The Present Moment is a Lounge Chair
"May is for Mayhem" Coaching Project starts *next week* and you can still book a free session with me.
Thank you to everyone who’s already booked a spot in the May is for Mayhem Coaching Project where, from May 1-31, I am gifting 20 coaching calls over 31 days.
This project is for you if:
You are feeling overwhelmed by the unpredictable, chaotic reality we are experiencing
You understand *intellectually* that you need to care for yourself in order to care for others/the planet, but you aren’t sure how to *actually* do that
Your go-to coping strategies aren’t working the way they used to
You want to develop self-trust in your ability to stay engaged and participating in all the change without despairing or burning out
You want to increase your confidence in your resiliency to handle what the future brings
NOTE: Even if this project’s theme isn’t 100% resonant, if you’re curious about my approach and are interested in a coaching session, go ahead and sign up for a call.
Today’s inspiration:
Optimism
Rust morning. Again,
the incompetent heart speaks
the language of stones.
I tell you, in the voice
of the old poet: move it
into the sun. It will warm.
Like the fields and their seeds,
the clay and beams.
Happiness is a riot of endless
limbs. You say, Hope
is the light at the end–
I say, It is what keeps us
drenched and dredging
through the darkness
for one day more.E.C. Belli
Last week, I was counting down the days leading up to an appointment with my reiki practitioner.
I’ve been seeing her for the past three years, and I always leave our sessions feeling present, anchored in myself, and basking in a general sense of well-being. It’s unlike anything I’ve experienced. I was skeptical at first, and it took me a few sessions to relax into the experience and to put my thinking brain on the shelf for an hour. As a verbal processor, I could talk and write until every single last cow comes home about feelings and my inner experience, so to access this level of groundedness without having to talk or think too much was particularly profound.
Last week, she peeled me down from the rafters and landed me back in my body. Towards the end of the session, she checked in. “What’s coming up for you?”
Sometimes, I know how to answer this question when she asks—there’s an image swirling behind my eyes, or a word, or some message has come through. Last week I sort of mumbled something, I don’t remember what, and as I was speaking she interrupted me. “Dani,” she said, “you don’t need to figure out. You’re exactly where you’re meant to be.” With this validation and acknowledgement, my nervous system downshifted a few more notches: ahhh, first gear.
And then came the zinger: “Remember,” she said, “the present moment is a lounge chair.”
And with that, I landed on an image that’s been dancing in my brain ever since: there I am, careening through space, relaxed yet alert, cross-legged in a lounge-chair, cool as hell even as life swirls around, even as it continues to be life-y, even as life continues to do its life-thing.
For so long, I tried to micromanage my life. I believed that this approach would keep me safe.
The thing that happens when you micromanage your life is that you start to miss your actual life. Your vision narrows, your body clenches, and anything outside of The Plan™ activates your whole nervous system. You miss signs, symbols, signals, serendipity, spontaneity. You gather evidence to reinforce everything you already know. Your beliefs calcify and what becomes available is the opposite of possibility.
You recede further and further into your brain. You replay past mistakes, obsessing over specific do-over scenarios that if granted—if only!—might finally redeem you. You fantasize about all the things you’re missing—people, jobs, ideas, careers, clothes, account balances, accolades—that you’re certain if you had would let you finally be happy. You grind over every possible outcome, behaving as if future tripping will protect you from the discomfort of the present moment.
One morning (ok, many mornings, over and over, over a long period of time) in the shower you are scrubbing your face a little too vigorously and the lightbulb goes off in your brain, illuminating everything: What is the point of doing all this self work, you wonder, if my lizard brain still has me by the tail?
Then comes the weird part: the part where you have to figure out how to change your brain. The part where you have to figure out how to cede control of your life, so that you might receive it instead.
I’m recalling a previous post both to demonstrate that I have been in this conversation with myself for a while. I knew for a long time that the way I was operating was not working, and that not only was it not working, but it was actively contributing to the low-grade sense of “is this it? Is *this* as good as my life will be/feel?” I was swimming in. I’ve worked with coaches and therapists and I have great support systems in place. And ultimately, I had to own that it was up to me to fundamentally change the way I thought if I wanted to change how I fundamentally experienced my day-to-day life. I had to believe—I had to practice believing—that I was worthy of having a life that felt good more often than it felt bad.
I knew I had to learn to relate to life in an entirely new way. But how would I actually *do* that?
One way I’ve been practicing releasing the death-grip of control is to study and apply the principles of Chaos Theory to my life and the way I see the world.
Incidentally! I will be teaching this framework at my FREE workshop on May 15th: Chaos Is A Friend Of Mine, and you’re invited to register.
Now, I am not the most articulate explainer of high-concept science-y things but basically, many of the structures we westerners operate inside were created based off the principles of Newtonian physics, as developed by Sir Isaac Newton back in the eighteenth century. To say that science has come a long way since then is an understatement, and so much of what we know now about the nature of life and change is actually in total opposition to these earlier discoveries.
The difference between Newtonian science and the new science that’s since emerged (which includes chaos theory) is the difference between viewing ourselves as machines, able to be broken down into parts that we can control, versus viewing ourselves as part of a vast network of relationships that all work together to perpetuate more and more life.
If I view myself as a controllable machine, then when something bad happens, I believe that something is wrong with me or my life. I double down and try to manage, fix, eradicate. My vision narrows. Possibility is out of reach.
