Hello Sweet Humans,
This morning I hold grief for humanity in my awareness. Accompanying grief I notice a deep sense of steadiness. I’m realizing more and more how important it is to cherish moments of presence, especially in the midst of what is so hard.
The brain is a prediction machine, which means the more we notice and celebrate curious internal states, the more we help wire them in. They become easier to access as anchors. They help to turn toward the growing pain, isolation and injustice in the world with a deepened sense of internal okayness and presence.
On September 26, a group of us gathered for the first session of The Relationally Rooted Series: Turning Toward. It was a powerful, emergent space of collective learning. While I can’t capture the depth of what we experienced together, I can share the arc we mapped to guide our exploration of how we relate to discomfort in body, mind, and nervous system.
We began by noticing how discomfort shows up in each of us. What it feels like in our bodies. What we do or say in response. What it sounds like when we listen. And what it wants us to know once it feels heard. As we got to know discomfort more intimately, compassion grew. From there, we cultivated a micro-practice: noticing, turning toward, inquiring what discomfort wants us to know, meeting it well. Then we turned back again to sense how discomfort feels toward us and how we feel toward it. This soft of layered embodied relational work is best integrated experientially.
On Friday, October 24 (4:30–8:00 PM), we gather again for Boundaries and Edges in The Living Room at Full Circle in Gardiner, NY. We’ll explore the edge of how we expand our capacity to be with what is and how we relate to the wisdom of our boundaries and edges.
We’ll continue to practice being in relationship with discomfort rather than reflexively avoiding it as a scaffold for transformational shifts. Discomfort becomes our teacher. It invites us to explore our vulnerabilities and edges with compassion and care, to notice what is tender, and to be intentional in how we set up our boundary practices.
Then we’ll dive deeper still, on Friday, November 21, as we again gather to explore Rupture and Repair.
You’re invited to join for one or both of the remaining sessions. Learn more and register here: https://connectfulness.com/relationally-rooted-series. And if you’re interested in a future virtual series, reply to this email so I can keep you in the loop.
Also, our free Virtual Geography of Grief Gathering is happening Monday, October 13, from 12:30–1:30 PM EST. This is an invitation to gather, not to figure things out, but to practice being in relationship with what is emerging. To notice sensations, thoughts, and emotions as they emerge. To be with grief inside community and be with it, allowing it to be witnessed. To notice what is taken for granted, to question what has been taught to trust, and to feel into what sits okay, and what doesn’t. Our shared presence itself is a regulatory, relational practice.
Register here for the link to join: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/dCSZXKbLRlOU2oHq-O2oiA#/registration
I’d love to share these learnings with you and deepen in community.
With warmth,
Rebecca ♡
