nervous system, the energy of that urgency can be repurposed back into nutrients, into the commitment to presence.
I become a mother who tenderly attends to her tired child. I gently speak to my brain, and thank my sputtering thoughts for working so hard to protect me, because that’s all that hyper-active mind is doing … simply trying to protect me from potential pain by overthinking scenarios. And I see this now. And I thank the brain, and then tell her that she can now rest.
I turn off the dial to the collective radio station. It’s that simple, swift and effective.
NO to feeding any external forces and energies with my vitality.
I notice with clear-air discernment the weight of my own judgments. The verbal and mental stones I’ve been throwing shift into streams of sand, flowing from hands that were clenched as fists, and now palms open, and the sand filters and falls into golden particles to kiss bare feet.
This is the embodiment of liberation.
I notice the squandering of precious life-force to outside forces strategically designed to distract me from my real power – the power of being alive in my life.
Alive to the stunning blue eyes of my sister as she passionately describes the mission of her nonprofit work.
Alive to my shoulder’s whispered desire to sit spaciously at the kitchen table and savor the sunlight streaming through the windows and bathing my hair, neck, spine.
Alive to the sudden appearance of the hummingbird outside the kitchen window – joy in deliberate motion, purposeful flight.
Alive to act on the ignited impulse to enthusiastically clear out the refrigerator, to ground the inspiration into a writing, to meditate outside before the Zoom meeting.
Today, I say yes to myself.
I make the commitment, and all my body’s fear-riddled strategies to capture my attention immediately dissolve.
Oh, you are listening, you do have our back, my body delights!
This level of acceptance and support is how I excitedly show up for my loved ones, it’s how I show up for my yoga and improv students, and now the practice has been redirected to me -- how I validate and receive myself.
Like the chorus of yeses I would guide my students to sing out-loud in improv class, I gift myself the same elevated cheerleading.
And a memory resurfaces and with present-awareness I watch the scene unfold.
We circle up together before we begin improv class.
And I ask a quiet and polite boy, who is around ten-years-old, what to place in this cauldron, in this soup we all take turns tossing ingredients into (as a way to shed nerves, to begin to shake out conditioning from the outside world and trust our first response) and with a mischievous gleam and a small smile he responds, “Barbie heads.”
“YES!!”
We all agree, and here there is healing and empowerment – to be accepted, to have ideas accepted without hesitation, and with expressed enthusiasm.
“And what sound does that make?!” I follow up with the second inquiry necessary for our collective cauldron making.
“Help me!”
We all chant “Help me! Help me! Help me!” as we toss those Barbie heads into the invisible goop.
And while the medicine of unconditionally supporting ideas, including my own impulses and instincts for the day arises with the memory, there’s also another startling epiphany.
My brain these past few days has been like that Barbie head chanting HELP ME.
Give me a break from the over-thinking, from consuming too much technology, from the vigorous mental striving to figure out moves, and the next step, and where will I be in the year 2030?
I’ve been operating from a ghostly dismembered place, cut off from the innate creative intelligence of heart and womb.
Reconnect me to the rest of my support system, that Barbie Head seems to plea – reconnect me to the soul-animated body!
And I do.
Today, when I say yes to myself, I say yes to the body intelligence that has the answer and then kindly includes the mind to help make that answer appear in the tapestry of reality.
Today, I say yes to myself, and yes recenters me in a pacing that encourages pausing in front of the sunflowers, because life is here in this recognition of being to being.
What if promise to say yes to ourselves is the heart-tucked commitment we make before we start the day?
This is the invitation we’ll be playfully exploring and delightfully entertaining in Body Writes.
Through meditative movement and journaling prompts inspired by the golden guidelines of improv philosophy, we’ll practice saying yes to ourselves – to our body’s wise needs, to all our creative ideas (Barbie’s talking head included), to soften into our own source of luminous support so we can hear ourselves with compassionate discernment, with sweetened curiosity, with an embodied presence that shines like the sun.
And this is our natural state. This is how we lived as children – in luminous innocence, and this wonder, this intact trust in ourselves is available to us now.
The practice of saying yes to ourselves, to our inner cues, returns us back into this embodied flow. We relinquish the resistance, the shoulds, the outer and internalized dictates so we can drop back into our bright wonder.
We live in relaxed exuberance.
Like those sunflowers, like the hummingbird, like the inner ten-year-old who mischievously, innocently plays.
Today, say yes to yourself. And see the sunflowers and let them see you.
Body Writes: Flow With Summer Ease And Shine Out Your Creative Luminosity
When :: Saturday, August 6th 10am-12:15pm EST
Where :: Zoom
What? ::
Body Writes offers embodiment (in-my-body) practices for Spirited Creatives.
We are ALL creative beings. To be human is to be creative.
We ALL utilize creative energy, life-force energy to design our lives.
And if you don’t feel that you’re creative, then I challenge you to gently investigate that narrative, which is probably a picked-up story that’s dimming your natural artistry.
Creativity is innate, and it has a rhythm and pulse that reflects nature and nature’s seasons. These sessions are all about including the BODY, and the body’s rhythm, intuitiveness and sparkling breath-fueled power into our creations. So often we can forget to breathe when we write, or we rely on force and effort instead of flow and ease to make decisions in our day-to-day lives, and everyday can be a breathing masterpiece.
Body Writes focuses on regulating our nervous systems, recalibrating us back to our parasympathetic nervous system, our tend and befriend, rest and digest systems, so we can re-remember that living and creating can come from a centered state of ease and exuberance. I also believe that healing and returning home to our inherent wholeness can be fun! So the movement and meditation and journal prompts come from a deep-belief and lived truth that playfulness is powerful medicine.
Price :: $122 ; proceeds benefit The Children’s Advocacy Center
Heart-Lit YES! Please Royally Register Here!