Do you feel the thinning of the veil that is present at dusk and dawn? As I was moving with the Earth the other evening, the magic felt palpable to me. Movement has become ritual for me, a means through which I can both deeply resource myself and connect with the sacred dimensions of this animal body as part of the wider field.

Here’s what came through after some movement in our garden one evening:

I twist and weave through
The many angles from which
I can see the sky.

The eve time birds
silently gliding back to roost.
The dappled clouds
Smattered across the darkening hues.
The widening and softening back
Of my gaze.
My feet.
And the earth.

And the soft, cool breeze,
Within which I am moving,
Whispering into me
Shape and form
And a growing silence
As my body becomes the dusk.

Settling.

No matter speed or slow,
I am stillness
Moving into darkness.

Time stretches.
Birds glide.
Long grass sweeps upon my feet.

My soul is resting
Upon the ebb of the dimming light.
Breathing here.
Awake to the dreaming.
(Hayley Price (C) )

Sometimes it’s all I can do but offer my voice to the space that holds me, that I move within and remember myself as part of it.

After two hours of immersing my body, breath and being in this space, here is what the land and water and I agreed could be shared from what came through (I didn’t record the rest because it was an offering to the space itself and needed to be solely that).

As I walked down by the river this morning with my daughter, we periodically paused to stand by the waters edge and plop in sticks and stones. We do it when we are by the sea too. We stand there for ages skimming stones and plopping pebbles, breathing in the water and offering our breath back upon the breeze.

This morning, as we took off our shoes and waded in to the water, as she reached down into depths that soaked her rolled up dress and picked up just the right stone, I paused inside myself. 

I connected with a something like a future nostalgia; a feeling I may feel when looking back at these moments. I wondered if, when my children are grown, I will continue to have these simple moments by the water. These pauses in which so much happens and so much connection is made and with so much innocence and playful authenticity. 

This feeling carried me through a plethora of images and stories within myself, all in the space of a few moments. I felt a deep gratitude for the presence of children in my life; mine and those of others. I connected with a grief around the fractious nature of our culture with regards to intergenerational connection in communities, even in families. 

In the world that exists within my body, the memory that exists within my cells was woven back to a time of living in the round, where the presence of all the generations mingled around one circular hearth. In this time we knew ourselves to be part of the natural world and our presence took the colours of the seasons as we pulsed through the life-death-life cycle in concert with all that did the same around us.

This memory has been passed through the fluid exchange that happens at all moments when one living entity meets another, in our very bodies which are made of earth and star. 

And I look at the world now and my heart breaks as the grabs for power and control usurp and undermine this beautiful, fully alive and wise presence. And I wonder what can be done….

Back to the river. Back to this moment with my daughter. Back to children and their beautiful, fully alive, wise presence. 

Often we think that it is the adults who are giving to the children. Yes, indeed we are, but did you notice the exchange that is occurring; the softening of the edges; the welcoming in of this presence that knows itself as part of this natural world that children, when offered the circumstances, embody so fully?

This is but one of the gifts that they bring and one that I am so very grateful for. Without my children, I would indeed relate to the natural world and I may even get there with feeling part of it… yet, there is something about how they show me the way, especially in their early years. 

Here is a little invitation to you if you do not have children in your life and you would like to: Seek out and befriend a family (honestly it is SO likely they will welcome you in and please don’t leave it all to them to make the effort), clear some space in your diary and prioritise some time for hanging out with the future generation… why?

Well, because in all that you have to share with them, you may discover they have a multitude to give you in return, without even trying! And, of course, because they are the future generation and do you not also mourn the loss of connection between generations? If we want to gently weave our culture back together in a healthy way, we must embrace these young ones as part of it.

As we leave my daughter speaks to the river: ‘Bye Bye river’ she says, using the words she knows. She waves emphatically and speaks it over and over again. She cries a little as we leave and wants to go back. It is as though she is leaving a dear friend or family member. I sing a song to the river to offer thanks for having us there and I wave too. I also feel as though I am parting from something I dearly love and cherish, something that pulses with life, just as I do. 

I carry her back to the car and she suckles on my breast along the way, water for water, life for life. We are all flowing in and out of each other all the time, the only question is, can we attune to it and, when we do, what shifts inside with regards to our relationship with life?

(I have no photograph of this moment. My phone is often far far away from me when the best moments happen. Her is a photo of a river.) xx

Recently I have been unexpectedly tumbled into a process around my willingness to be with and reclaim those parts of myself I have exiled for some reason or another. In this case, it has been around belonging and my heartbreak, grief and despair at the fractured state of humanity in these times.

