Category: Newsletter

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

We move into December’s dreamtime. What are the dreams (or nightmares) you are having? Are they sleeping dreams or waking dreams? Even as research shows how essential quality sleep is to health, I’ve been struggling to drop into the unconscious space of dreams these past weeks for fear I won’t reemerge. The boundary between asleep and awake seems fuzzy right now.
Recently, someone asked: in the face of dreamtime, how do you sustain yourself erotically? Tossed to the ground by nightmares they I can’t leave behind, how do I help myself arise?
This month, I’m experimenting with poetry as a source of sustenance. I offer you “Dreams” by Günter Eich (thanks poetryfoundation.org). Does this bring you comfort in any way? What poems sustain you?
—Amy
Dreams
by Günter Eich
Wake up, your dreams are bad!
Stay awake, the nightmarishness is coming ever nearer.
To you too it is coming, though you live far from
the places of bloodshed,
even to you and your sacrosanct
afternoon nap.
If not today, then tomorrow,
but it will certainly come.
“Oh, pleasant sleep
on the cushions embroidered with red flowers,
Anita’s Christmas present to you, she sat over the stitching for
all of three weeks,
oh, pleasant sleep,
following the juicy roast and the sprouts boiled to pulp.
As you drift off you think of yesterday’s
Fox evening news:
frolicsome Easter lambs, the stirrings of nature, the opening of the new
casino in Baden-Baden,
with their new Australian coach, the Light Blues pip the Dark Blues
by two and a half lengths
in the Varsity Race—
more than enough there to occupy the brain.
Oh the soft cushion, the first class goose down!
Lying on it, you forget the irritations of the world, this
item for instance:
the doctor accused of procuring an abortion said in his
defense:
the woman had seven children already, and she came to me with
her youngest
swaddled in newspaper
because she was unable to afford diapers.
Well, these are the court’s affairs, not ours.
There’s nothing to be done if a has a cushier time of it than b,
and, whatever happens, our grandchildren can sort it out.”
“Ah, asleep already? A pleasant waking then, friend!
The current is already live in the wire kraal, and the
sentries have been posted.”
No, don’t sleep while the arrangers of the world are busy!
Be suspicious of the power they claim
to have to acquire on your behalf!
Stay awake to be sure that your hearts are not empty, when
others calculate on the emptiness of your hearts!
Do what is unhelpful, sing songs from out of your mouths
that go against expectation!
Be ornery, be as sand, not oil in the thirsty machinery
of the world!

“Successful understanding of another’s point of view comes not from imaging their point of view, but from asking and listening—from getting the another’s perspective rather than taking it. ” — Nicholas Epley
In December, the Body Trust team will be doing our annual strategy meeting. Rather than just guessing what you might need or want, we really want to know what’s up for you. What is on your mind or in your body right now?
Specifically . . .
1. What are you wrestling with in your embodied life?
2. Of all the things Body Trust has offered*, what has been most useful?
3. What else would you most like us to bring into form?
Just reply to this email with your thoughts or, if you prefer to be anonymous, use this online form.
We’d love to hear from you before we meet on Dec. 9th.
xo,
Amy, Alex, Lizz, Zed
*We’ve been offering: weekend workshops, residential long-form workshops, online morning meditation, half-day year wheel workshops, podcasts, newsletters, Facebook groups, coloring book, Erotix journal, website, individual SI sessions, etc.

“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