I listened to a 10-minute meditation this morning, through the Insight Timer app (which is still my favorite app for meditation), and a lot of the pieces of it have stuck with me during my day today.
For example:

• I cultivate patience, and by doing so, I also cultivate self-confidence
• I welcome the opportunity to step out of my comfort zone, and I do not let myself be guided by fear
• I love myself unconditionally, because it is essential to my happiness.
• I love the person that I am, and I do not need other people’s approval to love myself fully
• I’m going to drink water, eat fruit and vegetables, walk, take the stairs, exercise. Today, I give love to my body

It made me think about some of my own little affirmations and mantras, like:

• Decide to decide once
• Being healthy is ongoing and lifelong

The meditation stated specifically that the purpose was to cultivate magic in my day … but my own mantras aren’t really with that purpose.
Similarly, someone told me this weekend that his intention was to maximize bliss and joy in every moment. Things like these are a little confusing to me, as someone who has struggled with depression and mood dysregulation for as long as I can remember, but I feel curious. And as I’m pondering blossoming, our May Body Trust theme, cultivating that magic, bliss, and joy is what comes to mind.

Like this quote, one of my favorites:

“Very few people ever manage
what nature manages without effort
and mostly without fail. We don’t know
who we are or how to function,
much less how to bloom.”
— Jeanette Winterson

So that’s what I’m pondering — How do I bloom? How do I blossom? — while the blossoming season is upon us.

“I look at men and women my age and older, and their scalps and knuckles and spots and bulges, though various and interesting, don’t affect what I think of them. Some of these people I consider to be very beautiful, and others I don’t. For old people, beauty doesn’t come free with the hormones, the way it does for the young. It has to do with bones. It has to do with who the person is. More and more clearly it has to do with what shines through those gnarly faces and bodies.
What worries me most when I look in the mirror … is not that I’ve lost my beauty. It’s that that woman doesn’t look like me. She isn’t who I thought I was.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin on Aging and What Beauty Really Means

“I know I got a dirty mind
it’s in the gutter all the time
I don’t believe that it’s a crime
I consider it a service
this ain’t 1954
it ain’t a man’s world anymore
so whatcha wanna tame me for
do I make you nervous?”
— Carsie Blanton, Vim and Vigor

“All the fun things about Easter are pagan. Bunnies are a leftover from the pagan festival of Eostre, a great northern goddess whose symbol was a rabbit or hare. Exchange of eggs is an ancient custom, celebrated by many cultures. ” — The Pagan Roots of Easter
Whatever you celebrate, this is a potent time of year, full of rebirth, connection, energy, and growth. I wish you lots of badass music, inspirational readings, and beautiful symbols of abundance and erotics.
— Zed
PS: Don’t forget about Portals of Pleasure! We are working on opening up registration and will have that information to you very soon. 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.

Spring makes me think of change. I love this season — the bursting forth of that which was hidden, but growing and moving under the surface this whole time. The lush greens that come back. The dripping rain off the trees.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about transformation. I’ve been experiencing more panic and anxiety than I ever remember feeling. Maybe it’s the political climate, maybe it’s my personal body chemistry, maybe it’s all the changes — who knows. But it all has me asking, how do I cultivate more transformation in my life, in my body? How do I change an energetic or emotional state that I’m in, while still honoring that state, not pushing it away?
I’ve got a small list of things I’m keeping in my notebook, and going to it when I feel myself in that frenzied state:

• Writing down everything I’m feeling in a fast-write, or in a letter to a particular person (that I won’t send)
• Calling or texting a friend and asking them to lend an ear, to listen to me
• Doing some alternative nostril breathing
• Doing some tapping
• Calling my therapist for a phone session
• Going through the steps of The Work, Byron Katie’s theory for a stronger and happier mind
• Distracting myself with a good book (currently it’s the romance novel How Not To Fall by Emily Foster which, I will absolutely admit, I am loving a lot) or with a good TV show (I’ve been watching through the seasons of Mad Men that I missed)
• Putting my face/head into a bowl of ice (okay, I haven’t actually tried this one, but my therapist suggested it, and guarantees it works to change one’s state of mind. I’m holding it for when I really need a jump-start!)
• Drinking detox tea, or doing other things to detoxify my body, like going to a sauna, scrubbing my skin, eating extra vegetables

I don’t usually do all of them, but sometimes I have to go down the list to three or four before I feel better. Do you have particular things you do when you notice your emotional state spiraling out?
Lots of love,
Zed

