Surrendering into the Fall

Balanced Living & Emie Kay Coaching November Update

photo credit: Tracy Gregory

Hello Beautiful Humans,

In November’s Monthly Touch In You’ll Find:

• Reflections on Surrender

• Poem of the Month: When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

• Celebrations from The Handless Maiden Workshop

• Personal Celebrations & Share

• Song of the Month: Loosen by Aly Halpert

• Transgender Awareness Week

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Reflections on Surrender

What is your favorite way to practice surrendering into change? How do you work with letting go, surrendering, being with what is rather than struggling desperately to try to keep what you think you want or need alive, manipulate it into what you think it needs to look like, or control what is uncontrollable? What practices support your embodied release of tensions, stuck energy, old patterns hanging on, and ending or morphing relationships?

Sometimes when I need to surrender, I sit by a fire to learn from the wood surrendering to the flame.

Sometimes when I resist letting go, I go to a float tank and surrender my body to the dark and the water.

Sometimes when I notice the rigidity in my body or stubborn controlling thought patterns, I set a morning aside for self pleasure. I leisurely allow my senses to awaken to smells, delicious taste, lovely sounds, beauty, and sensual touch. I create and receive pleasure for myself, surrendering into moments of bliss.

Sometimes when I create suffering within myself by holding on to something that is trying to die or alchemize, I set the timer for 15 to 30 minutes and consciously breathe full inhales, full exhales. I practice receiving breath and surrendering breath. I hold the terrified parts of me in loving awareness.

And when nothing works on my own, or I know right away that the thing I can’t open my fist to release needs extra support, I call my therapist, book my bodywork practitioner, set up a session with my coach, or jump on a call with a bestie. These people know better than to try to fix me. They are with me. They hold me. They breathe with me. They allow my body and soul to soften into releases rather than forcing them. I love my people so much.

Humans who are not intimately connected to and flowing with the natural rhythms of life have a habit of resisting change. We have a habit of holding on when it’s clearly time to let go. This is our suffering. When we practice allowing ourselves to be with what is, surrender into the present moment, allow seasons to change, winter to come, and embrace the deaths, peace enters the experience . . . even if the grief feels unbearable. There are skills you can learn that help you move through what you think is unbearable emotion, sensation, thought and experience.

• Practice noticing.

  “I notice this emotion.” “I notice this thought.” “I notice this unbearable sensation or experience.” Notice what your normal behavior would be with this experience or sensation. Running, numbing, masking it with a more powerful feeling emotion? Can you notice that and slow down?

• Breathe into it.

  Be with it and honor the thing you notice with the breath.

• Sound with it.

  Deep breath in and hum, sing, scream, moan. Allow the emotion, sensation, thought to express through sound.

• Move with it.

  How does your body want to move in response to what you notice? Can you allow it? Gently shake, bounce, tap, self massage, walk, dance.

If you need support surrendering into what is, please reach out. If you need support allowing the death, processing grief, or prying your fingers open when you’re unable to let go of what is ready to leave or change, please reach out. It is my deepest honor to support you in the letting go and being with what is.

If you need skillsets to help you live your present moment with more ease, reach out. This is one of my very favorite ways to support people.

As we move through fall, can you surrender into the releases?

Let nature lead you.

“Surrender is surrender to this moment, not to a story through which you interpret this moment and then try to resign yourself to it.” —Eckhart Tolle

Wondering what a BodyMindSpirit Session is about? I am a Trauma Informed BodyMindSpirit Therapist. I use the modalities of Certified CranioSacral Therapy, Esalen Massage Therapy, Eco-Somatics Practices, Certified Love, Sex, Spirituality Coaching, and DreamTending to co-create a unique session for each client. I assist you in down regulating an activated nervous system, building new relationship to pain, body, sensation, emotion, breath, and trauma story in ways that support you in coming back to inner wisdom, activating the body’s innate healing capacity, and bringing more balance and peace to your life. In short, I support healing through embodiment, empowerment, & expression of true Soulful Self. Here’s a short video explaining a bit about my work.

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Poem of the Month: When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

--Mary Oliver

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The Handless Maiden Workshop Celebration

Carin Barnes and I held the experimental space for The Handless Maiden to do what she wanted to do with us. We were committed to allowing the feminine templates to lead us through the process. We were committed to allowing the tale itself to do its work within us even while we were preparing the space for others to dive in to find resource and support from this feminine map of fairytale.

We were committed to holding the space for a minimum of three participants and a maximum of 10. The Handless Maiden drew 12 wild women ready to explore the feminine map of initiation into Wholeness and Powerful Womanhood. The experience was above and beyond what Carin and I were hoping for. The feedback was stunning.

