It Seems That I Keep Getting Weirder
It’s in our nature to sometimes be a wee bit dramatic the first time we experience some new thing. Overreactions are pretty common to new sensations or experiences that feel a bit out of our original perception of control. Rafe Kelley on a podcast talked about how a healthy 20-something on his retreat twisted his ankle and blacked out. The damage was minimal as he was fine the next day, but his experience with pain was almost naught prior to that incident. His system went, “That’s it! Shut it down.” Someone chronically in pain on the other hand may tune out their pain almost completely. Pain is a very funny subjective subject. This is one of my favorite videos on it, shared long ago in the FRC practitioners Facebook group by Brittness Fitness.
I’ve mentioned my lack of drug use before and some of my drug stories as well. But to recap, I’ve been drunk once in my life and spent one weekend with a fantastic group of people during which I had one microdose of psyliscibin, one try with San Pedro or huachuma, I may not even be spelling any of these right, and 5MEO-DMT.
The San Pedro sent a voice to screaming in my head that none of us needed this stuff and we could do the same things without drugs, until a second voice came in and wondered why that one was so angry. Now I nonjudgmentally think drugs are just another path.
I wanna talk about the mushrooms though. The microdose. I describe the experience as having my intuition dial turned up to 11, telling me to go here, stand here, turn that way, go inside and for the love of God and everything try to get warm because you are shivering. (If you want to give me advice or explanations for this do not unless you feel no need to do so, I don’t wanna hear it if you feel like you gotta prove something, feel me?) After a bath I curled up on a rug with a comforter over me and shivered like mad until a friend came over and did energy work on me, which calmed my shivers and I passed out for a while. It was interesting. I didn’t mind it.
That was at least 4 years ago.
Tonight (or last night if you’re reading this) I decided to do an hour of intuitive movement at home. I needed to figure out if this was an escape artist version of myself avoiding the gym again or actually what my body needed more, as it claimed when asked.
It started out much like normal sitting meditation does, with a flood of ideas and impulses to sit through while they just kinda vomit themselves out of your psyche. This was focused on movement though so I “had to” eventually pick something to do out of them besides sit there nonreactively like I usually decide to in meditation. It was fun sifting it out.
Basically I worked on me the way I work with you motherfuckas, following things around and acknowledging the various pathways available before choosing what’s in front.
In this session, I mostly sat with some weight on my hands at varying angles and an occasional repositioning of my legs and feet. I went into what would be a boat pose in yoga once, balanced on my sit bones with my back straight and legs off the ground. Then back on all fours, staying for a long time while the circuitry electrified itself in different places, I’m assuming.
As time went on I continuously started shifting more and more of the weight into right-sided positions and I suddenly began feeling energy move. There was something releasing and I thought about how important it is to have a positive relationship with your elimination pathways. Here’s a video I did about that a few years ago which is important for post-work. I kinda coughed and lightly gagged a bit, and totally reached my tolerance threshold for whatever was happening at about the 30-minute mark, at which time I flung myself onto my left side, curled up under a blanket (similar to the mushroom occasion), and tummy gurgled and nauseated my way toward sleep in the second 30 minutes of the planned hour.
I took my time getting up after the timer went off, told one of my beloved-as-fuck roommates bc I HAD to tell SOMEONE, and took Maggie out for a walk.
So here’s where I might be being dramatic about my new experience. I wandered around feeling REALLY drawn to different plant energies in the neighborhood, especially cactus, and noticing geometry on people’s doors I’d never noticed before, wondering if I’m now a shaman. I took really lingering sniffs and peed on this trail in the neighborhood canyon which is a thing in San Diego everywhere and i KNEW that my pee was an offering to the earth, something sacred. I don’t think I’ve done or thought that before. Maybe once. I think that about anything we release in sessions, that if it is good for us to release it that it is in turn good for the whole of the Universe that we are a part of, because why wouldn’t it be? It returns to nurture something that needs the energy when we don’t hold it any more. It is mutually and universally beneficial to do things that are good for us.
This stuff is all framed positively to me. You may think wtf, and that’s cool.
This is why I’m now doing Normal Wednesdays for you to enjoy things that are perhaps more applicable to your own life.
I’m just saying I think my shaman shit is leveling up. It’s been feeling that way in sessions. Roxanne had said to me before I moved here, and before living together was even a thought, that perhaps if you planted a magnolia tree and it was sick and having a hard time growing that you wouldn’t blame the tree. Perhaps it needed a new environment. So far California is feeling like stepping on the accelerator, which is exactly the kind of growth I was looking for. Also, please send me all the roasts about living here in California. I love them.