My reactions to living in our gorgeous rental space are kind of mixed.
On the one hand, I’m daily delighting in new wonders: “this is how I sleep when it’s not insanely noisy!” “We can walk everywhere!!”
On the other hand, there are boxes everywhere, and I’ve completely messed up my tailbone with all the lifting and bending from the move, so the boxes are not getting unpacked and put away nearly as fast as I’d like.
It seemed like the choice was between having a body in incredible pain (if I move one of my legs wrong, or sit down without a doughnut cushion, I might cry for ten minutes) and having a house in incredible incongruence for much longer than I’d like.*
*Obviously the hubsters is helping tons both with unpacking and with giving me massages, but he is only one person and gets worn out just like the rest of us.
Add to that the urgency of wanting to get back to my art (which in this case, means business) while my muse is speaking to me, and I was looking at a situation likely to go nowhere good.
Where do you turn when all the options look bad?
In this case, I turned to Stompopolis (where I stand watch as pirate crew a few times a week), and committed myself to two hours of filling-up.
Ringing the bells
We learned this thing at a Pirate Crew Rendezvous vous vous (it echoes) the other day where you pretend you are a bell of some quality and you ring yourself. Like this: “Ring the bell of sovereignty!” and then you imagine yourself ringing with sovereignty.
Like everything awesome many things I love, it sounds completely wacko a little bit weird, but when I do it my entire body erupts into shivers and the very air around me changes. So I’ve been doing it all the time.
I started today with an epic calf cramp followed by holy-shit-my-tailbone-is-dying, so when I got to the Playground, the last thing I wanted to do was jump straight into Shiva Nata or Yoga. What I could manage was to sit on a cushion and ring bells. And more bells. And more bells.
Qualities of delight, sweetness, creativity, grounding, sovereignty, possibility, play, love, kookiness, mice-of-unlikeliness-hanging-out-in-corners, more sweetness, knowing, heldness… etc.
And every two qualities or so I’d yawn and stretch out my neck or shoulders in some new way. Then more bells, more yawning, more itsy bitsy stretches.
Call in the Shiva Nata
Eventually I felt okay enough to do some Shiva Nata. I chose the words resonance, presence, trust, and radiance for the verticals. I chose possibility, sweetness, effervescence and one other word that I forgot and replaced with “everything” for the horizontals.
I sat myself down on a comfy stool and started going through bits of level one, changing the direction I faced with every starting position. Then I did some level two. Then a bit of level three. And though I wasn’t aware I knew level four, I did all of it as well (stopping often for confusion, more stretching, more bell ringing, and sometimes to get up and blow some bubbles.)
This lasted over an hour, which had my monsters in a tiff. They thought I wasn’t making things hard enough, was taking way too long to get to any kind of swirled out space.
And then abruptly at the last starting position of level 4, I just couldn’t think any more. All the positions were gone from my head. All the words. All the everything.
Letting the emptiness ring
So I lay down to do some Shavasana, letting that emptiness ring through my space, asking that the blocks I see before me be reconfigured, that I come into present time with new options.
After a few minutes I decided to lightly (and carefully) stretch a bit before getting up to journal. It turned out the stretching felt too good to stop.
The pain was there, yes, though quieter than it had been. I played with it. Can we twist this way? What if I put my foot over there? If I go slow slow slow slow slow, can I stretch the hurting calf just a little bit?
The baby woke up for this part, so I was accompanied by all kinds of fun kicks and somersaults.
I started breathing more and more deeply as I rocked my pelvis, noticing how little I’ve been inhabiting that space as I run away from the pain of it. I twisted into the most crazy shapes – stretches I couldn’t do even when my body was in excellent condition and getting daily yoga.
The air quality changed. I rang a bell of “present time” and suddenly all of Stompopolis became deeper, more magical, filled with possibility. Everywhere I looked there were several dimensions, hidden delights waving hello.
My own force field felt lighter and clearer than it ever had, but somehow stronger as well. I was taking up so much space, expansive and light.
No mental epiphanies today
I kept wondering what the page would have to say to me when I got to it. Today’s journalling would have to be filled with crazy epiphanies! But I never got up to journal.
Instead I followed portal after portal in my body. Feeling the hidden physical and energetic ties between the most unlikely places. Finding pleasure in pain, pain in pleasure, and radiant presence everywhere.
This, to me, is (one of) the essence(s) of mindful sexuality. Coming home into ourselves. Finding so many more hidden places than we’d thought existed.
I could have spent two hours in Stompopolis making a list of things to do today. Finishing up thank-you cards. Journalling with a part of myself or my business.
But I followed Shiva Nata into my body instead, and now everything is different. More beautiful. Less painful. More clear.
There are still boxes to be unpacked. There is still a tailbone-of-Rhiannon that is not at all happy with how it’s been treated lately. But life just got so much bigger than that.
My wish for you today, if you want it, is this sense of expansion. May it wait for you in an unlikely place and sweep you out of your regular orbit at the delightful right time.
Love,
Rhiannon + babylet + tailbone
P.S – If you missed out on the Mindful Sexuality Blanket Fort and want a chance to buy the recording + ebook at a discount, sign up for the Sneaky Peeks Discount List. I should be sending out an e-mail with details in the next few days.
