Amy talks with writer, performer, and educator Jen Cross about her new book and how writing is an embodied practice available to all of us, not just to heal trauma but also to celebrate our passions.
Find out more about Jen here: http://writingourselveswhole.org
Jen’s recently published book is Writing Ourselves Whole: Using the Power of Your Own Creativity to Recover and Heal from Sexual Trauma
If you are in San Francisco, come to the book’s launch party on December 5, 2017 in San Francisco (more info here)
Other resources mentioned:
Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma
Pat Califia, Macho Sluts and other books
Dorothy Alison, Bastard Out of Carolina and other books
Pat Schneider, Amherst Writers & Artists method
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves
Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, The Trauma Stewardship Institute
Music: Grateful to Little Dog Big Ears for their Creative Commons licensed music She Sees Mice (intro and outro). Make sure to subscribe in iTunes or Sticher. And give us a 5-star review in iTunes, it helps us reach more beloved explorers.
Author: Amy Butcher
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I’ll bury my nut my own way.
November’s theme is all about resilience. Think of those squirrels burying their nuts in the ground in preparation for the coming winter*.
Lately, though, I’ve been thinking of resilience not in the sense of planning ahead or bouncing back, all in an effort to avoid or get out of discomfort. Instead, I’ve been thinking about resilience as the capacity to stay in discomfort and to find inspiration in that friction.
Alex and I had long conversations about this very topic during the Wonder Body Connection Tour. Perhaps this comes from my New England Puritanical roots but, as we discussed the “healing power of pleasure,” some part of me resisted that concept, hearing in “pleasure” the concept of hedonism, at worst, or pacification, at best.
When I think of resilience, I want to push towards something else. I want to, at worst, develop the capacity to stand in the discomfort and, at best, have the courage take action even when discomfort still exists.
Many years ago, I remember standing on a high log element of a ropes course (yes, a real log stretched between two trees, 40′ up in the air, but me on belay with rope and harness—in other words, real fear but not real danger). My legs were shaking so much I could hardly move. I waited, thinking eventually they would stop and then I could dance with grace across the log. But they didn’t stop. They continued to vibrate like a sewing machine. Finally I realized that I would have to find a way to move *with* the shaking, instead of waiting (hoping?) for it to stop. And so I took that first step—awkwardly and without grace—and then another, until I found myself mid-log, suddenly clear that comfort is not a prerequisite to action.
This concept was re-inspired for me recently at the National Center for Civil & Human Rights in Atlanta where an amazing experiential exhibit allowed me to viscerally imagine what it might have been like to sit poised and determined at the lunch counter protests, even in the midst of screams and threats. Would I have had that type of courage?
And so I wonder, how do we cultivate the capacity to stay embodied, aware, grounded, and focused, even as our legs are shaking? What’s your relationship to resilience, pleasure, and fortitude?
— Amy
* Just in case, I searched for youtube videos on the subject and found this silly one.
Thank you, Mark Fleming and Jay Craver!
Music: Grateful to Little Dog Big Ears for their Creative Commons licensed music She Sees Mice (intro and outro). Make sure to subscribe in iTunes or Sticher. And give us a 5-star review in iTunes, it helps us reach more beloved explorers.
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Update: Wonder Body Connection Tour
The Wonder Body Connection Tour is all over the place, bringing the aliveness of the coloring book near and far. We’ve started describing it as “an embodiment guide disguised as a coloring book.”
I’m looking at this as a chance for me to explore what markers of community say “safe” to me, and which ones say “caution.” Can I test what assumptions are beneath those judgements? Can I adjust those that need changing. I feel untethered in a good way, with the veil between the “known” world and the “discoverable” one being worn thinner. I’m in a deep meditation on what it takes to make connection, to push the conversation to the places that get to the heart of the matter—whatever that may be.
Right now, Alex and I are in Asheville, NC and will be heading to Savannah this weekend, before making our way to Atlanta. You can keep up with all the latest adventures at bodytrustcircle/wonder-body/tour (we just redid it so it’s now very pretty!). It’s sure to be full of surprises.
We’d love to see you!
— Amy
Lizz is off this week but I miss her and so I can feel the impulse to channel something that is about food and nurturance.
With fall closing in, and with all the natural (and man-made) disasters swirling around the globe, it seems a good time for an anchoring stew, something that might tether me to the present. Therefore, I offer you Brazilian Black Bean Vegetarian Stew, courtesy of Vegetarian Times . Yum!
— Amy
Brazilian Black Bean Stew
6 servings
30 minutes or fewer
Here’s a quick vegetarian version of the Brazilian national dish known as feijoada. This stew entices the eye with the colorful contrast of black beans and sweet potatoes and pleases the palate with nourishing ingredients.
1 Tbs. vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 medium cloves garlic, minced
2 medium sweet potatoes (1 to 1 ¼ lbs.), peeled and diced small (1/4″)
1 large red bell pepper, diced
14.5-oz. can diced tomatoes
1 small hot green chili pepper, or more to taste, minced
1 1/2 water or less (try 1 1/4 next time)
2 16-oz. cans black beans, drained and rinsed
1 ripe mango, pitted, peeled and diced or Frozen OK too
¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro
¼ tsp. salt
Meal plan:
In large pot, heat oil over medium heat. Add onion and cook, stirring often, until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in garlic and cook, stirring, until onion is golden, about 3 minutes.
