Episode Details

Greetings friends~

As we be together in this political moment, I wanted to offer some of the dharma teachings and practices that I have been leaning into.

One of which is sharing poetry, so first a poem.

For When People Ask by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I want a word that means

okay and not okay,

more than that: a word that means

devastated and stunned with joy.

I want the word that says

I feel it all all at once.

The heart is not like a songbird

singing only one note at a time,

more like a Tuvan throat singer

able to sing both a drone

and simultaneously

two or three harmonics high above it—

a sound, the Tuvans say,

that gives the impression

of wind swirling among rocks.

The heart understands swirl,

how the churning of opposite feelings

weaves through us like an insistent breeze

leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves,

blesses us with paradox

so we might walk more openly

into this world so rife with devastation,

this world so ripe with joy.

Honor the wisdom of your body.

Our bodies are wise, they feel and respond to the information coming in through our environment. In the single unified field of embodied awareness, all response is welcome. All response is more information.

To honor the body's wisdom is to make space to feel what you are feeling, to drop into the body and allow the sensations, feelings and emotions that are present to be experienced and processed through the body’s awareness.

I want to name that we are experiencing abuse of power on a national level and attempts to undo basic practices of equity and care for folks with already marginalized identities and our earth. This may activate trauma responses or nervous system alerts in our bodies, responses of fear, freeze, rage, fight, anger, grief and overwhelm or feelings and sensations that are hard to feel/name.

What practices help you tend to your body and nervous system, to feel and listen to your emotions?

Bayo Akomalfe quoting a Yoruba saying says: The times are urgent, slow down

Meditation and mindfulness help us presence what we are actually feeling and transmute emotional reactions into wisdom, compassion and right action.

This is a process of recognizing what we are telling ourselves, what thoughts, memories and worries are being triggered—and coming back to our direct experience—here— in this living present. The four foundations of mindfulness is one way of touching into the different realms of our experience, they are:

Feel your body

Feel you feelings

Become aware of mental activity (remember we don’t have to believe our thoughts)

Rest in Awareness itself

Art, exercise, body movement practices, eating good food, taking in beauty, breathing deeply, being around others with regulated nervous systems like (meditation, yoga, art spaces, therapy, natural world) are other important ways to care for, nourish our bodies.

Insight Practice—The dharma teachings remind us that right here, in our present experience, in the imminence of this—there is a refuge that can’t be taken away. All the koans point us back here.

We ask—who is it that is aware? What is this? Not merely as an existential inquiry, but as a way to remember ourselves back to the truth of who we are.

In times of crisis, angst, hopelessness and fear our true nature is right here.

Aware, open, deeply grounded, whole.

Zen awakening reminds us that we can know this freedom in any situation.

Sometimes when things are stripped away, when we are truly facing unc