luxuriate in your joy

I attended my monthly therapy session, running a few minutes late, asking to use the bathroom for the first time.

My therapist said: You seem really bubbly and sparkly today.

Oh really? I replied, and started giggling, like a child caught in a secret act of mischief.

I told him about my recent trip to Japan, revealing moments of sweet poetic healing in a mountain retreat hosted by the inimitable Emmie Rae, where old shapes of shame dissolved within pages of writing, movement and heart-centred connection.

I left out the part about how I travelled to my Jupiter line, how I am still translating for myself what’s been brewing since Mercury/Venus/Mars started moving direct again.

My therapist is an Aquarius Sun and sometimes I am still afraid of sounding strange to him.

~

Over the weekend I cleared out years of debris in my home, and actually took bags of donation to the op shop instead of driving around with them in my car boot for a minimum of three years.

I went from binge watching the second season of The White Lotus after returning home last week and not really doing “productive work to advance my business to support my material wellbeing”.

And yet, I am learning to trust the rot, allowing the parts of me that need rest that looks unsexy - napping, unplugging, sleeping in, eating yet another bowl of instant noodles, house an explosion of mess and trash.

Trusting that when my energy returns, it is organic and natural and I do not need to push or force myself with an urgency that does not belong to me.

~

The bubbles remained.

Do you want to say something about this?

I spoke about taking a small risk with someone new being well-received, and a bold move to reveal more of myself publicly and feeling good about it when I would have once spiraled in shame.

Again and again, we returned to the felt sense of what this bubbliness felt like within - an excitement, like a champagne about to pop, yet a clear grounded sense of feeling anchored to my center. I could feel all my edges, from my head to my toes.

I am here, expanded and solid and excited and alive.

Luxuriate in this feeling of sparkliness.

So I did. And it grew and shifted and landed deeper in my body, the deliciousness spreading all over.

This is what pleasure feels like. This is what it feels like to be pleased.

~

I realised as I was sitting there, that this was a familiar sensation to me.

This feeling of feeling aroused by flirting with life, feeling playful and silly and light.

Yet allowing myself to luxuriate in this particular sensation, to let the container of my body hold this sensation of radiance, to make space for it to percolate and brew and really glow.

This was new.

~

This is so much of the work that we explore together in somatic work.

We are learning to relate to our bodies, and thus all parts of ourselves - mind, body, heart, soul - with curiosity, friendliness, warmth.

The practice is not a bunch of somatic tools to self-regulate, as much as this can support our process.

The practice is paying attention, observing, tuning into our internal landscape - the rocky and the smooth.

The practice is attunement, of being receptive and aware to your own felt experience, which can shift as quickly as the tides turn.

~

I left the session, surprised again by this work. How simple, how effective, how opening.

I said to my therapist - I was worried about what to bring up today, because life lately has mostly felt good.

As if I need to drum up some drama so I have something to process.

And the paradoxical beauty of this work is that, whether swimming in pleasure or pain, we are always in the river of life.

Touch what is here, and simply let yourself be where you are.

~

This Taurus season, I am remembering:

Let your garden bloom.

Inhale the fullness of your inner spring blossom.

Taste the sweetness of your matcha soft serve and know that life is good just for this second.

Sense how some parts of you long to flourish.

Let yourself luxuriate in your joy.

Let excitement and giddiness all the way in even when you know nothing lasts forever.

(lol full moon in scorpio incoming)

~

That afternoon, under the warm May sun, the Moon moving through my 5H of leisure and fun, I stretch on the grass in my garden.

I hear a child’s giggle. It’s my 2.5yo neighbour. She runs out and greets me. I haven’t interacted with her in a while and had been thinking of her. She makes half legible sentences while smiling innocently at me, and I can’t help but feel so happy to see her, a child’s delight lighting up more delight in my heart.

She returns into her house to get ready for music class. I continue stretching.

When I look over again, she is brushing her teeth by the door, watching me, smiling.

A child knows when the energy is good, when it is fun and alive, and I think to myself: maybe I’m doing something right, just being here, where the river is clear and flowing, burbling along, simply alive.