I am also digging deep and reclaiming some of resources that help me to be with these big feelings: the simple things I can put in place that orient me to health and wellness amidst these big feelings.

I am noticing a deep sensitivity to polarising language, how it lands in my body and how it can cast into exile some of the marginalised parts of myself and how that can be reflective of marginalisation in culture. I am engaging in an enquiry around how I can more clearly communicate an intention towards something that is more inclusive and welcoming of all that we bring in our wholeness.

I am unpacking my desire to belong alongside a need to move slowly in relationships to develop trust over time and tune in to heart felt resonance. I am asking questions about what community really means, about how we create spaces where we hold each other through the expression of our joy and playfulness as well as through our grief, anger and longing. Spaces where we can come as we are and we are held through the healthy, mature expression of the wild array of experience that is available to us as humans.

More and more, I am turning towards parts of myself for wisdom and guidance that over time I have been developing relationship with; my own anger; my own fear; my own grief; my own longing. Time and time again I find a resistance in myself to turn to face these feelings, a desire to bypass them into something idealistic and inauthentic. Yet, each time I do – and I do so in a healthy and resourced way, say through movement, voice and breath – they have so much wisdom buried at their core. So much so that they have become inextricably connected to my capacity to experience joy and playfulness. The seemingly vast crevice between these polarities (say, joy & fear) narrows to be connected through a breath.

Connecting with my anger gives me a sense of healthy boundary and its expression along with a clarity about my edges. Connecting with my fear offers me vision of the kind of world I would like to live in. Connecting with my grief allows energy to move through me and creates space for what is new to arrive in my body. Connecting with longing connects me with beauty and art and poetry that deeply settles my nervous system. Connecting with joy allows me to feel part of something larger than myself and brings me hope. Connecting with playfulness brings me a sense of belonging in community. I am speaking into a healthy and mature embodiment of these emotions. There are times I am lost in these experiences too and it is in these times that I need to pause, take a breath and resource myself so I can find the gold at their core.

I wrote this poem in response to a process I have recently been going through around my questions about community and how we are there with and for each other. It’s a big question for me as I feel so comfortable to bring these feelings into my own personal realm or explore them within a therapeutic relationship or a group container I have built safety with over time.

My question and my longing here are around how we create a culture of safety that these processes are welcomed in our communities and are seen as part of normal life and deeply interwoven with our relationship with the sacred. The deeper my well, the more energy I can hold as well as move through me; the more the presence I offer is dynamic, responsive, living and inclusive. I include nature and the other-than-human as part of our community web.

Who will catch me when I fall?
Who will hold me in the warmth
Of their embrace as
I let go,
As I strip myself down
To the bare bones of
Who I think I am and
Birth again anew?

Who will catch me and
Simply hold me?
Who will let me know they are there
By the depths of their presence and
Willingness to be with me as I am?

Who will hold me and
Not try to save me?
While I sob and writhe and
Scratch at soil,
Messy with snot and salt and
Tears.

Who will walk beside me, silently,
To the underworld?
That I may retrieve something of
My exiled self.
That I may reclaim it 
As part of who I am in my wholeness.

And who will sit with me
While I dance, sing and write poetry as
I try to make sense of
What I have found,
Even if it doesn’t make sense to them?

I have accompanied myself upon
This journey many a time.
I feel the support of unseen forces 
Guiding me through the terrain.
And, to those, I bow in gratitude.

And still, I long to
Lean in to the warm human bodies
Of those who know the territory.

What will it take for
Communities to come together
And hold each other in this way?
Hearts pulsing in resonance,
Bodies connecting through
Shared tears and laughter,
Voices echoing a shared longing,
Recognising beauty in all life.

Here I am.
And I will hold my intention,
Though there are times I will fail,
To see the gold at your core
With all that you bring.
In all that you are.

Come as you are to me.
And let us give each other
The gift of seeing and 
Of being seen.
As animal and angel,
As earth and sky
As human and divine.

I made this recording for a group I have been facilitating and thought I would share it with you all as a resourcing, grounding practice during these challenging times.

The first track is Embodied Relaxation, the relaxation practice I share that fuses the principles of yoga nidra with somatic relaxation. This can be done as a stand alone practice or can be followed by the second track: Bone, Breath and Earth.

Bone, Breath and Earth brings the awareness in to the grounding qualities of bone and connects them with our breath and the earth through improvised movement.

