Digesting Life

The practice of writing and creating ‘content’ has become such an integral part of my practice. For a decade and the better part of my adulthood I have been writing, sharing, and speaking publicly about my life. Writing about my struggles, my pain, my lessons, and my experience.I have written blogs, hosted podcasts, owned a bunch of social media accounts, and been a speaker at various events. I have taught hundreds of hours of workshops and classes in person and online about everything from cooking demos to yoga classes, essential oils workshops to guiding shamanic journeys. This is something about myself I’ve gotten in alignment with long ago: It can seem like I am all over the place with my work.But in reality, I am always right on track. Each and every step leads me to the next perfect step. I am in deep approval of the way I follow the breadcrumbs of my life. I find it incredibly exciting and fun to never know exactly where anything is leading me. I have been leaping from one rock to another through the misty landscape of my life forever, never needing to see where the trail of rocks may end. The idea of choosing a ‘niche’ or needing to do the same thing day after day does not and will never work for me.I do, however, need to remember to stop, slow down, reflect and digest each step as I’m going or else living like this can feel disorienting. And this is what writing has always done for me. It is a way to reflect and digest. A way to move energy. A way to distill the experiences I’m having into the lessons they offer and, in doing so, properly assimilate them. When you live a life that can change and morph at any moment you need to know exactly where you are standing, now, so you’re centered enough to take the next leap.Writing and creating has allowed me to digest as I go. To share what is happening inside of myself so that I may take it apart and study each part. To pull the threads and invite them to loosen so that I may see what is making up the knots. I do not share my life publicly to ‘get’ anything. I am sharing for me and my practice and to be of service. I am sharing to demonstrate with my life that which I endeavor and feel called, to teach. This is embodied teaching. It is not teaching from or to the mind, but from and to the body.There is a real lack of introspection in our world. A lack of appreciation for the process of digestion and assimilation and what it takes to integrate our life experiences. A lack of reverence for what happens underneath the surface and out of sight. And so I am offering my digestion and my introspection as a kind of invitation for you to do your own. Digestion is the perfect way to think of it. Eating is the life experience. Putting external stimuli into the body. We take experiences in. And then, just like with food, we must digest them. We must take them apart into their constituents, reorder them, and make our own sense of them. Especially if experiences are painful or testing. To learn to unpack and unwind our reactions and responses is some of the most important work we can to do for ourselves. To appreciate the time it can take to process, ruminate and chew over something.There is always so much happening underneath the surface. Can we allow ourselves space and time to move through it fully and completely? To be in approval of our own process, can make all the difference in how we care for ourselves. I am offering a medicine writing workshop on Saturday October 1st from 10am-1pm MST. In this workshop I will be guiding you through my personal medicine writing practice. To sign up just reply to this email. It’s $111. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe