Feeling powerless?

Last week I wrote about the situation back home. By now things have calmed down to some extent and at least everyone that I know is physically safe. But there is much work to be done to repair the damage and to make sure that things don't escalate again.

When we're trying to affect things, whether in our personal lives and especially out there in the world, it sometimes feels like whatever is happening is too big for us to handle and feelings of helplessness can arise.

I don't know about you, but I often feel like there's no way that my small actions matter in the big scheme of things.

Last weekend I got to participate in another one of those healing workshops I told you about and we got to look at how early experiences of powerlessness set us up to feel discouragement about many situations in the present.

Sometimes the scars of my early experiences make me forget what I believe to be true: that I AM powerful. That's why I was so grateful when the leader of the workshop gave us the following quote as a useful reminder:

"Every single little thing that we do makes a difference. While there may be a tipping point when it seems that one person or event changes everything, it is never about that person. Things shift because so many people's efforts caused little changes that eventually led to a huge breakthrough...… Everything we try matters". Alison Ehara-Brown

I hope you can take a moment to contemplate and see how this applies to you personally, and how this principle often operates on a larger scale in the world. I hope this idea of knowing that you or others around you are making a difference, no matter how much you can tell, helps you stave off any feelings of hopelessness about the state of things.

Last Sunday we got to work on "power" in the studio. We got to look at the different ways that we can affect change in our surroundings and in our bodies through movement and body awareness, using the concept of "impact".

If you'd like to take a few minutes to try embodying power in its different forms I have a video to share with you from class.

As you will see, we can try to create impact by exerting a lot of effort as in pushing, pressing squeezing, kicking, stomping, etc., but sometimes the more effective ways to create change (as in the quote above) might be less obvious and don't require so much energy.

Students have reported that trying these exercises is helping them reframe how they want to navigate their way through this world when it comes to impacting things, so I hope you try it too. Enjoy this exercise!