Hey Hedge Schoolers! What a trip this journey of inquiries into How to be Human has been. We’ve explored what it means to be a human, integration, connections, and our only-ness. I’ve been busy behind the scenes conducting interviews with some very special humans to share with you all in the upcoming weeks.
Today’s episode will be a pre-cursor to our very special contribution going live during Thanksgiving week in the United States. Granted the politics of Thanksgiving, how it started, and why we celebrate is alive with reasoning for continuing up for debate… I’ll be focusing on gratitude and appreciation as a whole specifically during that week and this entire month of November.
My understanding of gratitude has shifted over the years from just saying ‘Thank You’ for a gift, to being grateful for a blessing, to really observing and allowing the felt sense of appreciation to vibrate within my being for a moment in time with another human being or another space and recreating this felt sense by revisiting the scene again and again. Phew! That was a mouthful!
It was Dr. Joe Dispenza that turned me onto observing and melting into these senses. In his book Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One he asks you to imagine a scenario that you’d like to create. When I read the book years ago I felt stumped. I’ve always been a dreamer with a high visual capacity to “see” and “dream” things up. My mind can build a lot. So, What did I want to create? Well, I could build a house, I could build a farm, I could build a community, I could build a gym, I could create a manuscript, I could write songs, I could create great relationships, I could create groups and teams… My mind took over and I just couldn’t choose amongst the wide array of possibilities.
I put the book down for a good long while, years actually, and headed another direction. There was something about embodiment that I needed to learn. Even though I’d been an athlete and really physical all of my life, I needed to learn how to really be IN my body. To feel, to breathe, to notice my own heartbeat, to feel safe, to move grounded with each step. Conceptualizing embodiment doesn’t do much. We can talk all day about it ‘til we’re blue in the face, but really ya gotta get IN. You gotta practice. Like, What does my heart say when I am with this person? How do I feel on the inside in this scenario? Am I breathing shallow or am I breathing deep? Am I absolutely scared out of my grits with this human? Why? Are they really scary? Or am I believing a projection?
I dug my heels in DEEP. Learning my own nervous system and chemistry through breath work, observation, meditation, journaling, walking, conversating and just being. I started to understand the basic nuances of my system and where I might perhaps be able to shift and change things. Leaning into living the questions of, Where am I happiest? Where do I feel calm? What or who feels grounding to me? What freaks me out? Where do I not feel safe?
It’s been such a JOURNEY!!!
As I learned to feel and sense into my own embodiment, the union of my essence inside my body, not just in my head or outside of myself, I started being able to really pay attention to the people around me with presence.
And this is where the appreciation comes in. Once I really dropped into my body and stopped listening to the noise of my mind I was able to sense who I felt my best around. While I could not figure out exactly what I wanted to create years ago, I did realize that I wanted to vibrate in the appreciation of these special humans that I could feel in my nervous system.
So that’s what I began creating. More time, more moments and experiences with these extraordinary people. Why? Because I feel really really good around them. My nervous system quiets, my breath relaxes, syncopating with another human’s heartbeat, we are connected, we can essentially be in flow together. Co-creation at its finest for the simple act of just being.
Now, we could go the theoretical route and take a turn into poly-vagal theory introduced by Stephen Porges. Of what I understand poly-vagal is the space of emotional regulation with another human being. Their nervous system is so calming that yours immediately responds and adjusts to their timing. There’s no thought to any of this, it just happens. Like the way a parent can sooth a crying baby. The baby responds to the nervous system of the parent.
Once I noticed this occurring I leaned in further having few memories of my nervous system ever being so calm before. Perhaps the memories were there underneath, but perhaps they were also layered with learned hypervigilance, stress, tensions, and unresolved traumas.
I finally found what I wanted to create! More spaces and places and people whose nervous systems I calmly responded to. Whether they were responding to me, or I to them, doesn’t matter. Calm is Calm. And as Dr. Andrew Huberman says, “The optimum state for a human being to be is calm and alert.”
There’s a certain set of values and principles that take place within these humans. It’s like their intentions are aligned with mine or at least with the greatest good. They take responsibility for themselves and their lives. And they create the most they can with what they have. “Do no harm and take no shit.” They are quietly, unassumingly, humbly inspirational! Like a whisper that you can’t detect at first but if you keep listening can become the only voice in the room centering attention.
These are the humans I allow myself to feel fully with, and they are not all the same kind of human. They do not all come from the same place or have the same ideals. They do not look the same. In fact they exude “Only-ness”. They are unique and that’s what is beautiful about all of us connecting through our uniqueness.
I found what I love. And as the song above Blue Rose by Skrux says, “If you love it, then share it.” I found myself through these humans at varying points in my life. The list of these humans could go on and on. But I’ve chosen three special humans to me to dive into our questions of: What are the best examples of being human? Who? And what do these practices look like?
In our next episode of How to be Human we go deep with each of these individuals. Not only do we get to learn how they do human, we get to hear some of their own responses to the entire How to be Human list of inquiries. This is a TREAT ya’ll! Each conversation has gems of remembrance. So, stay tuned to our next episode in two weeks where we go deep on appreciation with our favorite humans.
Until then, I’ll leave you with wondering, Who are some of your favorite humans? Who would you want to sit down with? Who do you love dancing with? Who would you ask the question: Can you tell me How to be Human?
Dancing with my Favorite Humans