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Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “storytelling”

Fall Storytelling Intensive at Literary Arts

Mindy Nettifee September 9, 2019 Leave a Comment

Fall Storytelling Intensive: Stories of Healing/Healing our Stories November 6, 13, 20 (3 workshop sessions) & December 4 (final session …

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April 2020
Apr 22 2020

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Tonight at 7:35 pm PST the full moon blasts us wit Tonight at 7:35 pm PST the full moon blasts us with light at 18° of Libra. Full moons signal a peak, completion, ending. Full moons also illuminate or recall the shadow energy of the current sun sign, in this case the Libra shadow of Aries. If Aries is all impulse and agency and commencement, Libra is all judgement and empathy and finish. Aries is the rising up of the individuated self, and Libra is the drop into intimacy and relationship. This face off between agency/empathy or self/other might feel collaborative and generative, and it might feel combative as hell. We might feel both at once, generous and defensive, trusting and wary. Forming a square with the Jupiter/Pluto conjunction, this Libra full moon will also heighten tensions, raising the stakes. (Could the stakes be any higher? Fuuck.) In the northern hemisphere, Libra season arrives with the equinox and initiates fall, rebalancing and adjusting, readying us for harvest and bonding and banding us together to face the rising dark. I think that’s what it wants to do for us now. We are reaping what we’ve sown, and more challenges are on their way. The way we show up for eachother now is seeding what will grow next. We are the initial conditions for a new world. The tensions between self and other, agency and empathy, cannot be resolved, only outgrown. It’s time to grow up. Wherever you are at today, take some time to intentionally witness yourself and others with love and warmth and a sense of humor. Let the freak out peak if it needs to. Turn the volume up on your process. Then feel into anything that wants to shift. Is there anything you can move into deeper and more loving acceptance of? What might it be time to let go of? Are there values you can work on unlearning? False beliefs or old expectations you can more fully release? What can you give up and give away that will help end the war inside? If you want more cosmic guidance or just to be social on this Libra moon, I’ll be joining Yvonne Perez from @themakeandmary today at 5pm pst for her HIGHLY INSPIRED series on Instagram live. We will be clinking teas and talking about wtf is going on with the astrology this year. You’re invited 🌕
Remember back on the 12th of January, there was th Remember back on the 12th of January, there was this big deal Saturn Pluto conjunction that meant huge cycles were ending and beginning and astrologers were predicting that a worldwide paradigm shift was being initiated? Neither do I. Time + space have basically collapsed or dissolved as so many of us get ill and the rest of us worry and care and live and grieve. This is what a paradigm shift feels like. I’m sometimes calm and resolute and sometimes terrified. Today Jupiter is forming a conjunction with Pluto. Jupiter conjunct Pluto is a major moment, occurring every 13 years. (It’s all major moments all the time right now, stacked on top of each other like tectonic plates colliding etc.) This conjunction will happen three times in 2020, all in the later degrees of Capricorn: today - April 4 - and then again on June 30 and November 12. Pluto is the heavy. It’s death and rebirth, transformation and power. It’s also underworld god stuff - hidden power, shadow knowledge. Jupiter is expansion and growth, generous sky god raining down abundance energy. They both have a tendency to amplify whatever they touch, so when they align, it’s - well, we will have three opportunities to learn what happens when they align. Today’s alignment might feel like a portal opening, or the eye of a needle. More people might be forced to tune into the seriousness of this spreading emergency. One thing feels sure - whatever trip you’re on personally with this, it’s going to really start spinning its god wheels. A call has gone out for a million people around the world to meditate on this alignment and opening at 7:45 pm PST and call in support. I’ll be visualizing hot bright disinfecting light pouring over the earth, and glowing, singing, psychedelic white blood cells surging through everyone’s immune system. I’ll be praying for everyone I know, and everyone I don’t know, and asking for divine intervention, like maybe a god or three could help this rogue viral RNA relax and return to formlessness, and also end poverty and inequity and greed, amen. Maybe I’ll see some of you on the astral plane. (Anemone art for all of feeling extra sensitive right now, and for the great @gretamerican)
How’s your grieving going? My friend @amberrose How’s your grieving going? My friend @amberrosetamblyn texted me an article this morning from of all places the Harvard Business Review called “The Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief.” It’s an interview with David Kessler, a coauthor of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross. It helped. Like, right, grief. This foggy pain that also sometimes takes specific shape or becomes suddenly acute. The feelings that occasionally replace the anxiety and hoping and doing. It made me go to bookshelf and pull out Francis Weller’s The Wild Edge of Sorrow. He talks about five gates of grief: “everything we love we will lose,” “the places that have not known love,” “the sorrows of the world,” “what we expected and did not receive,” and “ancestral grief.” Reading them again, I felt something get seen and then soften in me. Sometimes naming things helps. Also thank you everyone who signed up for the donation based/can-be-totally-free remote sessions with me in the last week. I can’t really overstate what a pleasure it’s been to connect. Sometimes we do some somatic experiencing work to help nervous systems come out of hypo or hyperarousal, sometimes we just talk about it all, or name specific fears or difficult experiences and work with them. Sometimes we look at star charts or we activate new tools and ideas and powers. If you’re experiencing any dissociation/numbness/loss of focus or time or trouble eating/sleeping - like to a degree you know for you is worrying - I hope you reach out to someone with trauma support skills. We are social animals, and really don’t have complete nervous systems on our own. We are going to need eachother to get through this, or rather - I’m going to need you. I’m leaving the link up in my bio for the time being (it allows for bookings up to 14 days out) and I hope some more of you take me up on it. Also big thanks to the illustrations by #MarieNeurath that are like blood pressure medication to me right now 🐳
