The alternative title for this was: “How’s your nervous system? Pretty fucking fucked I’ll bet!” I just wasn’t sure if that was coming on a bit strong for my new readers *wink*
I’ve been offering Aromatouch treatments again lately, so many of us feeling right out of whack. How’s your body feeling these days? Are you like the circle of women in my life feeling at odds in your physical body? My friends are consulting their doctors and their NDs and they’re saying “exercise more, get more sleep, take $600 worth of supplements each month, clean up your diet, think positive thoughts”. They’re trying all the measures, keeping diaries and charts of their food and exercise and supplements and they’re not feeling better. I am most definitely not dismissing the importance of nutrition, supplementation as needed to fill missing links, daily body movement and rest. Yet I think we’re overlooking all sorts of vital bits of information about how we best operate and that well-meaning experts are leading women/people down a path of further disillusionment and disconnection. What my friends are feeling is overwhelmed at the to-do list of how they can feel better. Like if they just did more they would reach that supposed place of work-life-family harmony.
What if the answer was to not add in one more thing but to start taking things away?
There’s likely so much wisdom we’re not accessing when it comes to how our bodies function in optimal alignment. People seem apt to gloss over the major shift in daily life we now experience vs one year ago, this has all sorts of implications that we can’t quite understand yet, it’s self-preservation. There’s a thick current of fear that we are navigating each day – when we look on social, when we check the news, when we move through the world. The ways in which we operate are in contrast to the nature of humans; the distance, the suspicion, the loss of energy exchange as we isolate. Regardless of if you feel comfortable or uncomfortable with the level of change, it takes its toll.
It’s not just this past year though, let’s be honest. Our cultural norm is at a pace that is not set up for most to thrive in, but to keep us in perpetual catch up mode. Racing against a clock. Pushing when we shouldn’t be. The implementation of sick days is evidence of how inhumane we have become. Allotted time off, how nice! Except you’re only given 3 sick days a year. Hmm wait, what? What if I’m sick for a week? What if I’m sick more than once? What if I have a bunch of kids and they get sick sometimes and I need to be with them? If I need a break from the grind, is that a sick day too? Can I take the time and not be penalized? Ideally we’re well all the time but I think we also view sickness in a backwards way, something that has become increasingly evident as we not only are told to isolate our kids when they are potentially exposed to sickness but then we actually DO IT. We’re missing the point, we’re missing the design of the human body altogether. In its beautiful and effortless way of managing most of our daily body rhythms – breathing, digesting, blood pumping, eyes blinking. Couldn’t our symptoms of illness simply be the body’s manifestation of a biological upgrade occurring? This isn’t new, there are decades of research of how the body perfectly operates to utilize the zillions of bacteria and viruses to keep well.
Yet here we are still trying to juggle it all. The work, maybe now from home while wrangling children or managing internet outages, or still out in the world but with heavy restrictions. The daily errands, what’s open, what’s closed, do they have curb-side, what is the new protocol. The absence of social outings, no longer meeting up with friends on the weekend, walking down for breakkie at your local café, or maybe still doing those but with layers of “how to be normal in an abnormal world”. The child-care, what that now looks like, in school, out of school, no more extracurricular activities or still doing them but with 100 new complications. Don’t even get me started on the amount of energy we expend simply by being a container to hold all the feelings of our children, holy actual mother of god. That’s an article in itself!
We’re juggling it all as we always have been except not noticing the extra pressure or acknowledging how much you really depended on the energetic reset of your weekend away with girlfriends each spring, or that yoga retreat in the fall, or the family holiday you save up for each year. Or literally any stitch of normalcy.
So now you’re feeling depleted, restless, not really like yourself but not sure who you are. Everyone is selling a solution but it all looks like work. And the answer, in my humble opinion, is not to add in one more thing to your never ending list. The answer is to start taking things away. Or at least have the discernment to swap some things out for others, learn to prioritize what you most need and put that at the top of the list. Heaviness isn’t lightened by adding to it after all. Maybe the answer is doing nothing but sitting in the discomfort of this evolving time.
I see two major disconnects that are playing out in real time right now. One, not being able to hear what our body is asking for. When we are sick we see this as some sort of failure. Something has gone awry. Could it be our body just asking us to get back into alignment? Could we stop suppressing what our body is trying to achieve through ‘sickness’? What about proactive health? Why can’t we just give our bodies what they need? And secondly, a now deeply entrenched belief that all sickness is bad, catching and a definite portrayal of failure as you as a human being. Ayiyi we’ve veered so far off course!
What does your body want? Have you asked it? Find a moment today, maybe right now, to just shut your eyes and breathe in deeply and ask “dear body, what do you need from me?” Maybe it is to add in a new diet, supplements, a spiritual practice, more activity — what do I know! But maybe it’s to take away the mountain of achievement you’re deadset on climbing and to lay listlessly in your bed for a day. Or go sit on a stump and listen to the birds. Or drive through the country with the music loud. Or hug a friend.
My go to combo for overwhelm; Breathe (Easy Air), Copaiba, Balance over the heart
In the program I led this week we talked about the concept of destruction, of surrendering to the things that are trying to die away. This process is uncomfortable but necessary for our healing and our evolution. For our mind, body and soul to find true harmony we need to walk through the shadowy places and commit to coming through the other side. You were not made to suffer, it’s time to do away with old thinking that supports that and welcome in wellbeing in all facets of ourselves.
We are making choices daily that inform our whole system and we’re bombarded by messaging currently that our highest priority is to stave off sickness and death. But as Charles Eisenstien has said “a life saved actually means a death postponed” — which says to me, what will you do here, now, with the one life you have been given? The absence of sickness isn’t wellness, that’s an intentional and conscious choice you get to make.