I wrote these words for my community of letter subscribers recently, and I’m sharing them here now, because womxn told me they needed to hear it.
Do you ever wonder if you’re OK? Do you ever think or feel like something is wrong with you?
This used to be one of my patterns of thinking, a trauma adaptation and a product of the subconscious belief that I was broken. Through my personal healing and my work with other healing womxn, I came to know that I was not alone. Womxn breathe the air of our patriarchal culture, which programs us to question our bodies, our feelings, our thoughts, our Selves. We’re conditioned to question our OK-ness in other ways, too. We may seek validation from outside of ourselves or have difficulty making decisions, we lack trust in our abilities, we ruminate over something we said or did…
If any of this resonates for you, too, know that there is nothing wrong with you. Even when, especially when, you’re experiencing pain, uncomfortable symptoms, hard, dark feelings, or negative thoughts, even when you don’t feel OK, you are still whole and human and divine.
Our bodies are miraculously designed to communicate with us. That pain, those symptoms, the feelings you’re pushing down are here for you. They are messengers speaking up to be heard and honored. In homeopathy, symptoms are highly valued—they are the body’s wisdom expressed.
But symptoms—physical, mental, or emotional—can feel very uncomfortable. Learning to stay connected to a sense of safety in our discomfort is crucial for moving beyond this pattern of thinking (and long-held, often subconscious, belief) that we are not OK. Learning to recognize our programming for what it is—a self-protective and well-designed trauma adaptation—allows us to begin healing it. *Note: this is not to invalidate the very real lived experience of our pain and discomfort. It is real. But it doesn’t mean something is wrong with us.
This Is For You
If you feel stuck in symptoms or patterns of thinking and behaving that aren’t serving you, this reminder is for you. Nothing is wrong with you. You don’t need to be fixed or changed. More often than not, our nervous system and the limbic brain just need a little (or a lot of) support.
So, I’m sharing a simple, short exercise to support your nervous system below. And, I’m sharing the details of Self-Awareness | The Course with you, my blog readers. I hope you find something supportive in here for you.
A Simple Practice
When I learned about the foundational role of the nervous system in healing our bodies, hearts, and minds, all things nervous system started showing up in my awareness. What I consistently see, and what I’ve been practicing myself, is the simple, but powerful, exercise of orienting our bodies to our environment and engaging our senses to build safety in the nervous system. In my upcoming course we’ll be exploring the science behind these practices and adding to their power with other techniques. Take a few moments to try it out:
SUPPORT
Begin by noticing the ground beneath you. Notice the contact your body makes with the the ground or your chair. Notice all the places where you feel supported by Mother Earth. Sense. into that contact and notice and name the qualities (temperature, pressure, hardness).
BREATH
While you maintain awareness of contact with your support, notice your breath without changing it. Just observe the effortless movement of the breath, the expansion and contraction of your chest. Notice where you sense the air entering your body, maybe in the nose or throat or chest, and where you sense it leaving.
SENSE
Finally, as you dwell in these spaces of awareness, slowly take in the environment around you with all of your senses. Look around you, moving your head and your eyes, both slowly, to land on something in your environment. Name and notice what you see along with its qualities. Notice and name what you hear, smell, maybe even taste. What can you sense with your skin?
There is nothing more you need to do. Just dwell in this space of presence and awareness.
Self-Awareness | The Course
The nervous system will be one of the six learning and coaching modules we’ll be exploring in my upcoming Self-Awareness course for womxn.
Registration for Self-Awareness | The Course opens on September 15th, and I’d love for you to join me on this guided journey. The Course is for womxn seekers (this includes all cis and trans womxn and any other person who identifies as a womxn) who want to deepen their experience of knowing their W H O L E selves so they can cultivate revolutionary shifts in their wellness, relationships, and careers.
Remember, the links for registration won’t work until the 15th! If you sign up to receive my monthly-ish e-mail communications, you’ll be notified when it launches so you can grab one of the twelve available spots.