When I view myself as part of a web of relationships that require disruption in order to continue to evolve, I view difficult things as part of the process, rather than an indication that something is wrong with the process. I can be with discomfort. I can trust that order will reveal itself, if I allow it.
From “Leadership and the New Science” by Margaret Wheatley (emphases mine):
It is chaos’ great destructive energy that dissolves the past and gives us the gift of a new future. It releases us from the imprisoning patterns of the past by offering us its wild ride into newness. Only chaos creates the abyss in which we can recreate ourselves.
Most of us have experienced this ride of chaos in our own lives. At the personal level, chaos has gone by many names, including “dark night of the soul” or “depression.” Always, the experience is a profound loss of meaning—nothing makes sense in the way it did before; nothing seems to hold the same value it once did. These dark nights have been well-documented in many spiritual traditions and cultures. They are part of the human experience, how we participate in the spiral dance of form, formlessness, and new form. As we reflect on the times when we personally have descended into chaos, we can notice that as it ends, we emerged changed, stronger in some ways, new. We have held in us the dance of creation and learned that growth always requires passage through the fearful realms of disintegration.
Being inside of a “dark night of the soul” is not easy. I do not go out searching for these moments. And, when they arrive, which they will, and I am plunged into the cosmic transformation pot, reminding myself that this is LIFE having it’s way with me rather than something to be avoided or yet another reason to anesthetize myself is just enough of a reframe to release some unnecessary pressure.
But back to the lounge chair:
Here’s the bridge I’m inviting you to cross with me: applying the principles of Chaos Theory to how I orient toward life is how I return myself to the lounge chair of the present moment. It’s how I’m able to partner with life, to be with tumult and disarray, to be in relationship with the unexpected, without assigning unhelpful meaning to it. It is how I receive the way my life is being revealed to me, rather than fighting against its unfolding.
I can’t spend my whole life in the lounge chair. That would be a ridiculous aspiration. I exist in a capitalistic society that requires a certain amount of effort for me to sustain myself. There are demands on me, people and projects I am accountable to. Also, I’m a human, which means that every day I navigate things/thoughts/fears/stresses that seek to lure me away from the lounge chair.
What I can do is notice when I’m spiraling or squirreling, and then do my best to return.
This is not a bypassing. In my lounge chair, I am awake, receptive. I am not blind to the awfulness in the world. Indeed, spending time in the lounge chair is what makes it possible for me to stay engaged.
I just reread this, and I’m laughing! I’m laughing at the absurdity of being human, I’m laughing at our holy insignificance. I’m imagining all of us, a whole fleet, feet up, the chillest army in the galaxy.
May is for Mayhem is an invitation into a new conversation about how embracing CHAOS might actually offer you the freedom you’re convinced is on the other side of all that neverending micromanaging. It’s an invitation to consider a way of being that isn’t contingent on perpetuating systems that are in collapse—a way of being that supports all life.
If this calls to you, I want to gift you one hour of 1:1 coaching
The Details
I am offering each call for free to support to anyone curious about how to channel the lessons of chaos toward building personal and collective resiliency.
1. Book your session. Each project call is 1 hour. Conversations will take place between May 1st and May 31st.
2. Complete the short questionnaire. After I confirm your call, you will receive a short questionnaire. Please note that calls without a completed questionnaire within 48 hours will be canceled.
3. Show up to your call! I look forward to our time together.
In the spirit of 🪞transparency🪞
Projects like this are how I give people who are curious about coaching an experience of working with me, and also one of the ways I connect with my ideal clients to fill the limited coaching spots I have available in my practice each season.
On the other side of this session, if coaching together seems like an ideal next step for both of us, and you express interest in learning more, wonderful, we can talk about that. HOWEVER! This is not a sales call in disguise and I will not “pitch” you on coaching without your explicit consent/indication of interest.
If an ongoing coaching engagement is not the right next thing, we’ll wind down our conversation with suggestions and resources to support you where you are. Yes, coaching is an investment but limited resources should never be a hindrance in you receiving the support when you need it.
This project is *not* for you if:
You have participated in a coaching project in the past 12 months
You have completed a coaching agreement within the past 6 months
You are a current 1:1 coaching client
Free workshop: Chaos Is A Friend Of Mine
I am teaching a framework for incorporating the lessons of Chaos Theory at my FREE workshop on May 15th: Chaos Is A Friend Of Mine, and you’re invited to register.
WHEN: Wednesday, May 15, 2024
TIME: 5:30pm - 7pm PST
WHAT: Learn about Chaos Theory and its practical application for building personal and collective resiliency through tumultuous times.
You will consider how disorder, unpredictability, and lack of control are natural parts of change and growth, and discover a model through which you can reconstruct the default narratives you have about yourself and the world.
You'll leave the workshop with a concrete framework you can apply toward imagining, creating, and living a new future beyond the limitations in possibility insisted upon by the culture-writ-large.
COST: FREE
The workshop is 75 minutes plus a Q+A/conversation that will go fifteen minutes or as long as there are questions/comments.
That’s it for this week. Sign up, and I look forward to seeing you around soon.
SELF MADE is a call to deeply connect with the self—self-knowledge, self-trust, self-development—and then to make, small step by step, a life that you savor. Posts are written by me, Dani Cirignano, writer, Certified Integral Coach, and Holistic Recovery Guide, based in San Francisco, CA.
Click here to learn about working with me 1:1 and/or here to sign up for a complimentary Alignment Session. Let’s talk!
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