Align Your Orbit #78 - In & Out with the Tides
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.
It’s never been more obvious that healing internally ripples out into the greater tides of existence. Healing, like illness, is contagious, and at a critical threshold, it becomes spontaneous. Just imagine, for a moment, easeful and spontaneous healing and how many local, bioregional, and global systems would benefit. The tipping point approaches. Your ancestors wait with bated breath for you to surprise them.
We have a renewed sense of hope for that kind of spontaneous micro-to-macro healing after reading No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz, and much of this moon cycle’s wisdom stems from the theory laid out in the Internal Family Systems model of therapy. It’s time to free yourself, and when you free yourself, you free the world. Through these tides, these offerings, these movements, we are all connected.
Experience these experiments as a playlist!
New Experiments
1. resensitize your managers – There are parts of you who came online to protect you from what you weren’t prepared to handle, and they often still think you are quite young. Return to these parts of self—those that schedule, motivate, and obsess—and remind them of how old you are now. Ask them what they need to trust you to handle it now. Ask them what they are afraid would happen if they were to let you see beyond them.
Challenge Mode: As healing begins, you feel lighter. Sensations become more noticeable. You feel the wind as it brushes through your hair. Don’t turn away from this rediscovered vulnerability—it is your essence; it is your power. Seek out parts of the body craving attention and ask them what they would like you to know.
2. hotwash your firefighters – There are parts of you ready with the firehose to protect you by any means necessary, even if you are no longer in crisis. Their methods often appear as distractions, numbness, or relentless fury. Often, they are protecting an exiled part of you they don’t want you to worry about. Ask them what they are afraid would happen if they stepped aside or didn’t do their job. Help these protectors gently put out the first fire that ever overwhelmed them.
Challenge Mode: Your stealthiest firefighters get external praise for the work they do. From the outside, they look like perfect meditators, expert craftspeople, or obsessively healthy individuals. But, on the inside, the fires continue to rage. Honestly ask yourself what is a distraction and what is a joy. Ask these parts what they are afraid would happen if you weren’t distracted. Listen to the answer.
3. call in your exiles – There are parts of you—soft, beautiful parts—that were too vulnerable to handle the situations they found themselves in. As a protective measure, other parts stepped in the way and silenced their cries. Often, these exiled parts have lost the ability to get your attention except through acting out. After seeking permission from their protectors, sit with your exiles. Discover where in your memories they lost access to you. Be the adult you wish they had in that situation. When they feel complete, take them somewhere in your mind that feels safe. Ask them to unburden themselves, offering their burdens to the light, fire, water, earth, air, or lightning. Bring the protectors in to see your exile happy for the first time in years. Promise to continue developing this relationship and communication with each of them before you return to the outer world.
Challenge Mode: This healing is contagious, and once it begins in earnest, parts will offer themselves up, ready to unburden. If too many approach you at once, gently ask them to wait, promising that this won’t be the last time you speak to them. Find a sustainable pace for starting down these trailheads. Make sure to have someone in your life—a therapist, peer support, or just someone who you trust to be non-judgmental—to fall back on if it all feels like too much.
4. summon the self – If you do nothing else, seek the sensation of gently separating from your parts. Imagine that they are all at the bottom of a path, and ask them if they will allow you to walk without them. If they are too nervous, kindly ask them why. Get to know them. Earn their trust. Remind them how old you are. And, when they are ready, take a few steps away from them. Notice the shifts in your body. Feel the change in your energy. Begin to recognize when you lose access to this sensation.
Challenge Mode: When your parts relinquish control and instead act as advisors, you can feel that sensation of self for longer periods of time. The presence of self in you naturally summons self in others. Bring compassion and curiosity into this delightful contagion. Watch the world come alive around you. Bask in the glory of all that we can be together when no one remains in exile.
Andra’s Recap of To Fall is to Flow
The experiments for this last moon cycle included trusting yourself, be with what is, believing that the people you need are already here, and moving with what is workable.
Internal trust is something that I’ve struggled with for a long time, but through the help of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, I am finding the parts of me who have gotten trapped in past memories. This process is freeing up parts of me I didn’t realize still needed help. As a result of doing IFS meditations and meeting my parts, I am building even more of that internal trust, even to the point that parts of self have come to me to let me know they are ready, even without my prompting.
By having more trust in myself, I have been able to see where others don’t trust themselves and pivot accordingly. It’s been an effort to make sure I’m not taking more on than is actually my responsibility, but I’m unlearning that, too. It’s all part of the process.
As we are deep into Mercury retrograde, I’ve found that the willingness to flow and release attachment from outcomes has been clutch in surfing this wave. I’ve also noticed that, when I’m pressed for time, it is much harder to pivot and flow in this way. Adding that buffer in between activities actually saves energy in the long run.
Bringing the body into everything I’m doing has been the only way to hold the vast amounts of community organizing I’m doing these days. Every time I invite someone to take a deep breath with me, to connect with the landscape, or to ask their body if there’s a place that is ready to relax, I am nourished. Without that, I run myself dry and ragged. I’ve stopped caring about what’s weird or normal. If you want me to facilitate, if you want to join these spaces with me, we’re going to care for the collective body.
It's been easy to think that I need to continuing gathering more people to do the work I’m doing, but when the work has energy and momentum, the right people come. The people near the work step up. The skills develop and emerge. I continue to trust the process and allow the mystery to surprise me. When I am not afraid of scarcity, abundance has room to bloom.
In doing IFS therapy this month, I’ve called shadow after shadow out of the dark. I’ve remembered moments of my childhood I thought were lost forever and came back to that scene as the adult I wished would have been there. It’s been nothing short of magical. Even the parts of me that I once hated have come forward and offered themselves in new and healing capacities. I am learning from them, and they are looking to me with a newfound appreciation and respect.
I’ve had little tolerance for any decision-making spaces that are not shifting toward non-hierarchical styles of participatory governance. What I’ve found is that, once I give people a model of how it can work in another way, they try to go back to the way it used to be and feel its flaws and failures. They see the value of not having to hold every piece of the puzzle, and they relax, giving more space for what we are building to grow. It’s happened over and over again in the past few months, and it also feels magical. I’m fascinated by this pattern of group dynamics and thrilled for the iterations that come with us into the future.
I heard murmurs somewhere that you can make baskets out of English ivy, so I took a stab at it this cycle. I resisted the urge to look up a YouTube video and instead enjoyed the process of wrestling the vine into shape after a land-tending party I put together. It’s been joyous and liberating now to look at this invasive plant and see craft projects everywhere. I can’t wait to teach others how to do this.
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy this cycle’s experiments!