My grandparents had 3 pomegranate trees next to their house. Papa would hold the ladder for me and I’d go on the roof to pick them, coming down with grocery bags full of them.
I would sit for hours sometimes watching shows and opening pomegranates, making a huge bowl of ruby seeds. I’ve never felt so abundant.
In college I lived in Puebla MX for a semester. One market had a stand with mountains of pomegranates. It made my heart sing.
A man selling pomegranates taught me to cut them. It was magical to see someone know exactly where to cut and how to open these gorgeous little grenades. He showed me the lines and the depth, gave me a lens to imagine the fruit underneath. It was a game changer. So much easier and cleaner. I was and am so grateful for the knowledge.
I opened this pomegranate tonight and my son came to help immediately, knowing exactly how to hold and detach the gems without exploding them.
It struck me how the knowledge in that quick interaction at the market, 20 years ago, is still so alive. How it passed through me and kept moving when i was attentive enough to receive it, and open enough to give it away.
I could have *kind of* learned this from a book, but it wouldn’t have had the same weight as being shown. Even a video would be good, but in person? So much better.
Why am I sharing this?
Because ancestral knowledge breaks with trauma, and we start depending on books to remember things for us. And depending on them to teach the next generation. Don’t get me wrong, I love books. But even more, I love learning from people, from elders, from the real record keepers. And the most important knowledge doesn’t always make it into books.
Something I’m learning intimately - the softer my body gets, the more stories and knowledge I feel myself capable of holding and sharing.
What We’re Meant For
Yesterday was busier than usual. 4.5 hours of facilitating somatic visualization, two hours of dropping in as an alum in a Breathwork container from last year. I got to facilitate and breathe and observe, and recognize just how much I’ve healed.
What struck me most about was how good my body felt after this much space holding.
And it led me to this rant -
I truly believe we are not meant to sacrifice ourselves for the greater good. We’re meant to powerfully support each other in ways that nourish us as well. We’re not meant to be miserable.
I do this work selfishly. It heals me and it feels so so good to do it. AND I get to share it with my friends and family and clients. It builds all of us. The dream is that then the circles of people capable of creating securely attached community grow. I’m already seeing this happening. That’s why I do this. I want us to get really good at being in community with each other. To help us remember how to create communities built on autonomy, interdependence, and right relationship.
When I meet with my future self she doesn’t have a fancy life, she talks about rematriated land and how clean the water is now. She talks about commitment to each other and the land. She points me toward the people who already know this work, whose ancestors knew these agreements. She reminds me that mine did once too, but so long ago.
I am here for all the dismantling of oppressive systems. Ones that expect dissociation and control, perform physical and emotional violence and are incapable of repair. I’m here for decolonizing our minds, bodies, relationships and systems. I’m here for unlearning the neglect/control binary of white supremacy culture. I am here for helping our nervous systems return to the tending instinct that is underneath our relational trauma.
We are meant to follow what we have most energy for, not miserably slog through our days working or ruminating. This is for our greatest good and for the greatest good of our communities.
I’m so grateful for every BIPOC teacher, mentor and friend who showed me paths I didn’t know existed.
Wind and Warmth
There was a beautiful nugget I received from a teacher recently. I often use breathwork to bring me back into nervous system regulation. But I was curious about when breathwork doesn’t work.
Because sometimes, when the trigger is loud enough, when the gong hit reverberates too intensely, breathwork doesn’t seem to move anything. It’s like I’m breathing against a brick wall.
I asked him about this and he shared something so beautiful. Wind is useful when it blows in one direction, but when it has no where to go, wind can blow in circles, kicking things up and clearing nothing. Instead, heat melts the ice of a trigger. The warmth of the sun, the warmth of enjoying people or things that you love.
Our path into nervous system regulation is as unique as we are.
With love.
Breathing with My Body - Finding a way into Exertion
For years, I’ve struggled with “exercise.” I’m big on play and moving and games and chasing, but exercise for the sake of exercise (stationery bikes, treadmills, running, workout routines) has felt absolutely miserable in my body. Once when I was in my early twenties I had friends who ran marathons and managed to muscle through two 5ks, one half marathon and one long relay — two of these ended with me throwing up ON the finish line.
