you are animal, natural, beautiful.
i didn’t enter the earthly plane inherently feeling at home in my form. in collaboration with society at large, i have over identified with my intellectual space and the performative/physical quality of my body, seen in athletics to interpreting illness or changing shape as failure. from that place, the seemingly simple strategy of how to exist became increasingly complicated and fraught (tldr; humans are really good at overcomplicating shit, better or for worse). more often than not, my body felt like a limitation rather than the expansive vehicle of sensation and experience it has become now. feeling like all parts of me are online and engaged has taken time, diligent practice, a gentle eye and fierce heart.
i have been most nourished and healed by simultaneously learning more about the body, while also letting go of it. studying body systems, anatomy and physiology, herbs and nutrition, all showed me how animal, how natural my form. seeing that what i hold as divine and sacred in the behaviors and appearances of plant and animal, also must exist in me (as we have evolved via relationship with one another) provided just enough cushioning—a separation from perceived “self,” and my humanness, to really get to work on unwinding from the grip of a perceived sense of control that this consciousness offers, and land into the instinctual knowings that rise and grow when in relationship with herbal medicine and food in its most uncomplicated, unadulterated form.
engaging with the day + night, sun light + dark, movement, the elements, sleep, and all forms of care and community in ways that mirror the patterns of and on the earth, are the routes to peace, clarity, resiliency.
So as you're doing your work, of times past and present, connecting to above and below, remember the body, your body as earth. as channel for our spirit’s work, the container which we ground by. nourish and tend to it, in any way which you feel you can.
in healing the relationship with our attachment to earth—animal relationships, plant communication, cycles and seasons, we learn again how to feel resourced. when you know how to relate on a practical and spirit level with earth, an embodied knowledge of resiliency and adaptation flows. in meeting needs via what is around us, through direct contact with the earth body—wild food, plant medicine, working with fire, wood, stone, water, we are reigniting the remembrance of body as forever connected, and collaborated with. breathing with the capacity to feel at home within, and never alone. learning the language of non human kin.
it is this process of healing from which i share, and hope to be a guide for.
11.24.2020