Finding Wholeness & Balance
As a leader in my community, at work and in my family, I have days where I ebb and flow around the commitments I make to myself. Especially as the world becomes more divided and incredible debts are due.
Think about it. It is often a tough call to decide where to give more of yourself to when you are thinking about that long list of responsibilities to others and your own goals. There literally is only so much time in a day. We all have the same 24 hours.
Despite all my responsibilities, my clearest commitment in the last two years has been to center ancestral wisdom in my life and to embody it mentally, physically and energetically. It is important that all of us recognize this legacy we’ve been given.
Living In Exhaustion
So many of us are living in a constant state of exhaustion. From mental exhaustion, to emotional exhaustion, to energetic or spiritual exhaustion, to literal physical exhaustion.
For so many of us, we are holding down the fort. We're holding down people at work. We're holding down our friends. We're holding down family members, our children. If you have them, you may be holding down a partner.
But yet, we think that if we take on more, then all the people we're supporting, all the forts we're holding down, will eventually thank us and we'll be seen and heard. But we know that model puts us at risk of physical and mental illness. It is not sustainable and it's not guaranteed that you'll be seen and heard simply because you are doing everything for everyone. It is truly exhausting.
And the thing about exhaustion is that when we're really deeply exhausted, we simply do not have the energy to tap in to visioning, to revisit purpose, to check in and say, what is calling me? Who do I want to be? How do I want to feel?
I invite you to watch some of my journey unfold here:
Deeper Embodied Practice
Last December, during a mental and spiritual health breakdown from my own work as a coach and healer, I started considering whether I was truly committed to a deeper embodied practice. Would I have the time and the energy to devote to this practice, a practice where ancestral wisdom was more than a way of restoring myself from exhaustion but actually a pathway toward total and complete liberation in all parts of my life.
It was a big, weighty decision to decide to allow myself to be fully awake and engaged in my own life. I started moving beyond my own yogic, somatic and meditative practices which left my ability to vision the future very small.
Instead I began moving toward a practice of allowing myself to listen to information coming from the energy field around me. Using the indigenous traditions with roots in Africa and the Americas, I began to observe what energy my body responded to. To distinguish that energy from the mental analysis and judgements I use to shape my life choices.
And it continues. This is a live and ongoing journey. This journey will have no endpoint.
I am starting to realize that it's not about succeeding or failing. It is about practicing how to listen in new ways and learning to embrace what is unacknowledged in us. It is about becoming the wise community elder we once admired as children.
It is clear at this time in the world, what we really need is to come back into balance as women. As women of color. As immigrant women and as leaders in our community. It's time to come back into balance and say YES. To ourselves. To our culture. To our community.
Making this kind of pivot is a practice of full embodiment. You can't just sit there and wish it to happen. You have to participate. Your body and spirit must be fully engaged and activated to listen to the field of energy. You have to want to be alive, where even the most mundane things bring you a sense of presence and power.
When you begin to truly feel your emotions, you begin to flow with the energy of life. We can begin to feel by calling for our ancestors in the night sky. Dancing and drumming to bomba y plena until we and the drum are one. Praying for our grandmothers' wisdom and care, singing with Mary J Blige on our road trips, and asking for help from our living ancestors during temazcal.
When we allow it, ancestral wisdom shows up in every corner of our lives. We can draw from it when we need to. We can give to it and combine it with nature's gifts as an offering for ancestral wisdom to show itself.
We don't get to dictate the timeline or how it will show up in our lives. It simply appears and we are okay with that.
My greatest success has been to keep coming back to the practice. To not give up on myself and to realize that reaching my commitments is a continuously evolving process. I am committed to listening to ancestral wisdom. I listen, I receive. I integrate. I grow.
What is your commitment?
How do you listen, receive, and integrate your commitments?
If all of this is hitting home with you, it's time to bring in support, mi amor. It is time to begin your journey. Together we will honor her while growing a stable foundation for your Wild Dreams to take root. If there is a change in your life you have been longing for, I want to invite you to this practice to pivot. Click here to join the waitlist for the next cohort of the Wild Dreams group program.