What's coming in April?
That depends. What is interesting to you?
April: A month of requests and curiosities
For a number of months, we’ve explored our lived experience through a theme. We’ve explored art, love, the embodied sacred…
This month, let’s do something different. Let’s open up our exploration to your requests and curiosities.
What interests you? What do you find difficult to put into words? What do you find profound? What is your North Star?
I’ll be honest. Opening the theme this month is in part, a chance to see if my newsletter is on the right track.
My whole life, I have wondered about the source, the core, the heart of the lived experience. What are we doing here? How can we know if there is an “outside” reality when all we know is what we can sense? What are the invisible forces that shape and guide our lived experience? How can our consciousness and our bodies come together?
I’ve had these questions from a very young age. As a teenager, I wanted to know a God that could make sense of it all. Later, I thought that the laser focus of yoga and knowing the experience of my physical body could have answers. I tried living on the land in what my kids think of as a weirdo commune (I take some issue with this description but you get the idea) where I thought the energy fields of nature would have answers. For a while, the intuition of motherhood seemed like a guiding light. More recently, I’ve dabbled in the teachings and discipline of Buddhism, hoping that this might provide insights.
I followed all of these different practices in hopes I could put my finger on it. What is it to live a life here on earth, in a body that has a soul?
But of course, you can’t put your finger on an unknowable idea like that. So instead, I have circled around and around it, like a scientist trying to know a black hole. I could only describe the negative space—not the experience itself. I’ve vacillated from airy-fairy understandings to secular, scientific ones. But I can never answer my own questions directly. On some days, I can’t even formulate the right questions.
While I’ve followed the pursuit alone, I know that it is interesting to others. I have spent hours in discussions with people who are equally curious. Each person has their own perspective, each of us getting closer but none of us being able to name it. Or more precisely—when we do name it, the names seem lacking compared to the ideas.
This newsletter was meant to be a space to explore these questions through practices, reflections, essays, and art. I thought that others who share this interest could join me.
But it has been a little quiet.
So this month, let’s talk about whether this is of interest or if there is some other way we can come together. Let’s share the questions that drive our lives. What are your staring-into-the-moonlight musings?
Register your vote!
Leave a comment below if want to add something else.
April’s Movement Practice
March’s practices were a bust so in April, I’m starting all over again. I will once again be doing the Five Tsa Lung Exercises that Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche teaches in Awakening the Sacred Body. This is a series of movements (called tsa lung) that open and balance your life-force (rlung) and the five chakras of Tibetan medicine. They help restore both physical and mental health.
What’s coming in April
Here’s what to expect in April:
The weekly Threshold Podcast with Emily Conway continues. See details below for our next episode.
The April Inner Wisdom Field Guide is due to be published on Sunday, April 5. In this issue, we’ll remind ourselves of the activities and practices that most feed our souls. This newsletter is a benefit for paid subscribers.
As mentioned above, this month I want to hear from you. What would you like to explore?
Content this month may be a little light. I’m taking a mini-break in mid-month and need to finish up some house projects. At the end of the month, I’m going to visit my daughter in Los Angeles. I’ll do my best to publish newsletters but they may be a little lighter than usual.
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Embodied Living is dedicated to meaningful, grounded, heart-centered living. I write about living fully in my body, in my heart, and in my spirit. Together, we experiment with movement and challenge our ideas about how our bodies, hearts, and minds interact. And it’s not just in our head—we feel it though experiential exercises.
If you’re here, this probably matters to you as well.
If you’re a free subscriber to Embodied Living, you’ll receive weekly(ish) newsletters with essays, news, and book recommendations about the embodied experience.
If you want to go deeper, paid subscribers get that and a little extra.
Free admission to certain LIVE events (for example, see the Beyond the Threshold)
Monthly Inner Wisdom Field Guides which help you to explore your lived experience more deeply. These guides include reflections, prompts, and exercises—perfect for home retreats or inspiration for your own practice.
Personal messages, videos, and communications from time to time. As the paid community grows, I plan to hold events and open community chats so you can connect with more people like yourself.
If living like this inspires you, upgrade your subscription to find the resources to go deeper into your own embodied experience.
Threshold Podcast: Ask Us Anything
What are your burning questions? Have you had thoughts, questions, or ideas that came after we signed off? Do you want to know what Emily is knitting or what Julia is cooking in her new kitchen? Today is your chance to ask us anything.
Monday, March 30th at 11:00 CT
To catch up on all the old podcasts, click here.
THRESHOLD LIVE PODCAST
What resonates with me, Julia, is your explorations of this whole idea of embodied living. Your quest to understand what the ineffable force/being/flow that allows us to be is and what we are to do now that we're here in this life is familiar to me from my own life. How do we embody life? What is the sacred? I love that you are exploring those questions, and I learn from your personal stories and your learning.