Hello hello!
Let’s start with a little context:
I’m going THROUGH it! In all the ways— mentally, emotionally, physically.
I don’t currently have the capacity to unpack it, so just know that I’m in the process and getting the support I need. After the week of June 2nd, I’ll be moving to a monthly publication schedule to give me the space I need to get through this. How to effectively honor my capacity is a lesson that I learned the hard way over the course of several years. I knew abstractly what needed to be done, but it wasn’t until I embodied the knowledge that I truly understood the lesson.
No Lesson Is Learned Until It Is Embodied
Again, to honor my capacity, I’m going to lean on a podcast episode I already made to discuss this exact topic.
It’s thorough, it’s entertaining, and you can listen to it at 2x speed if you’re into that.
Check it out on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you do your pod listening! I’ve also created the TRANSCRIPT below if you’d prefer to read.
Thank you for your grace 💜
Athena
Transcript
00:00
I thought I’d already learned the lesson. I thought I was good. The goal of pattern disrupt is to make visible the mental models we use to understand the world around us and examine if these ways of thinking are still useful frameworks as we navigate forward. Welcome back to pattern disrupt. Today we are tackling this idea that no lesson is learned until it is embodied.
00:30
I’m going to get right into this. I think this is true. I believe this to be true on a collective level as well as on an individual level. But for me, this has always been extremely literal. So as I mentioned in the previous episode, oh, this is part two of the double feature. Woohoo! As I mentioned in the previous episode, I have been going through a
01:00
big metamorphosis, a lot of transformation and part of this transformation is a refining of what I am trying to do and what my capital W work is in this lifetime. And I have come to something that feels good, feels very correct.
01:29
It’s hard to tell because, you know I’ve been trying to sustainably self-actualize through entrepreneurship for several years. Almost a decade, I think. So it is a little bit hard to tell if the way that I feel about how I’m orienting right now is the same way that I felt all the other times when I thought I was going in the right direction anyways. But, you know, I’m going to say the thing, which is…
01:57
I think this one is really, really true. I think this is really it. Like, and obviously for the thing to be it doesn’t mean that I’m never going to learn or reorient, but this one feels the most solid in retrospect and the most accurate, I guess. Anyways, the energetic experiment series, which I’ve been doing on YouTube has
02:27
catalyzed a lot of things for me, but I would say April specifically has been the most agitating. And I mean that in the normal way that you’re thinking, but also in the way of like, it has activated me towards things. It has really clarified to me a lot of information that is uncomfortable, but necessary.
02:54
And one of the things that this experiment has catalyzed is that I need to just be still for a while. And this is something that I have, I have like an accountability group, which I’m really excited about, a group of femme folk who are holding space for each other. So our first homework of the season is three parts. What is your desire?
03:26
what resistance comes up when you think about that desire and what courageous action are you going to take in order to move you closer to that desire. For me, what was clear is that my courageous action was to be still and to take a couple of sessions and just think and feel into
03:55
what it is that I am trying to do.
04:00
And this feels a little abstract, but you know, such is the way sometimes. It’s abstract. So I was just thinking and it was like, yeah, I know what I need to do. It’s like, I’m doing so much right now. And especially because April’s challenge was to post every day. Well, April’s challenge was to share a message every day, but I chose to interpret that as posting something and…
04:25
And so I have been very much in my like busy bee energy this whole month because I didn’t batch create. I haven’t really done enough planning. And so it’s basically like every other day that I have to very intentionally and laboriously attend to making sure that content is available. But also on a grander scale, I do feel like I’ve always…
04:55
accidentally oriented towards, let’s talk about business, let’s just focus this in business. I feel that I have always oriented towards doing activities that give me the sense or the feeling of motion but are not generally connected to movement. So I’m imagining it as a almost like a treadmill or really I was imagining one of those hamster wheels but I’m on the treadmill and I’m running and I’m running and I’m running.
05:24
And I’m like, yes, yes, I’m doing cardio. I love it. Look at me. I’ve done, I’ve walked this many miles and I’ve done this. And it’s like, okay, but you’re actually still just in the basement. You haven’t moved. And I think in general, just because it is easier and because it satisfies that kind of dopamine need, when I feel lost, I tend towards activities that offer
05:54
motion but are not necessarily tied to movement. So one of the things that has been very clear to me or nudging me I would say is that I need to step off the treadmill, walk outside of the building, and just make sure that I’m in the even in the same zip code that I actually want to be in. And so over the past two or so weeks I have been
06:24
having these mini stillness sessions with myself. Some activities that I like to have as as stillness, as my interpretation of stillness is I like playing music as in playing the piano or drumming on my body. Also riding my bike, baking, things that engage my hands or my body without necessarily requiring brain power.
06:55
like too much brain power. Obviously the brain is always doing something, but yeah, it’s that thing of like something that engages me physically so that my mind has the space to wander and you know, cook up whatever our next adventure is to be honest. Yeah, so basically over the past two weeks or so, I’ve been engaging in those activities in stillness practices.
