Tiny Revolutions №60: The Body Never Lies
Tiny Revolutions №60: The Body Never Lies
+ come talk with me about mental health ⚕️
Hi, I’m Sara, and this is Tiny Revolutions, a weekly-ish dispatch of personal writing and links about becoming who you are. Reply anytime, I love to hear from you.
Just a short one from me this week, my friends. This long week, this tiring week, this week in which I really did not get a lot done. So. How about some links and things to think about?
“Life requires much inner awareness from us, as we work on integration and alignment. We need access to information that will help us navigate our lives. Most of us do this by thinking things to death. Here is the problem with that line of examination: our mind is relatively new on the evolutionary scene. As amazing and wonderful a tool it is, it is limited as being relied upon as the only compass. Our body, on the other hand, is ancient in comparison. There is much wisdom in our body, if we slow down enough to feel. Our body, in fact, is the most honest and accurate tool we have that can help us walk through life.”
My acupuncturist friend turned me on to the work of Abdi Assadi a few years ago. A healer with deep experience across multiple modalities, every time I read something he’s written (including his handbook for beginning healers), I am amazed at how brilliantly he integrates mind, body, and spirit in his treatment advice. The above is from a blog post called The Body Never Lies. Click in for a suggested exercise to help you get to the root of an issue you’re grappling with.
“I don’t think the artist owes anyone any kind of engagement or explanation. I think the artist should be a paradox, if they feel up to it. They should contradict themselves as much as possible. They should be interested in their own imagination. They should feel free to fuck up, to be strange—all of the things the internet doesn’t allow in 2021, and more or less punishes. So I guess I came here, on the internet, to say: maybe we should all leave. Maybe we all deserve a kind of creative mental freedom no matter if we make art or not.”
The Astro Poets, who are brilliant on Twitter, now have a newsletter and it’s full of gems like this.
“The irony is that when you work too hard to improve yourself every day, you slowly start to feel stuck and anxious and angry at yourself. I don’t write well from that spot. Believing that a good life is a constant upward trajectory, like a rocket ship to the stars, isn’t good for you. It’s unrealistic. It leeches the joy out of your life to think that way.”
I loved Heather Havrilesky’s latest Ask Polly newsletter, How to Stop Trying to Be Better. (It’s particularly amusing how she looks at a column she wrote seven years ago and thinks “Whoa, I needed that.”)
Let me be the latest to join the chorus of praise for My Octopus Teacher, the documentary on Netflix about a man and his special friendship with a common octopus living in a kelp forest in South Africa. Just a stunning piece of art about the natural world.
A Reminder
Soundscape of Note
An ambient recording of surf and foghorns in 1987 San Francisco. A real mood, as the kids say.
Zen Quote Time
"Life likes people to be flexible so it can use them for what it seeks to accomplish."
– Charlotte Joko Beck in Everyday Zen: Love and Work
An Event!
My buddy Stew Fortier, whose great newsletter I’ve linked to here a few times, and I are hosting a conversation on Clubhouse on Tuesday, 3/16 at 12 pm PT about mental health for creators.
I started out hating Clubhouse with the fire of 1,000 suns, but after listening in on a couple of genuine conversations with interesting people, I’ve come around. We’ll make it interactive and we’ll make it fun. RSVP here.
p.s. If you do not have a Clubhouse account (it’s still invite only, which is dumb), reply and I’ll hook you up.
Another Event!
The Tuesday night Tiny Revolutions Zoom sessions continue. Join us for a silent hour of coworking at 7 pm PT, and use the time to be with nice people who are making cool things. RSVP here.
You made it to the end! Thanks for reading.
😘
Sara
p.s. Share this with a friend if you feel like it.
p.p.s. 👇 ☠️🤘
