Hello friends! January is nearly over (hooray! It’s the hardest month for me), and this week, we resumed our book club after being on hiatus since early November. This newsletter focuses on insights and ideas from the book club and includes a recommendation for a meditation you may not have tried before. We hope you enjoy it!

—Mindy

Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the Chakra System [paperback, audiobook, kindle]

Let’s get the biggest criticism out of the way up front: The chapter naming scheme for the chapters is obtuse. If you’re going to write a book about the seven chakras, for the love of cornflakes and bananas, make the chapter numbers align with the chakra numbers. None of this “Introduction is actually Chapter 1, and Chapter 2 is Chakra One” business.  That just seems mean and will have us all stumbling over our words for the next several weeks. But push through the annoyance. Consider it an invitation to use what you learn about grounding in chapter 2 (on the first chakra 🙄) because this book is shaping up to be surprisingly insightful to me.

INTRODUCTION

Our original plan was for me (Gonzo) to take notes to make it easier for Mindy to write up a reflection for the newsletter since book club is her project. It’s difficult to be in the role of facilitator and keep things moving while also trying to take notes. 

I was excited to be the note-taker. I may have, at one point, imagined myself as Mindy’s stunningly handsome and chocolatey-voiced secretary. I like taking notes. Mindy also likes taking notes. We both love becoming facile with new ideas, and taking notes so often helps. Plus, Mindy and I started our relationship in school. We fell in love on a research trip to the Amazon rainforest, and the next few years were a whirlwind of young love, being young parents in grad school together, and lots and lots of note-taking. I quickly dropped into my role, and the feeling of my pen scraping across the page almost automatically grounded me in delicious memories of our first years together.

It did not occur to us until afterward that, given that the notes were mine, it made the most sense that I would do the write-up. Mindy’s full attention was best directed at facilitating the conversation. 

Mindy is a talented facilitator. Her natural temperament is to make sure everyone feels welcomed and invited. This shows up in so much of what she does. She never fails to dazzle the group with her mental flexibility and deft listening and positioning skills that will be punctuated with a joke if it’s been too long since the room relaxed. Afterwards, one of the attendees came up to me and gushed about how much she enjoys Mindy’s style of facilitation–it helps her to pay closer attention and more deeply integrate the material presented into her own views.

We were a baker’s dozen seated on cushions placed around the large open space at the center of the downstairs floor of our friend Jackie’s lovely home. Mindy opened book club as she always has, with a guided meditation. She chose to have us listen to the guided meditation in Chapter 2 of the audiobook–a meditation that includes this line:

Wrestling with the idea that we ARE our body, and not, say, our thoughts, would become a recurring theme during the discussion.

After the guided meditation, Mindy asked each of us to share something we did that day, or recently, to care for our bodies and any experiences we have had with chakras. Folks shared about eating nutritious food, some shared about indulging in a chocolate treat, feeling energetic concentrations inside and outside themselves, and I shared about concluding a seven-day fast.  This time, the fast felt like a silent meditation inside my body, a beautiful experience. Many shared how insightful but challenging it was to think of themselves as their body. Utah is a weird place. We have more plastic surgeons per capita than L.A. and 250% more plastic surgeons than any similarly sized state. People here are surrounded by messages signaling that their body is something to be subdued or conquered, and that certainly was the theme of the conversation.

I did not grow up in Utah, but I formed a relationship with my body as a possession, and one I was often embarrassed to carry around–it was too weak, too flabby, in pain, easily startled, uncomfortable, undesirable, even disgusting. 

I appreciated the perspectives and practices shared by those who had developed a practice of working with chakras. I had to read the introduction twice. The first time through, I kept getting swept up in feelings of dismissiveness. A new undertaking for me is to work to find common ground and ways to relate to ideas that do not immediately fit neatly in my belief system (a rather evolutionary and materialist perspective), and on the second reading, I was able to appreciate how powerful it is to have a narrative to map to one’s entire body and how one feels inside oneself. It functions almost like a mnemonic device–a way to remember our body proactively, not only when it screams at us in pain or distress.

