Roots and Branches

Practices to meet and hold this moment

Lately, I’ve been focusing on simple, practical actions. I love deep, extended dives into my own inner world and how I work, but sometimes you just need a quick, simple practice that you can try then move on with your day. 

in the Mycelia Writers’ Coven and in building out Symbiosis (which opens this week) those are coming up a lot, alongside the deeper, more extended work we do: And in my spaces and others I’m a part of I’m seeing this balance between small daily practices and long-term explorations, with the two building off of and supporting each other.

Small daily practices help us stay grounded in alignment with ourselves as we move through life, but they also can help us regulate, move energy, or refocus quickly when we need to. In tomorrow’s newsletter, I’m going to share a few of these practices with you, so keep an eye out for that. 

Regulation isn’t always the answer

While nervous system regulation is great, sometimes being calm isn’t always what we need. Sometimes we need to be energized, or to push against our edges and experience some discomfort so that we grow. If we’re never uncomfortable, we’re not growing. And we can’t expand our capacity to hold and experience everything we want if we don’t even know where the edges of our current capacity lie (and, to what extent we’re willing to move those edges outward).

The goal with expanding capacity is not to torture ourselves or to fall down the rabbit hole of obsessing over constant self-improvement. 

Expanding our capacity feels more like when you’re holding a yoga pose right at the edge of what’s comfortable: You feel that discomfort in the pose as your muscles are asked to lengthen and extend in ways they normally don’t. 

Then at a certain point, the muscle releases. Your body relaxes into this pose as it becomes your new normal. Something your body is now able to do more easily. It feels almost like a big exhale.

The same is true of your emotional and energetic capacity: By letting yourself exercise and move in new ways (like we do in Symbiosis) and by getting curious about your current practice, you’re able to move more freely and fully over time (just as you do when you stretch regularly). 

Building capacity as a practice

Expanding capacity is an opportunity to hold yourself at the edge of what’s comfortable, then let yourself relax while in that space. One thing I work with a lot in my own energy work practice is noticing where I feel some discomfort and just getting curious without judging. Envisioning myself as a container with space to hold all of what I’m experiencing. Rather than tensing up at the edges of my comfort, I let myself get softer. 

Just playing with visualization and physical sensation around that idea is a great way to work with expanding your capacity. 

For example, if I want to be a best-selling author, I begin by imagining it as though it already happened. And I notice how I feel. Where are the edges of my comfort? What about that future feels sticky or unbelievable? Knowing those things gives me a roadmap for where to let myself get soft and curious, and where to bring some gentle attention.

I sometimes use the term “soft focus” which is not just a sexy way to take photos, but also a really beautiful way to refer to the act of attending to the edges of our comfort. It’s easy to be hypermasculine and go getter-y about things we want to improve.

But the fastest, and by far the easiest, way to get to where you’re going to is let yourself just stop holding so tightly. It’s about softening your gaze and turning your attention in the direction you want to be looking, and trusting yourself enough to know you’ll go in that direction once you do. 

More on this tomorrow, but in the meantime, this is work we do together in Symbiosis, and that I can help you with 1:1 too. 

The doors are still open in Symbiosis, with two spaces left. If you’ve been wanting one, we begin Saturday, and you can join on a payment plan to make it more accessible.

Get all the details here. 

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