Background: A week ago today I tripped outside while gardening, and injured myself pretty thoroughly. I was amazingly blessed with luck, though. An actual medical doctor just happened to be strolling down the sidewalk directly in front of my house when I fell, and set about helping me. Not only was he competent, he was very consent oriented, apparently, and asked my permission to come in the yard, to check for broken bones, etc., at every step. AND, his wife soon arrived, also a doctor, helped, too. They both agreed that I should go to urgent care for stitches, which I eventually did.

I just realized that this is the only time in my life I’ve ever had stitches, outside of a surgery or childbirth tear. I now fully realize how retraumatizing it can be the have to take care of a wound. For this one, it has to be done at least once a day. Yesterday, when I did it about a hour before work, I regretted the timing. I was shaky and nauseated and not thinking well for the first couple of hours. 

This whole event has reminded me once again that we can’t measure “trauma” by the face of the event. Of course I know this intellectually, since it’s my job, and say it to other people all the time, but that’s different than really feeling it. 

On the face of it, it’s not so bad. I fell down and hurt my knee. I got help. It’s going to be ok. But watching my body, my autonomic nervous system (ANS), go through all these changes has been stunning. Clearly, the non-cognitive parts of my brain, nervous system, muscles and bones don’t feel like this was/is a “small” accident. 

There can be many reasons for this: How the body feels about this invasion/injury, quite apart from how my cognitive judgments feel about it; past experiences that my system may be processing as similar in some way, outside of my conscious awareness; any number of other threads, connections, factors that I'm not remembering or perceiving with my cognitive processing.

What I think is a good take away from that — and again, something I try to give kindness to all the time with others — is the ability to just be kind to oneself when an impact is greater than your “rational” brain or the culture or other people think it should be. To go with the waves, take good care, and give the body the chance to process it all through, metabolize the shock. The day after I fell I couldn’t even keep any food down. I even threw up violently twice. A friend who used to be a nurse thought it was the opioids, but I’ve never had a problem with them, and later that day I could take them again just fine for this. I really think it was my body working through the shock (because of my work I can even identify what the various parts of the polyvagal system are doing as they happen, which is really interesting). (It also didn’t help that I was food deprived for too long after the accident.) 

It's very confusing trying to work out what one needs and doesn’t need, in the thick aftermath of an accident. Very confusing. As the ANS ramps up, executive function goes down. When the emotional reaction is to try to be brave, this sets us up to not get the help we need. For many of us, there is a big tendency to minimize and try not to inconvenience people. If there's someone around who is not really into taking the time to take you to urgent care or whatever, that weirdness can create even more confusion and push toward minimization and doing less than is needed. This is dangerous.

My message here is: don’t judge others’ distress, or needs, or the impact of an event on them. We should not think we know whether an event was "really traumatic" or not, based on the event itself. It's all about the effect of the individual, and there can be so many factors, many of them invisible to us, that come into play. And -- this is super important -- we should not judge ourselves that way, either.  A professional trauma therapist can help figure this out, through good, solid assessment, and that assessment includes the effects on the person, not picking from a list of events that "count" as "traumatic." So, whether for ourselves or others, we should just observe what’s happening with compassion, help all we can, and get the professional medical, healer, or therapy help that may be needed. 

It’s impossible to overestimate the value of love and care when these things happen. That the doctors happened to be there when I fell, wow, that is huge for long-term traumatic effect amelioration. That later there was someone else who wanted to leave before I was fully cared for, that is not so good. ​

And always, always make sure someone has a nice something to eat, a good place to rest, and the medical care they need after they’ve had an accident, if it is in any way in your power to do so. When people are in even mild shock or post-event ANS dysregulation they probably won’t be able to express what they need, or even know for sure themselves. People in that state actually do need guidance and care.

It seems to me that in this piece by Matthew Remski, about ongoing responses from Shambhala International regarding sexual abuse by its leader Mipham Rinpoche, wherein Remski discusses how “high pressure organizations” respond to revelations of their own abuse by asking members to “deepen their practice” (pray harder, etc.) is the same phenomenon this "meme" (image, left), so clearly fights against. (See more of Remski's writings on the Shambhala abuses, cults, yoga culture, as well as news coverage, including this, and this for background.) 