When I exercised in an aerobic way, my body would typically either give up or throw up if I exerted myself too hard. And too hard was a line I never seemed to understand. Either way, I’d usually end exertion with a bad headache and a shaky feeling in my body. Friends were loving and supportive, but confused. I was confused.
Over the past few years, however, I’ve done a lot of healing in my body. I experienced a lot of chaos and emotional abuse when I was really young, and my body had all sorts of complicated and confusing ways of coping. Because of this, I’ve never been able to “push through”; my body collapses instead. I can’t force myself to endure pain, or I can, I guess, it’s just triggering and super uncomfortable.
For me, I’ve always known that I have to be patient with my body. That when she’s ready, she will do it and not before. An example of this is when my friend convinced me to sign up for the half marathon, I first had to learn how to run a mile. I did this by being so patient. I had a mile loop planned and ran until my body said no, then I would walk. And then, when I felt like I could run again, I would run. And then, I would walk again. And so on. I spent a full week slowly jogging a few blocks before collapsing in exhaustion and walking most of the rest of the mile. I can still see the speed limit sign that marked my lung limit during those days. Then one day, without thinking about it, I just didn’t feel like stopping. I kept going and jogged the entire mile. And it felt like an absolute miracle.
I want to add what it felt like in my body. This “I have to stop now” feeling was like a cold electrical fire in my lungs, deep trembles in my mind. If I access it now, it was a deep feeling of unsafety. My body felt wobbly and panicked. It was such an extreme reaction to something so seemingly benign. And honestly, it felt embarrassing.
In recent years I haven’t been great about exercise. I run around with my kids, I jump sometimes, I playfully swim in the Bay, and I go on ridiculously short “runs” when my body really asks for it. I stretch and move and do all sorts of breathwork and embodiment practices, but really, breaking an actual sweat is something that usually brings on a headache and fatigue, so I’ve kind of avoided it…with the nagging worry that as I age this inability to really exercise isn’t going to play out well.
So here’s the next piece of this story. I’ve been doing breathwork for the past couple years as I’ve integrated more and more of my past. It has been gentle and wonderful and I’m still learning exactly the best way this works in my body. I’m about half way through the book Breath by James Nestor and so much of what I’ve read so far is about the power of breathing through the nose and the power of slowing the breath way, way down. There’s all sorts of potential scientific explanations for what I’ve been experiencing with my exertion, but really, I don’t care that much about the why. I’m happy to practice things that feel good in my body and see what shifts.
Nestor talks about Indigenous people from all corners of the Earth passing down the wisdom of breathing through our noses. As someone who used to have a ton of seasonal allergies, I know what it’s like to not have full access to my nose. About ten years ago I did some Ayurvedic work to calm those allergies and have had good access since. But not fully closing my mouth was a leftover from those days, and honestly a leftover from childhood. Even as I would mostly breathe through my nose, my mouth would stay open and the seal just wouldn’t be as tight.
As I read this book, I find myself sealing my lips and breathing slowly, and I can feel subtle shifts. The first shift is power. This one was surprising. I play with power a lot in my body. There’s a subtle somatic difference when you hunch your shoulders versus throw your shoulders back and stand tall. For me, when I embody power, for example when I play with tucking and extending my tailbone, there is also a light feeling of fear that comes up. I have to breath with that fear for a few moments before it passes. It makes so much sense that it’s there, but still, it’s always surprising to find. For me, closing my lips brought that same mix of feelings: power and fear. Keeping my mouth slightly open feels oddly connected to my fawn stress response. Closing my mouth gave me this feeling of immediate power in my body.
Nestor also talks about athletes who train to breathe through their noses. Bicyclists who trained to breathe through their noses found they were able to use oxygen and carbon dioxide much more efficiently and travel faster and father with similar exertion. Which brings me to the entire reason I’m writing this…
Three days ago I tried this out on a run. I closed my mouth and focused on my nose. My body immediately began to heat up, but something felt completely different. My muscles have always been strong, but I never feel like I can access them when I do aerobic exercise, like my lungs explode before my muscles have the chance to support me. I even used to think I had small lungs. (And maybe that was true, but they can expand.) But this time, my body just felt safe. I somehow bypassed the system where my lungs would experience the cold electrical fire. I even opened my mouth once just to see if there was a difference, and sure enough, an immediate cold and painful fire flooded my chest. Closing my mouth and breathing only through my nose felt amazing. Like I was breathing hard, but fully supported by my strong legs. I didn’t need to stop and start, I didn’t get tired. For the first time maybe in my life, I felt good exerting myself.
