Embodiment Series Week 1: Sacred Force for Change

I'm back with a focused new Spring series called Embodiment as Sacred Force for Change!  We'll be using the potent New Moon and tomorrow's Spring Equinox to tend to our personal earth, our body, and plant powerful seeds for our future.   Weekly embodiment focused episodes will be aligned with the moon phases from the Spring Equinox until the Summer Solstice.  I will show you why deepening our capacity to stay present, connected, and courageous is an essential path to our healing, transformation, and collective liberation.

It comes down to the most vital question: what happens when we’re disembodied? Who and what actually benefits from our chronic immobilization and the illusion that we are powerless? Over the course of these next 14 weeks, I will make it my personal mission to convince you that when our nervous system lives in chronic threat, it’s easier to control us, divide us, and keep us stuck in fear. Embodiment becomes sovereignty, a way to enhance presence with our autonomic nervous system cues, honor our survival strategies, and still choose right relationship to our body, our integrity, and our communities, knowing that when we are united in collective embodiment we are able to uplift each other, and that’s when we harness our greatest power for change.

Our first practice today is vocalization, because the voice holds so much history. We explore gentle sound on the exhale, humming, and simple ways to experiment even if you “can’t sing,” then connect it to polyvagal theory, vagus nerve stimulation, and why chanting and group rhythm can support mood and regulation.

Thank you for tuning in.  If you’re ready for more then join me each week, and get ready To Dare, Together!  If this resonates, subscribe so you don’t miss out, share it with someone who needs body-based, spirit-centered support right now, and leave a review to help more people find this resource. 

Check out the links below to connect with the brilliant people and their work mentioned in today's episode: 

https://www.between-the-worlds.com/

https://www.sacredspacefoundation.org/

Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:24

Well,

Welcome Back And The Big Focus

SPEAKER_02 0:26

hello again, friend. Welcome back. Let's do it. What are we gonna do? We are going to dare together. And what is it that we are going to dare to do? We are going to focus on embodiment.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Our embodiment is a sacred force for change. I said change.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

All right. I don't know how that's gonna come out, but I just felt the the this the spirit move me.

Celestial Timing And Why Now

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Okay, it's been a very long time since my last episode, which I recorded on January 12th and then was able to put out there on the 19th. And it was all about shame with my friend Dr. Karen Sofer. And a lot has happened since January. First of all, there's been a lot in the celestial weather. We had our Neptune and Saturn conjunction at the first at the sorry the zero degree of Aries. And that is world building, world dreaming, making, creating, visioning energy. So that's where we're at. That is what we have the ability to do. Actually, let me say the power to do. So I also was very fortunate to attend a conference at that time, at that exact time of that astrological event, which is a pretty rare event that took place. And I was a part of a main ritual that really put a lot of energy and intention and magic towards creating a better future for all life. And we really need that right now. What

Conference Rituals And Future Building

SPEAKER_02 3:06

came through for me throughout those three days at the Between the Worlds Sacred Space conference, which, if you've never been able to attend a conference that really integrates spirituality, magical development, psychology, science, metaphysical arts, the esoteric traditions, the occult arts, it was very powerful. And at any point throughout the three-day weekend, it was Thursday to Sunday, four-day, sorry, you could attend a ritual, you could attend a workshop, you could get to know people, you could see people you haven't seen in a while, and it attracts souls from all over. It's an internationally attended conference. So it really shaped some of the energy and ideas and intentions that have been flowing through me as a human, as a therapist, artist, therapeutic artist, let's say, because I do believe that uh therapy is uh an art form and it's a science. And also as a spiritual person, as a witch who is on the path of personal and magical development, and as someone who really cares about social justice and right action and right relationship to each other and the collective and the land and the divine and all the things. So, okay, where am I going with this?

New Moon Series From Equinox

SPEAKER_02 4:55

I'm excited, and I have created a very focused series from now, March 19th, 2026. It is the new moon. And tomorrow on Friday, March 20th, is the spring equinox. And depending on what tradition you come from, people call it Ostara, people call it yestra. And in Irish paganism, they refer to the spring equinox as conoct unari. I'm probably not getting that right. And that's a time that's all about the balance of light and dark and night and day, and bringing in new energy, hope, and prosperity and abundance for the sowing season, planting seeds, and what is it that you are wanting to manifest and call in and give birth to and create. So we are all about it, right? We're doing it. It's all about embodiment as sacred force for change and growing, literally growing the world that you want to cultivate. And so it starts today.

