Author: astracoyle

Each and everyone of us here has gotten the message that something we said, did, wanted to be or express was not okay.In response, especialy when we are young and still dependent, we often send those parts packing. “Head to the basement!” Socialization is useful. We need agreements. But when the agreements that don’t allow equal access or in some way limit our growth – they need to be re-written. Re-negotiated.  How do we reclaim parts of ourselves we banished or put away to protect? In one of the oldest myths, the story of Inana we  we are given one of the key ingredients to healing. It is something we all have the capacity to do.  No need to purchase anything, enroll in a class, get certified, or even hire a therapist. The parts that get banished are – the ones that felt like they were too much, or misunderstood or simply not wanted. We did not make up those message about those parts and expressions of ourselves on our own. We read signals and had experiences with parents, care givers, siblings and peers. Being social animals the message from others always boils down to – do this and not that if you want to be included in this group or have a relationship with me. Since we need others to survive, we make pacts, agreements. I am the youngest of 4 kids. To be included, and to keep up since they are all 5+ years older than me I learned to keep my fears to myself. You can see the story by looking at my knees – I have scars from  bike accidents or scrapes and falls from hustling to keep up. The problem is, if we don’t know how to work with them, they haunt us. Sometimes quietly driving choices. Sometimes holding us back from growing in new ways. They affect how we feel and what we do because they are a part of us we feel we must keep out of sight. Can I express my anger? Can I  take up space regardless of my age, gender, skin color, education or income?  But what do we do with those parts deemed unsightly? Can we gently reclaim them? Yes. WIth love. 💜 But first you need to slow down enough to listen deeply, to know what you have buried and to hear those parts out. I particiapted in group therapy for about a decade. Time after time people and the therpaist woudl remark on my insights and ability to track and know what I was feeling and thinking. They acted like it was a super power of mine. I knew what had given me that ability. Learning how to track and attend to my body through the work I now teach. Being able to tracl sensation clearly and accurately has vastly improved my ability to tracl my thoughts and emotions. They all intersect after all – but the body is the easiest most concrete way to find the threads. When you learn how to tune into your body, you will know every aspect of yourself better. Love, Asta

You know what I want the most for myself, my students, friends, family and community? I want us to love ourselves more. I want to support love growing in the world in any way I can. I think that love of both self and others is a very natural state we have all experienced.

We love our dogs and cats, our families, kids, partners, and friends. We love the ocean, rivers, rain, and sun. We love food. We love art and music.

What many of us seem to be lacking is self-love. To not love oneself is a learned behavior. Thankfully, it can be replaced with new learning.

Self-love has been made into the industry of ‘self-care.’ We are told to love ourselves by going to get pedicures, working out, and drinking water. While I’m not opposed to those acts, and believe they can be an act of love, it is possible to do all the ‘self-care’ and still hate ourselves. We know this – because we’ve done it!

Similarly, we can extend love and care to others from a place of wholeness or from a hole we want to fill. We can give our attention, time and money away freely and care for ourselves or not. If we are giving from a place of lack, or a need to fill a hole, it will not lead to more connection or love. It will not improve our feelings toward ourselves. Chasing our value externally never works in the end.

My therapist used to say, “we can’t get enough of what we don’t need.” Think sugar, alcohol, bad relationships – the things you want to consume regardless of how they make you feel in the end.

The most basic form of love is attention. Love is an act. The world could always use more of it. It is not that there is never enough, but it seems like there is always room for more.

Many women I know are very good at offering love and acts of care to others, but when it comes to self-love, they get tripped up. We’ve been taught to measure and critique ourselves in a way that we would never hold others accountable. Some of us believe that our value is in pleasing others first, and ourselves later.

Extending our care and focus to people outside of us is a normal biological response from infancy and childhood. We are interdependent and need one another. This continues into adult dependency periods like pregnancy, sickness and in finance too. These are the realities of living as a social being with needs for survival. We need care and connection to survive.

Once while attending a trauma summit, an anthropologist said that the nuclear family was going to be the death of humanity. She went on to share what contemporary hunter gathering societies were doing successfully that we, in modern society were not. I think we all know, at some level, that we are not attending to the community, the needs of the whole, as well as we could given all the wealth and knowledge there is along with ways of distributing it. We need to care for ourselves and advocate for the group. We know that when the community is cared for, we are better off.

