I have been reflecting on the effects of long-term, chronic stress.  I have also been feeling them.  I recently read about the phenomenon of “biological weathering.”

The term “weathering” describes how the constant stress of racism may lead to premature biological aging and poor health outcomes for black people, like disproportionately high death rates from chronic conditions such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and most cancers.

Mental anguish and stress from “fighting against larger structures and systems can have an impact on your health,” Joia Crear-Perry, M.D., founder and president of the National Birth Equity Collaborative, tells SELF. This, in a nutshell, is weathering. https://www.self.com/story/weathering-and-its-deadly-effect-on-black-mothers

The pandemic is weathering us.  A disastrous, divisive, ugly presidency weathers us.  Witnessing the endlessly brutal effects of racism on our black brothers and sisters is weathering.  And on and on.

There are things that we can do to mitigate the harms.  Practical, heart and mind strategies to help us find shelter in the storm.  Many of them are simple, some are deeper and more detailed.  In my work as a trauma-informed somatic practitioner, I am helping folks discover ways to navigate the turbulence, the uncertainty, the anguish of these times, and open to greater ease and heartful engagement.

I am offering telehealth, teletherapy sessions based on the principles of  Somatic Experiencing®,  a body-oriented approach to the healing of trauma and other stress disorders developed by Dr. Peter A. Levine. SE engages both body and mind, focusing on regulation and repair. Listening to the body and our emotional responses, helps us to gain balance and calm. By establishing effective defensive responses, we create better boundaries and a feeling of greater empowerment and agency. Somatic Experiencing® focuses on the sensations that lie beneath our feelings and uncovering our habitual responses to these feelings. Clients develop increased tolerance for difficult bodily sensations and suppressed emotions, helping them to gain access to greater resilience and expressivity, while learning how to stay in the present moment.

During this time I am offering sessions on a sliding scale.  If you would like to schedule a session and explore some supportive possibilities, you can contact me at pjj@paulajosajones.org.

In the meantime, be well, be safe.

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I have been wanting to write something, but words fail me.  I feel that I have an obligation to speak, to join the big turbulent river of outrage, unrest, change, transformation, fury, sorrow, horror, and compassion.

As a privileged white woman, I question my voice.  As a queer woman, I know something about this ground.  My two daughters are Nepali, I have a black son-in-law, and two half-black, half-Nepali grandchildren. We are an American multi-ethnic, gender-fluid family.

I have been hearing so many voices, so many wise and rich perspectives, but I have been missing the unvarnished, unapologetic outrage until I heard Kimberley Jones on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight. Her understanding of the historic (and ongoing) denigration and obstruction of black and brown people is brilliant.

I am grateful beyond words for her passion, her clarity, her bravery. I want everyone to hear her, to fully grasp what she is saying, and to share it.

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Here is your weekend meditation.  Just spend a few minutes watching the jellyfish (video below).  Notice the pulsation, the opening and closing – letting in, letting out – the softness and ease of their movement, the drift, and the ways they are carried and supported by their watery environment.  Their effortless, casual connection with each other – sometimes the bells touching and other times, just the long tendrils passing by.

I like to feel that even as we are physically apart, that the tendrils of our love, our deeper social connections – the ones that do not rely on physical proximity – are passing near, gliding and drifting together, all part of our communal knowing, our social expression.

Can you allow these images to support your own watery, flowing body? Enjoy!

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Here is the second of my somatic meditations.  This one invites you into movement.  I hope that you will find it nourishing.  Please share it with anyone who might find it helpful.

As I mentioned before, I am “seeing” students and clients online at this time.  My work with trauma is deeply informed by Somatic Experiencing, as well as my work as a somatic movement therapist and educator.  At this time, I am particularly supporting those who are feeling overwhelmed, lost, sad, fearful, or isolated.

If I can be of help or if you would like to have a conversation, please contact me at pjj@paulajosajones.org.

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How can we make a difference in this strange and unpredictable time?  How, while staying apart, can we express our caring, our love for each other?  My answer (or one of them) is to offer this somatic meditation.

My intention is to suggest some ways to support ourselves  (and others) by deepening bodily awareness and ease as we navigate this unknown and unknowable space that we are in together, even as we are intentionally physically apart.

In my experience, when we encourage a deeper consciousness of the body, we can find ourselves and each other in meaningful and new ways.

My hope is that this meditation can offer a sense of connection to the collective body – the body of US – by focusing intentionally on the personal body as a place of refuge.

Next week I will offer a movement meditation.

I am “seeing” students and clients virtually at this time.  You can find out more about that work HERE.  If I can be of help, please contact me at pjj@paulajosajones.org.

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What happens in the face of terror is that we narrow our vision, close down our bodies, shuttering them like stores and restaurants in the face of the fear of contagion.  Maybe it will pass me by.  Maybe it will not find me.  The impulse is to close in, close off, retreat, hide. To try to find protection somewhere, somehow.

But what if instead, we find ways to expand, even in the face of the contraction that we collectively feel.