The most amazing part of this is that when I got home I felt fantastic. I felt like I had turned on the oven in my body. I was heating up from the inside. Normally this has felt like an electrical fire, complete with toaster ovens and hairdryers, a fire full of appliances just sparking in a way that is erratic and frightening — and also oddly freezing. This time, however, felt like a controlled burn, one planned with love and presence. A fire stoked with the most wonderful firewood. I felt unbelievably relaxed , in the same way that I can sometimes access with breathwork. Untriggerable is the word I like to use. Like my irritability melts and the things that normally build and bother me, just have nowhere to land. They slide off. I become this magical person, wife, mother, who can hold so much emotion and flexibility effortlessly. Magic.
I’ve repeated this breathing with exercise a few times since. It feels fundamentally different. I’m not sure exactly what is happening, but breathing hard through my nose is allowing my body to exert without panicking and collapsing. I feel powerful and also so safe, which is the gateway to everything.
The act of learning to listen to our bodies, to find amazing information in the collective wisdom and then filter it down into our present-day experience, is so powerful.
Love and Distance - Making sense of our attachment styles
There is so much complicated information out there about attachment styles. Secure, anxious, avoidant, disorganized, and then all of the subdivisions and smaller boxes. Categories and quizzes to help us nail down exactly what we are.
But in reality, that level of detail is only useful for a researcher splitting data, it’s just not helpful for us humans trying to feel safe in connection.
Honestly, we’re a mix of all of them. Our animal bodies are constantly judging the distance at which we feel safest. We might have a prominent type, but all of us have a little bit of everything, and depending on the situation, different people and different situations bring different styles to the surface. Like little coping strategies. Sometimes it’s secure, sometimes it’s anxious or avoidant, sometimes it’s disorganized.
Because it all comes down to this: How safe do I feel in connection with others? We have a primal need to attach. We have a primal need to keep ourselves safe. Attachment is distance mixed with safety. Which looks like this:
If you step back, can I feel safe in the distance? (Will I be abandoned?)
If you step forward, can I feel safe in the distance? (Will I be consumed?)
It’s a dance.
Attachment heals, becomes more secure, when our bodies believe it’s safe to have and communicate needs and preferences. When we feel safe to disagree with others, when we feel safe to be misunderstood, when we feel safe to feel connected and safe in asking for space.
And learning to tolerate love and closeness is just as complicated as learning to endure the pain of distance.
Be gentle with yourself in all of it.
❤
Also, I love Dr. Diane Poole Heller’s work around attachment. If you’re looking for a quiz, this is a good one. It gives you results in a pie chart. I’ve even taken it a few times over the years to track my own shifts in attachment. Enjoy!
An Open Letter to Rebecca Solnit - On Patriarchy and Birth
I wrote this letter five years ago as I was recovering from a traumatic birth experience. I was also just deepening into my understanding of patriarchy, feminism, white supremacy in the context of the world we live in. I had just read Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit and it blew my mind. To see rape culture acted out between countries with more and less power, to see rape culture in institutions — gave me the framework to understand what I had been through at the hospital. I truly believe that obstetrics is a corner completely forgotten by feminism. I wrote this then and share it now because not only do I have more strength to be seen in these opinions, but it feels just as relevant today.
Dear Rebecca Solnit,
I recently finished your book Men Explain Things to Me, and felt compelled to reach out.
I have been a proud feminist my entire life, but your discussion of rape and the blazing analogies to power structures blew my mind. It is so powerful how unbelievably obvious this is. You so poignantly shined a light on what I have been looking at for years, yet not seeing.
