Rooted community 🌿 I’ve been holding something with me since Saturday, and it feels like time to share it here. Saturday was my 56th birthday. I spent it in deep practice and community at the Strozzi Institute — that particular kind of immersion where the body is organized through rhythm and repetition, where you arrive as one version of yourself and leave as something slightly different. Somewhere in the middle of feeling into my commitment and my dignity, something landed in my body that I’m still learning how to hold: My time has come to be an elder. Let me say what I don’t mean. I don’t mean old. I’m not stepping out of vitality, or aliveness, or the rising energy of spring. I’m not handing in my badge or going quiet. What landed wasn’t an ending — it was a role. A different way of holding the work, the tale, and all the wisdom that’s been gathered over decades of practice, mistakes, returns, and refinement. Elder isn’t a stage of life. It’s a posture. A way of standing in the body and in the world that says: I have something to offer, and I no longer need to prove it. What I’m noticing is a shift in the quality of my pursuit. For most of my life, I’ve been chasing — chasing more capacity, more clarity, more credibility, more enough. There’s been beauty in that chase. It’s what built this work. But somewhere on Saturday, in practice, my body offered a different invitation: You’re allowed to slow the pursuit. You’re allowed to feel enough. That doesn’t mean stopping. It means a shift in posture. From striving to sharing. From accumulating to offering. From leading every charge to holding steady so others can take the helm. The work doesn’t need me to push harder. It needs me to stand here with what I’ve gathered — the tale, the practice, the long arc of return — and offer it. Within the Neuro-Somatic Integration™ Framework, Rooting (formally regulation, more on that change to come!) is the capacity to synthesize internal sensations, emotions, and thoughts with external cues — to hold complexity without collapsing and while staying connected to ground. Elder energy, as I’m feeling into it, is rooting in its most mature form: the body’s capacity to hold the joy and the pain at the same time — to celebrate a birthday in a fractured world, to laugh fully in a season of grief, to keep speaking honestly to inhumanity while refusing to let go of our humanity.

No script just a random thought to share about spring, practice and the rhythm of excitement! Would love to hear what your thoughts are? Where are you at?

It’s been a minute. And honestly, that’s been intentional. I said I’d stop forcing a daily rhythm and instead write when something moves me—and today, something did. I posted yesterday what my mentor and coach, Wendy Haines, said that really got me reflecting. “Folks change only when there is a compelling enough reason to change.” Sit with that for a moment. Because it’s not saying people can’t change. It’s not saying they don’t want to. It’s saying something deeper: the knowing isn’t enough. It never has been. We live in a world that floods us with information—podcasts on nervous system health, books on trauma, Instagram posts about regulation. And most of us know what we should be doing. We know we should sleep more, move our bodies, have the hard conversation, put the phone down, step outside. We know. But knowing doesn’t move the body. A compelling reason does. Within the Neuro-Somatic Integration™ Framework, this is one of our foundational principles: practice before insight. Not because insight doesn’t matter—but because the nervous system doesn’t change through understanding. It changes through experience. Through felt, embodied, repeated moments that teach the body something new is possible. And here’s the piece that Wendy’s words illuminate: the body won’t move toward that new experience unless something—deep in the system—registers the reason as compelling. Not logically compelling. Somatically compelling. The kind of compelling that you feel in your chest, your gut, your bones. A compelling reason isn’t an argument you win with yourself. It’s a felt truth the body can no longer override. It’s when the cost of staying becomes heavier than the cost of moving. Sometimes that reason arrives as a crisis—a diagnosis, a loss, a relationship ending. But it doesn’t have to. Sometimes the compelling reason is quieter: a child’s face that reminds you what you’re modeling. A moment of stillness where you finally hear what your body has been whispering. A community that makes the next step feel possible instead of terrifying.

I have struggled most of my life oscillating between hypervigilance and collapse. Both kept me safe and were useful for survival. Years of really good therapy have helped me to identify these experiences and patterns. What this looks like today is hypervigilance in work, and collapse in personal life. Difficulty looking at parts that need tenderness, care, attunement, attention - the health of my body, of my emotional and spiritual life, of my relationships with family, friends, community, planet. At work I was putting one foot in front of the other to meet the task - burnt out from 2+ decades of tireless, unrecognized work and holding boundaries and accountability with insecure leadership through significant chronic health challenges until I had to step down to slow my nervous system down. Now in my new career as a therapist I realize more than ever how these extreme patterns leave me unbalanced and depleted, and oftentimes not fully present and available for the important work I am called to do. I’m in the overlapping moment in the spiral of my life where I have an opportunity to integrate all that I have learned and am learning to make small shifts. Within the neuro-somatic framework, engaging in practices that invite and allow for regulation begin to gradually shift our brains out of default mode network to build new pathways of being, of relating, reflecting and reimagining. The practice doesn’t have to be big or intense or strict. I want to highlight a micro practice I have been engaging in for a few months that seems to be scrambling my default network of patterns and unfurling for me ways in which I want to show up for myself, for my community and for the planet. For a few months I have been Earthing. In my backyard which is huge and not cared for. I walk bare feet on the grass for about 5 minutes. At first it just started out without any intention. The more I did it the more I was called to do it. Whether it was a sunny morning or a cold dark wet one, the sensations my feet felt when I walked on the grass, the communication the mycelia were having with my body and nervous system, led to an awakening of the connection I have felt with nature all my life. With putting my fingers in the dirt..smelling it, playing with it, eating it as a child. My renewed connection with nature through this micro practice is creating shifts that might seem small but are huge feats for me!

Last night I had the honor of holding space for the Youth and community that support them at the Youth Speaks Slam Finals. My friend @Darius Parker was the emcee and at the end of the night 6 young people moved on the be the Bay Area Youth Speaks representaitives at the Brave New Voices event where young people from across the country come together for 4 days of slams. While only 6 will be moving on, all 17 showed up and showed out. They give me hope., And while my body is tired my hart is full. The video of the amazing Abayomi whose voice, both singing and words, move me so deeply. What a gift to be able to support and hold space. I want to thank the Hope Reimagined team that has supported each slam throughout the season @Lilya Kamholtz-Roberts @Joyce Lee @Nirupama Lal @Eryn Yuen @Carmalita Johnson @Veronica Ornelas @Cecilia Tavarez . This is community healing. This is powerful and this is what can shape our future. I also added the full video with much better recording. These young people!!!