Widening the Stream
A Somatic Practice for Feeling Grief and Expanding Emotional Capacity
The purpose of this somatic practice is to offer a safe space for widening our capacity to feel into and through our emotions that are right there under the surface, to allow ourselves to feel the grief we need to feel, and to remember and "re-ember" joy - because that is what keeps us going.
May we find safety within our bodies as we witness atrocities and do our part to fight for justice.
November 11th is a day of remembrance in Canada for war veterans and victims of war, and this practice is dedicated to ALL those suffering the injustices and horrors of war and genocide, at this moment and throughout time. Although I made this recording out of the need to respond to the conflict in Palestine right now, this practice is open to all who are needing it at any point in time.
The horror that we are feeling for and witnessing in Palestine and Israel is opening and pouring salt into deep, deep collective wounds. Watching such atrocities unfold and then having to argue for the rights of fellow humans to not be murdered en masse, balancing multiple truths and integrating understanding about legacies of trauma, and then to be facing discourse around whose lives matter more or less, is completely overwhelming and horrifying. We are feeling helplessness and shock, and God help us to carry the weight of it all, especially if we are simultaneously experiencing personal grief or loss or trauma. We carry the weight of our fellow human’s horror and trauma and grief as well as our own. I think a lot of the time when we are witnessing atrocities such as these, we tend to want to turn away or dismiss our own experience of grief, because we think it has no place compared to the tangible suffering we are seeing forced on others. But grief is an opening, to love and to empathy, and we are each of us allowed to feel it fully, to give it space and a voice.