As babies we knew exactly how to do this, how to attend to our own desires and needs and then translate that to getting care from those we were dependent on. It doesn’t mean our caretakers gave us what we needed, but we knew what we needed, and we knew how to ask. The responses we got informed our relationship to our needs and desires. That is why I believe that the lack of love for ourselves, is a learned behavior.

In a recent workshop I taught, one woman shared that her family told stories about what a ‘large baby’ she was and how ‘unruly her hair’ was. They also told her she was always ‘happy and smiling.” These sound like sweet things to hear from your parents, but this story had become a burden for her. There was more to her self-image and who she knew herself to be that felt unseen and she felt unsure she should let it out in public. She was self-conscious of the size of her adult body and her hair. While she knew how to please others, she wasn’t sure it was okay to be pleased with herself.

Hours into the workshop, she asked me what she could do when the workshop ended? Could she do the lessons and movement explorations we did at home? “Sure” I asked her if there was something that gave her joy? She said she loved dancing. “How would it feel to dance for a few minutes a day? “Her entire face lit up. It was like I was there with her 4-year-old self with much joy and love to share. She was so happy to have permission to move her “large adult body’ without the purpose of exercise or some other goal. She was so happy to explore the freedom and love she had for herself in her body as a child.

Many women report that they know what they need and want when they are alone. Alone, the boundaries are clear as is the ability to attend to and know their needs. In the company of others, their attention is pulled primarily to everyone else or at least what is outside them.

Most of us could use a little time invested in attending to ourselves, our preferences, and patterns both positive and negative. We could use time learning to connect with ways to center on ourselves a little more so we can take that into the world of relating. When we can attend to and track what is happening internally in real time, no matter who we are with or where we are, everything and everyone benefits.

Deepening our connection to ourselves really does deepen the world of love and connection with others. We can learn to show ourselves to the world, to share our joy, talents, vulnerability and humanity. When we see it in others, it is permission for us to experience it too. We inspire. We are inspired.

As young children, we loved and accepted ourselves before we were socialized out of it through our relationships with dependent care givers. We can easily return to this state of self-awareness and balance it with our care for the world outside of us.

The body is the easiest way to connect to ourselves. The body us the clearest intersection of mind, heart and soul. Notice yours. It will lead you home each time.

Love, Astra

I just got home from a trip to Egypt with some of my oldest friends. Together we shared amazement, laughter, and so much love. From age 12 to now so much has happened – careers, businesses, love, children, divorce, birth and death. To be together, experiencing something ancient and new was true gift . It changed me.

Back at home, with all that love in my heart, I find myself wishing I had another trip to look forward to. I want a cure for the sadness that the trip is over.

This is human nature. Most humans live in a state of doing. We run after this and that convincing ourselves that we will feel better when we do X or if we achieve Y.

We’ve gain access to more options, autonomy and independence, conflating what we do and what we pursue with how it is we want to feel about ourselves.

Many practices will tell you to learn how to “Be.” Be still. Watch what comes and goes. Don’t attach. And while I know this is a valuable practice it is also only ONE practice that may help us find greater happiness and satisfaction.

The truth is we are alive and what is alive moves. Cells move. Breath moves. Human bodies move. Human minds move. To be alive is to move. Movement can be on any continuum. It can be a trajectory of improvement or decline, growth or regression.

What decides which way it goes? Self awareness, and an ability to move your attention to the whole picture. Ultimately exterior circumstances play a small part.

Students come seeking change. They want to feel better, hurt less, experience resilience, have greater capacity for what they encounter in life. I love supporting these endeavors. But when I encounter students who have made it their life work to ‘fix’ themselves, it is really sad. No matter how much they change, or learn, or improve, they find themselves dissatisfied.

Why?

I believe it is because that they have not connected to the whole of themselves. They discard the accomplishments they make because they are still imperfect. Instead they focus on a wound, or a story that says they are broken. They do not feel that they are not enough as they are.

