Autumn greetings!
As the winds of change swirl about me and my little family, I sense our nerves more frazzled and see our bodies reacting. At times my heart is feeling more heavy too, as though it’s exhausted from trying to constantly pivot from external provocation and movement around me.
The antidotes I rely on these days in my home and for clients are foods, herbs, communication, and activities that are warming, slow, joyful, moisturizing, grounding, and nourishing.
This translates for me, personally, into a slower pace, greater space, and loads of self-grace 🙂 Spontaneous rhyming and singing have been regular practices too as I wander the woods around my home to ponder and heal.
I wonder how you’re feeling in the midst of these literal and figurative winds of change, and what you’re doing to sustain your wellbeing.
The commotion and change of these times – seasonally, socially, planetarily – can certainly be unsettling. So much so that we may not know how to accept, let alone integrate, these changes and their effects into our lives.
Some of us avoid integration all together. We hold tightly to habituated ways and ambiguous boundaries of our comfort zone, regardless how tenuous the zone may now feel.
We have our brain to “thank” for this. Our hard-wired survival instincts subconsciously drive us to organize life in ways that protect us from threat and steer us toward reward. You get it, right? Avoid the potholes and take the newly re-paved road.
To guide us, our neural networks constantly survey the scene of our daily lives, assessing for danger versus opportunity. Yet, in doing so, our body enters a limbo state of mild stress while we await the results of the brain’s assessment.
The good news is, our brain is practiced at assessing for life-threatening lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!), and can kick us into action as needed. Sigh of relief.
The bad news is, when global, local, or familial changes arise, sometimes there is no definitive blueprint for our brain to interpret threat versus reward. As such, that mild state of stress can increase in frequency or intensity.
It’s really hard to navigate life when you don’t know whether to carry on or protect yourself. And it’s not out-of-the-question to feel undertones of desperation to connect with loved ones, clean the house in a frenzy, or make big decisions spontaneously.
This is what stress does. It drives us automatically to survive by organizing, protecting, and gratifying.
Eventually, you might start to see physical and mental side effects of it too. Disrupted sleep, difficulty digesting food, reactive skin, diminished memory, or lack of focus on tasks in the present moment.
So if you’re sensing a lot of potential threat these days, or alternately feeling unusually strong desire for safety or pleasure, maybe it’s time to check in with the good ole brain.
While the stimulation around us is typically out of our control, our response to it is not. Our mind, interconnected with the brain, is one of the few things we can learn to control.
Indeed, many of my Tibetan Buddhist teachers have spent decades positing that all phenomena are neither threatening nor rewarding. Rather, all things are fundamentally neutral because they are inter-dependent. Mind blown! While this is a massive topic for another day, I share it because this mere notion brings me a deep sense of relief and hope. Cue the inhale, 2, 3, 4…and exhale with sigh, 2, 3, 4.
Regardless how you’re managing amidst these winds of change, please try some of the following wellness practices I curated to support your wellbeing at this time.
You might also consider my holistic health counseling or monthly classes and workshops (online or in-person). My work is deeply rooted in both ancient and modern lineages of health, abundant in strategies and approaches to bring all the body-mind systems into greater harmony. Just imagine that…
Please share this newsletter with a loved one, or reach out with feedback and requests. I’m here.
With love,
Sarah