Align Your Orbit #77 - To Fall is to Flow
Align Your Orbit is a series of philosophical and somatic experiments to guide intentionality and impact. Find delight in these journeys of exploration. If you would like to receive these offerings as an email on the new moon, sign up here.
As we watch the material powers that be tire themselves out, our underground movements grow stronger. While we might not have the before-and-after photos to show for it yet, but we feel the song growing louder in our hearts.
We are working together to set this waterwheel in motion, and we trust that even falling is a part of the flow. There is a process to catch us as we go further, reach farther. Our bravery becomes us. We remember how to seek comfort in our bodies. The future is calling our names.
Experience these experiments as a playlist!
New Experiments
1. I don’t have to trust you; I trust myself – From the outside, confidence and willingness to try might look like blind faith, but you’ve been honing your intuition for years. As you build confidence in your own abilities to catch yourself in the fall, you can move more freely from situation to situation. Even when your capacity is invisible, you are the only person who needs to believe in it.
Challenge Mode: When experts or authorities deny your reality, trust that there is still something real about your experience. As much as we would like to pretend we know everything, mysteries abound. Your sensations are there for a reason—they might not match someone else’s understanding. While it’s important to weigh external information, never give it the power to fully rewrite your truth.
2. whatever happens was all that could have happened – It’s easy to wonder how an experience might have gone differently. While that is a good practice for carrying forward lessons, there is no point in getting stuck there. Trust the process and resist the urge to wish for something other than what is. As Open Space facilitators will tell you—wherever it happens is the right place, whoever shows up are the right people, it starts when it starts, it ends when it ends, and if you don’t feel like you are nourishing or being nourished in the experience—you have two feet; feel empowered to leave.
Challenge Mode: All you can really change is how you show up to a situation. Seek embodied resourcing practices that allow you to show up fully to a new experience. While words can help us process, they don’t complete the healing. Dance, shake, do acroyoga, engage in rhythmic breathing, scream into a pillow—do what you need to do to regulate yourself and your nervous system. And, when someone asks if there is anything they can do for you, ask them to do something embodied with you.
3. if I don’t have the skills, someone else does – It’s easy to think that you have to do everything on your own. But, as they say in intentional communities, “you go faster alone, but we go further together.” Remember that this isn’t a race or a competition. And, whenever you feel overwhelmed, know there are people behind you who can give you direction, advice, energy, and skill. The people you need are already here.
Challenge Mode: When you have a fear, name it. Don’t let it hide in the shadows of ambiguity. If you lock your door, get clear on what it is you want to keep out. If you are asking for protection, call what you are afraid of out of the dark. Look your fears in the face and seek to understand them. If you can’t bring them onto your team, you can at least coax them out into the light. Have gentle grace for the parts of yourself that feel vulnerable.
4. it’s not working, but it’s workable – Take stock of each group you find yourself in. If you do not feel energized in those spaces but still feel tugged that direction, work to identify and name the problem. Bring collective decision-making models such as sociocracy to your meeting spaces. We need your bravery if we are going to move forward.
Challenge Mode: Just because you are not an expert in a topic does not mean the knowledge you have now is not valuable. In fact, learning something new gives you a valuable perspective on how to apply it adaptively to fresh situations. Trust the tools and resources that feel generative to you and bring them into new spaces while naming that you, too, are still in process. When you show your bruises as well as your successes, you make it more possible for everyone else to show up in their own vulnerability.
Andra’s Recap of The Water is Boiling
The themes for the last new moon centered around letting the storm devour itself, praying to your own intuition, transforming friction into resolution, and being confident that your health and clarity will return.
The storms have been raging, but I have been fiercely refusing to act out of a false sense of urgency. We have a long road toward collapse, and I know I can’t use all my energy now. I’ve trusted that my information sources will inform me of what’s important, and I’ve otherwise turned inward toward my own local communities and what it’s possible to build in these spaces. This is where we will find resilience.
I found myself literally “stepping out of the way” as a stranger came into my home this month in the middle of the night. I was completely nude standing between them and the exit, and I took a side step out of the doorway, asking them if they needed food or money. It seemed like they were only confused and lost, but my calm demeanor also seemed to help defuse the situation. They left the house peacefully. Though that was a very dysregulating experience, I am grateful that my “fight or flight” reaction was to ground, have compassion, disarm, and guide us both gently toward the exit.
The call to pray to my own intuition has taken the form of waiting at least a beat before I reach for the tarot explanation booklet, resisting the urge to check my astrology reading for the day, and trying to remember the pattern while I’m working on my fiber arts projects. It has felt like an important practice to stretch these muscles and not just reach for the easy, convenient answer. I’m building trust in myself.
For whatever reason, I have felt less inspired by domestic forms of magic and have a strong desire to weave my magic out in the landscape. Land altars, native planting, and community organizing is where my magic is calling to me. I also felt a strong urge to create some energetic filters to make sure that I am working toward only letting in energy that will help me grow.
We had a large snow storm this season that meant we were snowed in for a few days, and I used the opportunity to slow down and reflect. That energy helped me when I hit a snag in my professional life and needed to call out some hierarchical, patriarchal patterns. It required holding the needs and fears of the person in power in order to kindly redistribute responsibilities and control. I felt very strongly that, if we can replicate these patterns of power transfers, we could gently topple the empire.
I haven’t been perfect in giving up sugar, but I do feel more clarity of mind even just having decreased my intake. I’ve certainly had more awareness of my dependencies and when they rear their heads.
And, wow, my dreamscape has been merciless. I’ve had a number ancestor dreams as well as potent symbol dreams. People I haven’t been able to give up have been resurfacing, and I find myself throwing myself at their feet. Part of my energetic shoring-up process has been choosing when I want to open and when I want to close to these forces.
Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy this month’s experiments.