Mr. Fix It comes out of the closet…2-5-20

Esalen…land of alternate reality…Day 6.  By night I nestle in my bunk bed cocoon, synchronous dreaming with the assistants with me in this workshop.  By day I soak these bones, revel in beauty, seek alone space, drop into connection, dance my heart out.  Daily chapters in the dance dome with fifty souls: witnessing, caring for, playing music for this practice of presence. 
 
My morning ritual here is long standing, anchored to my first visit in 2002.  I wake in the dark, amble down hill to the tubs.  Bathe in silence, scan the horizon ‘til the stars disappear and the sun rises. Hot from the inside out, I enter the empty massage room, bag of toys in tow, churning sea beyond the glass beckoning to my internal waves.  I roll my spine, heart basket, bowl of pelvis, well-used legs.  I double tennis ball more deeply into back body, then  gently trace and inquire into psoas front body.  I roll pokey ball ‘round hips, shoulders.  I softy awaken my subtle core and stretch the big players that attach pelvis to legs.  I fold forward, back bend, twist.  I breathe and I feel in.  If I’m in a hurry, 15 minutes will do, most days here it’s more like forty minutes.  Whatever, the day is ready to unfold out of this moment.
 
This act of total pleasure, focus, pure self-love is my sacred calling to share.  Come to The Essentials at Clara 10-1 next Saturday, February 15 and feel the tender joy this provides.  An hour reviewing the foam rolling from January, then a dive into the balls, a deepening dabble in psoas and lengthening out.  So much peace to breathe and rest and feel.  Pre-enroll and I’ll send you the lat session’s home support video.
 
Mr. Fix It is an ego character I inherited from my father.  Finally I’m old enough to understand how the energy of this character directed me to this body-based passion.  When I was younger, this trait manifested in less than skillful action sometimes.  But now I bless the painful early learning that steeps me in deeply compassionate service.  Service that bubbles from a deep well of my history, my heart, fuels me to offer what I feel and know in the healthiest of ways and create change in a suffering world.  Utter vulnerable moment to close with yesterday’s writing that fleshed out Mr. Fix It.  Writing that deepened my acquaintance with this life long companion.
 

Dad’s Repair Shop

Random Saturday mornings calmly doing business
atop the scratched formica table. Just the night before,
its rosy surface fraught with meal time chaos.
Dislodged sandal straps, transistor radios gone wonky,
bike flats to greasy chains—if it was broken, Dad could fix it.
 
But when it came to my little sister’s funeral,
the plaintive echo of his repeating mantra, still a felt sense:
“There’s just no way I can fix this one.”
 
The harrowing ways he played a hand
in her misery were out of reach to remedy.
And the shame my folks carried
from that epic unraveling,
well, some of it landed in my bed,
where my tender eleven year old soul
forged secret ways to be with all those tears,
so deeply laced as they were with shame.
 
This dusty story, attic corner relic near sixty years,
only now am I ready to reckon and release
this shed-able inheritance,
this shift-able fragment in time.
Truly we are never broken, just so very tender human,
our parts and pieces continually re-arranging, 
until the circle is complete.  
 

So fixing it is just not what it’s about anymore.  Being with, breathing, making space for healing, compassion…this is what creates the spacious field of presence in which things are bound to change in their own sweet time.

Love, bella