spirituality

“Ask for Horses” by Tina Tau

December 24, 2022 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Memoir of a Dream-Guided Life

Recommended to me by: The author is a friend

This book is both honest and kind. It looks directly at hard times and painful emotions, and maintains enough buoyancy and narrative flow to carry the reader forward without getting mired in pain. It holds the tension between personal autonomy and spiritual direction inclusively, without needing to choose one or the other. It looks tenderly at mistakes and stuck places, holding compassion for younger selves that were doing the best they could.

The included dreams are brief, powerful, mysterious. They are interpreted with gentle curiosity, an eye toward word play, and a willingness to explore new paths. “Dreams tell you something you don’t already know.” There are no fixed interpretations of dream symbols, and the dreamer is always in charge. Other people helping with a dream say, “If this were my dream,” offering rather than imposing interpretations.

The book pulled me through it, and I felt accompanied in some of my own life struggles. Recommended!

Available at Kelson Books and Amazon.

“As We Have Always Done” by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

June 13, 2021 by Sonia Connolly 2 Comments

Subtitle: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resurgence

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist who has taught and lectured across Canada. With story and analysis, she carefully lays out how Nishnaabeg ways of living, learning, and experiencing are intrinsically suited to reestablish their communities and place-relationship that have been intentionally disrupted and stolen by colonialist settlers.

A single quote out of context doesn’t do justice to the way she steps out of whiteness to center the Nishnaabeg way of thinking and doing, but here is a taste.

Governance was made every day. Leadership was embodied and acted out every day. Grounded normativity isn’t a thing; it is generated structure born and maintained from deep engagement with Indigenous processes that are inherently physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Processes were created and practiced. Daily life involved making politics, education, health care, food systems, and economy on micro- and macro-scales. […] The structural and material basis of Nishnaabeg life was and is process and relationship—again, resurgence is our original instruction.

The book addresses kwe – the embodied experience of being an Indigenous woman – and the ways capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy have suppressed and damaged that experience. It also includes 2SQ – people who are Two Spirit and Queer.

I feel changed by reading this book. It affirms that there are right ways, sustainable ways of living, and Indigenous people still know and practice those ways. It supports my own search for connection to place and right ways to live. It reminds and teaches me that Indigenous people are brilliant modern thinkers and doers, interrupting the stereotypes of “primitive,” “lost,” and “in the past.”

Highly recommended!

Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation (pdf), an article by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson published in Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson website

Available at Powell’s Books.

“Mindful of Race” by Ruth King

April 30, 2021 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out

In the Introduction, Ruth King shares the effects of race on her own body and her own family as a Black woman living in the south of the US. Insight meditation has helped her manage the effects of racism, and she has created trainings that help others cure the heart disease of racism.

Part 1, Diagnosis, analyzes racism. Her writing is direct and clear. Here is how racism affects Black people. Here is how it affects white people. We have dominant and subordinated identities, like a white woman who is also chronically ill, or a Jewish person who passes as white. Here is how we can begin to get honest with ourselves and others about race.

Part 2, Heart Surgery, teaches the basics of mindfulness meditation. Here is how to invite the body to settle. Here are many specific phrases to say silently to ourselves or others in metta (kindness) meditation. For example, “When you feel deep sorrow, hopelessness, and despair, I will stay with you. I will breathe with you.”

Part 3, Recovery, gives tools for creating racial affinity discussion groups and making progress in dislodging racism from our hearts. Throughout the book, she gives examples of how listening deeply and making time for our emotional responses allows us to move through them and reach our vulnerable hearts.

Unlike The Inner Work of Racial Justice by Rhonda Magee which moves very slowly and seems to be trying to convince skeptical white people, this book lays out the truth and assumes people will do the work to absorb it.

Highly recommended.

Ruth King’s website with more about her Mindful of Race training program.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“Bodyfulness” by Christine Caldwell, PhD

November 17, 2020 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Somatic Practices for Presence, Empowerment, and Waking Up in This Life

Recommended to me by: Darryl C

“Bodyfulness” is the embodied version of mindfulness, presence without leaving the body behind. Caldwell brings in Tibetan Buddhism, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, and her own experiences with movement and presence. The different modalities felt awkwardly pushed together in places, with superficial coverage of anatomy and neurology. Perhaps she came to the topic from an academic perspective and forgot to talk with bodyworkers and others who make a lifelong practice of body awareness.

There are practices to try out in each section to explore body awareness.

8 principles of bodyfulness:

oscillation – movement through a range, with a preference to stay mostly in the middle of the range. Our cells, our organs, our whole body, all have oscillations.
balance – pausing, like balancing on one leg, and also being centered, not getting stuck at the far end of an oscillation
feedback loops – sensing and moving, trading information back and forth. Also cross-connections between different systems.
energy conservation – habits conserve energy by not having to figure them out every time. Movement plans (such as reaching, or standing) do the same thing at a body level.
discipline – practice leads to grace. “Use it or lose it.” This was a brief section and felt grafted on.
change and challenge – our bodies change under the challenge of new needs or a new environment
contrast through novelty – when something is new, it gets our attention and perhaps elicits change.
associations and emotions – guide our actions, memories, experiences.

