20. Root Challenge
We ain’t kidding around.
This baby is the challenge of all challenges. Fear is literally the only other option to love… and even then it’s based in a misunderstanding. There is only love and fear - and fear is forgetting that everything is love.
I know it sounds all granola woo-woo, but it’s true. It’s just really REALLY hard to remember and reconnect in the moments of fear. But we try. And then we try again. Eventually we remember.
Self Preservation
Fear is not the enemy.
Fear is in service to self-preservation. Fear is a guide to your safety and well-being.
“Everyone can feel safer, act safer, be safer — if they learn how to listen to their own sixth sense about danger.”
Fear exists to alert us to what threatens our ability to Be + Have.
What hurts us most isn’t fear (the alarm system of the Root) itself, but the way that fear is received and processed at the time of the fearful incident. What is damaging is when the fear is repressed, denied, avoided and distorted. What results instead is a chronic fear of the censure and judgement of expressing natural reactions to fear.
In the following video, Impala almost loses it’s life to Cheetah. Start the video 36 seconds in to avoid that mess - so beware. BUT, after the cheetah jets, the Impala comes to awareness and begins to release the fear and stress response lodged in it’s body. This is so healthy!!
The Impala almost loses it’s life - then we see what fear looks like as it’s being released from the body.
Imagine what an energetic KNOT that would make if you repressed the release of all that crazy highly charged energy!?!!
…trauma, from the Greek for “wound”, “is not what happens to you; it is what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you … It is not the blow on the head, but the concussion I get.” That, he says, is the good news. “If my trauma was that my mother gave me to a stranger … that will never not have happened. But if the wound was that I decided as a result that I wasn’t worthwhile as a human being, I wasn’t lovable, that’s a wound that can heal at any time.”
It’s not the fear that wounds - it’s what we make the fear mean that creates stories and beliefs that distort our experience of reality.
Fear and Faith are 2 sides of the same coin.
Fear is the belief something bad will happen. Faith is the belief something good will happen. Our task is to allow fear to transform into faith. We can’t do that by wishing or hoping or thinking different; we have to do the processing work, the courageous work of feeling all the fears we’ve shoved down and avoided, repressed, denied, judged and rejected. Yaaaaaay.
We will never be without fear. Fear will happen - but we can accept it, feel it, process it and allow it to move through us. We can settle into faith and safety quicker as we become accustomed to identifying, expressing and processing fear as it comes up in real time - instead of having to go spelunking into our deep past to recover the trauma blocks that sphincter our joy.
Fear is simply information.
I spent most of my life jack-knifing into anger before I’d allowed myself a moment to recognize and connect to fear. I was short-circuiting the information loop to avoid the vulnerable feelings of fear in favour of my anger armour. I was missing out on all the wisdom that fear had to offer.
Fear is a transpersonal stimulus that there is something to learn. Fear is a signal that a greater wholeness understanding is required of our spirit-physical self. Fear is part of the knowledge needed to expand our understanding of existence here and now.
Roots of Childhood: Grounding, Boundaries and Nourishment
We can’t deny our roots and still expect to build a strong sense of self identity and purpose.
Developing our ground of being necessitates learning to stand for ourselves and what we believe is valuable and important in the world. We need to develop a solid, secure stable foundation of support to grow our wisdom. We need to learn to contain and hold boundaries - learn to build up energy and action to release when appropriate and return to build up resources and reserves to release again, repeat. This is what our roots do - they provide us with the stable ground and a container to build.
Healthy roots accept limitations of the physical world. We can’t collect water in a sieve, but we can fill up and hold an abundance of water in a container. Without ground, nothing can increase - there can be no “having” without the grounding to contain it. Accepting limits allows for the accumulation of abundance.
The need for grounding is both the most vital and the most ignored in our society. We send energy up and focus on ‘out there’, and heaven up above and spirit, but we deplete and weaken ourselves by pushing our energy always up and out and away.
We change the experience of our lives when we focus energy down and ground our soul seat deeply into the core of the Earth. When we do this, we are expressing and creating a physical agreement and experience of Presence and Being. Source connection to Earth is the conduit for all other connections.