Start small.  Begin with letting the eyes to widen to include the periphery, rather than narrowing your vision in a focal tunnel.  Look up from the computer and notice what you see with your peripheral vision.  Steve Paxton, the dancer and choreographer, says that when we engage the peripheral vision, we can feel our bodies more clearly, almost as if we had closed our eyes.

Then let your eyes meander, letting them go wherever they want.  As you do that, notice how the movement of the eyes cascades through the head and neck and the whole body, even if the movement is very small.

Allow the body to move, even if you are sitting, Let small, exploratory movements bubble up from the body, perhaps beginning with awareness of the spine (that three-dimensional column connecting head and tail), and then letting those movements percolate through the rest of the body.  Little movements, almost as if the cells themselves were initiating the movement, or as if your effortless breath is sliding through the spaces between the cells.

The term ‘kinesphere‘ was coined by choreographer Rudolf Laban and is defined as the sphere around the body whose periphery can be reached by easily extended limbs.  With trauma or fear, we tend to shrink our kinesphere in an effort to protect our boundaries, or in an attempt to limit or suppress bodily or emotional feeling. 

Wherever you are right now, notice if the body feels contracted or expansive. Now gently widen your elbows a little away from your sides, and then let them settle back.  Do that a few times and notice any shift in how you feel in body and mind, as you invite a bit of expansion in your body.

Next, let the elbows float out to the sides, and then let that movement flow through the arms until they are softly extended out to your sides.  Stay there for a moment, seeing your hands with your peripheral vision, and then let the arms come back to your sides.

Then slowly float one arm upward toward the ceiling, and then the other. Feel that lengthening though the whole torso and at the same time notice the support from your feet if you are standing, or your hips if you are sitting.  Slowly let the arms come down.

Take a little time each day to play with your kinesphere – gently letting the body explore your near, mid and far reach space.  This can help to restore or encourage a greater sense of spaciousness and ease in body and mind.

I am working with students and clients virtually at this time.  If you would like to arrange a Somatic Experiencing or Somatic Movement Therapy Zoom session, you can contact me at pjj@paulajosajones.org.

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My friend Carol Hinson sends out an email daily that lists what she is grateful for and what she is attracting and manifesting.  Today the attracting list included this:  “Covid19 leaves as quickly as it arrived and the world is a kinder place.”

I think that is a good place to orient ourselves in a time of such overwhelming unknowns and fear.  Besides the disinfecting and handwashing and social distancing, there are other important things that we can do as we experience this collective trauma.

I am reaching out to people on a daily basis, checking in, telling them that I love them and am thinking of them.   In doing that, I can feel a gentle softening and opening in myself.  I see so clearly now how much my life is defined by what I love, what I cherish, and my great hopes for all beings.

Watching the “presser” this morning, I had a pretty fierce panic, which gave me chills and prompted me to take my temperature.  I am fine. I often (not always) feel that I am porous, and have to be particularly careful about what I take into both body and mind.

It is a good time to cultivate an interest in sound mental hygiene.  What that means will be different for each of us, but has everything to do with keeping one’s mental/emotional surfaces wiped down.  Not ruminating, not binging on news, and moving the body.

About moving.  Sometimes when we just try to calm ourselves, we are skipping the important step of allowing the body to actually discharge the trauma in a way that helps us to find a balance – not overwhelmed and fleeing nor locked down or frozen.

Simple steps like taking a walk, dancing freely to some music that you like, even just listening to music that you find pleasing can help to channel the body’s pent up energy or unfreeze what has frozen.  Because we are living in virtual connection now, maybe sharing an activity on FaceTime can be an option that offers activity and connection.

If you are struggling with what seems overwhelming at this time, I am working with clients remotely via Zoom or FaceTime, using the principles of Somatic Experiencing. You can reach me using this link. 

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I just learned of the death of my dear friend and inspiration, the artist Gillian Jagger.  I first met Gillian nearly 20 years ago when I had just finished choreographing RIDE.  I had seen her work “Absence of Faith” in New York, and was so moved that I reached out to speak with her and interview her for my book. That first conversation lasted more than two hours, and was followed by many, many more.

Gillian was an artist of fierce passion,  deeply generous in her vision, ever curious about others’ work and ideas. The world feels at once dimmer for her absence, and more brilliant for her having lived so fully among us.

Please watch these videos.  They will give you a beautiful sense of the woman, the artist, the visionary.

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The Peace of Wild Things

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

~ Wendell Berry ~

(The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry)

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Photos by Pam White

I have just returned from teaching a wonderful workshop in Bulgaria with a herd of 17 Balkan horses and a human herd of lovely, curious Bulgarian women.

Despite the challenges of language (helped by the heroic efforts of Millena, our translator) we were able to ground our communications in the shared language of the body, and find meaning in the always perfect teaching of the horses.

I am so grateful to Teodora, our organizer, for her vision and persistence.  For now, as my jet lag fades, I will let the photographs speak.

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