It is alright
to want to take to your bed
for days
while the snow gathers
outside your window
To go into the space of dreams
drop into the underworld
where the soul reigns
amidst golden caves
The air is not what you are used to
your breath expanding and softening
like some ancient and quiet instrument
made as much for moving air
as for listening
It is alright
to visit this place
and meet yourself there
Then to walk out without notes
without predictions
or certainties
Nevertheless enriched
and the riches simply
the opening of your heart
to yourself
I went totally off the rails this thanksgiving. For me that means feeling like an angst filled teenager and soothing myself with sugary foods. All my old family shit got triggered. It’s humbling because I’d like to think I’m beyond getting thrown off balance like that by now. But, it happened. I felt as deflated as a squashed jelly doughnut.
I would like to have written this on Friday, but truth is that I was in the throes of it. I’ve heard a quote from Ram Dass, “if you think you’re enlightened, go home for the holidays.” It was one of those “perfect storm” holidays, surrounded by the people who most push my buttons, along with so much sugar. Don’t get me wrong, I am not at all about feeling guilty for indulging in sweet things or obsessing over the weight. For me, it’s about the moods and low energy and my body is really sensitive to things like processed sugar. And about those people who push my buttons, I know they are my greatest teachers but sometimes, for whatever reason, those old buttons get pushed and there I am feeling overwhelmed.
I felt tired, stressed, and bloated. Down I went, into the rabbit hole of old family resentments.
And by the end of the weekend I was picking up the pieces of my cranky, cranky self and trying to feel human again. Here is how I went about it, in 7 simple steps. If you had a rough holiday, I hope they will help you too.
Here’s what you do:
Start with the body…
1. Get thee to a bowl of bone broth.
It rebuilds the lining of your intestines, which helps your digestive system and plays a huge role in keeping your immune system strong. Here’s a recipe for delicious bone broth. So tasty, comforting, and satisfying. I like mine with a few dashes of turmeric powder for added anti-inflammatory power. If you don’t have any homemade broth on hand, take-out or store bought will do. Snuggle up and let the broth do it’s thing. The stuff is magic.
2. Balance your blood sugar.
As soon as possible, once you realize that you feel off kilter and you want to get yourself feeling human again! Start with your next meal. This is a huge topic in itself but here’s a quick and dirty way to start balancing your blood sugar: Eat regular meals and eat enough protein at every meal. The standard recommendation is a palm size amount of protein, but you know your body and how much feels right. If you were eating a lot of processed sugars, you may find yourself craving more sugar and not wanting that protein. In this case you may need to override those cravings for a few days until your body is more balanced again. Along with your protein, make sure you’re getting some veggies and some fat. Yes, you need that fat!
Balancing your blood sugar which will help balance your energy levels and your moods. It may take a day or two but it will definitely help.
3. Self-pleasure.
Yes, that kind of self-pleasure. If you’re feeling really low or cranky you may feel completely erotically uninspired. Well, my friend, think of it this way–pleasure takes discipline. Anybody can sit around feeling lousy and most people do. But you will be different and choose to slow down and connect to your own pleasure center. Did you know the clitoris is the only organ in the body whose sole purpose is pleasure? It has an estimated 8000 nerve endings dedicated to pleasure. You’ll be glad when the oxytocin starts flowing. It has been called the love hormone. It helps lower stress, has been found to lower pain levels and anxiety, among many other benefits. Basically, you’ll remember that it does indeed feel good to be alive.
Of course, sexy time with a partner or lover will do wonderfully as well but you don’t have to depend on that. So that’s no excuse!
Ok, those were for starting with the body. Now try a little something for your emotional self…
4. Call a friend.
But not just any friend. Call someone who knows you well and cares enough to remind you who you are. That friend. Vent if you must, be a mess if you feel like a mess. Be the unvarnished, human, and still love-able you.
5. Follow the triggers.
Follow the thread. Where did you get triggered? Where did someone do or say something that threw you off? At what point did you disconnect from yourself?
