I just discovered this beautiful conversation today, listened to it in sections, in between other commitments.
I love the way you describe your decision making process during your travels, Renée, reminds me of the most important 'direction' taught by F.M. Alexander (founder of the Alexander technique): "Let the right thing do itself."
It also reminds me a lot of my own writing process, allowing my mind to wander around a topic in circles, keeping an open 'beginner's mind', guided by curiosity, while gathering whatever presents itself.
I also love your thoughts on difficult emotions, Mariah, emotions almost everyone struggles with. I love that you call them "sacred emotions"!
"Those are sacred experiences," you say, "I really believe there's something in us that needs and longs for a true experience of the magnitude of those emotions and to let it come through our bodies and to experience that in community."
These words elicit a deep sigh of relief from the bottom of my heart! Yes! These emotions, which have been suppressed and vilified, abandoned, neglected, starved of attention for generations... and where did they go? Into our bodies, interactions, relationships...
("to let it come through our bodies and to experience that in community." is indeed where healing happens.)
I am fascinated by the way you speak about anxiety and fear, Renée, (and totally agree), the way of being with and listening to nature, calming the nervous system through movement..., and the heart as an organ of perceptivity...
Wonderful. Thank you both so much for sharing this heart-opening conversation 💗🙏
Something prompts me to wonder if the very process of "let[ting] the right thing do itself" is how this conversation discovered you in your meander about, i.e, that we three could meet here in this conversation in just this way. Thank you for coming into this conversation with, as Mariah shared, "your presence and attention."
We meandered about these "profoundly human experiences," which, as you offer so beautifully here, have been "suppressed and villified, abandoned, neglected, starved of attention for generations . . . and where did they go? Into our bodies, interactions, relationships. . ." Perhaps it is that every sigh of relief in recognition of the livingness of feeling is a breath closer to the fullness of being.
Oh, I'm sure, Renée. Meandering is exactly the word I would use. That's what I do on substack sometimes (when I have a spare moment).
As I was listening to your conversation I felt drawn in (how could I not?) into this communal pondering on a topic which is right at the source of the whole work of Synchronosophy.
Because of the way the book is written (in cyclical form, growing like a tree, adding 'rings') I return to the topic of emotions in each part, every time at another level on the spiral of unfoldment, allowing this 'thorny subject' to integrate with all the other relevant topics.
I read Chapter 7 of Synchronosophy (the link you put in the comment above), and of course, I am ushered to many reflections: gratitude and admiration for you sincerity in sharing, weaving your own very personal experience into a philosophy and practice of emocean (beautiful beautiful word); immense resonance with you in sharing the context by which we come to these suppressions and repressions of feeling (intrinsic to being); stopped in my tracks by some of your recognitions about emotions.
Here, I want to reflect on your comment about circling out like rings of a tree. This image immediately touches at the heart of it, and I thank you. It also touches at how this conversation seemed to flow, never linear, never coming to ‘solution/answers’ and so forth that we, of the post-Enlightenment post-Modernity so crave, but circling out.
Thank you for the emancipatory work that is Synchronosophy.
This conversation happened with thanks to you: your vision and intention for what we might explore in conversation, your presence to our shared inquiry, your efforts to transcribe and share the recording, and more. Like you, I am humbled that our time together continues to ripple. I thank you, again.
Jenna, thank you for sharing. I am deeply moved. That places you’ve seen thousands of times came alive with tuning into the heart organ is exquisite. You show us the immediacy. And while I feel sorrow reading about the health issues you experience and the anxiety this brings in and about your body, I am also grateful to you for sharing. It can be hard, if not impossible, to befriend the body when it pains and seems to alienate us. Journeying back home to the body when this is so takes time, care, and profound tenderness. A little at a time--as you did by becoming aware of the heart organ. I also appreciate you sharing your personal experience on behalf of others who read and my have a similar experience.