Coming Home To The Body

SPEAKER_02 6:39

We're gonna use that energy because we are gonna create the world that we want to live in. And how do we do that? Well, what has been coming through for me pretty strongly is this awareness of we have to learn how to come home to our bodies, and being able to be more embodied harnesses our greatest power to change. So I have put together a weekly series that is going to offer an embodied focus, practices that will work with your body and your subtle bodies, your subtle energies. I'm going to move us through different practices and ways to understand like what's happening in the physiological neuroscience aspect of what we're doing, how we're working with these regulation practices. What is happening on a spiritual level? What's the function of that spiritually and magically? How to use this, and also for social change and transformation and liberation, in addition to we're gonna practice it, we're gonna experience it. So what I have in mind right now is to kind of give you maybe a bit of an overview, and what we're gonna do is each week is going to align with the luminary, the moon in particular, and I'll and also the sun, and what phase the moon is in. So next week on March 26th, we have the first quarter moon, and then on April 2nd, we've got the full moon. April 10th, the last quarter moon, April 17th, the new moon, April 24th, first quarter moon. And then we also have another festival on the uh the wheel of the year, which is uh some refer to it as belting in Irish paganism and in Gaelic, they call it Bailtuna, Baaltuna, Bay Altuna. And that episode is gonna weave in aspects of that that festival, that ritual. And then moving down, because it's connected with the full moon as well. So we'll there will there will be some embodied energy focus connected to what's happening there. And then we've got May 9th and 10th is the last quarter moon. May 17th, we've got the new moon, May 24th, the first quarter moon, May 31st, another full moon, the last quarter moon is on June 8th, and then the new moon is on June 15th, and that will bring the series to its completion. And that is also when the summer solstice is a couple days later on June 21st. And again, in uh the the wheel of the year, it's referred to as Litha in Wicca or Western magical traditions, and in Irish paganism, they uh refer to the summer solstice as a quarter or cross-quarter day, and they refer to the solstice as grian stud to we uh anyway. So that is what I am focused in on.

Sovereignty Trauma And Collective Power

SPEAKER_02 10:59

And I'll be honest, the last few months have been a real rest, integration period for me. I received some really exciting training that I'm now able to offer in my therapy practice, and it's connected to my focus. I mean, it's all connected, which is really exciting because I think since I started this little creation passion project here, I have been sort of searching a bit around, okay, like what is the focus? What does it need to be? And the truth is it's always gonna be in a place of transformation because what we need is going to change as we change and evolve. And so I feel really clear and it came through in lots of different ways, pretty much everywhere. You know, when like you're just moving through the world and you just keep getting signs and signals about a particular path you're supposed to be taking, and you're like, okay, I get it. Yes, all right. So everything during that conference that I attended was about embodiment and how being disembodied actually disempowers us. It prevents us from being able to stand up with courage and to transmute anger, righteous rage, certainly, sacred rage, definitely, around the injustices that are happening to so many people and so and and to our to the land and to our planet and to all all life. So what we feel is real and valid. And then how do we transmute it? How do we bring that energy into a higher vibration so we can use it for good, so we can feed the world that we want to create that's that's already being created right now, and it's already here. I mean, you can see it in how people are resisting, how people are singing, how they're bringing in these ways of relating and taking care of each other and remembering that we're all connected. And that's the way forward, right? It's not, we're not gonna be able to use tactics of c colonization and dominance to create the new world. That's not gonna, we don't want to bring that into the new world. That we're releasing that shit. We don't need it, we never needed it. And so what I want to shift right now is being able to support all of us in feeding what we want to experience, but feeding love and peace and abundance and generosity and being in right relationship to our integrity, being in our place of trust because there is trustworthiness happening in the people around us and in leadership, and having courage, feeding hope and dreams and compassionate force. And this is the power that lives in our body. And so what I am uh holding is this truth being in right relationship to the land and the people around us and the collective and the world, right? And I it starts with us, but more specifically, it starts with our personal land, our earth, our body, and how we're able to be aware of the cues that our body is signaling, and to be able to work with those cues in real time and discern is this my body giving me cues of threat or danger that are necessary for me to respond to, because we have these parts of our experience and from a physiological point, it's our autonomic nervous system. And it is divinely designed because we we need it as a as a species to be able to respond to threat and danger in appropriate ways that can literally protect us and save our lives. And so it's important that we honor, honor those survival strategies and be able to acknowledge that how the system, how the colonizers and colonizer mentality have strategically designed ways to perpetuate cues of danger and threat externally, certainly, and also how it rises up from inside of us, the cues of threat and danger, which then divide us and drive us apart and keep us fighting each other and not seeing the truth, which is a handful of leaders are holding so much abundance that was never theirs. It was never meant for them, it was meant for all of us. And so they've taken the what do you say, the oldest play out of the playbook or something like that. I don't know. I'm not like a sporty person, but this has been done time and time again in cultures and civilizations. The people in power want to hoard the power. They're incentivized to keep us immobilized or in states of chronic dysregulation and distress. Because here's the key about the body and really being in right relationship with embodiment and seeing how that might actually save us. No, no, let me say it more directly. That is the way. That's the way, that's the path. If we're able to be truly sovereign over our experience in our body, even though we have experienced trauma, that our bodies might actually feel unsafe to be present inside of, because awful, terrible things have happened to us. If we're able to heal that and transform that and be with that and grieve that and take care of each other around that, we are unstoppable. We are an unstoppable force because we are truly in our power, truly connected to each other. We're like a wave rising up from the ocean that can shape the land literally in the way that we want it to be. Because we have the power to choose. So it starts with uh how you tune into your body.