You may ask, why would I want to dwell on the pain? So and so is a pain in the ass and that’s all there is to it. But, you’re evolved enough to know that it all comes back to you. If you feel miserable, it doesn’t really matter what someone else did or said because only you can determine how you respond and only you can be responsible for your own state of happiness or misery.
Following the triggers means mustering enough presence to slow down and feel, tell the truth, feel the pain, and forgive whoever needs forgiving…starting with your self.
A great process to help follow that thread to a place of peace, check out Byron Katie’s the work.
Now that you’ve tended to your emotions, let your surroundings support you…
6. Your outer space represents your inner space.
When you think of it this way, vacuuming a room or doing the dishes can become quite therapeutic and even relaxing. Clearing your desk can help clear your head.
De-clutter one drawer or one corner and notice how your internal state begins to stabilize. Try setting a timer for just 5 minutes.
And of course, connect with your soul…
7. All it takes is a gesture.
Start small. light a candle. take a walk around the block and play a game of noticing one theme of beauty that you appreciate. I’ve been really paying attention to birds lately. You could walk and notice all the doors, or all the shades of green…you get the idea. Make a list of everything you appreciate in your life, from the simplest little thing to the most profound.
8. Give yourself a break.
That is all. Be as kind to yourself as you would be to a tired toddler, or to your best friend. The holidays can be a perfect storm of family dynamics and stress. So, give yourself a break if you didn’t handle it perfectly. And create your own list. What’s your tried and true way of getting out of the madness and back into flow?
Have you noticed how the most bad-ass adults felt like outsiders growing up? While it seemed tragic to be the high-school nerd, or that quiet goth kid, or whatever variety of weirdo you might have been, you must admit, it ultimately helped to grow your superpowers. Unbeknownst to you at the time, you were writing your heroine’s journey, complete with awkward beginnings. Here’s how:
1. You lived on the edges, where you saw and experienced life differently.
By definition, an outsider has a different vantage point on her world. How do you come to decide that you’re an outsider? You feel different.You were an immigrant, or gay, or one of those artistic kids.I have a friend who felt like a little alien from the time she was a toddler, while for me it really kicked in at puberty. The popular kids might have secretly felt like they didn’t belong, but their identity wasn’t shaped around it.
I had a high school crush on a boy who spoke to no one and hung out alone, literally on the edge of the school grounds. I romantically assumed this dark clothed, brooding figure must know things. When I finally had the courage to talk to him, it turned out I was right. He was smart, well-read, and sophisticated by high school standards. He also had brain damage from a car accident and was extremely self-conscious about the speech impediment which resulted from it. (I never saw him after high school but I’m willing to bet he grew up to be an amazing adult).
I’m counting myself and my dearest friends among these badass adults. How dare I? Because I get to define what it means: To see life as an adventure and one to be embraced as an experiment where we discover what it takes to know ecstasy, connection, and creativity. It’s not about the trappings of success or being defined by societal dictates of “doing it right.”
2. Because you saw life differently you developed an uncommon set of skills.
It wasn’t easy, but you spent years honing a completely different set of skills from the common, “muggle” sort they teach in school. You honed intuition and creativity, and dreamt what some called impossible dreams. You were something of an exotic plant.
My outsider story began when I was twelve and my family moved to the U.S. from Costa Rica. Not only did I turn twelve and move to a new country, but I also got my period all within the same week! I remember standing in front of my new American school that first morning, in agonizing self-consciousness, while all around me kids chirped and giggled in the non-sensical sounds of a language I didn’t speak. I felt as if I were naked, covered in tar, with bugs crawling over my entire body, while everyone watched. The irony is that I desperately wanted someone to see me and be my friend. I hid in a bathroom stall during lunch.
That tough, identity crushing period was painful, but it was also an initiation. It eventually opened me up to possibilities I wouldn’t have imagined otherwise. Part of the adventure was building up an identity of the misunderstood outsider, which I then had to overcome. How cleverly I was crafting my own story!
