Beloved people.
I’m thinking of you all. Sending big blessings of courage and calm to all of you in this whirlwind.
What a wild time this is to be alive.
I hope very much that you and all of yours are feeling strong, clear, and resourcing yourselves in this sudden crazy shift of gravity in whatever way makes the most sense to you.
Although I’m certainly fielding moments of total overwhelm, I am mostly feeling grounded, lit up, and marvelously optimistic. Weird, no?
There are incredible transformations available to us right now. The deck is being so thoroughly reshuffled. And in this liminal time when nothing is quite locked into place, there’s an unprecedented (for me, anyways) scope to the kinds of choices we can each make about what the world will look like when we emerge from this.
I feel peculiarly made for these times, and I’m so damn grateful for all that I’ve learned and tended and cultivated over my life that is serving to keep me clear headed right now. This is obviously not a test, and the anxiety, the lack of rhythm, the big waves of panic and rage and grief and loss are all super real, and I’m very relieved to find that some of the tools and skills I’ve got are relevant enough to keep me tethered to myself and available to others.
Parenting under these conditions is fucking intense - perhaps for you, too? - andbut we are slowly figuring it out, and it's full of gold. Being together in this way is bringing about the resolution of certain patterns within my family that have caused me a tremendous amount of worry, and our home is changing in beautiful ways in the crucible of these days.
Other good is taking root, literally and figuratively. I’m beginning the process of planting and tending a substantial edibles and medicinals garden for the first time in my life, geeking out on cultivating different plants from seed. My family is doing a daily online storytime for all the kids in our lives who are at home. I’m in a prayerful state much of the time.
And the information has been streaming in like light. Waking and sleeping.
In general, this first couple of weeks of quarantine has been about pacing myself, being with the people in my home and strategizing for time alone, acting in my capacity as a connector to get people what they need, and considering how I can be of service in the midst of this crisis.
I’m finding that my trust in the intelligent wellspring of nature is absolute. I trust us when we move and act in our rightness as part of a complex ecology. And this virus is a part of that ecology, too. It has been part of my meditations over the past couple of days to tune in with COVID-19 as well as with the earth itself, to establish some connection and communication with this presence which is causing such havoc and destruction to human beings and such relief to other aspects of the global ecosystem.
On a more rational-linear front, I’ve been deep in research on COVID-19, SARS and coronaviruses, and on plant medicines that reliably address both the viral infections themselves and their varied symptom presentations, and am in nearly daily contact with other healers who are bringing their lifetimes of learning to support the community during this epidemic.
There are some specific resources I’d recommend to anyone wanting a similar handle on what this is and how to work with it, which I’ll include at the end of this letter. In the meantime, if you need referrals to herbalists, acupuncturists, and other skilled practitioners who are capable of meeting this illness with tools beyond the scope of standard medical care, please reach out to me and I will do my best to connect you.
As of twelve days ago, I have stopped doing any hands-on work out of necessity for the time being. Not least because I flew on airplanes twice 2 weeks ago and waited out the necessary 14-day quarantine as a possible asymptomatic carrier (today is day 15 and I’m still blessedly symptom free), but also because I cannot in good conscience ask people to come to my office, which, as many of you know, is a cozy, windowless cave that I share with other people whose decisions I cannot control. We are staying the fuck home.
I feel insanely fortunate to be skilled and able to offer things other than direct hands-on work, and have been dreaming and mulling over what that might look like during these days of rapid transformation.
For now, what that dreaming/mulling has brought me to is the following:
- I am available to meet with people for one-on-one sessions over Zoom, for connection, emotional and energetic support, instruction and education on self-care and somatic wellness, guidance in essential healing movement and self-touch, and to continue to cheerlead and support your embodiment, especially in a time when many of us are responding to our emotional overwhelm by disassociating. This comprises a LOT of what I was doing in person with many clients - as someone who is all about fostering the agency and sovereignty of all of my clients and students, offering guidance in radical self-care, supporting your full presence and the claiming of your authority over your body is inextricable from supporting your healing. This time is going to just make that very, very obvious.
