Wintering in a Wild World
Balanced Living & Emie Kay Coaching January 2026 Touch In
Hello Beautiful Humans
In January’s monthly touch in, you’ll find:
Reflections on Balance in a Shifting World
Poem on Being in Balance with Another by Maria Popova
In Person Workshop Invitation in February: Let Yourself Wear It!
Personal reflections: Building Conscious Relationship to Life
Song of the Month: The Way Knows the Way by Lydnsey Scott
Balancing in a Shifting World
I have a dream of being able to walk a slack line with grace and skill. The reality of this dream is a long way off yet something in my body craves the ability to balance in impossible circumstances. (Thank you childhood trauma and my Libra Sun.)
So I bought [the kids] a slack board for Christmas.
My first attempt on the line sent me back to the 6 year old feeling learning to ride a bike. It looks easy. Why do I keep falling off? Frustration. My kids can hop on and balance with seeming ease. What am I doing wrong? Agitation built, my hatred of not being immediately good at a thing took over, and I gave up altogether that first night. Dreams of walking a slack line dashed to the floor.
I got back on the next day because I’m stubborn and determined like that.
Over the last few weeks, I’m slowly getting better. I’m learning a lot about my internal monologue and my body along the way.
I’ve had some “duh!” moments that brought us all a few good laughs.
At one point I exclaimed in exasperation, “I just want to get on here and feel solid.” One of my kids replied deadpan, “Then put a piece of tape on the floor and walk a straight line.”
BAHAHAHAHA. Expectation shift.
A few adjustments to my mental expectations changed my relationship to the slackboard practice.
Don’t expect to feel solid on a slack line
Expect to continually be making micro or even macro movements to stay on the line
Play with the position of feet, body, core muscles and eye focus
Notice breath, notice alignment, notice the ability to adjust quickly
Relax and Play
The world is a shifting thing right now. What used to feel solid, doesn’t. What used to feel secure is tenuous. Many are feeling not just unsettled but terrified. We aren’t walking a straight line of tape on solid ground right now.
So maybe it would be helpful to change our expectations of what our body and mind and practices and experiences should be. When I expected the slack line to feel the way walking a line on the solid ground feels in my body, I was so frustrated I quit. When I changed the expectation and awareness and became super curious about what this experience on this new terrain feels like in my body and breath and mind, I began to have some fun. . . . still a lot of frustration but wayyyyyy more fun.
I’m not saying things will feel fun simply by changing our expectations but I do think we can help our bodies and minds adjust and find center with a little more conscious awareness rather than white knuckle grasping for old ways of doing life through these changing, uncertain, and often terrifying times.
Take a few deep breaths with me.
Inhale, two, three, four, five
Exhale, two, three, four, five
Inhale, two, three, four, five
Exhale, two, three, four, five
Inhale, two, three, four, five
Exhale, two, three, four, five.
The world is rapidly changing. Tighten your fists for a second or two and then release them. Place your open palms on your lap.
Do that little exercise again. Tighten your hands into fists and feel the grasping. Release the grip. Open your palms to the ceiling and place them on your lap.
Deep breath.
You can learn new ways of being. You can find new ways to use your body, your mind, your skills, your compassion, your energy. You can be part of the change in collaborative, compassionate restructuring or you can keep being frustrated that the slack line doesn’t feel like the piece of tape on the ground.
Find your inner center. Use your core. Change your focus. Breathe with consciousness. Learn a new game. For the sake of humanity and our beautiful Mother Earth, join me in learning a new way of being connected, compassionate, collaborative, and conscious even as the world is dismantling around us.
We won’t always get it right. We will fall off the slack line a thousand times. But those moments when it all comes together and the microadjustments and graceful arms balance to keep you on the line, you will feel deep joy for trying and learning and growing. If you need help meeting the fear, the old stories, the grief of instability, the grief of the state of the world, the inability to find your center when you feel constantly in fight, flight, freeze, fawn. . . reach out. I would be so honored to hold space for you as we navigate a new kind of world together.
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.
Poem of the Month
by Maria Popova of The Marginalian
being in balance together
is not a fixed state
not a battle over differences
or bending to each other
but a slender cord
of grace between you
tough and elastic
that leaves you
steady and free
In Person Workshop, Feb 22: Let Yourself Wear It
I’m excited to announce an in person workshop led by my dear soul sister, Amber of Exeter, CA. I am supporting and attending this workshop. Would you join us? Here are some details. Please reach out if you need more info. Or register HERE.
Let Yourself Wear It
Ditch perfection! No expertise required!
L.Y.W.I. is a queer-inclusive fashion workshop centered on self-expression and reconnecting with yourself through the clothes you already wear.
Bring an item from your closet or come exactly as you are. We’ll explore color, styling, and confidence through reflective conversation and group interaction.
Leave inspired and ready to play with how you want to show up in the world.
This workshop is led by the amazing Amber. She is an inspiring artist, healer, wild woman. Amber is part of The Cauldron & The Feast Community and The Wild Woman Initiation Circle Community. Please follow Amber on IG HERE: https://www.instagram.com/tendingmyown/. If you have questions you want to ask Amber directly, please DM her on IG.
Join Amber and me at this fun and inspiring workshop on February 22nd at 3:00 pm.
Please Register HERE and we will reach out to you with the address and other details you might need. If you have questions before you register, please DM Amber HERE or Emie here.
WHEN: Sunday, February 22nd from 3–6 PM.