Every human on the planet has a moments of believing they are not enough. It is what many teachers call ‘The Ego.’ The Ego that wants you to believe that as you are you do not deserve love, and satisfaction. It tells you to go on seeking things outside yourself, trying to become something other than what you are – a perfectly imperfect human.

We all had to trade off things to be cared for, to fit in and have our early needs met. Many of us learned to pay attention to what was outside of us more than inside of us.

I understand this.

The first few times I did Awareness Through Movement lessons it was a game changer. It was clear that I was in a whole new conversation, guided by entirely different values than I had ever experienced before.

Each verbal instruction for movement, had no demonstration, nothing for me to imitate or emulate. Instead, I was asked to refer to myself and to decide what was valuable, pleasurable and enough.

It confounded me. I was used to going for it. Tell me the goal and I will get there, even if it is at a cost to myself, my own desire or pleasure. If I win, you will value me, notice me, praise me. Sad, but true.

Now I was faced with a teacher who would not tell me if I was doing anything right or wrong. Instead, my teacher was creating a learning environment for me to be able to sense and feel myself for myself. I could decide what I wanted to do or not do. I could decide what felt pleasing, interesting, or worth pursuing. It is what we call intrinsic learning. It is the opposite of what most of us experience in school or most methods of education.

I was learning to belong to myself.

Week after week I learned to attend to myself. To pay attention to my self talk, my emotional responses and to my movements. Little by little I gained insight into my habits of being, thinking and doing. I could see the ones that landed me in the same place again and again.

I learned how to differentiate between satisfaction and temporary pursuits.

Would another trip really make me truly happy? Nope. I know that.

Somedays in class, I got angry. Somedays I left the room in the middle of the lesson. Somedays, I muscled through with a clenched jaw cursing under my breath at myself or the teacher.

Yet, it was the most interesting experience I ever had had. After each class, regardless of whether I liked it or not, if I followed the instructions – I felt better. I had learned something new about myself – what stories I was telling myself, what I was capable to changing. My ability to change my relationship to myself became crystal clear. I was getting to know myself intimately in a whole new way.

I gained compassion for myself and others. I also gained new perspectives and values. I learned to value myself. Valuing ourselves is no small feat.

As women it is easy, and biologically wired, that we attend to things outside of ourselves. Learning to attend to ourself is a process. Rewarding. Satisfying. Game Changing.

That is what was so special about being on an trip with my friends of 40 years. We have all grown and changed. Yet, it seems we have all become more ourselves. We know, love and support ourselves more than ever before. It is truly gorgeous!

I love witnessing students learn to connect with the whole of who they are. I love the delight of watching as they discover and embrace desires, and idiosyncrasies . They begin to see themslves as a process, not a product. They begin to love the process of life. They begin to love themsleves more too.

This is what I wish for every person – to know you can evolve and change for the rest of your life. You are enough right now too.

Love, Astra

We have brains that make up stories all the time.
“Have I ever told you about the time?”

Stories entertain and play a vital role in our survival. Stories help us make sense of things we experience. The beginning middle and end we create help us anticipate future experiences, automate happenings and make meaning.

We are all on our own sheros  journey. 🦄

On that journey, stories can help us to have context and create meaning, but they get in our way too. We can get so caught up in the story, so attached to the meaning we make that we miss novel experiences, fail at creating the new, including solutions to problems or interesting art. At worst, our stories create justification for the mistreatment of ourselves or others and reinforce our attachment to our world view as the “correct one.”

If we see a person running down the street, we instantly make up a story about why they’re running. The story is based on whatever sensory information we take in through our eyes, ears, bodily senses. It is rarely a conscious process.

Later that day if we run into a friend or co-worker and comment that we saw someone running, if they saw the same person running, we will trade stories.

It only takes one person or one thing in our external world for us to confirm or corroborate that our story was ‘true.’ One thing, and we are certain. But, we don’t know the truth. We just have a story, an approximation of what occurred.  

Now what if that story you have made up is about a problem with a group of people, a situation in the world or about yourself that limits positive change and growth? 

 Here we are on our journey and in comes the blockade, the mountain, or just that thing we keep circling back to again and again. We WISH the thing would change. But really the only thing we can change is us. 