One skill I developed was seeing through double eyes. I became a hybrid of two cultures, learning from both, able to hold more than one point of view at the same time. It made me able to connect to people from all sorts of backgrounds–a much needed superpower these days.
3. Being in touch with your wounds and the darker realms of experience, you gained access to true power.
By true power, I mean power which can only be found through telling the truth and facing your pain, rather than the old paradigm of force or power “over” another. Whatever had you feel different, so much the outsider, even broken; whether you were born with extra sensitive emotional wiring, or went through a traumatic experience, these challenges were all potential doorways to knowledge.
Of course, when we are depressed or addicted, we aren’t necessarily thinking how great it is that this is an entryway to wisdom or creativity. But the possibility exists that through your wounds, you had an initiation and were given access to a broad range of emotions and sensations, highs and lows, and a keener ability to see into life, other people, and your own soul.
Crying Ciclops. Antonio Mora.
4. You came to see that your gifts were forged alongside whatever pain and wounds you carry.
In your deepest knowing you are magic, you are free. Something inside you always guided you to seek out deeper experience and knowledge, no matter the inner or outer obstacles. Whatever conventional success eluded you, this turned out to be a blessing because you had to get really honest about what matters to you, what truly turns you on.
But it didn’t seem as if you had superpowers until you discovered that hiding from your pain never resulted in the connection or creativity that you craved. Nobody asks for a dark night of the soul, or to sit face to face with the shame that causes them to sabotage their deepest callings. It doesn’t make for nice cocktail party conversation, but then you never cared much for small chat.
There is a pitfall here as many never see past the identification with that tragic story of the “broken” kid. These folks can stay addicted to the strange pleasure of victimhood or to self-help and personal development. And the story becomes boring and stale. But if they undertake the deep work to integrate the lessons from their wounds, then it turns out that the gifts are side by side with the wounds and there is a rightness to all of it, even if discovering so was extremely painful.
5. You decided to “fit out” instead of fitting in.
Joshua Rosenthal, who taught me about holistic nutrition and getting out of the matrix, talks about “fitting out,” which is admitting that you don’t fit in and you never will and that is well and good–and choosing to rock that. The all-you-can-eat buffet prize of having followed all the “right” steps, only left you with an overstuffed, numb feeling. You redefined success according to your own values and began to protect your dream from the dream killers who lack imagination and instead become pushers of fear through numbing entertainment and pharmaceuticals, who would convince you of your powerlessness, and leave you addicted to authority.
Paradoxically, once you embrace fitting out, there gradually comes a letting go of the identity of the outsider, the stranger looking in. While it would be easier to stay out there pointing in at all the absurdity of the “normal” world, you made the choice to find out what you’re truly made of, and to contribute in a way that is authentic to you–a new vision, large or small, but true to you and your gifts.
And so, you grew up to become the sexy rebels, innovators, artists of living, lovers of life, creators.
6. Your journey came full circle when you owned how much you have to offer the world.
You came to see that you are not truly separate, and indeed what you offer is needed by the larger culture. You’ve grown beyond the outsider box you once used to label yourself. Having re-written your story, you are free to contribute to the very world from which you once felt so estranged, and even to create a whole new paradigm.
You dreamer of impossible dreams, who started to awaken within the dream, thereby unlocking the keys to the Queendom. You know that you don’t need anyone else’s permission to live your wild and precious adventure.
Leading with desire and with every breath casting your spell, you have become the ones described by the inimitable Walt Whitman, “I no longer seek good fortune, I myself am good fortune.”
I know sometimes longing hurts. It feels like your heart is being squeezed by a cruel unseen hand. When you are in the grip of it, it can feel like hell. And if someone comes along and tells you that you can soften, even inside of that torturous grip, you may just want to slap that oh […]
I am here. I am a woman. I carry within me a little girl who is sensitive and tender and so playful. I carry within me a woman’s presence that is rooted and timeless and knowing.
