Less robot, more human
Picture of me borrowing my kiddo's Robot earrings for our Grove Community workshop on the illusion of constant growth.
Practices that loosen old trainings (gently)
What happens when you loosen, just a little, the institutional training that has become encoded in your body?
You come face-to-face with fears and career grief. Often, it’s surprising how deeply we’ve been trained in loyalty (the kind that lives outside of ourselves) for belonging and survival. So much so that none of us realizes the extent to which it’s become automated, robot-like in our responses.
I’ve been asking some challenging questions lately. Of myself, of you all, of this world. I was never great at small talk, ha.
But to wake up each day
to face fear and grief
to reach out for love and connection
to step up to rage-filled activism against those in power, inflicting hate and suffering
to take the dog to the vet and the kids to school
to make another meal because we have to keep eating.
Phew.
And to do all of that with integrity becomes some powerful embodied action choices.
How do we show up day after day in that intentional way?
Almost forty years ago, Audre Lorde wrote one of her most well-known quotes: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” - A Burst of Light
Self-care can take a lot of forms. Just watch for the wolf in sheep’s clothing of the capitalistic stalking of power naps to improve productivity. Or the predatory wellness industry, where shame and gaslighting are weapons for purchasing.
Saundra Dalton-Smith, MD, author of Sacred Rest, offers seven types of rest. I see each of these rest categories as critical for high-achievers to integrate throughout their routines. Mini-ritual practices can be restful moments throughout your day, like we talked about at the beginning of winter. Mini-sabbatical days are a practice of great care and rest, if you design it to be such. Intentional pauses break the churning cycle. These are the little things that invite more humanness back into our days.
Genuine self-care and rest are also acts of resistance, as Tricia Hersey of the Nap Ministry instructs us. Work disruption is why strikes are successful to the point that systems are anti-unions, anti-gathering, and anti-pause.
Take, for instance, full-time faculty accrue sick leave time, yet how many conversations involve them not knowing that or not using it because they’re so used to making up the time somewhere else or getting another faculty member to cover them. The only time I see it used is for FMLA to be paid. One regret from my academic time, I wish I had taken more than one FMLA leave over the two decades in higher ed. It should not have taken a breakdown for me to show some self-care, because at that point, it was recovery, not rest.
You being rested is key to community and collective wellbeing. It’s also key to being creative so that you and I can dream new, better worlds together. It can feel like ripping scar tissue apart, but if you stay with it, there’s a sense of spaciousness afterwards.
A nature-based restful practice
The days are getting longer. We’re on the lighter side of the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. I felt it on my morning dog walks just in the past week. And it feels delicious. It’s such a drastically different feeling in our bodies than when many of us step into organizations, offices, and meetings.
So if you’re able, step outside or look out a window. Find one living thing, maybe a wintering tree skeleton, a songbird, a dried weed, or a houseplant.
Sit with it for 2–3 minutes.
Then gently ask:
How does this being embody restful belonging without overworking?
What allows this being to be in slow growth or regenerative rest, without rushing or proving anything?
What would it look like if I went through my weekdays/work like this?
Notice what happens in your body as you consider that.
Breathe it all in. This is a little deinstitutionalizing practice to intentionally create a little pause, a bit of distance, between you and institutional patterns that have accumulated over time into loyalty of mind and body.