What Are You Carrying?

What are we doing? What should I be doing now? That's a question a lot of us are asking ourselves right now. I know I am.

What am I doing with my time? Who am I spending my social time with? What work am I engaged in? How am I working for change and who are my collaborators? Have some actions and relationships run their course? Do I need to course correct?

What is my internal environment? Am I excited about what I'm doing? What is juicy? Am I so afraid and depleted that nothing feels like fun?

What I hoped would be happening right now isn't.

Some will take this as a sign to double down and engage with more energy. Some may feel overwhelmed and despairing and not have any energy right now. Exhaustion is a signal to rest and rejuvenate.

We had a big reset with Covid. That abrupt change forced an opportunity to pause, reflect and realign. The trouble is that we were all doing that with hypervigilant nervous systems. Now is also a time of high fear and anxiety.

Our lives and freedoms are not as safe since the US election last week. Human rights and social justice are being further eroded and that will continue under a second Trump presidency. We are in a serious situation. Hard truths were exposed with the election results.

Notice what's here in your body. Are you holding your breath? Do you have sensations of fear? Is your mind going to catastrophic thinking? The trance of worst-case-scenario thinking is compelling and increases our felt sense of danger and hypervigilance.

Somatic mindfulness helps us feel more grounded and centered.

Nervous system regulating practices are based on somatic mindfulness. We notice what is happening in our soma, our body.

Notice if there's a predominant energy in your body right now and notice your response about how you are spending your time. What is it that's coming to mind for you and how does that feel in your body? Our body communicates with us through energy and sensation and is primarily non-verbal.

With somatic mindfulness, we can tune in and notice, ah, I have been feeling this pervasive sense of ...

Take a few breaths if that's comfortable. You might notice the flow of air in your nostrils, and the pace and rhythm. Are you holding your breath? Are you breathing that deep, smooth, continuous diaphragmatic breath? Are you breathing in enough air to nourish the tissues in your body with oxygen?

Notice your body. Is there any part of your body that is attracting your attention? It might be physical, or energetic sensations. We notice and take care of the obvious. Our shoulders are up around our ears which makes it hard to relax and breathe. We might move around a little, let things soften, let ourselves be supported by the chair or whatever is behind your body.

What else might be calming or regulating? You might look around the room, really taking in the present moment, what's happening in the space you're in right now.

Notice the back of the head, neck, shoulders, upper back, mid back. See if you could let your burdens slide off your shoulders and let them release down through your arms and hands, fingers and fingertips.

There's a difference between engaging and taking responsibility, and carrying the weight of the world.

This is not something we can carry on our own. If we're noticing a heavy burden, we could release that for an immediate sense of relief - I'm not going to carry that right now. I might drop that burden for 10 minutes while I rest. After reflection I might choose to let parts of it go forever or I might find different ways to engage.

How am I carrying what's happening in my life, the weight of the world, the weight of my life?

How much of what I'm carrying is mine to carry?

How much of that do I have to carry alone? How and to whom can I reach out to carry it with a partner, friends or in community?

Literally shouldering our responsibilities in community is very different from going it alone.

To bring a bit of ease into this moment, you might bring your shoulders up on an inhale, soften on an exhale. Take a few minutes to do some releasing and assessing - what's happening, what am I carrying? As your muscles are softening, let your mind rest for a moment too.

What am I carrying? Sometimes we lighten the load by sharing it. Sometimes we lighten it by letting go of things that aren’t ours to carry, or maybe not in the way we have carried them. We have a lot of conditioning and beliefs that influence how we see our role and responsibilities.

Bring your awareness back to your whole body, head to toes, head to heels.

What are you carrying in your mind, your thought stream right now? Soften your forehead, eyebrows, and eyes. Notice the energy of the thought stream. Sometimes it's really quiet in a still way or feels sluggish or frozen. It could be compulsive or frantic. Soften the muscles of the forehead and notice what it is that you're thinking about.

This might be in relation to what you're carrying. It might be around the question of whether your life is interesting to you right now. Do you have enough juice, enough loving, enough excitement? It's hard to be open to love and excitement when we're in a survival response of fight/ flight/ freeze/ fawn. Let's sit with that for a moment.

I see that I'm carrying a lot of worry about this particular thing. It's not something I've been able to shift very much. I see I'm spending a lot of energy and I'm being depleted. I'm going to let that go for a while.

Could you imagine putting that aside at least for a while? Notice your whole body as you're entertaining some possibilities.

If you could relax the hinges of your jaw, unclench your teeth, and soften your tongue, is there something you want to say? That you want to stop saying? Sometimes we're holding things in like anger or reluctant to set a boundary. Sometimes we're fawning, and would like to put a pause on that.

What is the energy of speech, your tongue, your throat, your jaw? When we entertain possibilities, that can feel a little scary.

This is not something we need to fix or figure out today, especially if we're wanting to make big changes, or a number of small changes leading to a big change. We could take our time, and come back to this again and again.

What are the obvious things that I'm carrying, and what is the more subtle? What might I open into as a possibility if I let go of some of this other stuff?

Change often feels scary and it helps to acknowledge that. Notice your forehead, your jaw, down into your throat, the sides and back of your neck, shoulders, and then let's go to the chest and the stomach area. What's happening now with your breath? How is your body moving with your breath?

If it feels okay, let yourself breathe as fully as you can without too much effort. Bring in an abundance of oxygen. We need fuel to engage with life. Take in an abundance of air and then release and let it all go. We don't need to hang on to the old stuff. You could sigh or grunt or hum or make some noise, or let the breath be quiet.

Let yourself go where you need to go. Maybe you had an intuitive insight - I'm holding on to something that is not mine, I'm going to look into that over the next days and weeks and months.

Let yourself feel that in your whole body from head to toes. Your nervous system might put on the brakes. Well, I don't know, that's a bit risky. We could allow the nervous system to have its better-safe-than-sorry intervention and we don't have to to believe that's the only way forward.

What if I could bring in this new thing that would give me energy or allow me to contribute in a different way? It might be a kindness and compassion practice. Volunteering? Joining a jazz band? Riding your bicycle a few times a week?

What are you inspired to delve into more deeply?

What needs to shift?

~~~

Resmaa Menakem, in The Quaking Of America, asks us to notice what we experience in our body as we read these words aloud (repeat each three times).

“I live in a time of great peril and great possibility.

I do not and cannot know what will emerge.

As the future unfolds, I will act from the best parts of myself.”

~~~

Grounding and centering in our nervous system is an essential foundation for truly resting and for feeling more alive and curious. Join us every day at 8AM Eastern for a live guided practice. Guided practices, courses and Insight Timer Live several times a week. Join us weekly in our Sunday free community class.

The threat to democracy and the weight of the world is not ours to carry alone.