i spent my 35th birthday in the third week of my first year of teacher training with generative somatics. it was wonderful.

the work is about figuring out what we long for, what makes us feel most alive, and moving towards it. this means learning to feel alive after trauma, after socialization, in relationship with others, in conflict, in love, in vulnerability. part of it is understanding that how we show up is based in what we practice, what we do over and over. and if we can become aware of what we are practicing, we can begin to have choice over what we practice and thus how we are in our lives.

what are we practicing? in our movements, are we practicing the things we want to evolve beyond? how do we change the world if we don’t change what we practice?

what am i practicing? i ask this question several times a day, when i get triggered, when i feel moved, when i eat, when i move.

i like it because it isn’t magic. it embraces that which is mysterious in the world, but it isn’t about just having some mysterious inaccessible magical skill set. part of the idea is that feeling is our human condition, and we get socialized to believe that we are just our thinking selves. reclaiming the full realm of feeling can return to us our whole selves.

as someone who has, at many points in my life, not wanted to feel what was happening, i am blown away by the connection between being able to feel and then being able to make powerful decisions.

and i am so grateful i can feel this moment, when things i have hoped and worked and dreamed for are coming to me.

it was an easy way to spend my birthday, it has been a gift to me. i invite you to support this work, to help it grow so that as many leaders as possible in social justice and other work can grow this wholeness, this feeling self, and bring that into our work.

whole people grow whole movements.