Before I dig in to my real reason for writing you, I thought you’d enjoy knowing that reading your book immediately changed how I view my place in the world. I find myself being kinder, gentler to myself. Smiling more freely, less concerned with how my sparkle might be interpreted. I embrace my moments of “vocal fry” or “upspeak” and keep talking, because my voice and my opinions matter. On the forefront of my mind is allowing myself to just be. I’m reconciling my feminism with my femininity, and it feels wonderful.
My main reason for reaching out is because a year and a half on, I am still full of rage about the birth of my son, and in many ways it’s poisoning me. I don’t know what to do with it.
A little background. I have been a positive birth advocate since I can remember. My mother has soaring, epic tales of her powerful births and over the years I have espoused these stories to friends and colleagues in the hopes that they act as buffers against the sea of misinformation about what our bodies are capable of. And yet, I ended up with a surgical birth. I can’t stand to call it a cesarean section because it’s an infuriating euphemism. Let’s call it what it is: major abdominal surgery.
When you wrote about the powerful countries raping the less powerful ones, I saw the system of care around pregnant woman. When you wrote about today’s older women who just now realized they were date raped years ago (because a term for being raped by someone you know and trust didn’t exist), I saw all of us women who have been gently or violently let down by the medical system. I truly believe years from now we will have generations of women who will look back at their needlessly long and painful births and reassess the command of the doctors and nurses — being directed to lay on their backs to labor, denied food for hours and hours, or made to drive back and forth to the hospital a few times in active labor only to be told it isn’t active enough. But for today, those are the good births.
There are much worse. Stories of doctors cutting women during labor while they repeatedly say no. Stories of threats to involve CPS when a woman questions an intervention. Stories of women forced into surgery because a new nursing shift comes on the scene and doesn’t know that the batteries in the monitoring equipment are faulty.
And then there’s my story. My baby was breech, as are 4% of all babies at term. I had no idea that this would mean it was near impossible to deliver vaginally in today’s hospitals. I was pregnant with a third generation (at least) breech baby. It’s a variation of normal. But unbeknownst to me, over the past 20+ years, idiotic regulations and recommendations have meant that OBs and midwives have completely lost the skill to deliver a butt-first baby. They don’t even teach it. Meaning unless you fight really, really hard and are exceptionally lucky, you have the option to either have major surgery you don’t need or birth without support.
I bled when the doctor/midwife team attempted for the second time to turn my baby head down (in hindsight there was no reason to try again when the first obviously failed). They said I should have the surgery right then, that afternoon, because the “good” doctor was leaving by 6pm. I baffled them when I refused and began my 3-day observation in what I affectionately called “hospital jail”. Every new shift brought different doctors and nurses who gently worked to coerce me into have the surgery immediately: because my placenta could fall out and within fifteen minutes my baby would be dead and I would hemorrhage.
Being two weeks from my due date I wasn’t in the space to tell them to fuck off, and go home. So I held my own in the only way I knew how. I let them monitor me, and my husband and I stayed in our tiny jail cell. I knew that every day I held off I was allowing my baby’s lungs to more fully develop. I lasted less three days. After a pregnancy of swimming and walking and breathing, being tied to a monitor in such a claustrophobic space drained me quickly. I steeled myself and went in for a surgery that terrified me. And came out with a baby I was not emotionally ready to hold.
I’m not exactly sure why I want to tell you my story. I think partly because I think you’ll get it. There is so much “all that matters is a healthy baby” out there that is used to silence women. There isn’t a space to have dialogue about our mistreatment by practitioners or by larger systems. This year I joined all sorts of breech and radical-feminism-in-birth groups on Facebook, I started a chapter of the Positive Birth Movement for San Francisco, and I’ve tried to become a resource for women who find in those last few days of pregnancy that they are, in fact, totally unsupported. But I realize I’m not much better off than when a year and a half ago. I still haven’t found some secret corner where people will proudly and confidently deliver breech freely, and even in my new extended group of ‘people in the know’ there is so much optimism about having a powerful birth, followed by so much unnecessary intervention that leaves them traumatized. Or not. Or they say everything is fine and they are just happy to have a healthy baby.
This is bigger than me and I would love your help. Even if that just means it’s on your radar. Your opinions get heard and it would mean so much if you kept this in mind.
Thank you so much for all that you do.
Liz Christiano
October 22, 2015