Befriending Discomfort
It’s finally feeling spring-like here today in this little corner of the Mojave high desert. The raging winds have quietened. I didn’t have to stoke the fire at dawn, and it was just warm enough to sit outside this morning and soak up some gentle sunshine. A couple of snake trails were spotted on our hike. That sense of seasonal newness is just a hair’s breadth away.
A mama dove is brooding on her eggs in the barn as Oli, my husband shares the space with her, letting his presence inform her that she and her eggs are safe while he’s in there, woodworking.
Yay, spring! The season of life bursting forth from under the ground, from the time of gestation + hibernation in the darkness of winter, up into the sunlight above the ground.
This involves leaning into the discomfort of expanding our growing edges, much like saplings and seedlings leaning into the discomfort + mystery of the natural process of growth.
Spring is a portal into the trust and surrender of growing, allowing, and doing from this place of openness.
Becoming friendly with discomfort is incredibly helpful in this process.
This change of seasons reminds us of the potential for new beginnings available to us on so many levels: the coming of spring, the monthly new moon and its waxing phase, the dawning of a new day and the inhalation of breath, to name a few.
Nature is generous: we have the opportunity to align our becoming and dissolving to micro and macro rhythms, and remind ourselves that we’re part of a much larger process.
There’s also an invitation into the adventure of collaboration + participation in this process. One of the essential ways to begin this journey is through befriending and becoming comfortable with discomfort.
Here, a disclaimer: this is categorically not about condoning the discomfort of abuse of any kind in any way.
It’s important to wield discernment in this area, and we can do that somatically, through our bodies, through the understanding that:
There’s always discomfort in threat. But discomfort is not always threatening.
If we have experienced abuse in the past and there’s trauma stuck in our nervous systems, there’s a strong chance that our threat responses (flight, flight, freeze + fawn) are hypervigilant and have become blended or overcoupled with present time instances of discomfort that are not threatening, and that are in fact beneficial.
But our unconscious terrain doesn’t live in linear time. And our nervous systems + bodies are one of the most direct ways to access our unconscious neurology, where unresolved past trauma + threat have become overcoupled with healthy discomfort in the present time.
This is where we mistakenly accuse ourselves of self-sabotage, (creating further Self alienation) when in fact what’s going on is that our nervous system is stuck and looping in an expired self-protective program that once upon a time was crucial for our survival.
To address this, as we begin this season with the practice of Embracing Discomfort in Root + Rise, we’ll also be doing the somatic work of uncoupling threat from healthy discomfort in our online group sessions to properly resource our nervous systems and create some clarity and organization in our neurology.
In other words, we’ll be resolving the activation of past trauma as we practice leaning into healthy discomfort in the present time. This is helpful because it stops us from “frying” or over-activating our nervous systems if there’s past trauma overcoupled with present time non-threatening experiences.
The vibrant and resolving container of our season’s myth, the Indigenous Australian Dreamtime creation story of Baiame & Yhi will situate what we do within the larger context of the cycles of nature - which we’re never separate from.
Registration closes on 31 March at midnight PST.