Take a marriage or any long-standing relationship. Our mate is late to dinner, and we are frustrated because ‘they are always late, and I am fed up.’ While the other person actually tried and thought they successfully came on time. We have all been there, waiting for the person we know well to cross that trip wire and “gotcha, I knew you were going to do that!”

When we use story to anticipate actions and to justify our responses, we our bound to repeat history. We need to interrupt the behaviors that keep us stuck in a pattern that keep us going towards the same results over and over again.

How?

We need awareness, contrast, and novelty.

If you show somebody an image of a person and make it so they are unable to blink for an extended time (there is a way to safely do this), the person eventually does not see the image in front of them! The brainbody automates the image and makes it background information, no longer crucial for the body and brain to be conscious. The neurons in the eye and ocular system are firing in the brain, but the viewer is no longer conscious of seeing an image.

Most of us have not had our eyes held open like this, but we have all walked into a room with a strong smell we either liked or disliked. At first you smell it and react. Eventually you don’t notice the odor. Just like the unblinking image experiment, your neurons that register the smell continue to be active, but because your brain automates it, and you no longer notice it.  

The brain and nervous system attend to novelty. It is what we need to notice because we can anticipate and automate it less easily. It might be dangerous or amazing after all!

Let’s go back to the person running past you…

• If  that person was in jogging clothes you will automate the story one way.
• If the person running down the street was wearing business attire, you will create a different story.
• If  the person running down the street is wearing a clown costume,  that will catch your attention in yet another way, you will make some conscious guesses and then create a novel story.
• If they were not clothed at all, that would really catch our attention. You would really wonder, and guess what the story was.

They key here is that the more unusual the situation in contrast to our experience, the more we are going to wonder about it and the more attention it will get from our body/brain. We will still try to  make sense of it and believe a story we make up, but we will question it and it will get our attention more effectively.

If you blinked in the eye experiment, the contrast between eyes closed and eyes open would make it so you continued to see the image in front of you. If you left the room and went outside to get a breath of fresh air from the odor in the room, when you reentered the room, you would smell the odor. It is the contrast that allows you to notice.

Given this is how we learn and what our brain does to make sense of our lives then how do we bring learning and novelty into the places where we get stuck?

We start with knowing that we do not know the full reality.  Our perception of the world is what we have to go by, and it is worth questioning. It is also worthwhile to work on attuning our perception. It is a fine instrument that can get better.  It is how we perceive and how well we can dial in our ability to perceive new information that is really valuable.

Sensation  in the body are the easiest habits to track to increase your overall ability to attune to the world through your sense. Sensations help us build awareness. When we pay attention to sensation we get better at perceiving detailed information about ourselves and our experiences in the environment. 

 As we attune to muscular effort, we encounter our habits and patterns. That sore back, that shoulder that is raised up. Those muscular efforts have become habits. They do not totally cease contracting even when we mean to rest. Each of us has some muscular effort that is unnecessary akin to this. 

The unnecessary muscular effort it was is what prevents our ability to feel anything new.
 It is the unnecessary muscular effort we make  that is a representation of our past habits,  our past actions and our past stories.
When we learn how to give up that unnecessary effort that restricts us to  repeating our past,  then we can become aware then we can change, do something differently than we did in our past. Then we  see and feel ourselves in new and novel ways. New stories and plot lines  become possible.  

My husband was upset that according to him, I was late to dinner last night. I thought I was on time. We got into an argument. I was upset because I had made a special effort to show up on time.  He was upset because I had not answered his text and he was waiting for me.  We each have our story. Each an approximation of the whole situation. 

If I stay overly attached to mine, and he to his, we will get nowhere. We will have the same disagreement again and again. We will repeat our future based on our past. 

 Today, I am trying to interrupt that reactive defensive pattern. The key  is to find where I am holding on in my body, to check in with that place and see if I can do something else there. Changing my muscular effort is WAY SIMPLER than trying to change my mind. One proceeds the other.

In Somatics we say story follows state.

When we change the state of our muscular contractions, we change the state of our nervous system. When we change the state of our nervous system, we change the state of our whole Being. We can be open to new information, using the prosocial part of my nervous system instead of  staying  contracted and work with the defensive part of my nervous system. 