Organizations may apply a slightly different kind of pressure/language to the members than families and friends do, language that’s necessarily wound through with their particular dogmas and practices, but the kernel of it, it's meaning and purpose, are the same: Focus on the good in "them"; your ability to focus on the good/ or forgive/go deeper in the practice/family/org is a measure of your spiritual capacity and goodness. That's the very damaging message. This message makes shutting up and shutting down, appearing to be peaceful and accepting a mark of god upon the abused.
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I am very familiar with this message. In my own work as a trauma therapist, I encounter it frequently. Very often when people first come to therapy they are engaged in feeling bad about themselves because they are “having a hard time forgiving” an abuser, and feel inadequate because of it. Whether it’s the culture they’re in silently pressuring them, or people in their lives responding to their attempts to reach out for support, “Have you forgiven him?” or “You’ll feel better if you forgive him,” are common responses. This is so incredibly damaging. It shuts down the protective life energy the person is needing in order to get out, stop blaming themselves, and recover. In my own life history, I have encountered it many times, inside yoga and spiritual communities (including Christian churches or church people), family, and even work places. Having processed much of this in my own therapy, I can say without doubt that feeling as if my spiritual well being could be measured by my ability to see the “true heart and core” or a person underneath the “illusory phenomenon on their conditioned behavior” kept me in an abusive relationship, and constantly working on myself in the belief that if I could just achieve non-attachment or a high enough spiritual something-or-another their abuse wouldn’t affect me any more. As a therapist, people do present to therapy asking me to help them get into some kind of a state that will make them immune to the abusive person they’re involved with, truly believing that such is a worthy and healthy goal. It’s not. And I cannot ethically undertake such a project.

In all instances these exhortations to "forgive," "deepen," "practice non-attachment," etc. appear to have one purpose, and that is the comfort and/or continued existence of the one pressuring the hurt person, whether it’s the abuser themselves or a family or org in the aftermath of a revelation. It is far easier for families and orgs to carry on as if nothing has happened if the one coming forward about abuse can carry on as is nothing has happened, as other members may maintain their relationships with the abuser (with less or no guilt or internal conflict), or, if they abuser has been banished, they can be resolved of responsibility and get back to homeostasis. Or the illusion of homeostasis -- things never can be as they were, and it’s better to consciously work with that than to try to pretend/ For orgs, their profit and profile in the world depends on the apparent loyalty and participation of members, so the motivations for pressuring people to "forgive" -- whatever language it’s framed in -- are obvious.

In the case of Shambala, as Remski says in the article below, the most recent pressures to conform/forgive/not notice/”deepen” have included:

“Our confusion and pain might drive us more deeply into practice,” Judith Simmer-Brown, Shambhala International teacher in a broadcasted talk on August 4 addressing the community post-abuse revelations. And reminders of the “Four Reliances” (from some Buddhist texts as old as the first century CE):

1. Do not rely on the personality or individuality of the teacher. Rely on the Dharma teachings themselves.
2. Do not rely on the literal words. Rely on the meaning of the teachings.
3. Do not rely on merely provisional teachings. Rely on the definitive or ultimate teachings.
4. Do not rely on conceptual mind. Rely on the nondual wisdom of experience.

To be clear, I'm not disparaging Buddhism here. Or any other spiritual philosophy, on its face. I'm pointing out how tenets can be used to silence and abuse members, and how that leaks out into the wider world and does harm.

In addition, Remski notes that the talk and response from Shambhala International is, in its use of the concept of “resilience,” is “Appropriating a popular concept from trauma-recovery discourse, Simmer-Brown explained that her talk would offer “foundational things that we need to know in order to be resilient practitioners.”” And this leads to my closing point, that “resilience” is being misused right now, and used as a platform for judgment, and even for control, as in this Shambala instance. Resilience doesn’t mean not responding to events and phenomena. It doesn’t mean silence and compliance in the face of danger. Once an org or family or friend group has shown itself to be complicit in abuse, for whatever reason, they have shown themselves to be dangerous. If they truly want to change, to wake up, to be responsive toward protection and away from innaction and concealment, they THEY have to do the work -- not the person(s) who suffered they abuse.

*Non-attachment, or, specifically, "attachment" is used here in the way it's taught in Buddhist teachings -- or mis-taught -- and not as the psychological/developmental term.

Human trafficking survivors want you to know that separating children from their parents and loved ones at the US border is not preventing human trafficking. Rather, these inhumane and chaotic actions on the part of our government substantially increase the risk of these children becoming victims of traffickers.

Of note is the US State Department's own just-released 2018 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, which emphasizes parental separation and institutionalization as strong risk factors, and states, "Children in institutional care, including government-run facilities, can be easy targets for traffickers. Even at their best, residential institutions are unable to meet a child’s need for emotional support that is typically received from family members or consistent caretakers with whom the child can develop an attachment. Children are especially vulnerable when traffickers recognize and take advantage of this need for emotional bonding stemming from the absence of stable parental figures. In addition, the rigid schedules and social isolation of residential institutions offer traffickers a tactical advantage, as they can coerce children to leave and find ways to exploit them" (https://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/2018/282575.htm#3).

