Author: Alex Jade

In times of quivering activity, bursting creations, or churning chaos, it is a good idea to have a ‘Sit Upon’.
Years of guiding pelvic floor relaxation and anal breathing led to a collaborative installation at the Seattle Erotic Arts Festival called Better Living through The Root. Part of the installation was small rubber balls nestled atop benches with instructions for how to use them while anal breathing. The most surprising discovery for me was the deep relaxation and connection to my body that arose from sitting on these physical therapy balls. They offered awareness to my pelvic muscles and anus, allowing for full body relaxation and openness.
So now I have been exploring what other items and locations I can ‘sit upon’ to create pelvic awareness. Small curved rocks into which my sits bones can nestle allow for direct connection to my root and the earth. Straddle a log, sit on a small cushion, or discover a mound in the grass.
Nestle your pelvis, breathe, and tell me where you are.
 

Pleasure has power. To understand this concept, think broadly about pleasure. Moments of pleasure—like a pausing for a cup of tea or holding a purring cat—can offer enjoyment and comfort. Sensate pleasures can sooth anxiety, discharge energy, and shift emotional states. Pleasure can offer a pathway to greater resilience.
During periods of overwhelm, fear, grief, or anxiety, pleasure can feel far away and inaccessible. The conscious application of pleasure can balance and ground and open us to a deeper sense support. During challenging times: use pleasure practices.
Begin by making a list of pleasure activities that nourish or are creative. If you can’t figure out what is pleasurable, have someone else suggest three different pleasure activities. Pick one of them then do the activity. If that feels impossible, get help from someone, engage your sensory body, and practice.
This spring, I spend time each day with my hands in the garden soil—even if it is only for ten minutes—connecting, creating, watching the worms and bees move. This pleasure washes the numbness out of my body, and makes my fingers dirty.
— Alex
PS: Don’t forget about Portals of Pleasure! Registration is now open. It happens July 19-23, 2017 near Albuquerque, New Mexico, and women and non-binary folks with some experience in erotic embodiment circles are invited.

Exploring the rhythm within your body directs your focus inward and offers an opportunity to experience your unique pulse and movement. Awareness of your rhythms will bring increased capacity and potency.
The most bold and loud rhythm in your body is your breath. Notice the rhythm of the inhalation and exhalation. Change your breath pattern, and investigate what happens. As your lungs fill with air, your diaphragm moves. Diaphragm movement will elicit other movements throughout your body.
The beat of your heart is a softer rhythm. Can you feel this beat in your chest, through your fingers touching your wrist, or in your belly? When does you heart rhythm increase, how does it slow down?
The subtlest rhythm is, as John Upledger describes it, “the subtle pulsation of the craniosacral system as cerebrospinal fluid circulates through it in a dynamic loop.” You can feel this by touch with your hands or through proprioception in your joints. To explore your craniosacral rhythm, place your hands gently around your ears, using soft contact, and feel with your hands. Notice the expansion and releasing.
Rhythm can be a road map to pleasure, openness, and ease.
xo,
Alex

This time of year germination begins beneath the soil. To germinate, seeds swell with water. The action in germination is a quickening, a transformation of cells. And it requires water.
Winter in Seattle, everything is saturated. Water seeping, spilling, washing, soaking and supporting germination. In some Ayurveda writings, it is noted that drinking water can balance qualities associated with emotional and spiritual emaciation and dehydration.
Take a moment and sense what seeds are dormant, what seeds are swelling. If you feel flat or dry, drink some water. Nurture what is germinating by adding water.

In most places the solstice occurs on December 21st. The North pole is tilted furthest away from the sun, creating long nights in the northern hemisphere and short nights in the southern hemisphere. In the north, this means the longest noontime shadow, with the longest night and shortest day. At the moment that the earth tilt reaches that furthest, there is a pause and then the tilt reverses its course.
The pause is potent, allow for it to create stillness and reflection. Turn off your lights and see what happens. Spend some time during day with only the natural light. Light a candle at night. Pause. Explore the darkness. Pause.
— Alex

“Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the fall, I begin to notice the light changing, leaves falling and my garden harvest. It is also a time when I create an ancestor alter, in honor of those in my life who have passed. Aliveness and death are companions. Honoring those who have died pushes me into my aliveness. How will I engage with life today?
Thank you Mary Oliver, who speaks it so beautifully.
— Alex
When Death Comes
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world
– Mary Oliver

As some of you know, I’ve been drawing a lot lately (i.e., the “secret” coloring book project). That means that I’ve had less time for just reading. I mean, after putting drawing pen to paper for hours, the last thing I want to do is to then put reading eyes to page. Yet still, I can’t pass up a good and fascinating book. This is my current TO BE READ pile. I just added another today. M-U-S-T  S-T-O-P  N-O-W!
The good news is I’m beginning to understand why audiobooks have become wildly popular (sales up 38% in 2015 versus a decline in print and ebooks). But truth be told, I still can’t resist the touch of a good book.
What about you? What’s on your pile? What pages are you caressing?
xo,
Amy

Amy + Alex have been hard at work at a secret project, and it’ll be coming to you completed this winter. They’ve been doing some deep reflection on the chakras, the different senses (did you know there are way more than 5?), and various pleasures (ice cream, citrus) … and it’s culminating in a stunning project. I can’t wait to get my colors + pens on the paper.
Here’s a sneak preview, above, of one of the pages during Amy’s process. 

xo,
Body Trust

The Mother Earth is abundant right now. Fruit is falling off the trees. Some of this fruit will go back into the earths soil and some will go on our shelves.
I’ve been so busy on the farm and in my kitchen, drying, fermenting, canning and freezing.
Sometimes there’s things like, carrot tops that I don’t know what to do with!
Until I found this CARROT TOP PESTO:
Ingredients

• ⅓ cup toasted walnuts or pine nuts
• 1 small clove garlic
• 1 cup coarsely chopped carrot tops (preferably organic)
• big handful of basil leaves (about 1 cup)
• juice of ½ small lemon
• sea salt & freshly ground pepper
• ¼ – ⅓ cup olive oil
• optional: pinch of red pepper flakes
• optional: 1 teaspoon capers
• optional: ¼ parmesan cheese

Considering the earth’s harvest time, what happens if we apply the tantric principle As Within So Without — because it is also As Without so Within.
So my question to you is, what can we reap, gather, collect within ourselves right now?
Find the juiciest answer and ponder what you want to do with it.
Lizz

Light.
Sunlight is essential for all living organisms.
Photosynthesis in plants is light energy converted to carbohydrates, food for insects, animals, and eventually the soil. Light direction and duration promotes the plant growth cycle. Plants turn toward the light. Sunflowers are harbingers of autumn. The diminishing light sends plants into dormancy. Daylight and night rhythm expressed.
For mammals, light and dark rhythm creates the circadian flow in an almost 24 hour period. Sleep, dream, wake, hunger, content/wellbeing, activity, hormone regulation, slowing down, moving into sleep.
Light receptors in our eyes and skin produces the neurotransmitter serotonin and sends information to the pineal gland to produce melatonin. Endocrine system in flow with the earth cycle. The pineal gland initiates the circadian rhythm.
The pineal gland has been called the third eye, producing insight and inner wisdom. In many lizards and frogs there is a parietal eye, the third eye is visible, it winks at the daylight and offers a direct route inward. Daylight produces wakeful consciousness; nighttime produces dream state consciousness. Luminance.
Welcome equinox.
xo, Alex