Last night, or even now when I reflect on what happened,  is easy to feel that I am  contracting my belly, and bracing there in defense. When I allow softening of my jaw, and my belly , my breath changes – so does my mind and my heart. When I speak with my husband from that state, we begin to new way forward, we begin to write a new story. Line by line. 

All my best to you,
Astra

I’m guessing you are someone who pursues growth. Do you ever make mistakes along the way?  Are mistakes frustrating? Have you ever considered making them on purpose?   Learning never happens on a clear continuum. We end up going down rabbit holes that don’t lead us directly to our goal. Sometimes, even when we stay on the path, we end up stepping on a rock we didn’t see and bruising our foot.     Do you value your mistakes? Or do you disparage them and yourself  for making them?   Brene Brown has an excellent audio book called “Men, Women, and Worthiness: The Experience of Shame and the Power of Being Enough” The book examines cultural messages men and women receive in society and the role of shame.    Brene says “messages and expectations that bring us to our knees, are so organized by gender. You know, for women, it’s really about do it all, do it perfectly and make sure you make it look effortless.” She uses an example from the movie Flashdance.  It’s a film about a woman who’s a welder by day and a dancer by night. She dreams of going to a ballet school. In the movie there’s a scene where the lead character auditions for ballet school. She not only performs incredible ballet moves, but also hip hop during her audition.The filming of that  scene took eight different actors to perform all the parts and make it look like the one character!   Most women are doing this on a regular basis. Have you ever been to a dinner party or hosted one yourself. I know I have said ‘oh this little thing (meal, dress, clean house), it’s nothing. SO glad you could make it.” That’s about hosting, but even when we are trying to learn something new, even when we are trying to grow, we often pretend something is easier than it is. Wanting to appear perfect  is a huge trigger for women. It is a huge trap. It leaves us alone, screwing up and striving for perfection, then connecting when we have it all under wraps. 💝   Brene also says ” For men, there’s a really kind of singular, suffocating expectation and that is do not be perceived as weak. So for men, the perception of weakness is often very shaming.”  The cultural job for men is to “fix it” Combine the two and men are suppose to fix it without experiencing weakness.  Again this leaves men keeping their fears and weakness to themselves.

Brene Brown Audio Book

Neither message allows much room for learning and growth while being witnessed or in relationship to others.  Yet, before you were an adult, you made mistakes and experienced your weaknesses all the time. You were once a baby after all.   Babies are intrinsically motivated by desire for some thing or some experience. Thankfully they are not as susceptible to messages about how to perform for others. Babies are more self referential and less socialized. Yes, they are dependent and this does influence how and what they seek, but the seeking and experimentation, if uninterrupted is a natural occurrence.   Babies have a desire, and they pursue it – be it a strawberry or a cat. For 4-6 months  they experiment and learn to roll over so they can get that object of desire. The pleasure, ease of movement, and effectiveness of the actions are the measures the nervous system uses.  When frustration arises, it is not because of a judgement in their heads about themselves and their failure. It certainly isn’t because they are self-conscious that they look weak or imperfect.   What if you could disentangle your learning and your desire to change from shame and your desire to appear perfect or strong? What if we could do that in our societies?    We shift our belief of who we are and what we are capable of through experience. The more you experience yourself doing and acting a certain way, they more you can build that into a self image.  In a typical Awareness Through Movement Lesson MISTAKES are built into the process. Why? Because the mistake allows the nervous system to compare and contrast the experience with another experience. I have had professional dancers break down in tears during a class or leave because their training to perform and move a certain way was so deeply ingrained in their concept of who they are and how they are valued in the world, they had a hard time giving that up.  They felt tremendous grief or frustration when  asked to move for how it felt to their sense and body. Overtime, they learned to separate out the ‘it feels good to perform perfectly and make movements that  look pretty” from “this feels better and is more physically pleasing for my sensations and to my  experience of myself.”   We all have those things to puzzle out. Just ask Brene Brown 😉    Practicing, iterating, experimenting, and playing while paying attention to yourself and your movement is a skill. The part of us that learned in a self referential way as babies is still within us and very much alive and ready to learn. The really cool part? If we learn that skill in one setting, we can take it into the whole of our lives.    Recently a few young people have told me things that worry me. They say that there are things they think, they cannot tell anyone. They say there are ways they must become perfect in order to become a parent. They are talking about cancel culture.   It breaks my heart.❤️   How did we get here? How did we get to a place where the parts of us that craves learning and dialog and desires growth – is too unsightly for others to hear and see?   I really don’t know. But I am guessing we are pawns in a bigger game that was not created for our direct benefit. It is a form of societal control.    The truth of who we are is complex and nuanced.  Our brains and our minds often put experiences in categories. That was good or bad. That person was good or bad. What I did was good or bad. Our minds seek simplicity for good reason, it makes for quick decisions. Quick decisions are helpful when we were fighting off wild animals or hunting. but now we live in spaces where with one quick stroke of the keyboard or text, you can act impulsively. Quick is not always an asset.  Most situations and people, ourselves included, are a mix of better and worse decisions and actions.To be able to see ourselves, and the nuances, we often have to slow down and shift our relationship to perfectionism, to simple agendas of right and wrong.    Babies let you see them sweat. They let you see them lose it. When we are together  in a workshop or class, even if it is online, we are doing this as well. We are learning together, humanly and imperfectly. While  I think doing this exploration on your own is useful, I think it is even more potent when you do it in community with others. When we step out of moving forward or moving quickly, when we explore and experiment with mistakes as a means to learn and change,  then we heal.  We grow in compassionate for ourselves and learn to  extend that to others.   Consider making mistakes. Consider being kind to yourself while striving for change. Please. Thank you.  Astra