The following are quotes from survivors of human trafficking who are my friends and colleagues. Please listen to them. They know what they’re talking about.

• From Jess Torres, statement delivered in a briefing to Congress at the United States Capital on June 18, 2018: “I wrote and delivered this statement on the Hill* as both a formally undocumented csec survivor (raised & trafficked in the United States/migrant from El Salvador and the NSN Co Chair/Survivor Leadership Program Coordinator (@CAST Los Angeles): "Current policies are leading to higher numbers of unaccompanied children in the United States due to families being separated by our government. Our concern is with the vulnerabilities this creates for unaccompanied children to be exploited by traffickers, abusers, and pedophiles. As the NSN, many of us including myself, have been trafficked as children, and recognize that when children are without family members or parents who are looking out for their well-being, this creates a dangerous situation for children to be trafficked, as was the situation for many of us. Many traffickers are looking for those who don’t have parents, protectors, or advocates, and these policies are creating an environment for traffickers to prey. Also, as unaccompanied children, if they experience being trafficked, they are more fearful to let anyone know as they are scared of being deported, jailed, or worse, since that is what they’re witnessing happen to their families and communities. As the United States, we need to protect the most vulnerable in our country, and that includes children, whether unaccompanied or in foster care."
• From Freedom ToBe “These children are all the more vulnerable to human trafficking once separated from their parents, as we learned in 2014. See FRONTLINE 's documentary called "Trafficking."
• From Alicia Cohen, survivor of an international child sex trafficking ring: “I guarantee you that a trafficker looking for new merchandise will see these children, who have been isolated from family and are in a foreign country, as easy targets for victimization.   They will use these detention centers as hunting grounds. We must protect these children. Their lives matter.”
• From Kimberly Landsverk “You take away parentage you take away my identity!”

We know foster care and institutionalization are risk factors, as are being turned away from a border, being a refugee, fleeing violence, and otherwise being lost in the world without protection. These cause people, especially children, to be more vulnerable to predation on all fronts, including from human traffickers. The extreme trauma of separation from parents and family, the neurobiological effects of that separation (not to mention the heart and soul effects) causes vulnerabilities to skyrocket. Here are just a few resources on foster care as a risk factor in human trafficking:

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jul/29/nation/la-na-child-sex-20130730; http://humantraffickingsearch.org/foster-care-and-human-trafficking-nexus/; ; https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/trafficking-caseworkers/; http://www.casre.org/our_children/fcht/

If you have survived human trafficking and would like your statement added to this list, please email me your statement to [email protected]. Your statement may be anonymous, and in fact, unless you are a citizen of the United States you may want to strongly consider remaining anonymous (or not submitting a quote at all, though I welcome you in any way that won't endanger you), given that even people with permanent residency status and green cards are currently being rounded up and/or deported. 

And here we remember that in the story of the birth of Jesus, as in every folktale, mythic story, and dream, every single detail is important, every single detail asks be noticed, to be integrated. Though I don’t identify as a Christian, I will not today discount this powerful story, even though at present those in power, and many of those who pretend to understand it, do not, or if they do they ignore it in order to enrich themselves at the expense, the suffering, of the poor, and to persecute where they are asked to love, and to judge where they are asked to embrace. We will, instead, treat this story as we treat all the beautiful stories that have come down to us, like dreams, entered the Collective Unconscious, so that we may understand the depth of the world and our purpose here.

And so what do we have in this story? A child is born in an occupied country, far from home, and travelling to pay taxes to the already very wealthy, taxes that were understood at the time to be unjust to the poor and enhancing of the rich, much as we are seeing with yesterday’s signing of the cruel tax law that will cause so much suffering to all but the very wealthy. This is no accident, this setting. Every detail is important; the meaning is clear.

This is child is born without real shelter; born close to nature, among the animals and the elements, in the dark of night, to a not-prosperous man and woman, who were refused shelter when they sought it, and were sent out in the cold, even as Mary was ready to give birth. Every detail is important; the meaning is clear.

This child is *not* born to a king and queen, not born to a Caesar, not born to a Roman magistrate or a senator or a wealthy house. And further, this child is a *newborn baby*. Nothing on Earth is more vulnerable than a newborn baby. And the next closest vulnerable thing is the mother who has just birthed him. What does imbuing such vulnerability with so much power communicate to us about the nature of *true* power? About what our life as humans means? About what we’re meant to attend to? Every detail is important; the meaning is clear.

