Awakening

In Saturday Somatics, we often center the work we do with our bodies around a theme, inviting the physical movement to connect to the things we need to move in our minds and hearts. The theme from the last session was “Awakening,” and to start the session, I shared a story about orchids, my fundamental inability to grow things, and the power of perception (but also about awakening.) It went something like this:

Several years ago, I picked up an orchid from the grocery store. I’d long admired them from afar, but my wise self had cautioned against bringing one home as I have ZERO ability to keep plant life alive. On this day though, I’d read “Just Add 3 Ice Cubes!” on the tag and thought, “Wait! Even I CAN ADD 3 ICE CUBES!” and so I took her home, put her in the sunlight, and dutifully added the three ice cubes every single week without fail. For months, that orchid bloomed and every new bud brought me an incredible sense of pride, making room for the possibility that maybe I WASN’T fundamentally flawed when it came to caring for new life.

Then one day, the last bloom fell off and “the stick” as I called it (I’ve since found out it’s called a “spike” for those of you who are plant-impaired like me) turned brittle and brown and I thought, “FUCK. I killed it.” And so I did what any self-respecting plant-killer would do - I disposed of the evidence in the garbage immediately, and drove myself to the store to replace the plant I’d just lost.

Again, I brought her home, deposited three ice cubes in her container every week, and AGAIN, the blossoms fell off and the stick/spike turned brown and brittle. “WHAT IT MY PROBLEM?!?” I wondered, but before I took this one to the garbage, I decided to google the issue and discovered that orchids, like all living things, do not bloom all year long. They require long periods of rest - periods during which they show nearly no signs of life - in order to produce the visual splendor of their petals during their active periods. The orchid wasn’t dead. It was dormant. And the difference between the two makes all the difference in the world.

During the first week of this sequence, I shared this story and told the class after that I had been struggling so much with experiencing joy. My family had a very hard year last year - lots of painful loss - and no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t muster even a moment of joy. This felt incredibly disconcerting because at the same time as I was experiencing this absence of joy, my daughter had also brought home my first grand baby, and if there were ever an invitation to joy, it should most certainly be in response to a brand new baby. But even when I looked at him, I knew I loved him, but I couldn’t feel anything beyond that knowledge.

And it was from this personal place that I planted the intention of our sequence -the intention that we would awaken because what I know, with certainty, is this:

There is something in you - something that you believe you’ve lost, something you believe to be dead - but if you’re still breathing, it isn’t dead yet. Not your joy or your peace or your freedom or your hope. It’s just dormant and your only job is to keep watering it until it awakens.

And if you need a place to wait while it slumbers, we’ve got our doors - and our arms - wide open. We’ll wait with you until you wake up and then we’ll celebrate the morning by your side.

Awakening (reflection)

I don’t know what is ready to wake in you.

I don’t know if you put it to sleep to stop it from screaming or if it simply nodded off because the days had been too long or the night had been too dark.

I don’t know if its slumber is light. If it startles easily while you shush it back to sleep or if it is dead to the world, so far from the hope of daybreak that it cannot be roused.

But what I do know is this:

If it’s ready to wake, it will wake whether you’re ready or not. The choice you get to make is in how you greet it. Choose the way that makes you both remember that you’re not dead yet. I’ll do the same, and together, we just might find a bit of new life for us both.