How to re-open.

What a long, deep contraction, like a perpetual winter, we’ve been in.  The threat has ebbed between immense, questionable, or laughable, depending on our particular vantage points.  But the collective, on a nearly global level, has been in a fetal position.  So how do we open, literally, our bodies back up to the light? What is the shape of becoming? 

I’m reminded of how western allopathy used to proclaim that birth was an inactive occurrence for the baby coming through, that we come into this world limp and needy on every level.  Traditional wisdom, now verified through technology (please do see the underlying subtext there of feminine wisdom vs. patriarchal verification) has a different understanding of birth: if given the space, babies let their mothers know they are ready to be born by pushing on the cervix, twisting through the bony passage, unfurling their spines and with feet against the fundus, thrusting into the world.  If unimpeded, newborns will also undulate up the mother’s belly to the breast, and latch on without support. 

This simple shift of what agency we all come in with can translate to how capable and trustworthy our bodied selves truly are.  We’ve embraced – or been made to embrace – a narrative that the only agencies we have are outside ourselves in ‘fighting’ this virus: masks, prophylactic drugs, isolation, and ventilators.  I understand the pathway here, but what else is possible? 

We won’t pretend health is equally available in this systemically racist society.  (Black and brown bodies of culture in the U.S. have perished at roughly twice the rate of white-identified folks.  But across Africa, Black bodies have survived well, with over 11 million infections and only 250,000 deaths on the entire continent.)  But going back to the idea that we all come in with an innate physical intelligence, how can we use that moving forward?  What does it look like to engage with this viral intelligence that is in fact a part of who we all are too? 

For me, it looks like unfurling, pushing my feet into the ground (concrete and all), and feeling my head pushing up into the sky.  I see the squirrel gathering moss in her mouth, I see the full face of my small child smiling at a stranger again, I see sweet annie and elderberry and japanese knotweed pushing up to join me here. We are doing this collectively, as the Earth wakes up the plants (where I live). but as an individual I wonder, how strong can I be in this moment, how flexible and vibrant and inspiring?  How can I move towards possibility and away from fear, which always has a diminishing effect?

All of our answers are different - I can almost smell the brilliant diversity of our collective garden as we engage with the challenge to live with health. We are brilliant beings, when we stay in our skin.

There’s one more thread here to weave in, the one about how, according to systems theory and metaphysics, what happens to the earth’s body echoes inside our own.  I do imagine that if we considered the impacts of our health choices on the Earth more fully, we would make different choices.  I know we’ve all found muddy, snowy, trampled masks as we traverse our days.  (I’m at 197 and counting.)  Most are N95s, made out of synthetic plastic fiber made out of fossil fuels, rubber, aluminum, and steel. Historically, us humans tend to respond first with a hefty dose of impetuosity, then we consider the impacts.  A good example is sunscreen, which, while healthful for us, has been devastating for coral reefs, which are even more important to global health. Are the protective options we’ve chosen really the best we can do to protect the vulnerable…whom might we be excluding in that label?

I know another surge may be in store for us soon, complete with fear, inflammation, anxiety, and mandated requirements.  What I wonder is, what would a response look like from an unfurled stance that considers the whole breathing Earth, who right now is inflamed beyond possibility?

The subversive act of living within our physical means, in a healthy orientation, could be a guidepost.  Asking the nearest tree, squirrel, or stone for guidance, might not be out of the question.

“Baby slides into a new world.  A transformation has occurred.  Baby is changing from fetal circulation to neonatal circulation, initiating respirations, smelling the environment, feeling air for the first time, listening, seeing, and experiencing his or her first impressions of this planet. Mother is seeing this planet through new eyes. She will usually sit quietly for a few moments allowing herself to return. She then reaches out to touch her baby. Usually the partner sits by, watching, with tears of awe.” –Wapio, esteemed midwife, homeopath, teacher