Stir in sweet potatoes, bell pepper, tomatoes (with liquid), chili and 1 1/2 cups water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer until potatoes are tender but still firm, 10 to 15 minutes.
Stir in beans and simmer gently, uncovered, until heated through, about 5 minutes. Stir in mango and cook until heated through, about 1 minute. Stir in cilantro and salt. Serve hot.
Thanks to Mark Michaels & Patricia Johnson! Follow their work at tantrapm.com
We especially recommend their book Tantra for Erotic Empowerment
Music: Grateful to Little Dog Big Ears for their Creative Commons licensed music She Sees Mice (intro and outro). Make sure to subscribe in iTunes or Sticher! And give us a 5-star review in iTunes, it really helps us out.
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Mindfulness has a downside?
I always cringe, just a little, when I hear someone speak seriously about “mindfulness”.
What they are saying makes sense. It is important to be present in, well, the present—rather than the past, the future, or some story inbetween. But there is often another layer of meaning in their serious talk, often unconscious, that can easily slide down the slippery slope towards narcissism, self-involvement, and a kind of spiritual hoarding.
We tried to talk about this in the “4th Chapter” of the coloring book: the whole point of embodiment is to increase your capacity for connection and resonance with others.
Take a look at this recent Washington Post article by Thomas Joiner and see what you think about where things might go wrong. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
xo,
Amy
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What’s the point of coloring?
“What’s the Point of All This?”
In the last chapter of the Wonder Body coloring book, we tried to articulate why something as seemingly frivolous as coloring might actually be important, critical even, in these challenging political times. With all that has happened this past week, this question seems as important than ever.
Here is what we spoke in the coloring book. See if has resonance for you now.
The body as a tool of connection
The mass of cells, science, and spiritual principles that we call our body is alive. We are complex super generators of sensation, energy, emotion, cognition, and intelligence. Bodies are mechanisms of engagement, the vehicles in which we participate in living. Our alive individual self only exists in connection; living is a process of engagement and exchange, whether we are aware of it or not.
Individuated and interdependent
Resilience—the ability to spring back into shape after impact, loss, and severing—keeps us alive. It is through awareness of interconnection that resilience thrives. Awareness and tuning of your whole body fully primes your engagement with the world. Yes, bodies are amazing resources for pleasure.
This pleasure is important—essential even. And bodies are also hypersensitive tools of connection. Part of the joy of living in a body is not just knowing our own individual experience but also in having the capacity to be in resonance with others, to sense—through our bodies—their pain, love, and hope and how it mirrors our own. Our embodied intelligence and attunement can heal wounds.
By coloring these pages you have fine-tuned your awareness, including the awareness of your body and the priming of its capacity. Treat it like the gift that it is and share it, ensuring this magical potency continues to grow.
We encourage you to feel into the web of connections. Be generous with yourself and others. Be a place of refuge of safety and compassion because…
…you’ve got superpowers now!
xo,
— Alex & Amy
Show notes:
Pleasure Lab Episode 3 of season 3 includes an interview between Betty Martin and Zed Meade.
Betty Martin’s work can be found at BettyMartin.org, along with lots of information about the Wheel of Consent.
Books and inspiration mentioned in this episode are:
Full Spectrum Sex by Isa Magdalena, and more of her work on isa-magdalena.com
Science for Sexual Happiness: A Guide to Reclaiming Erotic Pleasure by Caffyn Jesse
Sexual Intelligence: What We Really Want From Sex and How To Get It by Marty Kline
Our lovely intro and outro is “She Sees Mice” by Little Dog Big Ears, borrowed under a Creative Commons licensed music
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A combustion of words
A poem, an offering
This delightful poem speaks of combustion, our planetary theme for August.
Enjoy!
—Amy
Combustion
Sara Eliza Johnson
If a human body has two-hundred-and-six bones
and thirty trillion cells, and each cell
has one hundred trillion atoms, if the spine
has thirty-three vertebrae—
if each atom
has a shadow—then the lilacs across the yard
are nebulae beginning to star.
If the fruit flies that settle on the orange
on the table rise
like the photons
from a bomb fire miles away,
my thoughts at the moment of explosion
are nails suspended
in a jar of honey.
I peel the orange
for you, spread the honey on your toast.
When our skin touches
our atoms touch, their shadows
merging into a shadow galaxy.
And if echoes are shadows
of sounds, if each hexagonal cell in the body
is a dark pool of jelly,
if within each cell
drones another cell—
The moment the bomb explodes
the man’s spine bends like its shadow
across the road.
The moment he loses his hearing
I think you are calling me
from across the house
because my ears start to ring.
From the kitchen window
I see the lilacs crackling like static
as if erasing, teleporting,
thousands of bees rising from the blossoms:
tiny flames in the sun.
I lick the knife
and the honey pierces my tongue:
a nail made of light.
My body is wrapped in honey. When I step outside
I become fire.