07:23
I call it actually meditative labor, which this is a side note, but I really like that phrase because it, for me, kind of neutralizes the term labor, which generally has a negative connotation based on how I learned it, at least. So yeah, meditative labor feels like a nice reclamation. Anyways, I’ve been doing the meditative labor activities. I came to a conclusion, as I mentioned, that
07:53
feels really good, feels solid, feels like something I can actually build on, dig into, right? So I can both go deep and wide about this, this central topic that I’m organizing myself, my internal ecosystem around. And it felt really good and I was very proud and I was like, cool, I did it. I’ve done stillness. Let’s start moving. Let’s start getting into this.
08:22
And it’s funny because truly the day after the session, which I kind of like, I think this is enough stillness for me to move forward. The day after the session is when my ankle started to hurt and I didn’t do anything, right? This is not an acute injury that I’m aware of in terms of, there’s not one specific inciting issue that led to my inflamed ankle.
08:50
And so my foot started hurting and then within a few days I was like I think I need to go to the podiatrist see what’s really going on here. So I go to the podiatrist and I explained to what’s happening. We do an x-ray then we do an ultrasound and she’s like oh okay there it is. So she explains to me that I have tendonitis and tendonitis is when your ligaments and your tendons are inflamed and my Achilles heel and I believe it’s like a deltoid.
09:20
something ligament, those not the heel sorry but the tendon the Achilles tendon those two are inflamed and overstretched for me specifically they’re also overstretched I’m listening to this woman tell me this and I go okay doctor thank you what exercises do I need to do to strengthen this up to make this better and she goes hmm actually
09:49
I want to immobilize your foot.
09:52
And when I tell you that I laughed, when I tell you that I laughed the room down, I was like, of course you want to immobilize my foot.
10:10
Of course, because circling back to the title of this episode, no lesson is learned until it’s embodied. This particular injury, and I think the timing of it, everything of it, does feel like one of those things that I will allow, I will allow this feels like the hand of God. This feels like one of those moments where it’s like, hmm, hold on.
10:38
I think you need more stillness. You literally need to be immobilized for a little while. This is a theme in my life. This has always been a theme in my life. I’ve said this before, I’m not sure where, but I’ve said this before that most of the life lessons and or spiritual lessons that I have learned, I only understood through some concept in gymnastics.
11:08
And that’s something that I’ve always been, I mean, I’ve always been very spiritually inclined anyways, but I’ve always felt very grateful to know that if I am encountering some kind of block when I was growing up, I always knew that like, I don’t think I can like understand this as it’s currently being presented to me. So I know that at some point in gymnastics, I’m gonna learn a skill and somehow some way.
11:36
the skill is going to require me to do what is essentially the physical embodiment of whatever the intellectual or emotional block I’m experiencing requires to get over it every time. And it’s not like it’s like, okay, I experienced the block today and that same day in gymnastics, the answer comes to me. But it was always something where within the same year, if I’m pushing up against something,
12:04
I could rely on gymnastics to be the place where I can understand or process the experience. I mean, doesn’t that just feel like earth sign shit? Doesn’t that just feel like a very earth sign experience to just be like, actually, I cannot learn unless my body is involved, unless it is real and tactile, tangible inside of my…
12:33
corporeal form. There’s something good there, there’s something really tasty about that. But what is the conclusion for you?
12:45
So there are two things that I would like you to get out of this episode. The first is this concept of meditative labor. What does that or what can that look like for you? And also obviously feel free to rename it if any of the words I’ve chosen have a, you know, a negative connotation for you.
13:10
What are the embodied practices that help you process what’s going on in your life? And if you feel like you don’t have those, what are some practices that you’d like to cultivate? I’d love for you to dream up some tactile activities that can help you process or specifically decide on an activity and then imbue it.
13:38
with that intention, infuse the intention of now this practice specifically holds this space in my life or specifically creates this space in my life like a creative capacity expander. So think about what meditative labor can look and feel like.
14:08
for you. And I’d love to hear what you come up with. Feel free to DM me @whathappensinbetween on Instagram or you can send me an email. If you use Spotify, you can just add it to the comments of this episode. The second thing that I would love for you to leave with is just this reminder that the brain is not actually in charge.
14:38
Sorry brain, love you girl. But yeah, the brain is not actually… or let’s say it like this, the brain is not the total solution and it can’t. The brain can’t see what your intuition sees, the brain can’t… like logic only goes so far is what I’m trying to say. The brain is not the total solution and it never could have been. It just never could have been. You can…
15:08
know something theoretically and it has absolutely no bearing on your understanding of that concept. And I say this as an academic right? Like I’m not an academic but I value academia. It’s just that the brain is just truly not able to to be a complete solution. It can’t offer I guess complete solutions on its own.
15:39
There’s too many other things in your ecosystem for the brain to just be everything like that or to try and hold everything like that. Thank you so much for listening.
15:55
My foot is okay. I mean I’m still in the cast but I believe pretty strongly that my foot is gonna heal completely and I’m gonna get back to diving which I love very much but in the meantime I’m finding other ways to engage myself physically and I’m having fun. So as I said thank you for listening. Please remember all models are wrong.
16:25
but some of them are useful so you get to choose what you subscribe to. See you in the next one.