A client coming to me with pelvic pain, for example, will receive the same intake, strategizing and attention from me remotely as they would in person, except that I will be guiding each person in doing the hands-on portion of the necessary work on themselves. Offering remote instruction and supervision for hands-on pelvic and abdominal bodywork is particularly exciting to me, as these are skills I can help anyone to cultivate that will, I believe, be of greater long-term help in some cases more than receiving work from me or another person would. Being fully capable of working with your own body is a skill that everybody should have, and I would love to facilitate that for you in every way possible.
Because the things that bring my clients to me haven’t evaporated with the coming of COVID-19, and in some cases are certainly being exacerbated by the sharp anxiety of these times, I’m available to meet with people and to continue the work in the ways that are available to us.
Sessions will, I imagine, be 60-90 minutes, and will be offered at a sliding scale, because the financial hardship of the moment is real, and everyone must have access to the care they need. My rate for an hour long session has been $150, and my sliding scale is for now going to be $75-150. If that is beyond your means, please just reach out to me and we’ll work it out. I am committed to everybody getting what they need right now.
I have now had two video chat sessions which were extremely different, both amazing, and have a handful more scheduled for the coming week which I’m greatly looking forward to. Please get in touch if this is interesting to you.
I’m reminded at this time of something my teacher Martin has said more than once in my presence, which is that when he’s in a bad state about something, he makes himself a new jacket. (This is a man who shows up to teach in the most opulent, gorgeous handmade cowboy gear you’ve ever seen, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him wear the same thing twice.) As he says: I may or may not feel better by the time I’m done, but either way, I have a new jacket!
There is much we can do to stay engaged and in love during this time. Not “productive” or “busy” in the typical capitalist-protestant-work-ethic-go-go-go sense, which I for one am hoping this time causes to permanently shift out of vogue, but rather engaged with loving work, with loving play, in skillful craft, in learning and in creation, to make beauty and be useful, as we wish, as we can. If we are gentle with ourselves, and respond appropriately to the shifting needs of the moment, especially in this initial rollercoaster phase, my sense is that we can - as slowly as we need to! - begin to adjust our rhythm, move into and inhabit this strange new world we have with our eyes open. This is, in part, a suddenly-different and quite shocking adjustment to our experience of time, and that is something we can work with, without rushing.
And it’s good to have a new jacket, whether the making of it changes our mood or not. It’s good to have done something beautiful with the time, whether or not it solved the problem. Whatever we can do to regulate, root down, work on behalf of those who need help, create beauty where there wasn’t beauty before, is a realization of purpose on earth that transcends whatever “normal” currently looks like. Humans have lived through times that are unimaginable to me - hell, my MOM lived through times that are unimaginable to me - and all that they learned, all the ways people have kept not just their bodies but their imagination and love and soul purpose alive, are present and accessible in our own bodies, right now.
It also must be acknowledged that this time may, depending on what we were each carrying when we entered it, register in our bodies as a straight up trauma - an event that changes the way our nervous systems respond to the totality of our experience. If you are watching or reading a lot of news (as I was) or are obsessively referring to social media (hi), that trauma will be corroborated and reinforced by the panicked tone of much of what you’re seeing.
And, without dismissing that aspects of living through a global pandemic have enormous potential to be traumatic to anyone, because duh, there are some things we can do to shift ourselves into feeling safe enough in our bodies and working with our somatic resilience.
Many of us are already doing these things instinctively, but they can be difficult to remember when we’re depressed or overwhelmed, so this is a quick note to remind us all:
- Drinking enough water is important. Full stop. Bodies and their feelings do not function without proper hydration.
- Pooping well at least once every day is important. Your immune response depends upon it, not to mention your sanity. If your digestion is slow or irritated - if you’re freaked out, this is pretty likely - what are the ways you know to encourage your body in this direction? (For me, the solution is a morning smoothie and even the thought of yoga.)