During the introduction discussion, several themes grabbed most of the attention:

• Shiva/Shakti: some loved the historical framing of masculine and feminine energy through the archetypes of Shiva & Shakti.  It specifically helped several women relate to the challenge of showing up in the world of corporate careerism that feels so much energy of the wounded masculine (purposelessly driven to achieve) and of exiling the feminine in their lives. Everyone appreciated the framing of chakras as a way to think of the body as a conduit by which ideas (Shiva) are birthed into reality through us (Shakti). 

• Manifesting: We heard from people with various relationships with the idea of manifesting. Mindy spoke for many of us when she shared how the pragmatic framing of manifesting as something like aligning our actions with our desires was much more appealing than more esoteric framings. Others shared lovely experiences feeling the magic and alchemy of setting an intention and feeling safe and confident enough to reach beyond themselves for the resources or opportunities they needed to grow and reach their potential.

• Body dysmorphia and dissatisfaction: Several shared about the challenge of pedestalizing bodies and feeling so compelled to compare, judge, and measure up, while others related to the feeling that this body was a low thing, a burden standing in the way of happiness. Nearly everyone voiced appreciation for the framing of our body and our capacity for pleasure as beautiful and helpful.

• Balance: this was by far the most revisited and recounted idea. Some shared how they really did not have a framing for balance in their lives or how difficult it had been to find a framing of balance when their experience in society had taught them the opposite. Kundalini was brought up in this context a few times as well–with people reflecting on how disconnected or out of balance they felt their relationship was with the creative power they actually possess.

Chapter 2 Chakra One: Earth

I listened to the audiobook while running. I listened to this chapter while running and fasted. By the fifth day of my fast, the stillness that pervaded my inner self had heft–I felt deeply grounded and a pervasive stillness inside of myself. To be grounded is to be here. Being grounded in the Earth—our home and spaceship through the cosmos—feels very comforting. Many shared beautiful experiences of taking a moment during a challenging time to step outside or to lay or sit on the ground and feeling much more centered and capable with that simple act. 

It stood out to a number of us that with each chakra come rights. This first chakra is named Muladhara, which means Root. Without a deep rooting, our fragile self will be tossed about. But it can be difficult to root oneself when so many of us are taught early on that we must earn our right to be here, evidence to the contrary being every single moment we are here, notwithstanding. For several attendees, finding a framing of life that starts with a right to be here and a right to have (or desire) felt like a watershed moment of clarity.

One of the attendees shared a vision she had during meditation of people building scaffolding as high as they could to reach the heavens. She felt compelled to dismantle the scaffold under her in her vision until she stood firmly on the ground; from there, she felt she could reach anything she desired. 

It was beautiful to hear so many of those in attendance share their experience of feeling unsettled and not grounded for so long and then finding a path to a more grounded sense of self. Many shared this experience through their lens of having spent most of their life religious. The majority of the book club once identified as affiliated with the LDS church, and many expressed how disorienting it was to step away from a belief system they no longer felt connected to, only to find that they felt very shaky inside of themselves with nowhere to go and nothing to grab onto. Some found new strength in a broader sense of spirituality. Everyone found that strength was in them all along. They needed only to notice it, hold onto it, and develop it.

The human creature shares the most fundamental fears nearly all creatures feel: we do not want to die or be alone. For most of human history, a lone human was a dead human. With this brilliant sense-making organ in our skull, we take these two fears and project a third fear: I'm not lovable. This feeling triggers loneliness which cascades into survival concerns. We all could relate to how big these survival fears feel, even when we logically understand that we aren’t in any physical danger—even if that’s how it feels in our bodies. When these fears take root, we may barely be able to function.

Several shared the experience of getting grounded and feeling less alone and more energetic. Then some shared how they knew that this sense of otherness and loneliness started right inside themselves very young as they internalized disapproval and judgment and became self-critical and excessively self-monitoring.

