Rooted, Rattled, or Shattered?
How do you react/respond to stimulation and disturbances? # 13 of 90
Are you “rooted” or rattled?
Likely a bit of both. That is how it is for me. But these days feeling the trembling of unpredictability—though it may leave me shaken—does not leave me shattered.
We (collectively) are definitely in a larger cycle of deterioration and “undoing.” Systems are collapsing and with them comes the straggling struggle for their survival, the ways we have been “programmed” to survive within them as well as the inevitable death rattle that precedes the stillness of the corpse.
This dying out phase may last quite a while, subjectively, in terms of cyclic growth. Likely through my lifetime. However, the smaller and personal cycles can still experience the full spectrum of the growth cycle: planning, planting, blooming, harvest, decay, compost, and regrowth.
What you may experience, personally, during this time of collective “rewiring” depends on where you are and how your psychology and body cosmology organize around stimulation and stress.
To be contained in time of upheaval is not be “numb,” but is to be rooted in one’s internal structures to the degree that though you may be shaken—you do not fracture.
What does it take, or what are the resources that can help you to get to a place where you can be aware and contained? Personal and emotional accountability for one. Though we want to feel our feelings, we do not want them to control us or our decisions. In extreme this giving ourselves over to our emotions can look like mania which has two sides: the high and the collapse; neither which are sustainable or supportive. Another thing that can help reorient us are stable habits: domestic, creative, nutritional, and physical. And one of the most important for me is ritual. The habitual return to my relationship with the Unseen, with my body, my psyche and soul, my internal “parts” and the way they all dance in ritual is one of my continual saving graces and one of the practices that has made the most difference in developing my own resilience.
Once again, these practices or the development of my own containment does not prevent me from feeling the trembling of the collective or my own personal goings on. What it does is give me a structure to hold onto, ways to hold myself, and shelter from the storm. It also helps me to measure my own responses/reactions to various stimulations be they from the collective or from personal circumstances.
Some of my own personal circumstances match the chaos and deterioration that much of the Western world is currently facing: a collapse of unsustainable and narcissistic systems. Meanwhile, my own nervous system and body cosmology has never felt more consistently stable, aligned, mature, and rooted.
Do I shake at times? I do! But those roots extend deeper into the soil than the surface storms can touch. The branches sway and bend, but do not crack. It is from that deeply rooted place I notice my options, make my choices, and move in accordance with that alignment. There is a presence and patience which moves with me and supports me and when I lose contact with it, I remind myself to slow down.
Things happen very quickly in the world right now and sometimes our habit of reacting to them at the pace at which they arrive can contribute to our own destabilization and dysregulation. Sometimes the pivot we need is to move at the pace of breath, digestion, and body.
What do you notice in the world right now? In yourself? Can you find stillness and direction amidst chaos? Can you hold yourself amidst personal and larger collapse? Do you have support systems outside of the pseudo system to which you can turn?
Tell me about it in the comments if so inspired.
If the process of “containment” and the art of you holding yourself interests you, I invite you to check out the 3 week course I am hosting this month. Use code ROOTED at checkout to save $50 on this course.