Why The Voice Is First

SPEAKER_02 19:28

Okay, so we're gonna move into our first focused embodiment practice. And I chose vocalization as the point to begin, the seed to plant in our first episode in this series of 14 episodes. And the reason for this is I am in a relationship-building moment with my voice. And it's been a lifelong evolution, as I'm sure you can relate to, because we get so many messages about our voice and how loud it can be, what it can say. My personal uh complex relationship with my voice has to do with being a little child. And anytime anyone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would say very quickly and with a lot of um robust enthusiasm, I want to be a singer, a dancer, and an artist. So um I guess you could say that a lot of those little child passions were not really seen or cultivated or embraced for lots of reasons that I have compassion for. And my experience with my voice in particular was that I was safest when I was quiet and speaking with a lot of fawning, let's say. And I did a lot of regulating others through my voice. And that was a way that I stayed safe. And I give thanks for that because we were all doing our best in our complex family systems and societies where there's so much unaddressed trauma and need and scarcity, and we, you know, can be reactive and act out these patterns all over the place. So this is not just my story. I know this is the Story for lots of us. And so I would be as a child, I might be singing, I might be playing around uh with my stuffed animals and having them sing or or what have you. And sometimes I would, you know, sort of be encouraged to sing louder. Yeah, you know, do it. Take it seriously. Come on, let me do it. And I would, and then I would be met with a lot of laughter and sort of like I was being invited to believe in myself. And so I would. And then I would be met with how ridiculous it was that I revealed that part of myself, or how unsafe it was, or how it was used for a source of competition or dominance, or you know, putting me in my place, or the shame hot potato sort of thing. Like those folks might have been feeling some shame about their repressed passions or desires or what have you. And so let's just play that out with a child. I see how it has really repressed my voice and my actual real love of singing and always having this experience of feeling silly or feeling self-conscious, or that how dare I think that I could be good enough to put myself out there in this way? So I wanted to share a little bit, which I probably will do, each episode connected to how our body holds these stories and these wounds, really, right? So, which keep us disembodied. So we have to really claim it and name it. And so, what is yours? What is your wound or truth, the energy that maybe stays with you, connected to your voice? What is that for you? Let's let that fear or that feeling of, oh, it's this isn't safe. Like, what's gonna happen? Will someone hear? Let's just be with that and let's call out the true origin of it, because it didn't start with you, right? You came into this earth as a precious, sacred being of love. And being on this earth plane is tough, right? There's a lot of stuff going on, and so this is part of why being more embodied is a part of resistance and revolution and change, because we're reclaiming the truth of who we are and how we are empowered and we are sovereign over our body. And I also am aware that Taurus, the sign that rules in terms of medical astrology, rules the throat and the voice and that part of our body. So my uh my Taurus uh is in the 12th house, or my twelfth house rather is in Taurus, along with my moon and along with Chiron. So there's a lot uh woven there for me in terms of my path towards being more embodied, claiming my voice, being in intentional focus of connecting to my ancestry and Irish paganism in specific, and how my ancestors used their voice to speak truth to power. And they did this through Rosk poetry, which was a form of channeling from the divine and uh speaking prophecy, but also weaving fate. So it was sort of many things going on there, and poetry was sacred speech. So, anyway, all this to say, I'm choosing for us to focus the next at least three episodes on embodiment through our voice and how it can move and shift and create change internally and all around us. So