I recommend having a journal handy, perhaps some art materials or anything you may have gathered from nature to make with, following the practice. This is to help bridge any unconscious material that may arise during the practice into conscious awareness so it can be integrated. Writing, drawing and/or making can aid this process.

Here’s the link to the practices. May they be useful for you.

If trauma is present for you, sometimes embodied practice can be triggering. If at any time during these practices you feel disoriented or triggered, allow your eyes to open and orient by tracking your eyes through the space around you, feel the contact points of your body with the ground and allow your attention to externalise, while attempting to maintain a sense of ground. I also recommend working in person with a skilled practitioner who is trauma informed.

It’s alright, my love,
We don’t have to agree on everything…
Surely we can still find 
The places where we can meet,
The places where we
Remember the humanity in each other.

I won’t throw out the attributes
Of love, of compassion, of kindness in you.
Please don’t throw them out in me
Because we disagree.

Look harder, can you still see them?
I see yours.
And I know it’s difficult.
I feel threatened too and
That makes me what to close off to you.

It’s just that, at the moment,
I notice so much division,
So much pain and fear,
That I question what motivates me 
To shut you out.

It’s true, there are some
I have had to walk away from over the years.
Because meeting and feeling met
Is something reciprocal.

In the cases where I have felt I am
Over reaching, over extending, 
Over accommodating to meet another
I have had to walk away.

Even still, I recognise that
Whatever it is in that person that 
Can’t meet me or 
That I can’t meet in them
Doesn’t mean that
They are wrong or bad.

It doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of
Depth of relations with others or 
That there are parts of them where
We may, one day, find a meeting place.

Sometimes there is
Abuse of power and then it is
Clear to walk away or speak out.
Sometimes the abuse is not so clear.
It’s more complex then.

When it comes to the world at the moment.
When my heart bleeds with the division I see.
I’m looking again into my being and 
I am wondering how we can allow
Our differences without writing each other off
Because of our pain, our fear, our relationship with death and change?

Imagine a world where we all agreed.
Wouldn’t it be a bit bland and lacking in creativity?
Where we rub up against each other is
Where we find our edges.
We just haven’t been taught how to do this
In a way that is constructive.

I’m learning. We’re learning. Slowly. 
There’s a lot of repair to be done. 
A lot of years of closing off to each other,
Of disrespecting boundaries,
Of disrespecting choice,
Of labelling each other into fixed boxes,
Of abuse, gas lighting and
A habit of ‘us and them’ thinking.

I’ll try not to see this so
Right and left so
Black and white so
Us and them.
Will you?

Hayley Price (C)

I’ve struggled with saying I practice ‘yoga’ for years now and yet, I still move in a way that could be called yoga almost every day!
It’s been a huge journey – one of exploring the patriarchy, appropriation, throwing the baby out with the bath water and then learning to re-relate with it. More on that another time….
I’m arriving at a place with it where my relationship with the practice feels much more authentic and healthy, phew! And I embrace the practice of breath with movement for all its resourcing qualities.
Here’s a wee glimpse into what a practice MIGHT / MAYBE / NOT ALWAYS look like these days (it’s different every time as over 20 years of practice has guided me to meet my body where it is and respond to it – moment to moment).
The video speeded up so it’s 4x as fast as I was actually practicing so the shaking looks MEGA! The point is connection – with myself, bodysoulmind, environment, breath… enjoy x

Here’s a wee poem I wrote a while ago…

‘We cannot reach for the sky in any meaningful way until we embrace the dark, moist mud of our Earthen selves.’…

Strongly rooted,
Our bellies breathe fully
The air that fuels us.

Our hands reach and
Fingers spread like
Branches stretching out.
We touch the heavens.

Still,
Our leaves will fall and
Return to the ground,
In which our
Roots remain,
Sinking ever deeper into
Our beloved Earth. 

And,
Eventually the fleshy, boney
Decay of our bodies will,
Too,
Offer themselves back into the soil.
Dreaming into another form;
To be born, to live and return
within the cycles of nature’s timeless pulse.

We cannot reach
For the sky in
Any meaningful way until
We embrace the dark,
Moist mud of our Earthen selves.

Hayley Price (c)

A movement offering  and poem to a moment I shared with the incredible light that touched the daffodils and crocuses.

The incredible light

There was something about the
Light this morning
That so piercingly illuminated the
Crocuses and daffodils as they
Burst into colour through the soil.