I’m here for every woman who has ever felt invisible, or not enough, or too much. Everyone who has ever had a dream they put on that shelf, over there, not quite within reach. The more I remember, the more I have to give. I’m here to say you can come back to life, yes, one more time. I’m here to say your sacred body knows, and holds so many stories and mysteries and the deepest wells of pleasure and power. I’m here to welcome the YES, and make friends with the terrified gremlins that run screaming from the yes.
Waking up looks like nothing I imagined, and feels simple as breathing. The tiniest adjustment can open up the world. Permission is mine. I grant it to myself. No more waiting for the circumstance, the teacher, the course, the relationship…I am permission itself. So are you.
The most gorgeous part of it all is that I get to share it, pass it on. Live the questions with you, my dear peeps. See the visions beyond the visions, go deep into the heart of your life and what you are here for. It is so good! I love you.
Thank you, New York, for giving me a deep infusion of love and pleasure before I go on to the next adventure. Miami, here I come, but first I’m spending a few days back in old New York.
I was 25 when I moved here, and kind of clueless about what I wanted, but I did know that I wanted something new and different. I was in love with the man who would later become my husband, and he was here. Even though I told myself that I wasn’t moving here for him, it was the real reason I came. To my young mind, it was so not cool to move to a new city for love. But that’s what got me here and opened the door to so many experiences.
For a long time I felt conflicted about living here. The were periods when I was frustrated by what was missing in my life. I was lonely. I wanted more. My relationship had started to feel stale and I blamed the city because that was easier than looking inside and finding that I was responsible for the things in my life that weren’t working.
But somewhere along the way I realized that I had chosen New York and the medicine I needed was here. Coming had been no mistake and there was so much to appreciate. Instead of fluttering away, I decided to put down deeper roots. I let myself follow my curiosity.
The feast of learning experiments has been varied and rich. From bodywork to tango, from nutrition to coaching to orgasmic practices, and so much more. The loves and friendships have been where my deepest learning and growth have come, and where I feel the most intense gratitude.
That cliche of not knowing what you’ve got till it’s gone rang true after my very sudden move from New York this year. God, did I miss this place!
Every day since I’ve been back this week has been magical. Boat rides and art, friends and long conversations strolling through the parks. Assisting in a workshop where people are learning to feel and connect. Basically, soaking in the rewards of what I’ve created here.
Thank you, New York, for being the place where I have felt so free to explore.
Thank you for teaching me how strong I really am.
Thank you for showing me that power doesn’t always require keeping up the tough act.
Thank you for so many incredible teachers.
Thank you for tribes who believe that life can be magical.
Thank you for teaching me that telling the truth is the way to the sweet spot of aliveness, even when telling the truth is excruciating.
Thank you for permission to embrace my desire.
Thank you for the experience, over and over, of letting go with deep love.
This morning I danced to Paradise, while playing a Qoya video. In it, Rochelle Schieck (creator of Qoya) talks about paradise as the state we long for when we imagine life feeling really good. I spent an hour moving, dancing, finding the place where it felt so good and noticing where there was resistance or mind chatter distracting me from the sensation. Having access to that inner paradise, which to me is a feeling of freedom–well, it’s simple now and it was simple as a child and yet I’ve worked fucking hard to find it again. That degree of innocence and pure joy in making circles with my hips, or shaking my booty like a happy pup, it’s something I had to reclaim so that I could know it from the inside, not just intellectually.
I think much of our work as women now is about re-orienting toward what feels good, and that is a revolutionary act.
To re-orient our compass toward what feels good means that we make it just as important to feel as good now, in the process of getting to our dreams, as we’re hoping we will feel when we get there.