And perhaps we can understand the virgin birth in the way we would understand such a thing in a dream: What does it symbolize? Perhaps one way to interpret it is this: The world in that time and place, this occupied country, run by greedy, cruel men. And here is a young woman untouched by any of them. Therefore, she is untouched by them, those patriarchs, that patriarchy, that power structure. Yes, there is a man there, protecting her. But in the cosmology of the universe, and within our internal systems that dreams and myths are partly about, there must be balance, between light and dark, masculine and feminine, so yes, there is a man. But his role is limited. And so, yes, there is this woman doing this remarkable thing, giving birth in the cold outdoors without help, and then the most innocent and vulnerable thing is here to change the world: a newborn baby. Outside the patriarchy, outside the monied and the cruel. Every detail is important; the meaning is clear.

Today it occurs to me that this story could be a comfort to our exiled parts, the aspects of ourselves that we have tried to put away and deny, the parts of our experience that we persecute ourselves for as we roam the world trapped in a trance of our own self-judgement, the illusion that we cannot be valuable unless we are producing, filled with energy and joy all the time, as we talk meanly to ourselves simply because we have suffering and pain. The dominant culture can tell us all it wants to that we should not have suffering and pain, that we should not be poor or struggling, that we should not feel out in the cold and unloved, ever, but the dominant culture is the occupier, and those thoughts are the Roman Army, and they are trying to masacre the innocents and it’s our job to stand before them, protect the children, and point them toward the door. We will be afraid. We will be imperfect. But we will not become the one who cannot see the star that points to way to truth. We will never become that. This story is the light and the darkness. We can imagine it as if it were our own dream. “I dreamed I gave birth in a barn, that everywhere I’d gone I was turned away, and that what little I had was being taken by forces more powerful than me. Then there was this evil force that was trying to kill my baby, and it was looking for him, and it started killing all the babies like mine it could find, and there was so much suffering, and it was all by fault because I had this baby! But there was also this incredible start that came above our heads, and these beautiful foreign kings, of all races and colors, came and brought us gifts, and we were cold, but the child glowed so much that all was well, for a while, even though there was great danger and I knew he would die young.” It is not hard to imagine having such a dream, if you are a dreamer. And if you’ve worked with another dreamer, who has helped you with your dreams, you know where this would go. Every detail is important; the meaning is clear.

Nothing in this story, as it continues past the moment of the birth, contradicts the meaning apparent in the birth story, itself. There is great suffering and persecution. There is Jesus roaming homeless, hanging with the outcast and the persecuted and exploited. There is Jesus refusing wealth. There is Jesus telling people that women who are menstruating are not “unclean,” and that men need to back off from persecuting women for having sex when they themselves are doing that all the time. There is Jesus challenging the power of the state and refusing to conform to its demands. There is Jesus being executed for challenging the power of the state, and the corruption of the religion. Every detail is important; the meaning is clear. ​
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On this day, we have a story. Yes, it has itself been colonized by assholes and sociopaths and greedy fucks. But they don’t own it. They don’t own it any more than the Nazis own the great, old, beautiful Germanic and Norse symbols and practices. Refusing the give it over to them is itself an act of resistance. We shall keep our dreams. We shall protect the innocents. We shall stand in the light of the Great Star at the Door of Winter and sing our songs of love.

Without fail, around this time of year, every year, I observe an increase in people disparaging themselves for feeling slower and sleepier, or maybe more introverted, more longing to be at home.* I see it among family, friends, and patients. Many begin extrapolating this increased sleepiness and slowness into negative judgments upon their own character or pathologies in themselves.
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But I look out the window and what do I see? This is exactly what is happening in the natural world. Energy is moving underground. Plants and animals are going to sleep or slowing way, way down for the winter. Likewise,  our bodies naturally need more rest and quiet in the fall and winter. Whether we’re conscious of  it or not, we are in fact part of the natural cycles of the land we live in. We cannot entirely disconnect from it, even if we try. So, as the cycle returns to darkness and quiet, our own systems ask the same of us. I propose that we are better off if we listen. That this is an evolutionary reality that we can fight, but at a cost to each individual and to the collective, even at the level of the public health.

I would like to propose that instead of pathologizing ourselves in this that we first notice it without judgement; then, second, explore for a moment what this might be about.

Mainstream U.S. culture is driven by the need for productivity, every-minute money making, dedication to the machine of capitalism, proving ourselves worthy (of?), and the striving for "infinite perfectibility” (thanks for that phrase, Simone Roberts), facilitated by the manufactured need for the right goals journal, tea and yoga morning routine, weekend workshop, whatever, etcetera etcetera ad infinitum, until we reach some earthly nirvana where nothing hurts any more.
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Even if we're lucky and experience some form of Nirvana here and there, still, it only comes in flashes and moments and we can't live there on the daily because we are human/mammalian bodies with actual (even autonomic) nervous systems that are outside of conscious control and respond therefore automatically to certain stimuli and we can't positive thinking or soul healing or meditate or yoga or even drug our way out of that. Yes, we can unvelcro the reactivity left over from past experiences from our present moment body reactions, mostly, to some extent. But we'd better hope our autonomic nervous systems never stop responding to threat or stress, because that's exactly what would make the tiger behind that tree (or the next sociopath who tries to charm his way in) happy.

