Hello friend,
Let me tell you a tiny story:
February’s grey seeped into my bones and my boobs were mad at me for (mostly) housing them in a 5 year old Nike sports bra. And so this week, when I got a new bra and the sun came out, I remembered that I’m alive.
I’m not a great storyteller, apologies. There wasn’t even a middle to that. Just beginning and end.
What I mean is that sometimes the tiniest changes matter. They carry a far greater weight in lived experience than they look like they would on paper.
I was talking with a client this week about the practice of pausing. After we played with it in our sessions, she’s just started to include the tiniest of pauses in her busy day.
We’re talking literally 30 seconds.
A pause to come back to herself. To break the hypnosis of habitual disconnection and remember that her feet are on the floor, her breath is moving in her lungs. A tiny pause to remember that she’s alive, that she has power, that she can make choices about how she responds to what life is throwing at her.
And I think for those of us who are curious about healing and growth and creating different worlds - both within ourselves and out in the world - there can be this false sense that it requires big actions. You know, the story of big dramatic change. Repeated ayahuasca rituals, vomit and hallucinations and tears. Deep expunging of our traumas, dark nights of the soul and existential crises. Scream-crying in the breathwork session. Revolution and guillotines.
For sure, sometimes that’s the thing. But honestly, as someone who’s been rolling around in this ‘wellness’ and ‘healing’ world for nearly 20 years the things that make more of a difference are the tiny, unsexy, daily acts that remind us we’re alive. Like pausing. Like a new bra. Like the sun coming out.
Because it’s these things that enable us to meet life with a bit more groundedness. That gently expand our capacity over time, in a way that’s sustainable and able to be metabolised in our system. Because it the tiniest changes that bring us back to ourselves. Remind us that we’re alive.
Thoughts in progress:
I’m ruminating about the perpetual modern question: should I stay or should I go in regards to social media. In fact, as I write that I wonder if the question is actually a straw man. Maybe it doesn’t really matter if I’m on Instagram, it’s simply a symptom of a larger question: how can I shed my self-protective perfectionism and say what I really think in my business (because this is a business-specific rumination)? How can I tell the truthiest truth without anxiously editing it down? How do I share my work without contorting it to fit into some bland palatable idea that my brain absorbed about what’s ‘marketable’?
The Spring is springing and I can’t stop thinking about Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde. There’s a venn diagram between our capacity to feel the thrum of our aliveness (as Lorde defines the erotic) and our ability to know our power.
This feels particularly pertinent right now. Not only because knowing our power is an antidote to the creeping despair of these wild times, but because taking responsibility for ourselves - stepping into our power - is really fucking hot. And Spring is a prime time for knowing, bone deep, how damn hot and powerful you are. I want that for us.Reading Matrix by Lauren Groff the other day the line “Mystical acts create mystical beliefs” stuck me so hard. Like, of course. The magic comes after the act. It’s created from the act. The magic isn’t something I have to sit around and wait for. It makes me wonder, where might I cultivate more magic by taking magical acts?
What I’m putting out into the world:
Can I boast for a second? I really fucking love my one-to-one work and I have the best clients and a I’m really fucking good at what I do. I know it’s kinda gauche to say that out loud but it’s true.
Working with witchy, queer, creative folks one-to-one to help you reconnect with your body (and in turn your power, possibility, creativity, desire, and magic) is what I’m here to do. It lights me up to get to hold space for you to heal old survival strategies that stop you from really living, making room to grow into a more liberated version of yourself.
Curious? You should book in an initial session. It’s 90 minutes of conversation and somatic practice, including breathwork, somatic trauma resolution and rest. A chance to share where you’re at, what you’d like to change, and for us to map a path forward so you can get there.Limited sessions are open for March and April. Sliding scale pricing, trauma informed, poly-crisis conscious, and witchy af. And feel free to email me if none of the availability works — we can see what wiggle room there is.
Snippets and bits:
This Spring there’s a Leigh Bowery exhibition at the Tate Mod and a Linder retrospective at the Hayward Gallery. I’m drooling. Who wants to have a London adventure to soak up all the punk/club kid glory?
The most wholesome show on telly - The Great Pottery Throwdown - is leading to its grand finale and I will miss the heartwarming comfort of watching grown men cry over ceramics when it’s finished.
I joined Keri Jarvis’ Composting membership in February and it’s been suuuuuch a supportive place to hang out with other folks who give a shit about building better worlds.
Don’t ask me what rabbit hole took us there but Joeli and I recently stumbled across the Willy Nelson song Cowboys are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other. I’m obsessed.
This is Body Magic, a letter on embodiment, liberation, and magic.
join my community: studio dreamland.
work with me: one-to-one & practitioner mentoring.
send me some love. buy me a coffee.
Thank you thank you for sharing the Willie Nelson Song 🎵 🙏 ❤️ love this letter, love the song, love you and you are sooo damn good at what you do xx