The new moon hit its peak of darkness at 4° of Ar The new moon hit its peak of darkness at 4° of Aries the holy ram late tonight/early Tuesday morning at 2:29 a.m. PST. Coming just as Saturn and its gate of form has entered the inner vision castles of Aquarius, and forming a conjunction with Chiron the wounded healer, this moon and this moment is one of stark contraction. As many of us are adjusting to either sheltering-in-place for the duration of this pandemic, or preparing our best defenses to go out and serve, it’s one of the less subtle moons for interpretation. We are faced with massive change and an unknowable future, and given no choice but to adapt and enact new ways forward - all styled by Aries, bringer of the fast / harsh initiation. I’ve always struggled personally with the Aries archetype. It’s impulsivity and action stations aesthetic chafed my serene, there’s-only-the-long-game Taurus vibes. I’ve tried, year after year, to come into a better relationship with this moment in the year when everything seems to happen at once and all over, ruining plans and dashing visions and generally overstimulating the scene. This year though, paradoxically as action has become so limited, I’m finally getting it. Aries is pure yang, pure lifeforce, primal fire. It transforms what appears lifeless into $boom$ life$$$. It’s mushrooms mushrooming and rockets rocketing. If you haven’t worked hard at at shepherding your own consciousness and divining and channeling your will, it will knock you over. But if you’re ready (enough), it’s a direct line to the change and growth you’ve been calling in. This Aries new moon is an opportunity to increase our ability to channel our fight and life force and become warriors for the world as we want it to be - one where money isn’t more important than people. If we let it, it’s here to help us to transmute our fear into love, take conscious actions, and fiercely defend eachother. I don’t know what will happen next, but I know I‘ll keep showing up with every resource I have. Image by #SiyuChen
Happy spring equinox to all of us in the northern Happy spring equinox to all of us in the northern hemisphere 🔥 We cross over tonight at 8:50 pm PST. The sun will also enter Aries, cardinal fire, and a few days later Saturn enters Aquarius, followed by the Aries new moon. The astrology of this moment reflects what we already know - we are living through times that are challenging AF, and challenging in brand new ways. Nature is balancing. A great tempering has arrived. The danger is real, and a system built on inequity will work as it was intended too, but it’s cruelty and insanity will be exposed to some for the first time. Similarly, many are realizing freshly that death is not a rumor. Feelings are fucking heightened. Everything has changed, and it’s only really just begun. If you have been doing the work of healing, creating consciousness around your conditioning and wounds, actively nurturing new perspectives and neuropathways, grounding firmly in your own power and boundaries, practicing empathy without enmeshment, learning to tap into love and trust when you and others need it most - this is what all that was for. Use all your tools to stay sane and safe and grounded and loving, and to hold a vision of equity and justice and compassion and joy. If you are like, wait, I needed 3-10 more years wtf, I hear you. Ready or not, as this new season begins and the weather warms, all growth will be encouraged, even/especially that which we do not want to grow. Our task is to pay exquisite attention, and arrest unwanted growth where we can. That includes the spread of this virus, certainly, and also all unhealthy and unjust patterns that need to end. And our task is to look out for and take care of eachother as we weather this collective storm. For everyone working from home, or out of work at home, guard your health and sanity and sincerity however you can. For everyone still heading out to work each day, especially all those in the grocery, public utility, social services, and health care industries, thank you for your service. I’ll be taking a break from social media from Friday until Tuesday’s new moon - but you can still text or email me 💛💛💛
The frontal lobe and it’s “higher” cognition The frontal lobe and it’s “higher” cognition and executive functioning have an important job to do - imagine possible futures and consequences and plan for them. It’s the last part if our brain to fully develop sometime in our 20s, and can take much longer than that to really integrate well. Because of it, we can respond to our anxiety and any fear/scarcity signals by imagining plans of action and executing them. We can also set goals, hold visions, break things down into steps and accomplish them. But if we allow it, it can run the whole mind show on its own. Every waking minute when we aren’t, like, running up a steep trail and sweating and too out of breath to swear, it might be churning out thoughts of the future and scenarios of doom. It might be generating so many possible pathways we enter into that state we call analysis paralysis, or freaking the fuck out. When that’s happening to me, I do whatever I can do to interrupt it and shift my focus to what is immediate and present. I forget about the big picture and the future and just let myself concentrate on the five feet in front of me I can actually see. If I need to, I remind myself I’m actually pretty good at handling shit, and I repeat the mantra “I will deal with the future in the future.” Sometimes I spend a long time in childs pose, letting all the energy drain out of my forehead into the earth. Or I go put my bare feet on the ground outside and let all the extra charge drain out of me that way. If the future thought machine keeps going, I start getting really stern and loving with it, “like yes, thank you, and no, that’s not what we’re doing right now,” and I return to the mantra. Then I find a task to do. I throw my whole being into doing that task. I get out my plastic goat figurine and meditate on the holy goat, climbing the steep mountain one step at a time. I play with rocks, and try to be more rock like. Not rigid, just grounded. Solid. Here. In my body. Feeling gravity. (More in the comments, important video of Dik-Dik from @wildlife.hq via @evolveandascend 🙌🏼)