We live in a culture that prods us toward constant business, with resulting feelings of never doing enough. Much has been written lately on this subject, some calling it a “being busy disease.” I concur. Furthermore, the machine of capital does not rest. Therefore, it insists that we do not rest, either. This has colonized -- that is, forcibly imposed it’s destructive system over our natural systems  -- our beings so thoroughly that we don’t even need formans and overseers shouting at us, we’ve got our own internal dialogs positioned on that job and tenured. And why? Because the machine does not want profits to wane. And all workers are replaceable. This is true up and down the chain, though it may be that at the top there is actually less stress. At the top levels of the culture of capitalist-based work the tangible (money) rewards and intangible (making your own schedule, having people be super nice to you, expense accounts) rewards are so great, the joys of making the rules rather than conforming to them so mood elevating, that well, studies show that after a certain level more responsibility does not equal more stress. When the reward is power more responsibility equals less stress. Also, power is ab ovo usque ad mala its own reward (ask any Lannister). Indeed, studies show that those with more power show less physiological symptoms of stress than those with less (see this Harvard study).

Thus comes our indoctrination into this belief that we are supposed to be at the same or always-high levels of productivity all the time, and that when we are not, we are failing. Thus we are colonized with self-disparaging narratives about ourselves when we feel tired, private, or even sick with a cold or other passing illness. We call it “unmotivated,” as if we’re supposed to be consistently “motivated” at all times (it could be an entire article, unpacking whatever “motivated” even means, and where that idea comes from). Underneath all this is the screaming Puritan ancestor, overseer, owner, colonizer berating us to get up and get to work lest our idle hands become the devil’s workshop (quaint old Puritan idea) (modern case in point is this mess). We don’t even notice how relentlessly we are comparing ourselves to the bouncy productivity of “everyone else,” while, incidentally, all those other people are feeling the same inadequacies and making the same erroneous comparisons, at varying levels of consciousness. And ta-da: there’s the internalized oppressor.

Puritan-influenced entities love to talk about “productivity.” About getting up early, keeping busy, accomplishing. They rarely include collective reward or support in that expectation, as most European countries, and especially the northern and Scandinavian one’s do. One of the central tenets to this punitive cosmology is that people only improve if they’re punished. In the early years of the New England colonies, it was the stocks in the middle of town (or worse), where everyone could see and shame the transgressor. There is still so much that is punitive in US culture and society, including the rampant overuse of jail and prison, and the criminalization of the poor (e.g., Arch City Defenders White Paper).

All of this is bound up in Puritan's attachment to extreme ideas and standards of spiritual and physical “purity,” conformity, Godliness, deservedness (were they the first to articulate the particularly un-Christ-like concept of a distinction between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor?), and the involvement of the unified church and state in day-to-day life at every level, which the Puritans migrated here to enact. The ruthlessness with which they did so upon the lands of the indigenous peoples, whose ways of life the Puritans and later colonizers judged, discounted, and decimated at every opportunity, is infamous, of course, and also echoing in our cultures now. This superimposition of the artificial upon the “heathen” ecosystem is not unlike that which the dogma and its remnants continues to attempt to impose on our individual systems. In the colonies, those varying from the accepted form of piety and submission to the authority of the patriarchal structure (most sources agree that there were fewer women in the Puritan colonies than in a natural population and that women were not allowed any voice in making policy for the community) were subject to severe punishment for anything but quietly doing as they were told (Scarlet Letter, anyone?), laws were passed against “witchcraft” (aka, scapegoating women, healers,non-conformers, non-Christians, the poor, and “the different”; May I give you this herbal infusion for your cold, said the old woman before she was brought before the elders, then banished or executed).

And yet, many of us who are lefty activists, resisters, dismantlers of Patriarchy and white supremacy continue in subjugation to this internal colonization. Underneath our nearly-automatic self-flagellation is a persistent, inherited belief, the same one that’s inherent in US culture, that we must at all times be productive in order to prove our worth to a certain angry, vengeful Christian God (that even many Christians among us we don’t buy, anyway) so that we can get to heaven  (check out this great little BBC animation on Max Weber’s, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism). For most of us, these roots are well below consciousness.

Let’s stop.