We talked about how peculiar it feels to say, “my neck hurts” after trying out “I hurt” instead. When it is my neck that hurts, the implied “I” doesn’t include the body rather, the body is a possession that “I” needs to fix. Many shared experiences of resentment building inside themselves when their body didn’t work as expected. I related deeply to this. Instead of treating the pain or discomfort with kindness and gentleness, they grew angry, depressed, or disassociated from this “worthless” body that was letting them down.

Pain is the word I use most often to describe childhood. I was sick a lot. Pneumonia was an annual event, bronchitis was often twice a year, I was allergic to everything, and the prescribed medications gave very little relief. While running and listening to this book, it became very clear to me that when I get ungrounded, I tend to want to try to control everything around me. My focus of concern begins to disperse into an ineffectual cloud of control that wants to reach out to everything around me. The book says we can concentrate this dispersed energy into a highly concentrated “center of gravity” that grounds us and gives us stability, and it will pull the rest of the body into a more grounded state–often alleviating or lessening the pain we feel in our bodies. Accompanying this idea of a center of gravity, the following idea crystalized:

Meanwhile, we make room for infinitely expansive being and desire when we occupy the present.

Jackie shared an experience of grounded anger. When grounded, she experienced the emotion of anger bringing forward assertive self-advocacy instead of out-of-control flooding. Besides being something that passed through her instead of taking up residence, this grounded anger had the added benefit of actually conveying her needs and desires. She felt listened to. Grounded, we can exercise and experience our emotions without losing track of ourselves. The egoic urge to subdue others probably starts with the desire to distort our sense of self as separate from the body, which also must be subdued. Quickly, our egoic inflation means we feel separate from everyone and everything–and we all agreed that it doesn’t feel good to be lonely, even if we brought it on ourselves.

This was the message that resonated with everyone. It feels good to be alive when we no longer try and fight against our most basic understanding of self. Instead of a divided self, seeking relief from all the in-fighting, we become grounded and cohesive when we are connected to something large, the Earth, something we know will support us in life because it always has.

It was such a lovely discussion about ideas made so much easier to remember through these beautifully simple framings. They help one see the body as self and the aspects of the body as aspects of self we can care for and tend to with kindness.

I am excited to read and discuss the rest of this book with our beautiful group.

—Gonzo

NEAT!

• David and I are in love with lovable birds 🦜 

• I bought this foot roller 8 years ago and still love it and use it all the time. I think it’s a great grounding tool.

• Our son Max told me this morning that in data, four bits (half of a byte) is called a nibble. Hee hee! 🍪 

• I discovered this album on Spotify this week and love its funky vibes: Loopa Scava with Cayetano “Up and Down.”

• Powerful thoughts on how times when we felt unseen and unloved as children can wound us and how working with our root chakras can be a path to healing.

SOMETHING TO TRY

Walking Meditation

I have thoroughly enjoyed engaging with my senses with the intention of grounding myself. We really do sleepwalk through life sometimes. Something I learned about while attending the local Buddhist sangha is walking meditation. We walk all the time, but it’s nearly always to get somewhere or to accomplish some task, even if the task is just “taking a walk.” In walking meditation, you can go slowly, sometimes aligning one in-breath or one out-breath with each step. (You can also walk more normally but with abundant awareness.) Noticing the motions that our bodies go through when we move consciously. I often feel kind of wobbly, like I’m brand new to walking! If I’m inside, I notice my surroundings in a fresh way, and it sometimes feels like I’m floating. Outside, my senses are awake and alive in a way they aren’t when I’m moving as some means to an end. Even a five-minute walking meditation feels restorative and enlivening. If you’d like some more guidance, check out this video.

—Mindy

PARTING

WORDS

PIC

This week I had the opportunity to gather with women for the Full Moon and make cards for Traveling Postcards, a beautiful organization created to support victims of gender-based violence. Here’s the card I made.

—Mindy

That’s all for this week! If you’re into this, share this newsletter with all your friends. Connecting with new subscribers is magical! 🧚🏻‍♀️

We love all the feedback, especially when something we share is something you want to share!

Thanks for sharing This Is Real with the people you love!

DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice.