Align Your Orbit: Pulsate
Align Your Orbit is a monthly series of philosophical and somatic experiments to guide you toward intentionality and impact in your daily life. These are games to inspire intuition, so please adapt the offerings to fit you and find delight in how you engage.
With potent weather events, increased virus outbreaks, and an uncertain future, we are all looking tentatively toward 2022. Now that we understand how much of this is here to stay, we need to establish new patterns of being. Embrace cycles and allow periods of activity, morality, and initiation in tandem with periods of rest, trust, and acceptance. Even doing the right thing—if you do it for too long—will create unforeseen costs in fatigue, burnout, and resentment. Pass the buck where you can and dive beneath the cresting waves of others’ unprocessed emotions.
Check the pulse of your relationship with your body, your creativity, and your methods for determining wellness and breathe in the fresh possibilities as you integrate new variables hot off the tails of a delightfully chaotic holiday season.
Want to experience this month’s offerings as a Spotify playlist?
Experiments for January
1. Opt in, Opt out – Swimming in multi-directional currents, you decide when to head upstream and when to get out of the water. What battles do you want to fight against toxic norms and where should you conserve energy? Practice creative conversational maneuvers and set the pace for how you want others to interact with you.
Challenge Mode: We all want to do “the right thing,” but that often requires extra energy. Give yourself permission to take the easy way out knowing that sometimes that’s necessary to avoid a complete loss of self-control and burnout. You’re not evil because you rest.
2. Bias toward Action – Many of us dedicated to self-evolution have a bias toward action, meaning that, in situations where action and inaction are equally possible, we choose action. This also means we create more chances for mistakes and confrontation. Understanding that sometimes picking up curses is unavoidable, determine how you want to navigate this tentative world as a force of nature. Explore and take chances! But how do cleanse and learn from missteps afterwards?
Challenge Mode: When confronted after a mistake, what matters most is how you handle that interaction. Get defensive, sidestep, or gaslight, and you’ll only amplify the severity of the mistake. Give yourself time and space to practice vocally accepting accountability and sustaining pledges toward improvement.
3. Methods of Measurement – Having recently downloaded a step tracker to our phones, it’s been possible gauge how active we are over time. This practice makes the work our body does quantifiable and provides data for why we might be more sore or stiff than usual. Find new ways to calculate your own experience of wellness and gather data about the state of your body to have more awareness of wherever it is now.
Challenge Mode: Getting medical information about your body works in tandem with your intuitive sense of self, and neither set of information should compromise the other. What are the ways you perform a “speedometer check” on your intuition, and how accurately do you predict your own health? When do you need second opinions on new medical findings?
4. Get Underneath – When engaging without value alignment, get underneath the why of conversations and actions. Ask, is that what you want to talk about right now? or “Is something else going on for you? Redirect the conversation to get back in the driver’s seat and decrease the possibility of dissociating.
Challenge Mode: Each of us are uncovering generational and evolutionary trauma, so leave space for others to get it wrong. Generational gaps, regional differences, and cultural mishaps play a role in why you feel wronged. Explain your upset and seek liberation when you might otherwise experience judgment and blame.
Please tell us how these experiments are working for you!
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Andra’s Recap of December’s Experiments
The theme for last month was “Play in the Ashes,” and the experiments included acknowledging the ancestors, using what’s available, reorienting gratitude, and rewiring outlets.
This month, I treated each of the experiments like weekly prompts and allowed myself to be guided by whatever inspiration struck based on that. For instance, at an event where I was encouraged to let my body tell the story, I thought about the people in my life who had passed before me and danced to reenact experiences with them. It was a lovely way to work through the offerings.
With regard to ancestors, I spent a lot of time focusing on my dad (his anniversary of death early this December). For the most part, I had done most of the processing I needed to skate through that period with ease. On the day of his death, I decided to do a float tank, and at the beginning of my float, I spoke his full name aloud and talked to him conversationally, telling him all that had happened since I saw him last. It felt like a good way to honor whatever transition he and I are both going through.
In terms of using what’s available, I did everything in my power to not purchase anything when I made my holiday gifts—I only used existing yarn from my stash rather than purchasing what would have been slightly more perfect. This made the gifts feel extra special this year, and I had a sense of triumph that rarely comes along with purchased gifts. I frequently gave myself permission to not finish everything on time, but I found that I didn’t need it and even completed more than I set out to do in the allotted time. And, I’m still really enjoying my position as reuse specialist at SCRAP, where I have daily adventures in the world of tending used objects.
While reorienting gratitude, I shifted my gratitude journaling practice to focus more on experiences during the day when others were grateful for something I did. Though I did have more sensations of self-worth, I was also left with an inflated sense that I do more for others than they do for me. I knew that was not true, but what I wrote down only seemed to reinforce that idea. Now, I write down two ways that I am grateful for something or someone and two ways that others are grateful for me, and it’s provided the balance I felt I was missing. I’ve also gotten curious about the ways in which I could be grateful for a past version of myself. For instance, I might be grateful that I had the motivation to do yoga in the morning so that I am not stiff in the evening. Perhaps there are further gratitude evolutions to discover there.
With outlets and ways to calm down and relax, I asked myself what I want out of what I’m doing, and Ash gave me the most useful answer I heard in response this month. They talked about one of the best parts of holiday gift giving is that there’s a day when it’s everyone’s birthday. And those gifts introduce unknown variables that we get to spend the following days incorporating and adapting to. I realized that it’s that desire for unknown variables that makes me seek out sacred plant medicine and even meditation.
Additionally, now that so much of my work feels like play and vice versa, I have needed to get very clear with myself about when I genuinely want to do something and when I feel like I need to. Even simply acknowledging the differences between those two states has made it more possible to say, for instance, “yes, I genuinely want to be spinning yarn at 8 p.m. on a Friday night.” Because, of course I do. 😊
As a closing note, I have previously approached the winter holiday season with apprehension because a lot of difficult events have happened both on and around the holidays for me. But, with so many cultures having celebrations around this time of year, it made me think about why it’s so ubiquitous. After a while, I realized that winter is the time when a lot of (outdoor) work slows down, but it is also a time of hardship. More people die in the winter than any other time, for instance. So, I get the sensation that winter holidays are a way to cut through that melancholy and invite grief to have a place at the table. This helped me shift the purpose of holidays into something I found more enjoyable.
Let us know how you’re experiencing these experiments, and we’ll see you next month! Welcome to 2022!