October 2023: Conversations with the body
Listen to this month’s offering as a podcast
Here in the Catskills, autumn feels a bit subdued. I think of how much smoke we had this year + wonder if the trees are like: no color show this year, humans. With the equinox passed, the dark continues to grow + honestly? I’m here for it. I’m wondering how the transition into deepening autumn is finding you?
Here’s what I’m up to this month:
- The last new Study Tarot Series cohort of the year begins October 10—it’s the perfect time to begin at the beginning with Operationalizing Desire: The Magician + Aces. Here’s what people are saying about this Series…
- I’ll be offering Asking Good Questions Tuesday, October 17 at 5:30pm est. See what people are saying about this workshop.
- I’ve been having a blast recording episodes of my new podcast series, In Conversation With—you can listen or watch my convos with my favorite esotericists, artists, writers, creative + spiritual workers…more coming this month!
My books are open for readings in October + now it’s super-easy to book with me thru calendly!
Thank you to all of you who continue to support my work in so many amazing + generous ways.
In love + solidarity + collective imagining,
shea in the catskills
You Might Be Interested
- Atha Yoga School’s Let’s Talk About It: Mistakes series got off to a profound start last month with Robyn Love’s What is a mistake? This month, Nancy Hunter offers Accountable for harm on October 21, + I’ll be offering Using Tarot to work with regret on November 18. Saturdays at noon EST.
- Join me at my monthly in-person Tarot Circle at Cygnet’s Way in Kingston—Thursday, October 26 at 6pm
- The final two sessions of Ki Martinez’s sexual, healing, embodied support space are happening this month + next. This is a support + learning space for exploring embodiment, desire, + growth & healing related to self, relationships, intimacy, body, sexuality, sex + beyond (highly recommend!)
What’s Inspiring Me Now
- JINKER | From the Dictionary of Newfoundland English: a Jinker is the perception of women as “pollutants on the water,” jinxes, bad omens
- Antarctica the Woman by Stephanie Krzywonos: “Antarctica is not your mother. She’s neither your grandmother nor your sister. She is complex and refuses to be reduced to a binary role: a Madonna or a whore. She owes you nothing, not even a smile. Instead, she demands reciprocity.”
- Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence by James Bridle: “True randomness is a slippery thing: it is a property not of things in themselves…but of their relationship to one another. …Randomness is relational.”
- “Despite the repressive tactics of authorities who wish to disenfranchise the community and charge protestors with domestic terrorism and RICO, people of faith will continue to act to resist the militarization of our society,” said Rev. Dave Dunn
- Jackie Battenfield on Small Things Brought Together: this decades-long working artist watched a tree blossom during a 10-day meditation retreat (during her second Saturn return) + began a series of paintings that has been bringing her joy every day for the last 14 years. #thestudyofonething #goals
- The Gallery That Destroys All Shame: One evening in L.A., a group gathers to learn how to take back the speculum
just a simple thing that brings me joy for a few minutes a day
Thanks to those of you who continue to send me your inspirations!
Authenticity is the willingness to tolerate the discomfort of your own contradictions.
— Dayna Lynn Nuckolls, aka The People’s Oracle
Conversations with the body
Later this month, I’ll begin a professional training in the Wheel of Consent, a practice framework developed by Betty Martin. In the introduction to her book The Art of Giving and Receiving Martin says, “When we forget how to notice what we want, we lose our inner compass. This has a profound effect on society. We allow all manner of injustice, theft of our natural resources and our planet’s future health—because it feels normal.”
While Martin developed this training for bodyworkers, sex workers, + others in touch-based fields, my interest in it lies more in as “a study of power dynamics [+ a] path to erotic maturity.” Martin’s framing of practice itself resonated deeply with my former training: “The reward of practice is in the experience itself, and what makes any practice engaging, is not the thing you do but the quality of attention you bring to it.”
While zazen—or seated zen meditation—is one hundred percent a way to bring attention to the body, I currently find myself hungry for ways to bring attention to the body that are, as those who facilitate the practice spaces I find myself in put it: “radically self-responsive.” In one somatics centering practice I attended, a facilitator said, “Don’t dominate your body.” I think about this now all the time.
Once the facilitator introduced the idea, I started seeing it everywhere: the way I delay eating, or using the bathroom, because I’m “busy,” or simply numb. The ways I have “found myself” in situations I no longer want to be in but stay because I don’t want to be rude or upset people. Clamming up when the water was too hot, or the touch was not right, or the pressure was too much.
We live in a culture that appears to require us to dominate our own + each others’ bodies: Having to go to work when we’re sick or exhausted. Giving up on Covid precautions + let “the vulnerable fall by the wayside.” Forcing people to give birth. Locking people in cages. Criminalizing the gender expression of young people + the parents who support them.
How might the Empress invite us into a practice of being in relationship with our bodies that is radically self-responsive + non-dominating? What would such a practice look like + feel like? How would we initiate it + experiment with it? By what indicators would we adjust + deepen our practice? How might such a practice effect our relationship with others? How do we practice this inside a culture the very nature of which is to dominate the bodies of self + other?
The Empress is always inviting us into a conversation with our body—our sensations, emotions, appetites + longings fully experienced + responded to. They are an invitation into pleasure + creativity, into love of self + other. They are Life as Love Story.
- What is your relationship to pleasure? What have you been taught about your pleasure?
- What does pleasure in your body feel like? What is your experience of mental pleasure? Emotional pleasure? Creative pleasure? Spiritual pleasure? Erotic pleasure? What activities, sensations or experiences blend these kinds of pleasure for you?
- Make a list of 60-second, 5-minute + 20-minute pleasures. What would it be like to set aside time each day to practice these pleasures?
- What is your relationship to appetite—food appetite, erotic appetite, spiritual appetite? What have you been taught about appetite?
- How do your emotions serve as an important source of information in your life? What emotions are your go-to’s? Which ones feel forbidden?
- How is beauty a resource in your life? How do you create + experience beauty day-to-day?
- How are you in relationship to your sensory experience? Which sense is most vivid for you? Most muted?
- How are you learning to be responsive to your body? Where might you be more responsive?
Find out more about my tarot work
The Thing Is by Ellen Bass
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
—via Mariame Kaba’s Substack