Gorgeous setting, delicious food, deep and rich content, vulnerability, intimacy, embodiment, artistic integration, a titch of masculine structure and a whole lotta feminine flow.

Thank you to the 12 wild women whose energy within the container was magical, co-creative, and essential to the making of this wonderful experience.

If you want to explore fairy tale as maps for the wild woman or powerful womanhood, I highly recommend Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Éstes.

If you want to hear the tale read aloud and steep in what images feel alive for you to play with, here is a recording of me reading it.

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Top Left: Ela’s bronze cast tarantula, Top Right: Ela’s B-day, Bottom Left: Around the fire pit, Bottom middle: Morning coffee with the familiar in the crisp autumn air, Bottom Right: Working at Watson’s.

Personal Celebrations

November held a milestone for me and my Locke Experiment.

My baby turned 18!

Most of you know I have four young adult kiddos, now ages 26, 23, 20, and 18. I homeschooled all of them with the help of Eleanor Roosevelt Community Learning Center for 15 of the 21 years of the homeschool experiment. Ela graduates in May. I devoted my life to these people. I was a stay at home, homeschooling mom until I got divorced and started Balanced Living in 2016. Motherhood is by far the most difficult initiation I’ve ever experienced.

When my kiddos were small, I was drowning. I couldn’t even find a smidgeon of “me” in all the work of mothering. When I got divorced and my kids were adamant they needed to stay at ERCLC, I was a wreck. How could I manage it all?

It’s truly only been within that last couple years that I have relaxed into the whole experiment. That’s a lot of years of anxiety around mothering and educating my kids! I most often felt like I was failing.

I look back and celebrate all those versions of me. I made it. We made it. We’ve worked our asses off in therapy to break toxic generational patterns in our home. We’ve worked our asses off to maintain heart to heart connection and allow queerness to be welcomed and explored in our home. I did the brutal internal work so that internalized homophobia and internalized transphobia in me would not create separation between me and the humans I love more than anyone. I’m so grateful they were patient with me.

We aren’t perfect, but we know how to love each other and repair when we hurt each other. We generally have deep respect and honor of each other with the normal sibling struggle and personality conflicts that come with so many people sharing space.

I no longer feel like I’m failing at motherhood. I no longer look back and beat myself up for all the things I didn’t do better. I have forgiven many, many moments of losing my shit, saying things I wish I would’ve never said, missing moments I wish I could have been more attuned to, parenting from old belief systems that harm instead of heal, and on and on and on. I didn’t have a mother, grandmother or crone holding me through this experiment. But I did have the most amazing friends, homeschool support, therapist, coach and bodyworker.

I celebrate this wild journey of motherhood I’ve been on. I celebrate the incredibly unique, colorful, creative lives of each of my children.

UPDATE ON ASH’S JOB HUNT: Ash Locke was hired at Heavenly Touch in Hanford and will be starting this Friday. Another major celebration for the Locke Experiment. Send Ash love and peace as they start. If you want to support their massage career, book at Heavenly Touch for a massage with Ash Locke to support them.

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Song of the Month: Loosen by Aly Halpert

Loosen, loosen baby
You don’t have to carry
The weight of the world
In your muscles and bones
Let go, Let go, Let go

Holy Breath
and Holy Name
Will you ease,
will you ease this pain?

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Last week was Transgender Awareness week. As the mother of transgender humans, I beg you to educate yourself. Soften your tightly held beliefs, soften your body, and practice staying curious. Notice how your body tightens and gets defensive with thoughts of people different than you are. This is a fear response. We are trained to be afraid of those who are different. Can you soften? Can you breathe? Can you get curious and interested in what is actually happening for a person who lives their life differently than you do? Transgender people are some of the most amazing people you will ever meet.

I am constantly afraid of hate crimes. I am constantly aware of homophobia and transphobia. I am constantly aware of the safety of my children and other dear friends in the LGBTQ+ community who deserve to feel safe to be themselves in the world.

Please read a book from the opposite belief than you hold. Please listen to the story of a transgender person (there are podcasts everywhere). Please ask questions with an open mind. Please read articles from perspectives other than the ones you’re comfortable with. I know how hard it can be to let go of internalized homophobia and transphobia. I grew up in rural conservative religious Montana. But for the sake of love and honor and safety of beautiful people like my kids, please educate yourself. Notice how terrifying it might feel to entertain a belief you were trained was “wrong.” Let the terror move through your body with your breath and then engage your heart and thinking brain.

And if you need support in the Visalia area, reach out to The Source. It’s an incredible community of people working to educate, create safe spaces, and empower the LGBTQ+ community in the valley.

Connect HERE.

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I am so grateful for each one of you. Thank you, thank you, thank you for allowing me to share moments with you. I feel privileged to know and support you. I celebrate you. I honor you.

emie kay