from hard ➡️ soft: a listening story.
I just got back from 3 nights of drinking ayahuasca.
I’d originally planned to only sit for 2 nights.
That’s something I like to do: leave early. Git ‘er done quick.
It’s not uncommon that I be the first to leave a party. At just about any social engagement, you can look over at me and be like, ‘wanna go [to the next thing / somewhere else]?’ and I’m 90% to respond, ‘YEP’.
Since I was a child - I’ve been quickly onto the next. The next place, the next idea, the next thing to focus on. Its served me well as an entrepreneur; its served me disastrously in an ability to be present.
I could hear TruthVoice in the days leading up to night 1: you’re going to sit 3 nights.
I didn’t wanna accept. The resistance sounded like: “there’s not the $$ RN to be indulging in spiritual work // I have a full Monday of meetings // What’s it say to the team if I move meetings around? // I need to be the responsible one // Right now is not the moment for me to get all lost and flow’y and chaotic and allowing w spiritual work. RIGHT NOW IS WORK TIME!”
And yet -
I could hear the other voice and it was not letting up its grip: ‘you’re gonna stay an extra night’.
An hour before I was to leave for the train, a human who is really tap’d in got ahold of me, said the thing that broke me from the lying-to-myself fever, and it was done:
one more night.
Beyond the head-based resistance I was facing, was a deeper emotional + spiritual resistance: I knew a truth was waiting for me. I knew that NIGHT 3 was going to be TRUTH DELIVERY NIGHT and I was on the run. It sounded in head like: “I do not have the time RN to have ayahuasca blow up my life.”
LOLZ LOLZ LOLZ
She - TruthVoice - arrived relatively swiftly and softly (no purging!), in the middle of a long and beautiful song.
“No more Solidcore.”
At first - my response was one of curiosity: “is that it? Anything else? You got anything else?”
I was expecting severe life blow up explosion vibes, cause I’ve def had that in the past.
On Night 3.
Duh.
I searched and searched. No more.
Just what she’d dropped: “no more Solidcore.”
I knew the message was actually so much deeper.
Solidcore - for the uninitiated - is a 50 minute core workout that takes place in a pitch black room, with music blaring and an instructor giving commands without pause. Its about muscles tearing, about fatigue, about breakdown.
I’ve been going for 2-4 days a week since 2021. On my dating app profile, ‘Solidcore enthusiast’ is an identifier.
The emotional attachment to Solidcore sounds like: “this is [my only] way to have the body I want. My stomach is so gross - so fat, so curvy - and I MUST DO SC IN ORDER TO KEEP IT UNDER CONTROL.”
Solidcore became the only chance I had, to be some semblance of thin enough.
The TruthVoice message rang out: “let this go, and let it all hang out.”
I’ve been squeezing in my stomach for so long, so consistently, that my body has automated to it. I treat it like a safe space, a hiding out: “I gotta clench, or they’ll see how fat I really am.”
One of my besties Jeremy recently challenged me to push my belly out, to literally let it hang out, and experience the sensations that arise.
I tried it out one day walking down the street: I instantly went from alert, and low level stressed to so relaxed that I could feel my eyelids flicker, and experiencing the sudden urg to go to sleep.
It was an instant state change.
I knew there was something in there for me.
Back to Night 3, to the TruthVoice + being laid out on my mat. I knew her invite was to a new way of being:
An invite to soften.
An invite to release.
An invite to accept.
An invite to be in the truth of my body.
A chance to love my body in a new way.
An understanding that this is my work - this is my space to grow - and that I dont get to choose the ‘work’ -
but I do get to choose if I resist or accept.
And cuz I’ve been in this game long ‘nuff, I know that resistance leads to suffering.
To be sure - its hard. Ive been back for 4 days and I’ve gone to SC twice. You might be like, ‘what the fuck? Why’re you even writing this?’
I know, I get it.
I tell myself its to run down the $304 monthly pack that I just paid for.
But I know its more: its about what’s ready to be seen + known, its ‘bout being in the inch-by-inch, hard-as-fuck pattern change work that comes with recognizing what no longer serves.
Night 3 was an invite to listen, to listen more deeply. As Jeremy shared + as echoed thru the group throughout the weekend:
“To listen is to lean in softly with a willingness to be changed by what you hear.”
I stand willing.
here. we. go.
from now till april 28, we’re offering a discount code on all ‘feels’ tickets if you sign up to the mailing list. feeling called?