WHERE: Private, in-person gathering in Exeter, CA. Address provided after Registration is paid.
COST: $60.00
Click Here to Purchase Your Ticket: https://buy.stripe.com/9B65kE5I8apd5FAfAJ77O00
A light grazing table and water will be provided.
Personal Reflections on Conscious Relationship to Life
Winter in the central valley of California usually means fog. I love it. The fog helps me honor slowness and Mystery. When I have to drive in it, I love that the familiarity on roads I’ve driven a thousand times disappears. It becomes a new world. My brain has to engage differently in the fog. Everything feels intriguing (and sometimes a little terrifying).
You all know by now that reconnecting to seasons and cycles is my thing. I believe we must come back into rhythm with nature’s seasons and cycles to heal, to repair a broken body, family, community, world.
Connection.
Intimate connection.
Building and deepening relationship with the seasons and the cycles. Not biohacking. Not the next fad or highlight in scientific evidence that nature is good for you and the practices indigenous people followed for thousands of years are, shock of all shocks, the best practices for physical, emotional, mental, psychic, community, and spiritual health.
I’m passionate about helping you fall in love with Life, with being a messy human connected to the elements and other in intimate ways because we ARE the elements. This kind of “biomancing,” as my teacher, Dr. Azra Bertrand calls it, is a lifestyle change, consciousness shifting, remembering, reconnecting to harmonious templates that are lying dormant within us and can be awakened through deepening our relationship to the natural world.
I’ve been changing my way of thinking and being slowly over the last decade. I don’t believe in trying to change it all at once. I believe in allowing small changes to shift trajectories in major ways over time. This slowness of my own evolution was not easy for me at first. I am an overachiever. I love to work hard. I love to get shit done. And I love to move (and drive) fast. I love to fall into bed exhausted feeling like I accomplished a million things.
Life has taught me to move fast when it’s time and move slow when it’s time. I learned this through attuning to my menstrual cycle’s energy patterns, attuning my body to the seasons of spring, summer, autumn, winter, and to honoring the sunrise, sunset, moon cycles in personal and intimate ways. I am changing my life, my biology, and my disharmonious templates in slow and beautiful ways.
One of the small habits I finally started this winter after hearing about the benefits for the last few years is wearing orange tinted glasses after the sun goes down. I cannot believe how much I feel the true tiredness in my body when I wear them. I go to bed earlier and get better sleep now that I added this small habit. My mind feels clearer and I wake up feeling more refreshed. More than a biohack, this is a relationship with light and dark that I’m tending to within myself. In the morning, I get up and put my face in the sunlight and my bare feet on the grass. I’ve been doing this for a couple of years, as I’m rebuilding a love and trust of Light energizing me, Earth holding and nourishing me, Water flowing me and Breath breathing me.
The biomancing part of that? This is me learning to soften to and open my bodymindspirit to Life Loving and Resourcing ME in a tangible, embodied way. I don’t just do these practices so I can outlive everyone. No, I’m doing these practices to be in relationship to Life, to Love itself, to the Bigger Thing Resourcing my bodymindspirit that allows me to be ME in the world. The Elements are Divine Love energizing me with the Sun, breathing me with the Breath, flowing me with the Living Water, and holding and resourcing me with the Great Mother Earth Herself. Divine Love holding, resourcing, and loving me every second of my life in this body, no matter how insane the country is or the world gets. Something Bigger, Life Itself, is holding, resourcing, and loving each one of us. And we are desperately needing to tune into the felt sense of this support with our physical, emotional, and mental bodies if we don’t want to crash and burn with all that is shifting around us.
I don’t care what you call that Life Force. Call it God. Call it Goddess. Call it Mother. Call it Source. Call it Life. Call it Mystery. Call it whateverthefuck you want. But when we come back into a intimate relationship with the Bigger Thing Breathing, Flowing, Energizing, Holding and Resourcing us, we find our humanity again. We find our connection again. We begin to feel alive again. We find our compassion for all things again. We have stability even in a wild world and this offers us the opportunity to find our center and be with and support Others through every wild experience we may have individually and collectively.
If you need extra support as you remember and reconnect, please reach out. I am honored and delighted to support you in attuning to the intimate relationship with Life that is available to you with every conscious breath.
This work I’m referring to in this section is melding of my three years of study with Ernest Morrow in his Becoming Human work and three years of study with Dr. Azra Bertrand in his Biomancy Program and pioneering Eco-Somatics work.
Song of the Month
The Way Knows by Lindsey Scott
You don’t have to know the Way
The Way knows the Way
You don’t have to plan the Way
Trust the Way
Feel your Way
The Way knows
The Way knows
The Way knows the Way
As always, Emie, this was not only beautiful but so incredibly helpful. Your experience on that slack line or slack board or whatever it is I never even heard of one of those until you started talking about. It reminded me of what I have had to figure out and experience with rehabbing from this knee surgery my usual way is to white knuckle by God I’m gonna get through it come Hell or high water. I’m gonna get there and somewhere along the line I had to just let go and just be with the pain and be with the exercises and sort of just play with them and see what I could do and bit by bit. I’m actually having fun going not to say that it’s always fun because there’s some pain involved too but instead of asking my usual question OK am I going to be able to run a marathon.( that’s a joke.) I don’t ask the questions anymore. I try to enjoy my body being able to do a bit more every day and I’m so amazed and it brings me joy. Thank you as always, dear soul, sister for all that you bring to us.