Music has been respite for me lately. From silly and catchy to serious to battle cries, I turn it on to soothe my nerves, reconnect, be inspired.
I’ve been following the political developments often, getting involved with Countable and the Indivisible Guide, and keeping track of what kind of actions are next. I’ve been horrified, terrified.
But underneath that, I’ve been inspired. People are mobilizing in a way I’ve never seen, in a way many folks are commenting on as unprecedented. Folks who have never been activists are showing up and asking what they can do.
This is one of the songs I’ve been listening to over and over … it has been settling me, and helping me accept the inevitable present moment, no matter how much I still want to be in some sort of denial that this is happening. And the sprouting baby-green seedlings of activism are so precious, and fuel me daily.

Everything Must Change

Nina Simone

Maybe it had to get this bad before it was going to get any better. How many times have I heard activists and change-makers say, “How do we wake people up?”
It has to get really, really uncomfortable before someone is willing to adjust, before they’re interested in becoming involved in a deeper way. Maybe this is it.
I go back and forth between being involved, reading things, keeping up with the latest executive order, and also some profoundly deep self-care. Rituals, honorings of my body, time with my sweetheart, really good nourishing food, spending time in nature, in the rain, by the ocean. Both have felt so necessary.
How are you doing in this time of change? What seeds of resistance or growth or activism are sprouting in you?
— Zed
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.” – Fred Rogers
Nina Simone painting by Chris Gerbaux

When the days get shorter and it’s already dark by the time I get up from my desk, or by time I return home from a day of work, I can easily get hooked on a TV series. (I kind of wish they’d come up with a new name for the long-arching complex video story narratives that they’re making these days — they’re not just “TV shows,” I think, anymore.) I love complex plots and many characters, and the magic of videography can make amazing worlds. It mesmerizes me.
Lately, I’m hooked on Westworld. A friend described the first episode to me, and we binge-watched four. It’s the first show in years that I’ve been watching in real time — the finale just aired this week. It’s been a complex puzzle, with multiple timelines, overlapping characters, plot twists, all set in a world beyond ours (some fans posit that it’s about year 2052 in the show). A writing teacher of mine once said that studying movies and TV is a great way to study plot — how a complex narrative is broken down into parts, and told piece by piece, focusing on the parts that are relevant and important. That’s always stuck with me. (Of course it would, because now I can justify getting into a TV series as “research” for writing.)
The opening sequence of Westworld is glorious, such a work of art. This Vulture article breaks it down beautifully. If you watch through this and aren’t at least a little tempted to call all your friends to see who has an HBO account you can borrow in order to watch the first season, I’d be surprised.
It’s been largely influencing my dreams lately. Between the dystopian future and the real fears of the current political climate in the US, my dreamtime has been wildly vivid and sometimes confusing. But I still like to feed my unconscious all sorts of expansive ideas, like those in Westworld.
As we enter into the sleepy, hybernating part of the year (at least, in the northern hemisphere), I’m curious about dreams, setting intentions for dreaming, and letting my dreams come more. Who knows what kinds of new plots will emerge.
— Zed

Hey!
In case you don’t know this about me, I also write under the name of Sinclair, and one of my ecourses on submission starts soon.
So lately, I’ve been musing about the stereotypes around submission, particularly that folks who are (or want to be) submissive in bed also do (or must) have submissive, doormat-like personalities.
I find that folks who are new and exploring submission have often told me they fear losing their autonomy, their sense of strength; that they are concerned that they must somehow compromise their integrity or worthiness in order to submit.
But on the contrary, I think the strongest submissives I know, those with many years of experience and who theorize about what it’s like to be in authority exchange or total power exchange relationships, are some of the strongest people I know.
I wrote a thing over on Sugarbutch about this, You can be your strongest self AND be a power bottom.
In it, I talk about my own misconceptions and how I still sometimes fall prey to the way my brain wants to categorize people (totally human nature), and how I believe I’m not sure it’s possible to avoid assumptions, but I can at least keep them to myself.
Do you think more submissives have submissive personalities *and* want to submit in bed, or do they tend to be more dominant personalities? Or are they neither extreme, but more well-balanced personalities?
Maybe it doesn’t matter what the majority is like — but my point is that I want to bust the misconception that submissives all have submissive personalities. You CAN be your strongest self and still be a power bottom. (Click here to read the whole thing over on Sugarbutch.)
xo,
Zed