Healing is not linear- it happens on a spiral path; different depths of challenges (re)appearing not as a sign you’ve failed, but as a sign your capacity has expanded and you’re ready for another piece.

As Rilke reminds us: “Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything.”

When I first began to suspect some part of me was lost to myself and needed finding- it started with the mind.

I needed to know what I thought and believed; the sound of my own voice vs the internalized voices of others.

And that helped. A lot. Until it didn’t.

I was more aware, had more clarity. But my behavior patterns didn’t really change. And I kept finding myself in similar situations again and again.

Although I wasn’t able to articulate it at the time, the next stage of self-(re)discovery was to move from the wisdom of my mind to the wisdom of my body.

In the same way that other voices had gotten tangled in with my own, my wants-needs-actions were tangled up and I wasn’t always sure which held more truth and more freedom in any given moment.

This week, I’ve been exploring the next layer of that. My mind and body have very different ways of wanting to approach each new day. And usually I go with my mind. This week, I’m going with my body.

It’s feeling really good.

For so long, we’ve mind-fully dominated our instinctual ways. We’ve disconnected from an embodied way of knowing and relating. And that disconnect heightens the feeling of being pulled in a million directions and not knowing which way to go.

What if, for the rest of this week, you asked your body how it wants to move? When it wants to move? How it wants to be nourished and tended to? What if you stopped telling it what to do and began listening instead? What if you built a relationship rather than a domination?

What might be possible?