One of the goals of nervous system healing is incr One of the goals of nervous system healing is increasing vagal tone - higher vagal tone means your body can relax faster and more easily after stress. The point is, healing isn't about not getting stressed. It's healthy and normal to feel stress, and to respond to threatening conditions by experiencing arousal that helps you orient, gather information, and prepare to respond and act. A healthy system can move quickly into appropriate states of high arousal, and just as quickly come back down when it's safe. Those carrying a lot of unresolved trauma may experience nervous system dysregulation which leads them to either get stuck in hypoarousal, feeling dissociated or numb, or stuck in hyperarousal, experiencing intrusive and overwhelming thoughts / feelings / memories / sensations and not being able to rest or relax, which is excruciating. So, if you're stressed right now, that's correct, there's nothing wrong with that, or you, even if it doesn't feel great. If you live with trauma, or have lost baseline safety due to this crisis, and are stuck in hypoarousal or hyperarousal, or moving between the two states, and either can't feel anything, or are feeling too much and suffering greatly, that makes sense too, and fuck. The thing that can help is coregulation – other people’s warm and safe nervous systems can help ours to come back into a normal rhythm (which at this time may still be stressed, but present, and able to get to sleep.) Animals are great co-regulators too, and if you speak their green language, plants. If you need some extra coregulation at this time but are isolated, and I am someone you have warm and trusting feelings about, I would be honored to see you in a remote session. I’ve updated my bio with a link you can use to book time with me. This offer is donation-based, and if you need it to be, can be free of charge, no questions asked. You can also book time with me if you just need some connection and inspiration to help power you through this time of crisis and disruption. Let's be extra gentle and coregulatey with each other right now.
Since the full moon, I’ve been making an infusio Since the full moon, I’ve been making an infusion each night of echinacea root & aerials, nettle leaf, calendula flower, and hawthorne berries - I imagine including all the plant parts builds a kind of comprehensive nutrient tonic for the immune, nervous, and circulatory systems. I strain it in the morning and start my day with two room temperature mugs of it. It’s been saving my life. Like I feel calmer, stronger, more fully here, even in the midst of all this stress and chaos. I’ve also just been doing a lot of staring at my houseplants and cat after checking the news. I thought I’d post about it, because I am genuinely appreciating the posts of others acknowledging these new levels of anxiety and what their favorite tools are for coping. It’s providing me real-time co-regulation 😳 - sometimes social media lives up to its potential. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you could use some co-regulation and support in the coming weeks. We don’t need to do this alone, or stay isolated during isolation thanks to the interconnecting robots 🙌🏼🙌🏼 (Dreamy artwork by @_liamcobb_ )
The full moon will peak Monday morning at 10:48am The full moon will peak Monday morning at 10:48am PST and at 19° of Virgo.  Virgo is efficient, exacting, anal-retentive earth, and frankly, we all need its mental clarity and sense of order right now. Virgo's main concern is the efficient and right use of our energy - it won't let us waste our time, or our life. It’s a healer of broken systems and compasses. It invents the right track. While it's time of year conjunct the sun is late August through September (cleaning up the hot mess of summer), it's full moon moment in late winter arrives just as Pisces is deep into dissolving our stagnant-but-reliable structures and solid ground. If we let it, the Virgo vibes can help us dry out and get our lives right, easing the emotional hangover of Pisces season Mercury Retrograde edition just in time for the equinox. All full moons are times of culmination and release. This full moon also happens to feature Mercury turning direct, initiating three weeks of retracing our mis/steps and lessons from the past three weeks. If you've been freaking out, secretly or not, now's the time to stop, put your oxygen mask on, breathe on purpose, think chill thoughts. Still your inner child with love. Despite apparent setbacks, all our work to create a more just, more sane world is not lost. Stabilize in whatever way you need - a media diet, herbal infusions, sleep hygiene, listening to On Being or some other blood pressure medication of a podcast. Then get to some ritualing - any practices that support identifying and releasing any beliefs, habits and relationships that are limiting or derailing. As the yang spring energies get stronger, everything gets agitated and starts growing, even/especially old patterns we didn't quite kill at the root. Our efforts now to strengthen our health and our spirit through grounded, daily, disciplined action will definitely pay off come April and May. Full moon laser goddess art by the amazing @the_real_theory 🙌🏼
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