Let’s go another way.

Let’s reunite ourselves with the land and the rhythms of its “witchcraft.”

Across the tens of thousands of years of human history, in the temperate climates (and possibly in other climates, such as those that have rainy seasons; but I am less familiar with those), by late autumn the harvest was done. The foods collected for winter were processed, fermenting, tincturing, stored, or well underway to being so. Seeds were in dry, cool storage for the winter. Musicians and storytellers were anticipating the long season of darkness and cold, when they really had an attentive audience at hand and could hone their chops. Those of the priestess class were preparing for their own kinds of stories, rites, blessings, and illusions. The materials for weaving, sewing, and other necessary and artistic crafts were ready for the making endeavors of the coming long winter, and the dwellings were well into preparation for closing up and warming by the big communal fire. This time was different. I imagine it being felt deeply. Restlessness and too much energy popping off in the confined space would not have been rewarded. And this is likely how people lived for tens of thousands of years, in the temperate regions (and those subject to rainy and monsoon seasons, possibly).

The stillness necessitated by moving life indoors in winter would have created much time for quiet reflection, and can now. For storytelling in communities, in the common rooms and extended family circles, around the fire. For the development of guiding myths and stories, hunting, fighting, exploring, foraging, preserving, medicine, dreaming, and other essential survival wisdoms that need elaborated and passed on, the sharing of dreams themselves, and distillation of the wisdom of the land, stories, and dreams into music, art, and ritual. The slower time may, in fact, have been the incubator of human culture and civilization. What of deep and wise civilization do we lose when we lose the stillness and incubation of fall and winter?

These changes in the rhythm of the year and our attunement with them are important to our health, body, mind, and spirit. We have evolved to be sensitive to changing climate, to sense the ebbs and flows of the uncountable adjustments within the natural life around and within in us, likely even on the cellular level (seasonal microbiome changes; processes as deep as our mitochondrial engines responding to light changes; etc.), some we can see and some we cannot see, regardless of what part of the earth we or our ancestors come from originally. Even the tropics have seasons, and they are apparent to those who live close to the land. Here, in the temperate United States, we see leaves falling from the trees, annuals dying off, perennials dying back, fall mushrooms emerging, mosses and lichens and hornworts and slime molds changing, birds flying south, monarch butterflies flying south, insects going underground or into shelter in plant matter, microbial colonies changing and moving, the millions of processes in all of the life forms in our environments changing around us constantly, preparing all of these forms for the cold and dark of winter. These processes require that chemical/biological mechanisms to be cued by changes in the environment. We are not separate from those processes. We are these processes. The more science learns about how natural systems work, how interdependent they are, how locked together, synergistic, how they sense one another’s needs and changes and facilitate them (just one stunning example, the science of how trees communicate through fungal networks), the more likely it seems that we are being communicated with, too, and communicating, in these chemical/biological ways, with the natural world.

I lived in Sweden for a short while in the 1990s. I very much enjoyed talking with locals about their culture, beliefs, and experience. Some of my friends were Swedes of many, many generations, others were immigrants, like me. I was the only American I knew, other than my family there with me. One of the many wonderful things I learned came from a conversation at my daughter’s little forest Waldorf school, where I and other parents were working on the grounds, trimming trees, moving things around in autumn, for the winter preparation. We were talking about nature, and the differences in mainstream US and typical Swedish culture, when one woman said, “We Swedes, we live in nature. You Americans, you live on nature.” I thought this was the most apt thing. Yes. So true. I think that what we realize now, though, even from the most recent science of microbiology (like the importance of the microbiomes of all living creatures, even the living soil that sustains everything), is that our feeling that we live on nature, and that it is optional or separate, and that we don’t experience it unless we go out into it, is an illusion.  

Our spirits know this. The moving into the quieter season has through human evolution also been accompanied by ritual and offering to the land and elements and their spirits. As Toko-pa Turner says, “Westerners have forgotten what indigenous people understand to be cardinal: that this world owes its life to the unseen. Every hunt and every harvest, every death and every birth is distinguished by ceremony for that which we cannot see, feeding back that which feeds us. I believe our alienation is, in good part, the felt negligence of that reciprocity” (Toko-pa Turner, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home). Honoring our bodily wisdom, feeling it without judging it, noting the changes in how we feel as the wheel of the years turns is, attending to the changes the earth around us is undergoing, possibly even developing or adopting rituals to acknowledge them, then, is a deeply spiritual act.

