Just here… practicing being human and dancing with what it feels like to be a multidimensional being in a body, like all of us, a force of nature wrapped in stories and sinew and stardust. The dance shimmies us into spaces yearning be explored, touched, held, and loved. Sometimes I go willingly and other times my wise animal body would rather curl up and wait for the storm to pass.

There is no judgement when I just witness the weathered pathways my nervous system is familiar with. Spiraling softly into crevices where it seems nothing could flourish, I notice what happens when courage unfurls its wings, where compassion brews its nourishing broth, where I become the one who soothes the uprising in my tissues, with the help of other bodies, whether tree or sea or human, opening channels of receptivity and release so the impulse to hide or explode gives way to open arms and curiosity.

From the quiet dark, burgeoning miracles. From the pulsing underground, eruptions of light. Ever present reminders of disintegration ride alongside the undulating forces of imagination and sensation. Beholding beauty is a full time occupation.
A body might slowly, gently open an invitation for contraction to dance its way to the light, to be warmed, or grounded, to be seen more clearly and touched more kindly, where it can give itself new names, like grief, or shame, or fear, or uncontainable excitement, all dissolving like salt in the waves when we let it come & go without fighting what is here.

Maybe softening can feel more safe than it has before; maybe today, the body does not feel it can go there. It’s ok. Root in and just be witness to yourself. Our animal body is as wise as our spirit. It does not work to banish any protective response, to make it unwelcome; aliveness is a devotion to a practice of sensing, noticing, and being with. This is a practice of self trust, as our own guide, feeling held by all who are here now, all who have come before, and all who will be. The luminous field welcomes all of us home.

“The light returns, the light goes.” Little by little. As the heart spills over its edges to touch its own vastness, we find ourselves as the unchanging spark amidst all rising and crashing.

The heart can hold all of you, me, us. Call yourself, ourselves, beloved. May we let ourselves receive inside our deepest folds, and give from the depths we are able to offer from, allowing our capacity to shift and change shape. As the light returns, may our own clear-seeing reveal to us what we need to see or be seen by in this moment. May our own clear-sensing reveal to us all we need to feel or be felt by in this moment.

“May you be at peace. May your heart remain open. May you awaken to the light of your own true nature. May you be healed, may you be a source of healing to all beings.” Tibetan Buddhist Prayer