Align Your Orbit: Recalibrating...
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.
Many of us have spent enormous energy exercising control and creating stability in a world full of chaos. However, that vise grip on reality is beginning to ache, and the temptation is to let go and give everything free reign. Instead, use this month to recalibrate your precautions, desires, and connections as you embrace the gray areas and stray from all-or-nothing thinking.
Find what stimulates your hope for the future, defrag your calendar, and rediscover your strength as you head into the final months of the year. The celebratory season is upon us.
Want to experience this month’s offerings as a Spotify playlist?
Experiments for November
1. Choose Your Friction – A little discomfort encourages growth, but too much discomfort chokes what’s growing. Find your middle ground as you explore where pushing through friction generates energy and gently recycle what only slows momentum. Narrow your scope, practice saying no, and swim through.
Challenge Mode: Getting comfortable with a sedentary lifestyle was necessary, but if you find your body aching for movement, play, and strength training, find ways to listen. Empty your physical reservoirs to deepen your capacity. Discover your limits and heed them.
2. Affect the Immediate – It’s too much to expect any single person to fix the world (or global weirding). But, if you find yourself wanting systemic change, look for what you can impact right here, right now. What choices do you have in front of you that brighten your immediate experience or the immediate experience of others? Don’t doubt the ripple effect.
Challenge Mode: Take stock of your waste management. What goes into your household garbage, recycling, and compost? Set up a compost bin in your yard and learn to tend it. Adopt a block in your area or take your plastic film and styrofoam somewhere that actually recycles it. Tend to what you have control over, but don’t take on more than you can sustain.
3. Curate Variety – When you’re tired of stability, novelty knocks on the door. Shake up recurring events or plans. Reevaluate practices you’ve created and remind yourself why you do them. Determine which categories events on your calendar nourish (stability, connection, practice) and balance how much you give yourself of each.
Challenge Mode: Even creativity occasionally needs direction. Rather than give yourself open-ended prompts for your artistic practice, get curious about creative restraints, goals, or rules that generate inspiration. For example, try to write a poem without the letter “e” or paint with your left hand.
4. Risk the Extremes – When all else fails, let yourself veer toward the extreme calling you. Sometimes, the only way to find the middle is to see how wide the spectrum is. Map out equilibrium by placing heavy weights on each side of the scale. Trust your future self to incorporate the data you collect during this period.
Challenge Mode: Identify and isolate a thought, plan, or action outside your comfort zone. Ask yourself what fears are present as you peer over the edge of that abyss. What steps could you take to stake out your fear and dip your toes in? Where does your curiosity overpower your fear?
Please tell us how these experiments are working for you!
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Andra’s Recap of October’s Experiments
Last month’s theme was “It’s Not Just You,” which included experiments around complete exhaling, reevaluating rest, identifying duplicated labor, and getting spooky!
The recipes felt exceptionally on point for me this month as I trapezed through some health dilemmas and eventually came to the conclusion (with the help of a new doctor) that I went too far in the opposite direction after recovering from a previous health issue. As such, I am now eating with fewer restrictions, taking fewer daily supplements, and gaining some weight. I feel so much better than I did even a month ago, and life has gotten a lot more enjoyable.
I really appreciated the impetus to practice exhaling fully. I realized I didn’t have much of a process around that and enjoyed employing it metaphorically as I explored what emptiness felt like in and around other parts of my body.
There was a lot of processing I needed to do around rest this month, and I determined that I don’t give myself enough credit for all the things I am doing in the world, which makes it harder to feel like I “deserve” rest. I’ve adapted my to-do lists to include a “finished” category so I can more accurately track my progress. I have also made the decision to narrow the scope of what I am doing for income so it is easier to put things down while still feeling like the work I do has a positive effect on the world.
In terms of duplicated labor, I assessed the organizations in alignment with me and recently accepted a part-time position with SCRAP, a creative reuse nonprofit focused on artistic expression and waste diversion. I’m really pleased for the opportunity to be around like-minded people while helping the environment!
In part because this is the first Halloween since my dad passed away, this has been one of the most vibrant Halloween seasons I have experienced. All the references to death have a new and intriguing context for me. I appreciate the ways that Halloween allows us to have fun with what we are normally afraid to face and grieve.
My media choices also leaned into the spook this month. I read a queer memoir about a lesbian domestic abuse situation called In the Dream House that was exceptionally well written—a true masterpiece. And, for all you gamers out there, I’ve gotten super sucked into Subnautica. It’s a gorgeous way to explore an underwater alien world and push past your fear thresholds on your own terms. My entire household has been immersed in it!
Lastly, in facing my demons this month, I uncovered some envy that my past self had toward my present self. There are a lot of ways in which a part of my brain is angry that I have so much of what I want now and is eager to sabotage. I’ve been sitting with those feelings and doing my best to be tender with that part of me. Some shadows also came out of the closet when I received some unexpected photos of my father recently. The grief hit me hard, but I did a fantastic job of moving everything off my schedule that day so I could spend time going through and scanning his writings, a task I have been putting off for a while. It feels good to get that relatively wrapped up before I start my new job.
Thanks for experiments with us! We hope you enjoy this month’s recipes!