You need to BE in your BODY.
You cannot BE in your head or in the airy clouds of “spirit above” you. This gets confusing because it ‘feels’ safer in fearful situations to move our awareness out of the body and upwards into mental &/or spiritual realms because it’s being in the body that feels bad. All we do though is disconnect from the body and cut off the experience of the body and repress, suppress, oppress the actual experience into our body and carry it around for the rest of our lives. lol.
The disconnection is a brief respite and gift that our body gives us to manage overwhelming fear and keep us functioning - but it’s not intended to be a permanent solution. The Earth holds our fear in our body until we can come to connect and process and release the experience and return to free flow of energy. Every single unprocessed fear experience remains in our bodies and manifests as depression and apathy and sadness and unexplained feelings of worthlessness and not good enough. Those experiences weren’t meant to be held in our identity and turned into stories about the truth of life and our value here.
Fear is just “shit that happened”. Shit is always happening and we will react in fear. The fear response is not a problem. The fear response is appropriate, expected, and useful reaction to fearful situations. Releasing the fear responses stuck in our body is the work that needs to be done.
The more developed your ground, the easier time you have navigating fearful situations… all situations actually. A highly developed ground can manage all kinds of mess and move through with supple flexibility and remain rooted into solid foundation.
If you need an immediate ground - stand on the earth with bare feet and hug a tree.
Immediately and massively grounding. Solid, foundational, physical support.
It is not hyperbole to say that I love trees, am in love with trees. I love them as kin and am grief-stricken to my heart and soul when they are mistreated. They teach us everything about Roots and Ground.
Reasonable Faith
Anodea Judith asks us to “replace unreasonable fear with reasonable faith.
Where did the fear come from? How did it serve us? How did our fear keep us safe?
What is the body’s response to the fear?
run and hide?
scream and push out?
curl up?
something else?
in the practice, allow your body to lead and move/express how they need
release and express the fear response in your body using as much of your body as you feel you need - including voice
trust your own judgement to know what you can and can’t do
some fear responses are more charged than others and you can decide that you need a therapist or health care provider to partner in this process
highly charged events need more time and care and gentle holding of safe space to process
be patient and loving with your self
do as much as you can do and give yourself plenty of rest and support and nourishment
realign and ground and do enjoyable things to reorient you to the safety that exists in your body right here and now
The internet literally fed me this video right after I finished editing the audio practice below. I love synchronicity. You are known and loved.
This is from “Primal Trust Official” on Instagram. Please read her nourishing words:
The amazing and awe inspiring creation of new neural pathways! This is what we talk about so much in brain rewiring, here you can actually see what's happening 🧠
Post credit @talk2spirit
This is what I want people to understand about the power of therapy SO badly. When you do the work of revisiting your life, especially the painful, traumatic parts that have injured or wounded you, you are not talking simply for the sake of talking or rehashing. You are allowing your brain to heal itself and grow in new ways that you (and it) were incapable of before.
I also like to remind my Clients that healing and creating new neural pathways is a process that takes time. I mean, come on! Your brain is LITERALLY blazing new trails and connecting to itself in new ways. That. Takes. Time. So, while your brain is busy doing incredible things, the very least you could do is be gentle with yourself and give yourself (and your brain) everything it needs to complete the process. After all, fighting to reclaim your wellness and complete functionality is the greatest act of restorative justice you can fight for.
Imagine what a world this would be if every one of our minds were free and clear of everything that's causing us to hurt ourselves and each other... 🙏🏿🙏🏿🙏🏿
Reel credit: wearenourishedandstrong via @rockatscientist
#mentalhealth #rewireyourbrain #healing #recovery #healingisaprocess
The Practice
You are the unconditionally loving and accepting Guardian you needed when you were a child. Now you get to be that for yourself.
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I want you to know about the support
and self care before you begin so you know what to do if it feels too intense.
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Try it yourself.
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This can be scary, vulnerable work. Be kind to you. Your little inside needs reassurance of your unconditional love and support.