I never walked like this before
I found this poem I wrote at least six months ago this morning. It viscerally reminded me of the experience of starting to feel again, how overwhelming it was, and still is, to be present in my body again. And how worth the work it is, to have moments, hours, even whole days, where I get to experience, “I never walked like this before.”
At first, I thought it was my hormones.
At first, I thought, “I’m going crazy again.”
At first, I thought, there is something wrong with me.
Did I sleep enough?
Did I eat enough?
Did I meditate well enough?
Did I drink enough coffee? Too much coffee?
Is that why I cried over the suds of a saucepan, the feeling of my compostable sponge squeezed in my fist?
I sat at my kitchen table, and I looked up. I saw the moon.
Through two slats in the blinds, I stare at the nearly full moon for long enough to see spots, I see the moon when I close my eyes to the sky of my mind.
I cry, and I laugh, and I breathe in and I can balance my body better, I feel myself settled in my feet. I never walked like this before.
Stepping into somatics practice has been the most powerful pathway back to myself, back to my body, connecting me to the river of “the felt sense,” as Peter Levine names in Waking The Tiger. The best definition I’ve found of somatics I read in Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown (yes, she is my mentor I’ve never met and highly encourage you to read her work), who sourced Generative Somatics for it: “The word Somatics comes from the Greek root soma which means “the living organism in its wholeness.” It is the best word we have in English to understand human beings as an integrated mind/body/spirit, and as social, relational beings. In somatic speak, we call this embodiment “shape,” and the collective “body” or collective psycho-biology. Somatics is a path, a methodology, a change theory, by which we can embody transformation, individually and collectively. Embodied transformation is foundational change that shows in our actions, ways of being, relating and perceiving. It is transformation that sustains over time. Somatics pragmatically supports our values and actions becoming aligned. It helps us to develop depth and the capacity to feel ourselves, each other and life around us. Somatics builds in us the ability to act from strategy and empathy, and teaches us to be able to assess conditions and “what is” clearly. Somatics is a practice-able theory of change that can move us toward individual, community and collective liberation. Somatics works through the body, engaging us in our thinking, emotion, commitments, vision and action.
In amb’s essay “Feeling From Within: A Life of Somatics,” she says “It turns out, being present is the most important part of every single experience of my life.”
It makes sense, doesn’t it? And yet. It can be so difficult. Especially if you have experienced trauma and its impacts have conditioned your body to feel it’s safer to be disconnected, disassociated than to be here. Right here. In this moment. How do we do it?
My invitations to you were the invitations I gave to myself in the beginning. Pay attention to what is always there, whether we see it/feel it or not.
look up. The sky is always there for you.
look down. What a miraculous body you have, that is always there for you to notice, appreciate, and thank it for what it allows you to do.
feel in. Your breath is always there, a safety, a comfort to rely it. Notice it, follow it, allow it to guide you back to your body, to this moment.
How can you be here with us, the collective, and you, the individual, today?
look up 