Whether we conceive of that which we are alienated from as spirit or as chemical/biological (I’m not so sure they’re different things, when it comes down to it), it is interesting to hypothesize that in either case this denying, ignoring, judging, or pathologizing our body’s signals and states as flaws in ourselves is negatively impacting us. I often recommend that people incorporate small rituals into their lives, things that connect with the flow of the day, the week, and the seasons. I rarely think I’m communicating why particularly well, though. Which is one reason I’m writing this essay. I want to say: so much of what we are is rhythmic; we must feed that through our noticing. I want to say: deep parts of our systems need to feel the overarching “we,” the whatever the watcher consciousness is, seeing, sensing, attending to that. And here is what ritual does, I think. It does that. Communicates that. Especially when the elements are incorporated, earth, air, fire, water. The unconscious does not speak English, my friends. It speaks in ritual, image, sensation, music, dreams, the elements, the unseen. Ritual brings us into alignment with the beating of life around us. These can be tiny things, small things, we do, that mark the changes and movements of the land, and the year. Burning sage at a certain time of day. Placing a new seasonal object from nature, like a leaf or a rock or a piece of moss, on an altar or nature shelf or table at each turn of the season. Noticing and respecting changes in mood or body or dreams or needs as the seasons change.

When we wake up in the morning and notice that we feel drowsy, that we’d like to remain enveloped in the blankets, to not go out into the frenetic world, maybe we can just stop and notice those feelings. Where do we feel that in our bodies? What additional details about those sensations can we notice? What is their color? Size? Texture? Temperature? What happens when we continue to notice? What do we notice next? Those who have been in somatic psychotherapy work for a while, as patients/clients (I count myself among these, too) know that some deep magic happens when we stop and notice our bodies in this way. It’s a magic akin to that which happens when we stop what we’re doing and really, quietly and respectfully attend to a little child. That attention helps what is present go ahead with its processing. We don’t know the science under this phenomenon yet, in either our bodies or in children, but I suspect we will one day. Nonetheless, we consistently observe that there is something about attending fully and at length to what is present in the body that facilitates the metabolizing of whatever is present, especially suffering, but also pleasant sensation. It is also vital that we notice joy and pleasure and the absence of pain just as fully. We must develop the capacity to notice one, in order to also notice the other. But we tend to turn away from the sensations of suffering and look for logical/cognitive reasons for it, which, again, often can lead to stories of inadequacy and failure, or “solutions” involving pressing ourselves to more action, rather than the simple noticing of the suffering  (which probably exists also for the illusion of control: If I just flog myself enough I’ll do better tomorrow; This. Does. Not. Work.).

This attention to the body’s sensations simply as they are moves us away from judgment and away from latching onto and following some habitual story in our cognitive minds about what it means to be cozy in bed and drowsy, or not feeling like going out tonight, or spending the whole weekend with a book and doing zero else. Maybe we still have to get up, because the bills aren’t going to pay themselves, but we can then do so without pathologizing ourselves for the suffering of it. And then if there is anything we can do, anything we can adjust to give ourselves more hours in the cozy hygge of house or bed, either on the evening end or on the morning end, maybe we then have more room in our hearts for ourselves to figure that out.
Of course, people working several jobs, people with young children, and many others may not have the luxury of such control over their own schedules. It took me into my 50s and lots of trial and error to find my true vocation in life, and that vocation includes that I don’t start the interactive part of my work before noon, regardless of the season. Especially in the winter. In the spring and summer, it’s often hard to contain myself in the mornings, as I love to garden, and adore to rush out to it in the mornings with my coffee and check on all the goings on, then either work or gaze quietly from my chair at all that life and movement. This slow, earthy morning time is vital for me. It has healed parts of my system that had henceforth been rather unreachable. I also realize how privileged that sounds, and I’m sitting with it. But heck, I also know that I paid a lot of dues, worked since I was too young to legally work, was a single mother with almost no options and zero money, taking any job I could get for years and years, and clawed my way to this moment with every ounce of strength and wit in me. So I’m not going to spend much time feeling bad about it. I am, though, going to notice what the sensations of privilege guilt feel like now, as they arise, and feel them for what they are.

Summer is over. Summer, with it’s long days, the bustle of gathering, preserving, planting, tending, discovering (though hunter-gatherers did, it seems, work only a few hours a day), is gone. In the autumn and winter, however, the bodily rhythm changes radically. Now is the time for long mornings with dream journaling, reading, or just listening to music or podcasts. Or simply dozing and gazing. I find suddenly I am interested in experimenting with things inside the house, and my writing has picked up and deepened, after a lull at the end of summer. I give thanks to the gods for the priviledge to notice and flow with these rhythms, every single day. After a lifetime of internalized relatives pathologizing my late morning Circadian rhythm (which even my DNA analysis shows is hardwired in), what a relief. This is the frame I was born into, I shall give it love and respect, I shall listen when it speaks, and I shall not try to force it into an imposed mold.