Sounds easy enough. “Follow your bliss” and all that, but unless you’ve deliberately chosen a practice where there is an emphasis on pleasure and enjoyment–which isn’t most people out there, then this notion might feel pollyannaish or even infuriating! I mean, you have shit to do, bills to pay, and important things to attend to. And when someone comes along and says you ought to prioritize feeling good, maybe you think “who is this hippie anyway and what does she know about my life?” There’s a part of me that still, after years learning to trust the feeling of pleasure and aliveness as a sign that I’m on the right track, recoils and gets resentful at the idea that it’s really ok to, like, feel good. Usually, the bitchier I get the more I need a dose of feeling good.
As women, we’re raised to bond around our complaints. We’re kind of suspicious of people who feel “too good”. It pisses us off, which is a clue. And when we dare admit that we want it because we’re burnt out and hungry and dying on the inside, then we wonder how! How do you make the time? How do you decide that it is ok to put yourself first? It’s a huge question to which I offer a simple medicine. Move. And find a way to do it that feels good to you.
Here’s a little story about movement and dance and how it saved my life.
When I was thirteen and beginning my teenage obsession with NOT GETTING FAT! I used to do aerobics. There was this show called the 20-minute workout. It was super eighties–leotards with panty-hose and leg-warmers. Big hair. These chicks moved like smooth barbie automatons. They didn’t seem to sweat but they all had skinny, toned bodies like I dreamt of having. Ah, the irony, because I wasn’t even chubby. But that’s not the point, since in my mind anything less than idealized perfection meant I was a disgusting pig and who needed to work harder and strive to be better at denying myself. I was starting my training in numbing out hunger and pushing my body like a machine. I would hop on my bike after school and do endless loops of the neighborhood, or get on the stationary bike at home and pedal away. The thing was to clock miles and keep the ugly fat at bay. This was not about enjoyment!
But there was a time before all this self-flagellation. As a little girl, before the self-consciousness and worry about getting fat, I remember climbing trees and tumbling on the grass with my little brother. There were afternoons doing cartwheels with friends, and days at the beach splashing around and waiting for the next wave. Moments where the joy of pure play was simple and completely mine. My family lived in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. The cliches about tropical places and paradise exist for a reason. So in my memories of playing on the beach where the world around me really did look like “paradise” are also where I experienced the inner freedom of being totally at ease in my body. But that didn’t last very long, just a few sweet years before puberty.
I’m not sure when exactly I discovered that I actually liked moving and that it felt good? There were the times in eighth grade after school, doing silly interpretive dances with my best friend in her living room. There were those times in college, dancing all night at the little club where I used to go with my friends, or going to shows in New Orleans and getting sweaty to down and dirty blues. Through all the years of body hatred, of obsessing over every calorie, of doing my best to eat the least possible amount, through all of that there was always something in me which remained intact–the part that loved moving! I’m not saying that I embraced pleasurable movement with open arms. I didn’t have such a concept. Back then I put in my time. I walked, ran, pumped iron. But the thread of pleasure through movement was never totally severed. And bit by bit I found my way back. There were those very first yoga classes where simply breathing and paying attention to breathing was a revelation. A return home. It’s not that I discovered that I liked moving but rather that I re-discovered it as I grew up.
So why do I say movement and dancing saved my life? It wasn’t one particular incident where I danced out of the way of a moving train or any such literal thing. But I cannot tell you here the countless times when I found my way home to my self and my own heart through dancing and movement. When my ex-hubby and I divorced, I found connection and passion and a healthy obsession through tango. I became a regular at Triangulo studio in New York City. When I lost a baby after a tough and complicated pregnancy, I found my strength again and let myself move through the grief dancing in the forest in Costa Rica with Parashakti and her Dance of Liberation. Those were some big transitions, but movement has also been there for me in quieter, slower ways, like learning how to do walking meditation or getting to a 5rhythms class and sweating my prayers. Whenever I feel “off” or when I feel great and want to celebrate, I move. No matter what else is going on, the body is home, and moving and dancing is a direct way to connect with self and soul.
Here’s the video, in case you feel like getting up and shakin’ it:
What’s your idea of paradise? Where does movement and dancing figure into it, if at all? I’d love to hear your comments. (Comment at the top of the page).