- Getting enough sleep is important. Your adrenals and your sanity require it. If you need assistance with this, consider setting a schedule with a set wake up time in the morning, a time limit on screen use after an hour of your choosing, a set time to turn out the lights at night. Quarantine days are very time-bendy, and having a relationship with the clock may be extremely helpful in finding some solid ground emotionally and energetically. It’s a good way to get traction.
And if you need herbal support for sleep, please do hit me or another herbalist up for some suggestions.
- Getting enough sun is important. In every way. Please, friend: get your ass outside. In Los Angeles, and in many other places, there are wide-open, uncrowded places to go, and the daytime skies have been exquisite. Take a picnic blanket and snacks and a book. Take a nap. It’s so good.
- Love is important. The hot pink web, as my beloved Willa calls it, is alive and well. The past 2 weeks have been a period of reconnection with many, many people dear to me with whom communication had lapsed because we were too busy or some shit. This is a great time to reach out for video chats with folks you love. Please proceed with care on the internet, as it is - as always - both a tremendously helpful weaving-together and an insane rabbit hole. Use your spidey senses when it comes to clickbait and other potential time-suck content.
- Movement is important. Any kind of movement. There is an explosion of free online guidance in every damn thing you can imagine. None of it is strictly necessary, as you have a body and you likely know exactly what to do with it. But it’s really lovely if you feel like it. I’ll list some of my favorites so far below.
- Gentleness is important. These are among the most intense conditions anyone living has ever experienced. If you are a person whose nervous system wiring was already tightly-wound from past experiences, give yourself a break. Twenty breaks. If you need to stay in bed all day, do it. If you need to self-soothe, do it. Don’t keep it up for too terribly long, but allow yourself a good grace period of being off the hook. If you are on the wagon in some way, please do set agreements with someone who can support you during this time. Please find every conceivable way of being kind to yourself.
- I don’t know that it’s for everybody, but getting my hands into the earth is, for me, the truest remedy for the spin-out potential of this moment. If you have access, it’s a great time to begin tending the earth in really simple ways. I’ve gone full tilt nerd with it but that’s by no means necessary - plants in pots are excellent, and there are plenty of fruit-bearing friends who are happy to be by a window or on a balcony. And it feels good to be hand in hand with the process of growth and care.
- If you feel capable of it, there has never been a richer time for diving into (or back into) to a meditation practice. Sitting meditation has been the spine of my sanity since I was 14 years old, and I cannot overstate how much it has informed and bolstered my emotional health and energetic resilience. Many of the teachers and communities I love most are offering resources during this time, and I will list some of them below. Mindfulness practices are often NOT an appropriate response to being very triggered - trauma responses, in my experience, don’t respond to top-down tools as well as to body-based tools - but it is a very helpful structure to build some experience with in other states and other moments, and to be able to lean into when the shit hits the fan.
SOME RESOURCES.
Plant medicine information on COVID-19: info to help us not freak out:
- The best information I have yet come across regarding plant medicine remedies specific to SARS and coronaviruses is from a genius herbalist named Stephen Harrod Buhner, who wrote an extremely comprehensive book called Herbal Antivirals that was published 7 years ago. The entire first chapter is on the flu, SARS and CV, and is absolutely worth reading. Here is a link to a free PDF.
An article he wrote about COVID-19: Part One and Part Two
Note: there are several articles, largely clickbait, rolling around about disaster capitalists selling fraudulent CV “cures” with Buhner’s name attached to them because of some woman in Idaho who was selling herbs based on his protocols. I have seen nothing in any article that impugns his integrity or the efficacy of what he recommends, at all.
- I cannot strongly enough recommend asking your acupuncturist, if you have one, about herbal and other preventatives. If you would like a rec for someone solid in Los Angeles, please let me know.
- BotanicWise did a free Herbalist's Perspective video seminar on COVID-19 with Guido Mase and Tammi Sweet, both of whom are great.
- Julie James of Green Wisdom is offering lots of helpful support over FB Live.