This was incredible! Thank you both! I felt so privileged to be able to listen in to this amazing conversation. Such wisdom and intelligence in both the questions and the answers, a wonderful flow of dialogue. I listened while I was on my morning walk and found myself being present to my heart as an organ of perception. Places in my neighborhood I've seen thousands of times were suddenly alive with magic. I was also really glad you brought anxiety into the conversation, Mariah. After living with some long-term illnesses and having some strange phobias, I have a lot of health anxiety where my body doesn't always feel like a safe place to be. It's an ongoing process for me of deeply loving this home that is my body while also experiencing moments of intense anxiety about it. It really helped to hear Renee's answer that we can't make decisions from the chaos of anxiety; that when we tend to the activation (through movement) the return to center will come. Thank you again for this conversation!
Wow, Jenna. Thank you for sharing your experience of our conversation! I can picture you on your morning walk and feel the resonance of a heart fully present to your surroundings.
Anxiety is really something, isn't it? I'm constantly working on changing my relationship to it, trying to work with instead of against, welcome it in like a friend who has something to teach me. I think often of Rumi's poem, The Guest House:
"This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond."
I think Renée's invitation to inner feeling and trusting our bodies as we're present to the emotions that come through us is a call to courage and also care. Some of what we're experiencing in the world right now is not meant to be shouldered alone but in community.
Mariah, I just want to echo your words about courage and care. They call us to recall that to live with courage is to live with heart, not to be fearless. Care naturally flows through courage. . . . Thank you also for bringing Rumi into the fold. So perfect.
Thank you for an amazing conversation❤ Mariah, your interview skills and questions are exceptional. Many times during the hour I caught myself marveling at your ability. Your poise and intellect were shining. Renee there is so much to comment on! Of course I loved the discussion about the importance of listening to our body, such a valuable skill. But then there was the part that brought me to my knees - 'to bear the hard times we must become present to that thing we think we cannot bear.' Amen. This is what we need to hear right now. Thank you both.
Thank you, Donna for the generosity of your kind words. I’m amazed by this community time and again for how restorative and regenerative it can be. Thank you for your presence here and your attention to what we can only bear together. 💗
I just discovered this beautiful conversation today, listened to it in sections, in between other commitments.
I love the way you describe your decision making process during your travels, Renée, reminds me of the most important 'direction' taught by F.M. Alexander (founder of the Alexander technique): "Let the right thing do itself."
It also reminds me a lot of my own writing process, allowing my mind to wander around a topic in circles, keeping an open 'beginner's mind', guided by curiosity, while gathering whatever presents itself.
I also love your thoughts on difficult emotions, Mariah, emotions almost everyone struggles with. I love that you call them "sacred emotions"!
"Those are sacred experiences," you say, "I really believe there's something in us that needs and longs for a true experience of the magnitude of those emotions and to let it come through our bodies and to experience that in community."
These words elicit a deep sigh of relief from the bottom of my heart! Yes! These emotions, which have been suppressed and vilified, abandoned, neglected, starved of attention for generations... and where did they go? Into our bodies, interactions, relationships...
("to let it come through our bodies and to experience that in community." is indeed where healing happens.)
I am fascinated by the way you speak about anxiety and fear, Renée, (and totally agree), the way of being with and listening to nature, calming the nervous system through movement..., and the heart as an organ of perceptivity...
Wonderful. Thank you both so much for sharing this heart-opening conversation 💗🙏
Veronika,
Something prompts me to wonder if the very process of "let[ting] the right thing do itself" is how this conversation discovered you in your meander about, i.e, that we three could meet here in this conversation in just this way. Thank you for coming into this conversation with, as Mariah shared, "your presence and attention."
We meandered about these "profoundly human experiences," which, as you offer so beautifully here, have been "suppressed and villified, abandoned, neglected, starved of attention for generations . . . and where did they go? Into our bodies, interactions, relationships. . ." Perhaps it is that every sigh of relief in recognition of the livingness of feeling is a breath closer to the fullness of being.
Immense gratitude, Veronika and Mariah.
Oh, I'm sure, Renée. Meandering is exactly the word I would use. That's what I do on substack sometimes (when I have a spare moment).
As I was listening to your conversation I felt drawn in (how could I not?) into this communal pondering on a topic which is right at the source of the whole work of Synchronosophy.
See for example Chapter 7 https://veronikabondsynchronosophy.substack.com/p/the-heartwood-of-synchronosophy-712
Because of the way the book is written (in cyclical form, growing like a tree, adding 'rings') I return to the topic of emotions in each part, every time at another level on the spiral of unfoldment, allowing this 'thorny subject' to integrate with all the other relevant topics.