Hello there, my name is Patricia Black and this is the very first post in my new blog, my baby–Food, Sex, and God.
I chose some biggies in terms of topics, I know! So much of what I’ve spent my life delving into connects to these big three, and they are inter-related. We all have hungers. We crave, we are moved by desire and we negotiate with our desire or run from it and sometimes even manage to forget about it to the point that we don’t even feel it. Me, hungry? No, I’m too busy running on this treadmill of work, success, whatever. But, at the end of the day we can’t really run from our obsessions. What if we were to actually dive in and trust our desire, trust that it will not lead us to chaos and destruction but to some truths with heart. Well, I know how scary that can be. And there’s no guarantee that there won’t be chaos. But this is life, it’s an amazing ride when you can open yourself up to all of it.
I could’ve thrown money in there too, but I’ll admit that I don’t have too much that’s useful to say on that topic. And I like threes.
But on Food, well, I have the qualifications of having had an eating disorder as a teenager and into my college days, and of continuing to struggle in my relationship with food for many years–just like most women in America. But that was the thing that led me to learn about nutrition and yoga and the whole world of holistic health. It opened me up to seeing myself and the world through new eyes. So, the suffering and the obsession were the seed that grew me. I worked as a holistic health coach and natural nutrition counselor for many years, helping women make peace with food and shift to friendlier relationships with their bodies. They often came because they wanted to lose weight, but there were always many other desires beneath that one.
Sex, where to begin? When I worked as a holistic coach I heard from so many women about the shame they felt around their bodies and the constant trying to control what and how they ate. And I started to see that there was a connection to how they felt as sexual beings. The body image stuff, the sense of self-worth being tied to feeling desirable, and again the question of hunger and desire and just how to “deal with” them. Being something of a personal development junkie, I managed to find a life coaching program centered around a practice called Orgasmic Meditation. The practice blew open the doors to exploring my sexuality and everything I knew about relationships. Thing is, I’m still shy about writing on this topic it but I guess it’s just like being in bed with a lover and feeling shy–the desire pulls you through. And I do have lots to share with you about my explorations, and insights, and my own on-going questions.
And lastly, God! Did I really decide I’d write about God right next to food and sex? Well, yes, if not next to these very earthly domains then where else? My relationship to God and even to the word “god” was for many years fraught with anger, confusion, resentment. You see, I’m what they call a PK, a preacher’s kid, and thus the complicated relationship. When I was much younger I thought I wanted no part of God, but that wasn’t true at all; I just didn’t want spirituality in the way that my father’s church and religion prescribed. And all that teenage angst and rebellion was wrapped up in how much I resented God for taking my dad away from me and from our family. But underneath all that there was so much yearning and so much love waiting to find a place to pour itself into.
And so, the common theme in all of these is desire. Yes, yearning, longing, hunger. And women have I complicated relationship to desire. I know I do. And I find it worth going deeper to discover what it’s all about because it does carry so much power, regardless of how we choose to relate to it.
Why am I doing this, anyway? Being this rather private introvert and choosing to write about these very personal topics. I write for myself because through writing I discover what I really feel and what I know. But I also write for others because I hope that in writing honestly and being willing to expose my metaphorical belly, that I will be permission for others as they grapple with their own questions and embark on their journeys. I hope this blog will be read by women who are tired of holding it all inside and holding it all together. Women who are tired of swinging between self-deprivation and mindlessly acting out. Maybe I’m writing for the addict in all of us. And for the recovering perfectionist too. I am one for sure. Oh, and if some men find their way here, I hope they will get a view into the inner lives of women and learn something about what makes us tick.
My hope is that this will be a place for connection and conversation. I welcome your comments and your musings on these topics.
As you can see, it’s a newbie blog. There’s a lot to do to make it more pretty and fancy, which is not really my skill set. But, I wanted to get started and to connect with some readers and begin the ride already!
Here is a quote from Mary Oliver. A short and sweet mission statement:
FoodSexandGod 