I recently spent three days in solitary retreat after a several-months-long intense experience of downloads, flurries of synchronicity and small and large miracles which completely consumed my life, and it was both just fine and also completely destabilizing. Years worth of work has been downloaded and I have clarity and direction and more information for my mission than I’ve every had. It was a wild experience where I had easy access to guidance and connection with the Four Who Are One and others on my “team”.

I have landed now as much as I think I’m going to, and find myself in a new normal where my dreams are clear and strangely thematic, continuing in the same dreamscape night after night, and where I still have that clear access to guidance and connection. One of the biggest messages that came through during this time, and particularly in the solitary retreat was:

It’s the body.

That was a weird message to get in the midst of not seeming to have control over the fact that I was ignoring my body’s needs; not eating, not sleeping, caught in a manic, ecstatic, overwhelming wave of energy that literally was moving through me. I woke up every 2-3 hours to journal pages and pages of information streaming through. I had to carry that same journal with me everywhere I went so that I could catch and record everything that was arriving. It was like a radio playing in my head. Loud, disruptive, and full of what felt—and feels—like (r)evolutionary directives and truths. And maybe most importantly, this entire experience happened in relationship with another person. It was witnessed, shared, and developed not in solitude, as these experiences have so often come through in my life, but with another. And thank god for that, because at least if I was going crazy I wasn’t going alone.

And, back to main message I received, I attribute my ability to ride that wave and not (completely) blow out my circuits to my several-years somatics education and practice. In other words, I attribute it to the body, to the container I’d built where I was able to be with arising sensations and energies and emotions. This experience tested the edges of that capacity and I did, a few times, feel overwhelming sensation spilling out of the container completely, and in those moments I found myself literally laying on the floor, holding on for dear life, connecting with the pressure and presence of the Earth and gravity.

Somatics is a huge topic, and I’ll talk about it soon in a long podcast episode. At its core it’s about the experience of and in the body, without necessarily connecting to a story around that sensation and emotion. It’s pure experience; a happening, and the ability to "be with” what is arising. And to get to that experience, we need to go slow and feel and experience the sensations we’ve held in the body a little at a time. This process takes education, patience, the ability to hold complexity, and knowledge of how to tend to and go at the pace of the most vulnerable part.

“… it is universally true that the renegotiation of trauma is an inherently mythic-poetic-heroic journey.”

— Peter A. Levine

And after years of engaging with this work, I’ve come to see that just like the psyche has shadow aspects that are like programs running in the background—influencing and coloring the way we see and engage with the world—our bodies also have shadows. And when we’ve done the hard work of clearing up and releasing some of that shadow, we experience the body no longer living out that program from the past. We can literally come into the present moment, and feel what is alive and arising in the now.

And let me tell you, it’s fucking psychedelic.

Sitting in the liminal, holding the tension, not collapsing the narrative, becomes boiling discomfort. A soft and strong and trustworthy container allows surrender as it becomes a somatic release. Moving and shaking and quaking and rocking my body, freeing cells and the emotional body and some intangible etheric self from the past. And then, Life Herself. Here, now. Moving through like a hurricane and then a swelling of heat and ecstasy rising from my chest and then stillness and silence, and the mind can’t make sense of any of it, but I am with the experience itself and know that I am different than I was.

If you want to engage with somatics, check out Irene Lyon. Check out Peter Levine, Gabor Mate, Scott Lyons at The Embody Lab (where I got my education and certifications) and others in this emerging field. Expect some science and research, but mostly expect something more alive. Something wilder. Something connected to the mystery of the body, that is just beginning to be revealed to us. It is from the Earth Herself, activating the Earth of our bodies. Something new is arriving or we are remembering, or it’s a combination of both and some secret third thing. It’s scary and hopeful and real and (r)evolutionary. These times are not for the faint of heart, and thank god we don’t have to do it alone.