- If you or a loved one is pregnant right now, Evidence Based Birth has released a bunch of information about COVID-19. I find their work to be grounded in facts, solidly calm and accessible. Kindred Space is offering online childbirth prep support, lactation support and more. And if you are in need of recommendations for excellent midwives and doulas for homebirth support, please reach out to me. I’m here to help.
Some marvelous community offerings amidst all the noise online:
- The wonderful Rebecca Altman is offering a free 5 day course called Surrender & Magic - she offers work that is difficult to put into words but that I think could be best described as superbly-held experiential earth magic, and it’s particularly poignant at this time. If you do it and find you want to dive deeper, this is an affiliate link to her 2 year course called The Wonder Sessions, which I have seen loved ones go through and have their lives profoundly and dramatically changed for the better. She is offering tons of scholarship for that right now as well. I believe it opens for registration tomorrow.
- Ryan Heffington is doing a legit dance class/party a la Sweat Spot styles T/W/Th at 10 am on IG Live. There are TONS more amazing at-home dance classes happening. These times are made for those of us who kiiiinda want to go to class but feel too shy to do it in a room full of people. Plug #danceclass into Instagram and see what comes up. It’s pretty wild.
- I am, with various combinations of people in my family, doing an online Staycation Storytime every weekday at 11:30 on FB live. Come see our faces reading our favorite children’s books in various wild headdresses.
- I am also pulling together a schedule of online Crystal Camp offerings, teaching the skills and tools of practical magic for people of all ages - please stay tuned for that. Liz and I will be offering community meditations over FB and/or IG at some point in the foreseeable future as well.
- This is a dear friend’s spreadsheet of great stuff for parents.
- This is that same dear friend’s other spreadsheet of a ton of incredible stuff available for free right now online. SO MUCH FREE.
- Everybody and their mother is doing free online concerts and it is fabulous and overwhelming. If you can: support the folks who need the support. My partner Willa Mamet just hosted an outstanding 12 hour online music festival called I Need Space last weekend, and is consistently offering stalwart support and good jokes to fellow independent musicians here.
- The angelic Stephen Beitler’s Free Yoga TV is, as always, a wonderful resource.
- Ada Lusardi, who I have been trying to study yoga with for several years every time I go visit my honey in the Bay, is now live streaming classes. Rejoice!
- Pascal Baudar is going to be offering online fermentation & foraging classes in the near future and I am very fucking excited about that.
- My partner Adam Yasmin is hosting IG live conversations with various people as part of the Wabi Sabi podcast, as well as offering to guide folks in beginning their own gong fu cha practice.
- If you are a person who watches the stars or has curiosity about the relationship of astrological transits and the current chaos, I recommend the work of Olivia Pepper, who is an incisive poet in deep conversation with the stars as well as the cards, and who will be holding a weekly astrological discussion group on Thursdays at 6pm pst as well as an apocalypse-times mythic journaling group that will be cohosted with Nick Jaina. Journaling will happen on wednesdays pst.
- Ken McLeod’s Unfettered Mind has been a primarily online offering for years now, and remains a gold standard for how dharma & mediation guidance can be transmitted perfectly in that medium.
- The Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation has an entire menu of amazing, amazing COVID-19 resources.
- Angel Kyodo Williams is a jewel of humanity, and has some deeply helpful offerings at this time.
- Martin Prechtel’s talk on grief and praise is something I have listened to over and over for some years now, and am listening to again now, and it is something so prayerful and courageous and truthful that I can’t recommend it enough to you. Especially now. I would also strongly recommend reading all of his books, if you feel thusly inclined, beginning with the first one which is entitled Secrets of the Talking Jaguar, which I first read in one sitting and which completely changed the course of my life.
I’m going to stop there and send this missive out to you.
I hope you are breathing deeply, enjoying the emerging spring, feeling your body, feeling all the love that holds you, and the longing too.
Please let me know how I can love and support you best during this time.
We are in every way in this together.
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
PCWS