4 themes

breathing – this book, about awareness of the body, says that gravity does the work of the outbreath. Which moves up. No. The diaphragm relaxing up into a dome shape lets the outbreath move without additional effort. This error alone made me lose all confidence in this book.
sensing – add kinesthesia to the usual 5 senses. Balance the amount of sensory awareness, and the amount of attention inwardly or outwardly.
moving – motor plans and motor development, probably from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. Some basic exercises to address trauma held in the body.
relating – borders, boundaries, and coregulation.

Bodyful Applications included material on oppression, activism, and bodily authority. It also explores the contrast of bodylessness: ignoring the body, seeing the body as a problem or project, hating the body, and making one’s own or other people’s bodies wrong.

Unfortunately there is an ongoing theme of “curb your addictions” and “fix your eating habits” in the examples. It seems strange to have judgmental examples in a book about body awareness and acceptance. Also there is a non-ironic positive use of “trickle-down economics.”

This is such a great topic, addressed in an oddly skewed way, as if it’s trying to match up modalities that don’t quite fit. It has interesting information, but I can’t trust any of it when basic facts about breathing are simply wrong. It would be a good start for someone who hasn’t thought about body awareness at all and needs a step by step introduction to the idea.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer

May 6, 2020 by Sonia Connolly 1 Comment

Subtitle: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Recommended to me by: Amy Bennett

A set of essays loosely tied together in chronological order, with themes of sweetgrass and braiding all the way through. Each essay braids together personal memoir, Native American (specifically Potawatomi) ways of living, and colonialist ways of living.

Potawatomi ways developed over generations as people saw what works to live in balance with nature, as a part of nature. Humans are considered the young ones, the newcomers, learning from their more experienced plant and animal family members.

Sweetgrass is harvested in specific ways. Not the first plant you find, because that might be the only one. Take only what you need, up to half of the plants there, either by cutting half of each bunch, or taking whole bunches. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a Professor of Botany, and one of her PhD students showed in a set of careful experiments that sweetgrass thrives when harvested this way, and fails to propagate if it is left completely unharvested. Humans and sweetgrass have a cooperative, collaborative partnership.

White colonialists disastrously interrupted Native American ways of living by stealing Native Americans’ lands and pushing them into entirely different ecosystems, and by taking their children to residential schools and forcibly preventing them from speaking their own languages or practicing their spirituality. The Potawatomi people and other tribes are gathering together the fragments of what remains, and braiding them together anew.

The book ends on a hopeful note, that perhaps enough of us will turn toward collaborative, cooperative ways of living that we will not entirely destroy the ecosystems of this green earth. Fitting right in with that hope, the current Great Pause of this pandemic gives us time to consider what we want to add back in to our lives, and what we want to leave behind to allow cleaner skies, safer streets, and more sustainable lives.

I read this as an ebook, because that’s what I can get from the library in this time of pandemic. It’s an odd way to read a book so rooted in physical experience, and I would have much preferred to have a physical book in my hands. This is a long book that wants to be appreciated slowly, essay by essay, section by section, exploring how all the parts fit together to support each other.

Highly recommended!

Robin Wall Kimmerer: ‘People can’t understand the world as a gift unless someone shows them how’ interview by James Yeh, May 23, 2020

Available at Powell’s Books.

“Outside the Charmed Circle” by Misha Magdalene

March 24, 2020 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Exploring Gender & Sexuality in Magical Practice

Recommended to me by: Sam L-G

Misha Magdalene (they/them pronouns) asserts that magic is queer. In writing by turns academic and conversational, they explore viewing magic through the lenses of gender and sexuality.

They describe their experience with growing up queer, as well as their gradual introduction to magical practice, including the whisper networks that say, “Avoid this established teacher, he’s creepy.” Of course Misha went and found out for themselves, fortunately without being harmed.

They talk about consent, and how important it is in matters both sexual and magical, and definitely in the mix of both. As a practitioner of the Feri tradition, they directly address some of the deep issues with consent in that tradition.

They list some gender-queer and non-heterosexual gods and goddesses in various flavors of paganism.

In the end, magic is queer because it is non-mainstream, not the default religion, outside a lot of people’s lived experiences.

The book includes practical writing and magical exercises to explore the covered topics.

Highly recommended as an interesting, eclectic, and principled exploration of gender, sexuality, and magical practice.

Misha Magdalene’s blog at Patheos, Outside the Charmed Circle explores some of the same ideas. There are posts that forthrightly challenge the pagan community to address its problems with racism, homophobia, and lack of consent, sexual predation and abuse.

Available at Powell’s Books.