Hello you,
More and more these days it feels like all my work circles around belonging. It’s taken me a minute to see it though. For a long time I was sure that every element - breathwork, tarot, rest, magic - had a different focus.
“Oh”, I said to myself, "‘breathwork is all about shifting energy, rest is about unlearning the urgency that capitalism instilled in our bodies, tarot and magic making are about connecting to something bigger than ourselves and the power of our intuition”. But the deeper I get into any and all of the practices I teach, the more I scratch beneath the surface, the more I realise they’re about belonging.
I want us to find ways we can create an unshakeable sense of home for ourselves and for each other. These practices are the paths that I’ve found to come home.
I want to find more trust and openness in my relationship with myself, so that I no longer shun parts of me. I want to hold space for you to do the same.
I’m curious how we create spaces, both within ourselves and in the world, that feel safe and welcoming enough to shed our self-defensive shells and just fucking be. No performance or perfection or shapeshifting to please people needed.
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And because I can’t resist a definition of terms, let me say that belonging ≠ fitting in.
I’m not talking about conformity. That’s a kind of false belonging, like fool’s gold. Shiny but unfulfilling in the end. It’s unable to withstand the actual humanness of humans, with our diversity of experiences and perspectives.
Belonging is darker. Richer.
It’s the soil of an old growth forest, teeming with fungi and worms and a whole microscopic ecosystem of beings. And yes, I recognise that I just compared this fundamental human need which we all desire and yearn for to a handful of buggy dirt but stay with me.
Belonging asks for us to have courage.
Belonging asks us to open to the stuff in us that we find kinda monstrous.
Belonging asks us to be okay with the dark and the gross.
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Your capacity to belong is directly related to your capacity to be with yourself.
Can you hold your tender, embarrassing heart with care? Can you shamelessly own your needs and desires? Even the ones that put you at odds with the ‘shoulds’ you learned? Can you sit with your shadow - the grief, fear, rage of a human life - and not turn away?
Brené Brown, the patron saint of defining esoteric concepts, talks about how true belonging involves “believing in yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness.”
I remember reading that and feeling a rush, like the thrill you get standing at the edge of a cliff. The expansiveness and the fear of what it might be like to fully back yourself. To belong to yourself without question, no parts abandoned.
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But I will also say that I find Brené’s definition to be frustratingly individualistic. I don’t believe belonging is just about belonging to ourselves. It’s about relationship.
Belonging is the web of invisible threads, shining and metallic, weaving within each of us and out into the world. It’s the ecosystem of that old growth soil. We are intrinsically connected to one another and to the more-than-human world and pretending otherwise is fucking lonely.
So also, your capacity to be with yourself is directly related to your capacity to belong to those around you. If you reject your own monstrosity, your own inconvenient needs, your own vulnerable aliveness it’s all too easy to do the same to others.
Belonging means that we are able to feel the threads tug and pull. When we can feel everything in relationship with everything else and know that we’re home in that web of connection.
This is a practice for anyone wanting to find a way into deeper connection and belonging.
Do you need to clear away the detritus and come back to yourself? Join me for Breathwork for Belonging next month.
Breathwork is a powerful practice that allows deep self-exploration and transformation. It is intended to support your personal growth, using the power of breath and music to help you access a non-ordinary state of consciousness, bring you into your body, integrate and release energy.
Sometimes there are tears, sometimes laughter. Sometimes rage, sometimes joy.
All of it (all of you) is welcome.
A six-month deep dive into your embodiment, using breathwork, rest practices, and ritual to bring you into deeper relationship with yourself.
A container that's one part science, one part magic, and all about helping you thrive.
A space where you can reconnect with your body, learn ways to navigate your nervous system for greater capacity, and remember just how fucking powerful you are.
I have space for two new one-to-one clients over summer. Book in a free discovery call and let’s chat about what you need.
Other Things
What’s been lighting me up this month
✹ It’s been fun to explore ways to embody The Hierophant with paid subscriber babes this month. Plus we’re gonna get into The Lovers in a couple of weeks and whewwww I can tell it’s going to be juicy already!
✹ My amazing and impossibly insightful partner Joeli Caparco is hosting Cycle Magic 101, starting July 1st (err, this Saturday!) It’s a month of learning to track your cycle, for folks of all bodies and genders who want to learn how to work with their cycle so that they can know themselves (and their needs) better
✹ Three months of breathwork with Jennifer Patterson and a squadron of amazing teachers? Yes, please
✹ I’ve also been loving the Open app for breathwork, movement and meditation practices in my pocket. Want to try it? I have a link for 30 days free for you
✹ I’ve had a copy of Caliban and The Witch sitting in my to-read pile forever but she’s a weighty academic tome and a little hard to read in bed. Enter Book on Fire, a podcast that discusses the book chapter by chapter, and fiiiinally I’m learning all about the witch trials and the beginnings of capitalism
✹ Real talk? Most of what I want to do with my spare time right now is explore the vastness of the new Zelda and make my Animal Crossing island super cute. Anyone else deep in a gaming wormhole?
✹ My little fangirl heart is full of delight with Jenny Owen Youngs’ new song Avalanche (also because that also means new album!)
✹ Do you ever read a book and get mad at the author for writing the book you wanted to write? Well, that was me with Mara Glatzel for Needy but ohhh it’s so poignant and on point that I can’t stay mad
✹ We Will Dance with Mountains, created by Bayo Akomolafe, is a course/festival/indefinable gathering at the edges and I think it’s going to be fucking magical
✹ This letter was brought to you by this banging remix of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (a sentence I was never expecting to type). It’s my new work focus album