This one is definitely me thinking out loud. In the paradigm of trying to balance, rather than simply trying to meet some standard of being a good, better or best person, I’m having to swivel away from one comfortable dopamine source. This is…well, it’s easier to do in summer, let’s say that.

While I’m very much musing about my own difficulties as to this “wobbly” week I’m having, I hope there is some crossover to your lives, in that it’s much nicer to think about struggling to stay upright in a difficult pose, rather than feeling like a failure, or incompetent, or bad, or any other rather more triggering names. The thing is, everyone is probably quite tilted. In tricky, or even simply very intense and joyful seasons of life, this lack of a stable tripod shows up even more clearly. I’m trying to embrace this as an opportunity for more precise feedback as I struggle to stand in place.

I do want to achieve more balance. And it’s funny how I tend to think of everything like this - something to achieve, an obstacle to overcome, an adversary to conquer. My imbalance shows up as a real block when I try to engage in anything but mastery. What is needed in relational or natural or creative situations, though, is something different. Maybe it’s presence, or acceptance, or even stillness. Whoa! Tipping over just thinking this way!

That’s it. Happy Friday. Namaste. Stay in balance, friends. Or…work at it, anyway.

🍃

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It won’t stop raining here. We are in the midst of a fairly large system that is just spinning and precipitating, and so I’m not going to attempt a horse training video. Not that heroic, to be honest, and with all the excitement in our household, I’m not that energetic either.

I do want to keep on showing you more precise visuals of the various energies (as I see them, anyway) at work in amongst what would otherwise just look like “normal life.” Here is a little montage of the ways I see Draw energy at work in my day to day. The last part is kinda a big deal this summer. We are attempting to steer clear of this set of connections as much as possible!

It is clear to me that the power of Draw is incredibly useful in certain situations. I need a good recall for the dogs. I work on that constantly. It’s also helpful for the horses to come when I call. Worth a daily outlay of oats, for sure. And it’s also true that while Draw is in play, there is a certain elasticity to it. There may be a delay, or a tighter or looser connection, based on many factors. I would love my recalls to be answered immediately, with alacrity. But I can’t expect to increase Draw by using Drive (which could feel like a push back, if I get impatient or even angry at a slow response).

I’m trying to get better at working with this very different force. It’s completely different in quality than my more comfortable use of Drive, and yet, not better, or worse. Just uniquely suited to certain situations. Like proficiency with a good set of tools, if I am more aware of the directions of the energy I’m exerting, I can be a lot more efficient with my efforts.

I bet you could spend an enjoyable half hour or so in a crowded environment watching people use Draw with more or less effect. Sales, parenting, performing in any sense, as well as herding cats or other animals (😋) requires tactical familiarity with this particular direction of attention and energy. And unlike with Drive, you can’t just use brute force and expect the connection to “work.” It’s a little tricky that way. Yes, I can use treats for sure, but I also need to be seen as safe, reliable, and an attractive communication partner. So pure bribery only gets me so far.

Hopefully next week I get back to some sort of training routine, but meanwhile, enjoy some animals Drawing!

Ever tenderer topics! Can’t talk about compassion fatigue without starting into this big one. Take a deep breath and come along. You are worth it. Truly.

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I think the pictures we have as backdrops for the “stories” we are always writing matter. I’ve been very interested in what my pictures are - the set design, as it were. What are the colours, shapes, and taken-for-granted sorts of geographic assumptions I carry? You know how we see the “world” based on the distorted 2D maps that place a higher emphasis on certain parts of the planet? Kind of like that. We don’t really factor in how some parts of Asia, North America, or the southern hemisphere are much larger, visually, than others. We tend to simply accept this map as a representation of reality. And while we know at some level that the earth is a sphere, on another level, East and West and North and South matter. Sometimes deeply.

So, in trying to turn and face the origin and continued motivation for my tendency to Drive myself forward, onward, and away, I think my backdrop needs renovation.

I live in a forest, and I love it. It does have its challenges, but the sheer complex beauty of it (even though it is a scrubby, Jack Pine-y sort of bush) is endlessly restorative to my bruised and battered Soul. I got a tattoo with my brother, scripted beautifully by my sister-in-law, which for me illustrates the trackless, endless wonder of truth - as a forest, as a place of natural awe and life and light and also shadow and treachery and danger.

The use of a forest as a backdrop for my many questions, possibilities, difficulties, and connections with others is, I think, healthier than a more mechanistic, right/wrong, competitive, or in/out model. There is nothing exclusionary about a forest. There is also the fact that the obstacles are real and often quite painful to navigate. What I’m wanting to remind myself of today is that there is no place to “get to.” I don’t need to achieve, arrive, or assemble anything or anyone or anywhere. I’m already right here. And that is in Truth. In Reality, and therefore in “it.”