Guided Sounds Breath And Humming

SPEAKER_02 26:37

here's what we're gonna do because when people think about using their voice, they get nervous, they're like, oh no, I can't sing. You don't need to be a professionally trained singer or musician to use your voice and vocal cords as the instrument of power that it was divinely designed to be. So we're gonna just warm up a little bit. And how are we gonna do that? I'm gonna have you maybe just sway a little bit. I'm adding a little movement because that can kind of move our energy around. And what I'm gonna have you do is take a big breath in. And on the exhale, you're going to allow your voice to sort of come through, make a noise. It can be any noise, and you're feeling into the vibration. So I'll go, and uh, you know, we're just all being uh vulnerable together here and being in right relationship and deeper alignment with our sacred force through our voice and embodiment through our voice. So and as you exhale, you're fully releasing that breath, you're emptying it out of your body and focusing it through the channel of your voice and let whatever sound come through. So I'm gonna play around again. Okay, so now we're we combined breath, maybe you're swaying a little bit, and with exhale, and now we're gonna play around with the vocalization of humming because humming is really powerful, and we're gonna just play with that. You can breathe in or you can just kind of play with the hum. You can play around with your mouth open or close, whatever feels natural. You can kind of play with the with this sort of intensity, the power. You can move it up, you can move it down. You're kind of just warming it up, greeting your voice, saying hello to your throat. And you know, the vagus nerve is right there. It's sort of seated right at the the vocal cords, the voice box. So as you're doing this, you're also receiving the benefit of hearing it, listening to it through your auditory sensory experience and your middle ear in particular. And so if you have a song that brings you a sense of sacred joy or or force or courage, you can be with that. You can play with that. And I'm gonna just kind of hum one. So

The Science Behind Vocal Regulation

SPEAKER_02 31:09

I'm a big Florence in the Machine fan, so that was uh a little something from one of her new albums. Um and I want to leave it here with a bit of the science. Because I want to tell you what's actually happening in your body when we move through these different embodiment practices. And therapy, psychology, polyvagal theory, any kind of somatic practice or body work might refer to these as nervous system regulation activities or practices, and I truly feel like they are connecting us to the body and also our subtle body and our energy. Uh, so it's doing lots of things, not just in the physiological body, although it's definitely doing a lot there. So when we are singing and chanting, we can experience an increase in blood flow to the brain, and that supports regulation of the heart and nervous system, particularly when performed at a rate of five to six breaths per minute. So you can play around with that. And group synchronization, so chanting, singing in community with other bodies, right? Other people, other beloveds in sacred connection increases social cohesion, leading to increased positive mood and focused attention, and thus decreasing ruminating thoughts. Chanting stimulates I'm gonna how am I gonna say this? Uh, glossopharyngeal cranial nerve and auditory feedback that cross-activates the ventral vagal complex. So this was out of an article called Chanting Meditation Improves Mood and Social Cohesion. It was a part of the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition. So really cool, exciting science, sacred science, I'll say, because we are divinely designed. And so it is no coincidence that our body holds so much innate healing power and energy and magic, right? So I'm gonna read to you a little bit about humming, which stimulates the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve passes through the vocal cords and inner ear. That's what I was speaking to a moment ago. Rhythmic vibration from humming stimulates the vagus nerve and helps to calm the nervous system. So earlier I was speaking about the polyvagal theory, in particular the vagus nerve and the autonomic nervous system, and how that's such a key part of embodiment as sacred force for change, for changing us inside, for being empowered and sovereign in right relationship to our land, our sacred earth, our body, and also how we ripple out and influence and interconnect other people's experience and body. And so our nervous systems, our state of embodiment, if you will, is constantly in communication with the people around us. So how how incredible it's this psychic, truly process that's going on all the time. So there's a little bit of the science. And vocalized, we're gonna be focusing on vocalization uh in the next few episodes because I think that's how I'm gonna uh really focus in on this series. And uh I'm gonna be covering those areas that I mentioned before. Specifically, I'm gonna be spending some episodes focused on vocalization, like I said, mindfulness and meditation, breathing and body work, and all things movement. So sort of split into those four uh dimensions and really just doing a deep dive over the course of several episodes with some specific focus on different integrated, multidisciplinary, if you will, aspects that will interweave neuroscience and psychology, spirituality, social justice and liberation and the magical arts and magical sciences, all of that sacred stuff.

What Comes Next And Farewell

SPEAKER_02 35:57

So I hope that you come back and we can dare to be more embodied together. So I got a lot of good stuff planned for you. And I know for me, uh focusing in on reclaiming these parts of the power that lives in my sacred force of embodiment is really necessary and invites courage as well because we have wounds connected to our body, and in particular connected to how our body has been violated and trauma lives in our body. So this is an act of embodiment and healing and integration of parts of our experience that have had to live in a fragmented position, let's say. So we're gonna be doing a lot here. That's my intention. So I hope that that sounds pretty cool to you because I'm super uh super excited and I'm like jamming out on this stuff. So I'm excited to really have a focus. I'm talking a lot. This is kind of what I do. I'm trying to be concise. It's just not my jam. It's hard for me, it's hard for my neurotype. We have a lot to say, okay? So I'm really working on less as more. All right, I will see you next week, my dears, because they're coming out weekly. I know I've been, you know, I haven't been around, but I am here in full force with the sacred force of being embodied from the spring equinox all the way to the summer solstice. So if that sounds like fun and that sounds supportive, I will see you here next week. All right, take care. As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul.

unknown 38:06

Bye.