If we can’t arrange our schedules right now, we can all of us practice noticing what’s present without self-judgement. We may be rewarded with increased creativity (this right here), or enhanced well-being. Rest brings the room for the work of the deep unconscious to unfold. For dreams to connect more fully with those unconscious processes and bring forth fruits into conscious awareness. So that we may find our way, find ourselves, notice interesting pathways we may pass by if too hurried.

Maybe we at first have a hard time conceiving what “the unconscious” even means. That’s ok. Whatever it is, it’s unconscious, that which our conscious mind only has access to through dreams and synchronicities. That which is trying to take care of us without our entering it into our day planners. That which at its deepest levels is connected to the Collective Unconscious, where the knowledge and wisdom of all times flows like a clear, dark, underground river full of love and treasure. Yes, it is always flowing in the direction of our growth. And yes, it does contain Shadow elements, and we must also meet and understand these in order to be our whole and true selves. It runs by the laws of nature, and that means that its energy is dedicated to the survival and growth of the organism, you. We run into problems when we try to repress it, escape it, ignore it, wallpaper it over with manifestation manifestos and notions of order and control. And it's not just an esoteric idea, this unconscious. Recent neurobiological research shows that unconscious processes are activating far more than was ever thought, in all sorts of tasks. That little one millimeter strip of brain matter (the cerebral cortex where our conscious thought lights up neural circuitry is the smallest bit of what we have going on (“cortex” actually means, “the outer or superficial part of an organ or bodily structure” according to Webster here https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cortex). The rest of the brain extends downward, and then through nerves down our spine into all our muscles and organs, and very significantly, our guts. The river of the nervous system, flowing along without us even trying to make it flow. The personal unconscious, or its parallel structure. Depth psychological theories have described this all along.

But we must be patient. This doesn’t mean that the first week we let ourselves rest a bit and notice that we’re suddenly going to have all sorts of great ideas or feel differently. Emphasis here is on the word unconscious. We don’t know when the fruits of our rest and incubation are going to emerge, and we don't know what they will be. Perhaps in the spring. Perhaps in some years hence. Probably when we least expect it.


*Caveats:

1. We are not talking about any of the diagnosable depression syndromes or illnesses here. We always screen for those. They are distinguishable from what we are discussing here. If you think you might be depressed please engage with professional help. Major depression is a life threatening illness. For more information or to find resources see this https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/depression-what-you-need-to-know/index.shtml and/or call SAMHSA National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
2. ​We all also not here discussing Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), which is also a real thing, and also should be cared for in collaboration with a professional mental health practitioner.
3. While this isn’t a universal phenomenon, my own totally unscientific note keeping has it at about 90 percent of persons I’m in contact with over the course of a year or more. And in this sample I am not including anyone with major depression, recent trauma, recent major loss, persistent unemployment, or major illness that could affect energy level. ​

This essay is also available on the Huffington Post here.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Here's what I'm doing today. I don't have a mate or a date this year, and that's cool with me. I've decided make the day an opportunity to remind myself that every cell and wisp of us benefits from love, and that the primary and most constant source of love is our own internal love engines. Our hearts. Our hearts that need to glow for ourselves, too. So, if I have a thought or feeling that is not supportive and loving of myself, I'm noticing it, then stopping it and instead smiling at the part of myself that the internal editor was trying to dis. I'm keeping this quote from James Hollis in my awareness, and smiling at every part of myself that has not been supported by capitalist, patriarchal culture and society. I'm appreciating all my quirks and soaking them in light and love. And I'm wishing the same for all of you.

Also, I'm making Dorie Greenspan's World Peace Cookies (using Kakao chocolate), my mother's hamburger pie (my favorite comfort dish; with local, grassfed beef and organic everything), and having either a glass of red wine or a Side Project beer that I picked up yesterday. (Note: mentioning the brands is not for product placement, but to emphasize that for me, spreading the love by using local goods and those that are created without labor exploitation or overuse of resources is part of what makes my heart glow; and also that I'm treating myself right!)

“We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide exempla for others. We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being. As the gods intended, we are here to become more and more ourselves.”
― James Hollis, What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life
‪#‎valentines‬ ‪#‎loveallourparts‬ ‪#‎loveourselves‬ ‪#‎love‬ ‪#‎hearts‬ ‪#‎thingsofmine‬‪#‎survivor‬ ‪
#‎trauma‬ ‪#‎healing‬ ‪#‎oyster‬ ‪#‎pearl‬ ‪#‎acorn‬ ‪#‎valentine2016‬‪
​#‎adoreyoursweetstrangeheart‬