My heart couldn’t bear it.
She burst too.
And inside a grief,
A fluttering anxiety as
I Let the wild and tenacious
Fragility of our world
Touch my open heart.

I almost couldn’t look anymore.
But I did.
I softened my gaze and
Kept allowing the
Beauty of this earth to
Reach inside of me and
Weave invisible threads of
Belonging and connection in to
The soft soil of my body.

It isn’t comfortable
Every time the needle pierces and
Pulls another thread through.
But, as the tapestry begins to
Take form, I see a beauty much
Larger than myself and the
Pain becomes as fundamental as
The sun and clouds
Painting colours through the sky.

Hayley Price (C)

Our next Nurturance group will be on exploring our cells: the communities that live within ourselves and how they connect us to our wider environment, and each other.

Some thoughts and inspirations:

‘Cells don’t live in isolation. This simple fact offers a lesson about our lives: Living creatures are tender and vulnerable and only thrive in situations that offer supportive context. If a person stops feeling connected to community and world, he or she will not thrive.’
(How life Moves, Caryn McHose & Kevin Frank)

Does this strike a chord within you? What arises?
I’m curious.

Looking in, I sense a longing. A truth that lands, quite literally, within my cells. Sensing in to my cells I find the edge where my self meets the world around me. I am both individual and part of a much larger living matrix.

And, yet, here we are living in isolation from each other – in the wider world I mean.
I wonder what that does to our cells?

The longing within my cells is to live this truth of ‘supportive context’ – I need you and you need me. Yet, there is also a wisdom that speaks to me of the importance of boundaries – also embodied within the cell. How do I be me, with you – and how do I let you be you, with me? And how do I embody a reciprocal relationship with our world? How do we live in dynamic alignment with one another?

It strikes me that somewhere along the way, our essential trust in one another has been severed. The nervous system can recognise the ‘other’ as a threat – and very likely for a wise reason that served in a particular situation. That situation may no longer be the living truth but the pattern sticks as a survival mechanism repeating itself through relational experience. How do we learn to trust one another again? Equally, how do we stand in our own presence as worthy of another’s trust? How do I trust myself in a world of so many voices, with such diversity? How do I learn to be responsive to each moment with regards to trust?

‘Some… may notice that to feel comfortable they need to move their body away from the group. [They] may then judge themselves as lacking capacity for intimacy. It is important to point out that acknowledging the level of proximity that is truly comfortable is the beginning of self-organisation and regulation of health. By noticing what is true for us, we can be spatially far but relationally present because a key barrier to relationship has been removed. Often our greatest barrier to health is an image of what should be. We encourage enquiry in to what is true in the absence of judgements and self-image.’
(How life Moves, Caryn McHose & Kevin Frank)

In my very early 20’s I witnessed many self development / ‘body based’ groups that asked me to come closer when I felt safer on the periphery. I have been told I need to be more open, when openness was defined by the amount of physical contact I was willing to endure or how much of my personal story I was willing to divulge. I have also had my boundaries outright violated without permission sought at all. I say this not as victim but as someone who is walking the long road of taking back ownership of my edges, learning to feel them, learning to trust and embody them.

I seek safer sanctuary and trust my story with those I sense can hold it, with those who can be with me, while staying within themselves; with whom I can stay within myself while being with.

Empathic connection isn’t found in projecting myself in to you – or allowing you to project yourself in to me –  and vulnerability isn’t telling you every secret I hold. I find those qualities in the ability to locate myself within myself when I am with you; to know where I stand with you, while being receptive to your presence and the space between us. Dynamic relational attunement.

And, so importantly, to allow myself to be at the periphery until my body invites me to move a little closer. To get to know my edge, I must first be able to feel it – otherwise, how do I know where I am, let alone where I am in relationship?

This, I believe, is where trust begins; at our edges. These edges are not fixed places. They can change, but we must get to know and embrace them before we can allow a new sense of edge to emerge. How many times have you overridden your body / needs in order to fit in, or people please, or because you simply don’t even know where you end and another begins?

In somatic practice, we explore these boundaries in a safe environment, within small groups. We works at the pace of nervous system integration. We don’t seek ‘intense’ experience, rather allow integrative ones; ones that allow us to land in our skin and point towards the regeneration of healthy connection with each other.

Sensing in to my cells there is both a longing for connection and closeness and a need for safety, for boundary. Seemingly opposite experiences yet I find connection within both. There’s a community within myself that I think may know a bit more about this. I’m delving in to the wisdom of my cells to enquire more…

Does this strike a chord with you? What arises?
I’m curious.