The sky was bright blue as I walked across the golden grassy field to sit down by the river, where the cottonwoods grow tall and the northern flickers and magpies come to feast. But there was nothing pastoral about the wind. Gusts over 40 miles an hour buffeted me, causing me to lean forward to keep steady, and I found myself wondering why I hadn’t chosen a more sheltered location for this short walk and a sit.

Was this spontaneous healing supernatural? Did something happen that “shouldn’t” have? What about my recent healing from insomnia? Since I don’t really understand why going to Hawaii helped resolve the sleep issues, is it a supernatural healing? What about the time I resolved chronic abdominal pain by placing one finger at the source and another to a corresponding thread at my throat and wept and wept and wept? Is that a form of supernatural healing?

When you take action on intuitive downloads/desires/dreams/new information, you don’t really know what will happen. Will you get what you seek? Will there be struggle? Will it be easy? Will there be loss? Will it match what you imagine? Will you get what you came for? Which is to say: I didn’t know what would happen when we temporarily moved to Hawaii; I didn’t know if I would get what I came for.

I intended to write this long, chronological piece about why and how we came to the decision to put all of our stuff in storage here in New Mexico and head to Hawaii for the winter.

But the essence of it is this: my body spoke and I listened.

I’ve spent the bulk of the last two months resting. Or trying to rest. Or, maybe better put, being taken on a wild ride as I explore what has caused a year’s worth of insomnia.

Desperation set it. Fear. I dreaded nighttime. I never knew what was going to come. Nothing I did ever consistently helped. I was often in tears of desperation, afraid of sleep, afraid of the next day.

This morning, I stood in front of this empty bathtub for a full 90 seconds trying to ignore the inner voice that said "Take a bath. Take a bath now." I didn't really want to take a bath because there are only so many (kid-free) hours in a day and I just wanted to get shit done.

This year’s Mother’s Day was epic. Somewhat terrifyingly so. I thought it was going to be a regular Mother's Day hike. A few miles. A few lizards. Lunch by the Rio Grande. But on the way back, quite a ways in the lead of the rest of the family, I walked right up to a rattlesnake, head raised, rattles a'rattling, ready to strike. I was just several feet away. With a baby on my back

In my last therapy appointment, my somatic therapist asked if we could play around with reaching. She would reach toward me. I would reach toward her. As my arms started to extend, I felt panicky. Anxious. I didn’t want to be seen reaching.

When you can begin to see how your psycho-emotional environment intersects with what's available to you in your body, you can start having some compassion for some of the obstacles you face in your movement. You can also start to change your environment. 

I don't want to fix you. I am not asking you to fix you. I want you to come home to yourself, to Love, to Life. Movement is the path I walk to bring me there. It can be yours, too. 

I felt like I was making a life-or-death choice. Like choosing one place to live was a prescription for utter desolation and like choosing another would leave me bereft of my soul. I have been clearly "overreacting."

If you are like one of the many people who work with me, connect online or email me expressing your curiosity and confusion and delight at the interplay of your heart/emotions/psyche/narrative/life and the way you use your body, this post is for you. 

So many of you are laboring away in different ways, owning the life you seek to create, doing the work to support it. You are stretching your calves and sitting on the floor and walking instead of driving. You are going to therapy and feeling the feelings and challenging the beliefs you hold that tell you to just give up.

You know your body needs to be tended to, but you're not sure how to make it happen when your day-to-day life involves a desk. This video is FOR YOU. :)

You need to move. It helps you meet your basic biological needs. And enhance your relationships. And deepen your sense of community. And grow in love. And be available for the big questions in life.

It's not just today we need to be looking out for when we are choosing between the floor and a chair, when we are choosing between corrective exercises and stiffer shoe, when we are choosing between sitting on the sacrum or rolling the pelvis forward, when we are choosing between a walk and mindless time on the internet.

It's tomorrow, too.