Homebody is an evolving practice of coming home to myself. It is easy for me to slip outside of myself, merge, mold, shift, perform, overreach, or under-reach. The question I bring to my practice every day is, can I come home to myself? Furthermore, where have I extended beyond myself? How can I call my energies back? Where is my attention living? Is it outside of myself? In the future? In the past? Literally inside of another person? Who, what, or where is holding my attention, and can I hold myself? Can I call my attention home to my skin, below my skin, my muscles, my organs, my blood, my bones, my heart, my breath, my energy?
In this effort, I move through a collection of practices that I have accumulated, gathered, created, evolved over time, and learned from a range of teachers, mentors, research, and living. Some help me in active dysregulation, and some help fortify a regulated state to build resilience and strength in physical, energetic, and emotional boundaries.
Some of the exercises are designed to take us all the way down to a full restorative rest, the place where we can linger restfully between awake and asleep—the sweet spot that gives access to the subconscious. Here, we can imagine a new future, talk with the little one inside us, or live out a corrective experience.
This practice has come from my own lived experience, both relational and independent, personal mentors, and Eastern practices focusing on energy and movement. To list a few, Kinesiology, Improvisation, Yoga, Breathwork, Qi Gong, and much more have influenced it.
I invite you to try a moment of homebody-ing. Wherever you are, where is your center? Where are your thoughts? Where is your felt sense? Are you reaching, are you retracting? Are you holding tightly? Where is the breath in your body?
Join me at the Bridge Studio in Saxapahaw, NC, at 7:30 pm on Thursdays.