Sometimes Sickness is Stories Leaving Your Body
I left the east coast just over a week ago - Tuesday, March 14, 2023.
I spent the next 7 days driving an average of 300 miles per day - 458 here, 200 there, exactly 300 twice. My intentions to have a regular schedule of only driving 6 hours a day or less with walking breaks went out the window immediately, which I should have expected since I’ve met me before.
It wasn’t because I was grinding anything out or felt like there was a rush to get there.
It was actually because I followed my body’s cues the entire time, never forcing anything, letting what felt the best and most joyful lead my decision-making, knowing that everything would only unfold perfectly if I did it that way, and taking the message that if my right knee started to ache it was time to wrap it up for the night.
During times when I couldn’t stand driving any more, I wandered around abandoned buildings in Texas with Maggie until I felt like going back on the road.
West Texas was rough to drive through. The desert seems to be saying very clearly that permanent fixtures aren’t welcome here, and yet we build and watch the buildings bleach out and get destroyed by wind and sand.
I came up with ever-more creative ways to sleep in the car that was stuffed to the sight lines of the windows.
I even managed to have two really incredible sessions with people one of the days of the trip.
So while my body did NOT like the taste of office-worker-ness/sitting for such long periods of time, I really felt pretty good because I refuse(d) to force myself to do anything. I needed a consensus from me, my body, and my car to move forward lol. I welcomed all sensations and feelings and had conversations with them in the ways I know how. This quelled two stressful moments where I felt in conflict with myself.
And after landing in San Diego at my friend Brandi’s and welcomed in her home, I got a cough after one night.
The second night I woke up feeling like I had had a fever overnight and the cough was almost gone.
I implore you to view your symptoms as movement, something that is moving out of you. In German New Medicine they would perhaps call it moving from the ‘conflict active’ phase into the ‘healing’ phase. Your body, relieved of a stress burden of some kind, is now resolving it and moving it on outward. This may be as a cough, a fever, or any of the other symptoms there are aisles and aisles of medicines to suppress.
There’s actually good data out there (find it yourself though) on how kids whose parents let their fevers run their course have stronger immune systems as they age.
Let’s get behind the idea that our bodies are never trying to harm us and nothing they do is wrong, just data.
The fact that we panic and try to suppress the body’s expression makes them grotesque and stronger or emerge in new and more extreme ways.
They also try to draw your attention to things you’re neglecting, and I can say my foot pain that was just killing and lingering while I stayed in an unhappy position in my house in NC has resolved over the trip, as I stepped forward into my new life.
Here’s a video I made about this concept a while ago.
I’ve had a bunch of stuff coming up, and what brings me joy is often to call and lean on a friend in that time, or to write in back-and-forth conversations with the energies that come over me until they shift.
New slogan - SHIFT HAPPENS
Eh? Nah. But feel free to make and send me bumper stickers of that.
I don’t know that I could ever go back to forcing things. Now, that’s not to say that there isn’t a constant deciphering of what forcing even means, or that it’s all pleasurable because the pain that requests change is often very hard to listen to at first.
On an anecdotal note, I’ve just been offered a job at an outdoor nature preschool called Wild Child San Diego after doing my trial day today, giving me my very first job ever that has a regular schedule and pay. I discovered and dispelled a resistance in myself to such stability while I was on the road trip. I’ll be studying my 1000 Hours Outside and Katy Bowman to supplement my own internal knowings and trends as I help to make a better-adjusted, less-traumatized dent in the youth today.
Along with my coaching, I think I may be able to afford a place to live. hahaha ::laughing face emoji::
Speaking of which, I’ve decided to change my prices to $75/hr currently. This includes in-person sessions in San Diego. It fits in a sweet spot for me that feels really nice. You can still buy bulk, with a $5 per session discount if you buy 3 at a time. I hope this makes my work more accessible to people to get the help they want for a little less risk.
I’ve updated my calendar for PST and new life. Next week is very open as the Nature School is on spring break. Let me know if you have any apartments for me to look at in SD. In lieu of that, check and book now.
The ongoing schedule for booking sessions after the spring break should be regular now that I have a regular schedule doing something meaningful to me. What I love is that it’s something for something vs being oriented against other things, though I suppose it’s a type of school that is against the systems that seek to make sedentary, under-stimulated, and risk-adverse children. My goal is more pro-kid than anti-system.
The online course sale is still 50% off including a 3-day immersion with me in San Diego ($1000) that I know is not an online course shhhhh and The Supportive Mind Course ($24.50) where I teach you how to have conversations and silence your internal conflicts through understanding, for a few more days. The Body Awareness course is only $7.50 with this sale! And today is my birthday. I’m 38.
Let me know if you have any questions about the trip in the comments, which are open to free and paid subscribers!