Align Your Orbit #81 - Tap the Root

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.

The season calls us to reach down toward the deepest well of our capacity, trust our longest roots, and continue standing tall. As painful as this moment can be, on the timeline of the land, this is only a blip. We are but a moment of pleasure, of beauty, of awe, of experimentation—let us return to that purpose collectively now.

Spread nourishment to the mycelial network as you place radical, unwavering trust in abundance. For every moment you believe in yourself and believe in others, you make space for more empowered agency, discretion, and mindfulness. You and everyone around you is a well of wonder.

Experience these experiments as a playlist!

New Experiments

1.      invite multiplicity – If you want to avoid cracks in your truth, hold dissonance with love. Find divinity in each holy individual story you encounter. Trust in your own ability to hold your own reality while experiencing one that creates friction. Appreciate the novelty, the awe, and even the fear as you come across alternative modes of belief. Take a moment to marvel.

Challenge Mode: More and more environmental activist circles are talking about listening to the land, but we must also understand that the land speaks differently to each person. The land itself is a fractal identity that changes constantly and even exists in conflict with itself. The land, like anything, is not a monolith, but a collection of beings. How can we speak what we hear from our part of the land and allow for disharmony? Find the underlying threads of connection and trust that they all weave together in the tapestry of greater understanding.

2.      dismantle hierarchy – The era of dominant culture is dying like so many of the systems unable to hold themselves up around us. Enter this new period with confidence in collective decision-making, expansive identities, and land-based practices—they are the new consensus reality. Dig deep and resource yourself with the attention of all the beings who have been waiting anxiously for this moment. You’re not the only savior—you’re unearthing a community of empowered agents.

Challenge Mode: Beware the fragile peace. Identify the root causes of conflicts, of injustice, of power imbalance rather than succumb to the temptation of treating symptoms. Seek people who challenge you and invite them to give feedback. Practice accepting your body’s responses before you speak. You have become resilient enough to take cues toward growth. These reflections are gifts.

3.      bring your body with you – Cultivating somatic awareness is a radical act that resists the capitalist attempt to grind you down to nothing. Don’t exercise your body like it isn’t you. Practice full presence in your physical activity rather than treating it as a means to an end. Enjoy this moment and this one and this one.

Challenge Mode: Become a person who naps. Rest. Recover. Build extra buffer in your schedule. Find the third way. Pivot to use less muscle. Balance your weight and send it straight into the ground. Seek the alignment in every movement. What if this need not be difficult?

4.      play in the field – Think of a dilemma or situation that feels stuck. Gather sacred objects around a small, plain cloth—your field. Assign elements of the problem (people, parts, settings, etc.) to other small objects and place them intuitively into the field. See how each new element affects where other elements want to move. Accept the shape that emerges. Embrace the dynamic movement of each new energy as you get a bird’s eye view.

Challenge Mode: As adrienne marie brown offers, there is a conversation that only the people in this room can have. Similarly, there is a divine, holy thread ready to weave into the greater tapestry. Celebrate the unique ways you impact a space. Let your very presence inspire others toward their own sense of agency and divinity. Imagine that everyone has exactly this capacity.  

Andra’s Recap of Mirage Magic

The experiments for the previous moon cycle included obsessing over your romance novel (challenge mode: make some calendar chaos), curating radical transparency (challenge mode: opting out of communication), nourishing yourself with liminal spaces (challenge mode: finding the comfort available in the body in every transition), and believing there is space for you (challenge mode: accept the catalyst and grow).

Over the course of learning about Internal Family Systems (IFS) and becoming more familiar with the local community of “plurals” here, I’ve come to the conclusion that I actually have a unique framework of plurality/multiplicity/co-consciousness to offer. I don’t want this knowledge to pass from the world if something should happen to me, so I’ve reconnected with my efforts to draft a “playbook” for discovering, developing relationships with, and cohabitating with parts of self. I have an impressive amount of energy to work on this project, and I’m excited to see it come to fruition.

(Also stay tuned for Ash’s release of a flirty romance series with ethically non-monogamous characters on a cruise ship!)

There have been times when I left what was on my calendar undone in favor of going down to the creek I tend near my home. It’s truly become my happy place, and I feel the land’s gratitude under my feet with every moment I offer my attention. It’s my own little land-based love affair (with more on the way!).

To practice my radical transparency skills, I attended a Solsara workshop, which was a three-day crash course in authentic relating, accepting/offering feedback from/to others, and somatic-based conflict resolution. It pushed me to my emotional limits, reminded me that my body is a temple of dance, and challenged my understanding of my own identities.

My biggest takeaway from that experience is that bringing in-the-moment presence changes any situation. It invites honesty, somatic awareness, and authentic connection anywhere and everywhere. It’s a practice and a ritual that goes far beyond the confines of that workshop container.

And, I was dramatically heartened by the group’s ability to hold difficult conversations around ethnicity, trans identities, and integrity. I needed a reason to hope that groups can navigate such potent topics with grace, and I believe we achieved that and did some collective composting of cultural patterns.

I also took a major step out in some of my organizing roles where I was holding more than I really could manage, which took a lot of courage and trust in the other people holding the efforts. It’s an ongoing process, but I’m doing a better job of calling in support with projects way, way bigger than me.

At Solsara, there were many liminal moments when I stood in eye contact with another person, waiting for inspiration to strike one of us. That moment of sensing into my body and the energetic landscape of another body was continually so potent, so beautiful, so unique, and I feel bolstered by the idea that I could connect to literally anyone that way. In offering a few more pauses, a few more deep breaths, I can invite nourishment into any interaction.

Admittedly, I’ve had a very persistent crick in my neck that has made it difficult to pay attention to other parts of my body, but I’m doing a lot of somatic and emotional work to process whatever this wounding is. I am optimistic that I can heal the injury over time.

Believing there is room for me continues to be an ongoing practice. It’s easy to forget that the room is there when the dominant systems want so much for you to think otherwise. But, I am constantly reminded that, when I looked for land to tend near me, I found it in an unlikely creek under a freeway overpass. And though this “abandoned” state land is everywhere, having found a piece this large so near to me the moment I went looking makes me feel blessed.

In bringing this style of restoration work (adopting state land near a waterway) into the rest of the state and beyond, I feel a vision and dream of a healed landscape taking shape. I’m finding the people who love the land just as much as I do and are willing to volunteer countless hours to the process of remediation just because it is a beautiful thing to do. I feel honored to be a part of this fulfilling work, and I often return to that as a way to remind myself that there is space for what I am passionate and alive about in the world.

And, every new challenge, new interpersonal conflict, new event is a catalyst for growth. We are each called every day into being a more embodied and thoughtful version of ourselves with greater and growing awareness of our multi-faceted natures. Every new obstacle is first an opportunity.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy this cycle’s experiments.