There is an energetic shift in the air this week. A shift in seasons. A shift in light.  Happy Solstice and New Moon! 🌟 Whether you live on the part of the planet Earth that saw the longest or shortest day of the year this week – there are things in your world asking for your attention, asking your senses to notice. Perhaps your attention is drawn to the the temperature, or the light, or maybe something in your community? Human bodies and brains are constantly sorting and learning by noticing differences. Sensing and noticing our environment and changes in it is one the most potent and often unconsciously used tools we use every moment of our lives. We can learn to consciously use it too. Yesterday I was hit with contrast that left me in tears…and grew my heart 💜. I had spent the weekend in total glee. One of my oldest friends and her son had been visiting. We said ‘yes’ to everything and had all the fun – from a pinball museum and games, world cup watching (yes Messi won;-), hikes and delicious lunches. Ending our days watching absurd silly movies. It was an embarrassment of riches for sure. Hours after my friends left, I was hit with the news of a family member in need of support, plus the news of three families with 8 young children who arrived in my area seeking asylum. Big contrast. When the kids were interviewed by social workers and asked what they wanted, they said ‘to eat’. The social worker explained to us that this is a common answer given the hideous journey they just made, but, once they have enough to eat, and eventually when things stabilize a bit, children begin to ask for things like play and an education. Big contrasts. I spent the morning crying, talking with my husband, wondering what to do, how to show up, how to help and what is enough. I did not wish away my fun weekend, but the contrasts between my life and the people I was talking with had my full attention – body and mind. It was undeniable. It was biological. We are wired in our nervous systems, senses, bodies, and brains to notice differences.  The brain pays special attention to experiences that are novel or unusual. It tries to automate as much as possible and attend to what is new or unusual. It does this by making comparisons between the new information brought through the senses and existing information stored in our brain’s long-term memory It is easy to imagine why we would notice dangerous situations and have a body and brain that sorted for that. The wiring in the nervous system is in a sense, faster, when it comes to danger and dangerous situations. All animals share this biology. Survival first, pleasure to follow. Recent research in neurobiology, adds information about our ability to compare experiences in the environment based on hormonal differences. Women and girls often have higher levels of estrogen. We also have more receptors in organs and throughout the body for estrogen and oxytocin. These hormones influence the growth of the communication and social centers of the brain making it easier to notice relationships and relational information

