How I Learned To Stop Hating a Simple Somatic Tool
I used to hate orienting.
In simplest terms, orienting is the practice of slowly looking around. That’s it. Orienting can also include noticing sounds, textures, smells, or tastes.
But when I first tried it (and many times afterward), I didn’t like it. When I moved my gaze around my space, all I could see were things that required my labor, like a cobweb in the ceiling corner or a pile of unfolded laundry. If I were healthy and well, this would have just been annoying.
But since I was very sick and very unwell, I didn’t have the energy for any of these tasks. And I had been without energy and often confined to my bedroom for so long that gazing around that space only reminded me of how long I had been stuck there.
Hard Times Require Furious Dancing
In the midst of the daily grind lately, I’ve often been overtaken by tears, followed by the irresistible impulse to dance.
When I stop and pay attention, my body calls for freedom from the constrained postures of grind culture: shoulders hunched over a laptop, head bent down while fingers tap on a device, eyes tense and fixed on a screen, glutes and hip flexors clenched while driving, legs marching up and down stairs during chores–all the while, the whole body bracing for the next wave of suffering and heartbreak in the world.
Review Your Year With Me
Let’s look back on 2025 together, but not with a “year in review” exercise where you list all your career accomplishments or gratitudes.
Instead I want to focus on these questions:
🌟 How have you experienced both rest and unrest this year?
🌟 What has happened when you have explored the needs and longings of your body, mind, heart, and spirit this year?
Just Trying To Get Through This
Anyone else been flailing around in a storm of overwhelm?
For me, it began with a stomach bug on our way home from a big family trip abroad.
Then my husband Micah caught it.
Our kids started school four days later, with no school supplies because we’d had no time to buy them.
Afterschool activities, backlogged appointments, and unpaid bills immediately clogged the calendar.
Jet lag still plagued me, weeks after our return.
I’ve been doubting my decision to try life without caffeine as I dragged through the days, while also contending with erratic perimenopausal hormones and autoimmune fatigue.
Friends are grappling with hard diagnoses.
Micah returned to work and learned that a family in his community lost their young son.
Stories of heartbreak continue unfolding: genocide and gun violence in the news, deportation and eviction in our community.
Everything’s been a struggle–getting out of bed, helping the kids get ready for school, completing basic work tasks, making meals, just showing up day after day.
I keep asking myself:
How will I get through this?
You Choose How to Meet the Moment
I have been invited to many rallies and protests in 2025.
I have attended zero.
Several years ago, I did things very differently.
I joined a public action at least every few weeks, often with my baby and toddler in tow.
I regularly pulsed with fear and outrage.
I believed that putting my (white and privileged) body in the streets was the most valuable way to show how much I cared.
Learning To Practice Anywhere
I’ve spent a lot of time stretching in airports and train stations recently.
It started in Chicago, just a few minutes before I boarded my flight to Paris. I knew that if my body would be confined to a cramped sitting position with very limited mobility for close to eight hours, it was calling for spaciousness and fluidity while it could get it.
I decided to do some of my somatic practices right there at the crowded gate.
Look for the Magic
By the time you’re reading this, I’ll be on an airplane. I might already be in Paris.
It’s my first trip abroad in almost eight years, and my first solo international trip since I lived in Spain, and traveled through the Iberian Peninsula and the UK, in my mid-twenties.
So you could say it’s been a while.
Back in December, my friend Diana, a former colleague and retired English department chair, proposed the idea of visiting her in Bordeaux. I was intrigued, but mostly hesitant.
You Don’t Have to Perform Wellness
My body started doing weird things in the fall of 2021.
When I lay down, I felt like I was floating on a raft in choppy water. If I turned my head in the opposite direction, it took me a moment to get my bearings again. I often woke up with a throbbing sensation in my skull, like my brain was expanding and contracting to the pulse of a metronome. I would surrender to the floor in the middle of the day, my body overcome with frightening fatigue. I struggled to read simple children’s books with my kids, doubting the accuracy of the words I saw on the page.
In the years leading up to this, I was riding the waves of my early 40s, new parenthood, quarantine life with a toddler and preschooler, devastating wildfires, house renovations, and continuous strife, both on TV and on the streets outside my home in Portland.