I’m all good. What to do next is a fun problem.

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Continuing the extrapolation of how we can tip over, from yesterday, here are the points (logical, sequential, analytical!) that make sense to me today in the world of relationships and inner team preferences.

* Mind-blind

* emphasis on the Heart

* emphasis on the Body

* Heart-unfelt

* emphasis on the Mind

* emphasis on the Body

* Body negative

* emphasis on the Mind

* emphasis on the Heart

Each one of these arrangements of an inner team leaves one critical team member more or less out, and then tries to relate with the other two in a sort of two-dimensional way. This can work for a while, but like a child learning to walk, we eventually need all three planes of movement to really balance well. Side to side, front to back, and rotation.

I’m hypothesizing a little here, based on my own experiences falling down, and being tipped over as others fall down in my near space. It’s a common enough experience! We are all struggling for balance, I expect, and there are plenty of reasons to find to avoid leaning on a mind, a body, or a heart. Life is that difficult and injuries are painful.

I’m interested if you resonate with any of these tipped over patterns, or can think of your own. And again, all sorts of grace extended to me, to you, to the human race. It is tough to balance in any respect. I’m finding it an extremely complex topic, and yet starting to feel real benefits just from an increased awareness and vocabulary helping me as I navigate tricky stuff. Hope this helps you as well.

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So there’s a lot going on for me in this video. I’m trying to show you my exact moments of “tipping” out of balance, and into a patterned, automatic, and unchosen response. Because I’m going as slow as I can, and trying to really notice those feelings of sliding into anger, or shame, or fear, I am starting (so exciting!) to catch myself! I love this, because I do not enjoy the sensation of looking back at an interaction and regretting or feeling confused by my contribution to whatever happened.

Staying balanced for me in this context means: remembering that I have worth, and a presence, and am secure in my self. The implication of those statements that is relevant to this lesson is that when Tundra shows “resistance,” or “refusal,” or whatever it is that she does that I don’t want her to do…it’s not about me. And without this balancing discipline, it could easily (so easily) become about me.

When we are in a power scenario with another person - say, an employee, or a child, or a student, or anyone who has less privilege than we do in an area that matters to the joint task, it is so critical to be self-centred. Meaning: centring, grounding, staying aware and present, and remembering our/my own tendencies for falling over (which are complicated, but usually result in me demonstrating way too much Drive energy, and forgetting all about the power of Draw, and certainly not bothering to Soak).

I encourage you to go there. Think about a time when you were in a clear power differential. These are not bad in and of themselves (I lack power going into surgery, but boy oh boy I don’t want to have to manage the surgeon!). However, they are very subject to one or both of the parties’ imbalances tilting the whole thing into a bad place. If you (either as the one with more or less power) can stay grounded, stay aware of your own strong circle, and try to take advantage of all three of your inner team members (Heart, Mind, and Body), the chances of the whole thing staying healthy and positive go way up. In my experience.

I’m trying to show and tell and write and in all the ways figure out the best way to cement this concept into my own life. I really, really want to get this. It is the difference between limping along with a cast and a crutch and lots of pain and reduced mobility - and health. The only catch is having to take the cast off, finally, and address the original hurt. (Insert emoji of pained expression and holding my nose).

Yes, of course we all could do with the talking part of healing. I am all for that. But (and as an occupational therapist I’m biased) we also need to do the rebalancing work. This requires taking an abstract “knowing,” (or maybe inkling would be the more accurate term) and using it in a situation. With others. Where the results matter.

So scary!

Of course this will look messy and incomplete and uncoordinated and wobbly. Learning how to balance can’t look any other way. Not a reason not to try.

My video series with Tundra is collaborating with this podcast series and so feel free to go back and forth. I have a horse and a round pen which is a handy little metaphor for life, with all its limitations, chaotic outer events (especially Tamira, the ultra-scary cat!), and inner possibilities for growing trust, or actively breaking it down. Which I’m trying to use as a mirror for my own inner Home and Soul and Team and all of that. Anyway, that’s the intro.

Please join me on the fence, because that’s what Fridays are for.

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Well, I wasn’t going to post this, but I think if I break it up, it will work better. There’s just a lot that happened today and I’m still feeling like more needs to happen. Between my stated intention to stay grounded, the very active weather which certainly kept us all alert, and me figuring out some gaps in Tundra’s vocabulary (namely: “you can stop now”), it was an athletic day for both of us in the round pen. I want to keep going with this lesson (in real life), but the full version (which I’m not subjecting you to in this part) was more than long enough for one day. We’ll resume tomorrow if at all possible and I’ll try to video that, too, as I continue to attempt to capture how well I manage to learn to stay true to my own values and true goals!