“Until eight weeks old, every fetal brain looks female-female is nature’s default gender setting. If you were to watch a female and a male brain developing via time-lapse photography, you would see their circuit diagrams being laid down according to the blueprint drafted by both genes and sex hormones.A huge testosterone surge beginning in the eighth week will turn this unisex brain male by killing off some cells in the communication centers and growing more cells in the sex and aggression centers. If the testosterone surge doesn’t happen, the female brain continues to grow unperturbed. The fetal girl’s brain cells sprout more connections in the communication centers and areas that process emotion.How does this fetal fork in the road affect us? For one thing, because of her larger communication center, this girl will grow up to be more talkative than her brother. Men use about seven thousand words per day. Women use about twenty thousand. For another, it defines our innate biological destiny, coloring the lens through which each of us views and engages the world.” – Louanne Brezendine

New York Times link

Sometimes when we start reading the findings of neuroscientists, neuropsychiatrists, it is tempting to draw conclusions about behaviors that have no basis or evidence. We cannot jump from these brain scans and hormone differences to ‘women care more than men’ or some junk about doing math and science. We know that this kind of supposing does not help anyone. However, it also doesn’t help to deny that hormones affect our brain, nervous system and the lens that we engage and experience the world through. Which brings up PLEASURE. Feeling GOOD plays a role in our brain’s ability to seek and notice contrasts. For example – Moms go through hormonal change to carry and grow their babies and feed them after birth. While it is work, they also experience tremendous pleasure and surges of oxytocin when feeding the young, touching them and looking at them. The hormonal surges help them bond with the young & the bonding increases the oxytocin levels. This is also why most humans don’t tend to leave our kids for dead even when they are exhausting us and our resources. The hormones make us feel good enough and happy enough to endure the hardship of caring for them. Survival = pleasure. Pleasure = survival Fathers and Grandfathers CLEARLY experience love, care, and connection too. However, certain hormones, like oxytocin, increase at a different rate. One study began when an anthropologist decided to check oxytocin levels, in both her and her husband, when her grandson was born. They measured oxytocin before, and after they held their grandson the first time and in the days to follow. While the Grandmother’s levels of oxytocin jumped immediately, the Grandfathers took several days, eventually reached the same levels.

“Lab tests later revealed that Hrdy’s levels of a brain chemical called oxytocin spiked by 63 percent that evening. Her husband’s spit showed a 26 percent jump after his initial meeting, but several days later, it also increased to 63 percent. There was no difference in the end result between me and my husband, it just took him a little more exposure to his grandson to get there,” she says. Now a professor emerita at the University of California, Davis, the esteemed anthropologist has written extensively about the science of human maternity.”

National Geographic link

No matter who you are, and how you identify in the world, you are wired to notice contrast for both pleasure and danger. Thanks to our long dependency as children and the interdependence needed for survival, a desire to connect and care for one another is part of how we navigate both danger and pleasure. We do it together. Care and connection can happen in many forms. I’m indebted to countless people, who are not parents, that have cared for and aided me in my life. I was especially in need of care in the years after my kids were born. Most practitioners who helped me were not parents themselves. Each was able to offer me a tremendous nurturance that I so desperately needed to heal and thrive. I am forever grateful to them. Their support helped me get to a point where I could do more than just what was right in front of me. Because of their care, the scope of what I notice and what I can observe, can grow. I can think about and care for more people than just my immediate family. When I was a child I would watch my Dad write checks for donations at this time of year. I would ask him how he decided how much to give? He said “You have to give enough that you really feel it. It can’t be an easy amount to give. You’ve got to feel it.” It is necessary to take care of ourselves while also creating long standing change in the world. Please listen to yourself, to your heart – our feelings and sensations are not something to endure or get over. Let the tears of joy or sorrow come. They are happening for a reason. Our bodies know something before our rational brains have time to make sense of it all. Decision making and action, not rumination, are the biological drivers you need to work with to keep evolving. We can’t go back in time. We can only take what we have learned, what didn’t work, and bring it to the present moment. Now we can ask, what change can we make here and now so maybe it is different this time? Experiment with action. The action you take can be to help yourself, to help others, to rest, eat, drink, watch movies and sleep. They are all actions. They are all wonderful choices. “Track what your body needs, and what your heart demands, as carefully as you pursue your goals. Material success is worth nothing if your heart and your mind are playing on different teams.” Last night, after the temperature dropped 40 degrees, it snowed. Take care of yourself and your human tribe;-)