Same here, my gratitude to both of you!
Veronika,
I read Chapter 7 of Synchronosophy (the link you put in the comment above), and of course, I am ushered to many reflections: gratitude and admiration for you sincerity in sharing, weaving your own very personal experience into a philosophy and practice of emocean (beautiful beautiful word); immense resonance with you in sharing the context by which we come to these suppressions and repressions of feeling (intrinsic to being); stopped in my tracks by some of your recognitions about emotions.
Here, I want to reflect on your comment about circling out like rings of a tree. This image immediately touches at the heart of it, and I thank you. It also touches at how this conversation seemed to flow, never linear, never coming to ‘solution/answers’ and so forth that we, of the post-Enlightenment post-Modernity so crave, but circling out.
Thank you for the emancipatory work that is Synchronosophy.
Thank you for your presence and attention as you listened to our conversation. I’m humbled that our time together continues to have a ripple effect!
I believe the themes we spoke of are profoundly human experiences that many of us can relate to but don’t always have a way to express.
I’m grateful for spaces like this where we can gather (even virtually!) and share our stories. 💗
Mariah,
This conversation happened with thanks to you: your vision and intention for what we might explore in conversation, your presence to our shared inquiry, your efforts to transcribe and share the recording, and more. Like you, I am humbled that our time together continues to ripple. I thank you, again.
Jenna, thank you for sharing. I am deeply moved. That places you’ve seen thousands of times came alive with tuning into the heart organ is exquisite. You show us the immediacy. And while I feel sorrow reading about the health issues you experience and the anxiety this brings in and about your body, I am also grateful to you for sharing. It can be hard, if not impossible, to befriend the body when it pains and seems to alienate us. Journeying back home to the body when this is so takes time, care, and profound tenderness. A little at a time--as you did by becoming aware of the heart organ. I also appreciate you sharing your personal experience on behalf of others who read and my have a similar experience.
This was incredible! Thank you both! I felt so privileged to be able to listen in to this amazing conversation. Such wisdom and intelligence in both the questions and the answers, a wonderful flow of dialogue. I listened while I was on my morning walk and found myself being present to my heart as an organ of perception. Places in my neighborhood I've seen thousands of times were suddenly alive with magic. I was also really glad you brought anxiety into the conversation, Mariah. After living with some long-term illnesses and having some strange phobias, I have a lot of health anxiety where my body doesn't always feel like a safe place to be. It's an ongoing process for me of deeply loving this home that is my body while also experiencing moments of intense anxiety about it. It really helped to hear Renee's answer that we can't make decisions from the chaos of anxiety; that when we tend to the activation (through movement) the return to center will come. Thank you again for this conversation!
Wow, Jenna. Thank you for sharing your experience of our conversation! I can picture you on your morning walk and feel the resonance of a heart fully present to your surroundings.
Anxiety is really something, isn't it? I'm constantly working on changing my relationship to it, trying to work with instead of against, welcome it in like a friend who has something to teach me. I think often of Rumi's poem, The Guest House:
"This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond."
I think Renée's invitation to inner feeling and trusting our bodies as we're present to the emotions that come through us is a call to courage and also care. Some of what we're experiencing in the world right now is not meant to be shouldered alone but in community.
Thank you for being here. 💗🙏
Mariah, I just want to echo your words about courage and care. They call us to recall that to live with courage is to live with heart, not to be fearless. Care naturally flows through courage. . . . Thank you also for bringing Rumi into the fold. So perfect.
Thank you for an amazing conversation❤ Mariah, your interview skills and questions are exceptional. Many times during the hour I caught myself marveling at your ability. Your poise and intellect were shining. Renee there is so much to comment on! Of course I loved the discussion about the importance of listening to our body, such a valuable skill. But then there was the part that brought me to my knees - 'to bear the hard times we must become present to that thing we think we cannot bear.' Amen. This is what we need to hear right now. Thank you both.
Thank you, Donna for the generosity of your kind words. I’m amazed by this community time and again for how restorative and regenerative it can be. Thank you for your presence here and your attention to what we can only bear together. 💗