It’s so hard to balance when the environment is all sorts of “in motion.” I think this is so crucial to practice, though, because the environment is rarely a lovely day of 22° C with blue sky and a slight breeze. It happens, and that’s very nice, but most of the time we’re dealing with…more discomfort than ease. Wouldn’t you agree?

I want to keep in mind the circle of my limits (always the trickiest thing for me to respect). I want to remember my Mind loves to fly but she’s not actually the one doing the work. That’s my Body’s job, and so I need to stay weighted, present, and highly physically aware, if I’m going to communicate effective solidity in a background of energetic chaos. My Heart’s contribution is to remind me (when my Body gets “angry,” or maybe annoyed), that my true values lie somewhere in the relationship between me and Tundra, not in the performance of the “task.” That’s also very hard for me to remember, so I’m counting on my Heart to stay present as well, and support me in keeping my plans and goals secondary.

The actual time in the round pen was interesting, and the video of that will be a next week thing. This is just a video of me walking towards the project, with Tundra not so very sure it’s going to be a great idea!

I think our wildfire is likely sputtering out as we just had a full on thunderstorm pass over as I am posting this. Very welcome rain, that. Stay safe and cool and enjoy your Wednesday.

Grace, softness, and space were my words for the year 2026. They sound nice, don’t they? Harder to live out, though, in deep winter, in deep grief, in deep stress.

This morning someone was quite aggressively resistant to Joy’s presence in a public place. This is an unusual response, thankfully. I think most people find a dog in amongst normal human-only places novel and, with the service dog vest on, kind of glamourous. There are other problems we tend to encounter that are on a different end of the spectrum, honestly. But that’s another post.

Anyway, I had to reach deep, deep, deep in my soul for grace, softness and any space whatsoever. I think I managed to not betray my own intentions or values, whilst also defending my people and Joy’s extremely necessary presence in that place. But it was a reminder that people come with significant debris. Why else would someone be so unbelievably self-absorbed, and hard? I can’t know, but certainly that flood of hostility was not a recent accumulation of anger/fear. Nope. There’s a full story going on there.

I’m talking today about my recent increased awareness of the costs of increased awareness…because answering that person back in the same spirit they were inhabiting would have gone nowhere. I’m aware. I get (now) that it is possible to be utterly certain of one’s opinion, utterly convinced of the rightness of one’s cause, and also to be completely wrong, as compared with the full story or reality or truth of the big picture. So there’s really no point in me arguing or trying to convince them of anything. There’s not even any point in escalating internally. That person is where they are and has their own large stuff to handle, and is handling it in their own way, and it is probably good to just get out of their orbit, asap.

Being aware (and ever more aware) that we each come with depths and breadth and history and all sorts of paradoxes and inconsistencies, not fixable through sheer logic, or any other persuasive technique, is both depressing, and hopeful. It allows me to slow down and expect less progress for more work (surely in line with my experience). It also suggests that some problems are too much for me to handle, particularly the interpersonal kind. And this can reduce some pressure for me to try to bend reality to a childhood shape and colour scheme. So…yeah. Awareness has pros and cons. But it’s one of those things that is hard to put back in the bottle, isn’t it?

That’s the gist of it. But download and listen and share and whatnot. And comment! What are you becoming aware of, that you kinda wish you could turn off - but of course you can’t…?

This fence is sort of like growing up. Mostly there is really only one direction to travel. But it’s worth a pause to at least grieve the loss of a simpler time…

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I think we all try to avoid certain uncomfortable truths, and I’m not particularly enjoying facing mine. But it’s time. I have time. I have a willing horse. I have a round pen, and today I have a world of distraction outside of it, just begging me to dismiss myself. As usual.

Not gonna. Today I’m working through my own tendency to feel like I’m paradoxically not enough, and also too much. My go-to in these situations is (or has been) to focus on the task, not the relationship. I’m trying here to use a task to support our relationship, which is a slight flex of reality for me.

This is a long-ish video, and has a lot of wind, Tundra going in a circle, and also my phone loop whipping around just in view. I can understand if only a few of you soldier through it. However, for me the experience of making it was quite important, and I am kinda proud of myself for the clear differences I can see (watching it back) between how I would have approached Tundra’s skitteriness in the past, and the far more balanced way I have available to me, today. This is thanks to a lot of work within my inner home, and amongst my inner team. I have a renewed appreciation for the choice to just be, and do rather less.

Being, though, does involve inhabiting space, and the round pen, along with a fairly energetic, large, and slightly distracted co-inhabitant, requires me to do whatever is necessary to stay within the guardrails of not enough (where I’m in danger), and too much (where I endanger Tundra).

You are welcome to come along for the windy, warm work. I think we both had some fun and also stayed connected. Despite the chaos all around.

Happy Wednesday!

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