Discover Top Posts Tagged with #wise self

Day 3:

I can’t remember when I started doing this. Maybe at The People's Yoga sometime in 2016? It doesn’t really matter. It’s been a long time. At the end of many yoga classes there’s a pose called savasana (or Corpse Pose). It’s a long exhale; a moment of integration and deep rest before transitioning off the mat. Many teachers follow it with an invitation to roll over to one side and curl into the fetal position before sitting up.

This part, for me, is often the most valuable moment of my practice. I wrap my left arm around my ribs and squeeze. I reach my right hand up to cup the back of my neck. Sometimes I just rest my fingers there, other times I’ll stroke the short hairs at the base of my skull. I always try to touch myself as gently as possible, like something precious.

If you'd asked me three years ago to identify where my Wise Self lives, this is one of the top three moments I'd think of. She becomes tangible in this position. My hands become her hands. They delight in having found me. They tell me she’s proud of me. They give me permission to rest.

(If you find yourself wanting to make some cards about your own Wise Self, I'm running a supportive container to help a small batch of people do just that. No creative background required, just a willingness to spend some time exploring and playing. Sign up for the $18 tier on my Patreon anytime before August 14th to join us.)

#what she knows #100 day project #the 100 day project #card deck #oracle deck #wise self #personal work #yoga

Day 5

I have a speedy metabolism, which often sprints ahead of me during busy conventions, social gatherings, and shopping trips. It leaves me in the dust. By the time I’ve started to realize I might be hungry, I’m already crashing. Hard. I get hangry, but also hangxious, hangsty, and, eventually, hungished. Which, in turn, makes it very hard to figure out what (or how) to eat.

My Wise Self is always out here trying to remind me: eat first.

Staring at a creative project thinking it’s a steaming pile of crap and should be lit on fire at your earliest convenience? Eat first.

Stranded after missing your international flight due to weather-related issues outside your control? Eat first. (I don’t care if it’s an expensive airport breakfast, you have a credit card for emergencies and this is one of them.)

Worried about spoiling your appetite by having a protein bar in the afternoon? EAT IT. YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DECIDE WHAT TO HAVE FOR DINNER IF YOU ARE TOO HUNGRY.

This strategy has saved me more times than I can count, and yet I still need this card all the time. Food is hard, but it also ALWAYS makes me feel better.

(What She Knows is a deeply personal card deck originally drawn in secret over 100 days in 2020. On August 14th I'm launching a guided container for folks to make their own decks and get to know their own Wise Selves. To join the class, hop on over to Patreon.)

#personal work #100 day project #the 100 day project #lucy bellwood #card deck #oracle deck #wise self #food

Day 8

When I drew this card in April of 2020, I was watching people like @thepianofarm, Pat Race, the Wayward Retreat, The Meet Card, and Nuns and Nones performing a new and particular kind of magic. Whether it was poetry readings or remote dance parties or drawing hangouts or explorations of policy, they were all curating spaces that felt so nurturing during a season of grief and isolation. In these little digital windows, people cried together. They traded resources and information and jokes. They delved deep into their fears as we were all being flung headlong into a terrifying new reality.

I grumble about social media and the internet a lot, but the fact is there are many way of being online. Some don’t scratch the itch the way I want them to, but these deep, tender containers felt different. They left me wanting to pursue the thing I felt after getting back from the 100 Demon Dialogues tour in 2018: creating a room where people felt willing to share their innermost fears and hopes. Where they felt seen and heard and safe. I wanted to do it all the time.

It scares me, this kind of work, because it’s much more of a collaboration. It’s no longer me behind a podium at the front of the room, holding forth; it’s all of us in the circle, on the same level, working with what we’ve brought along for the ride.

The longer I do this, the less interested I am in acting like I know anything about anything. It creates a hierarchy and cuts people off from each other and makes the creator behind the podium into a sort of switchboard operator: all calls route through her. That’s not a sustainable way to build a community.

I drew this card to remind myself to stay focused on the places on the internet that give me this feeling—the “all of us in here together” feeling—and to figure out how to make more of them in the world.

#what she knows #wise self #community #100 day project #the 100 day project #digital community

Day 1:

It seemed obvious to start here.

The longer I've spent making art into my career, the harder it's been to retain the sense of curiosity and enthusiasm that drove me to keep sketchbook after sketchbook as a young person. But I was also driven to get "better" as a young artist. I wanted to be like the people I admired on the internet.

These days I find myself coming back around to a type of drawing I leant into as a little kid. I'm sitting on the couch with my partner laughing as we trade blind contour portraits, testing markers, trying to draw with my non-dominant hand.

It takes so little to capture a bit of the world around me, and even if it falls short of what I think of as a "good" drawing, it changes the way I see. When the chasm between taste and skill seems too far to bridge or I fall prey to anxiety and comparative thinking, I think about this card. I draw because it feels, when I let it, like magic.

(What She Knows is a deeply personal card deck originally drawn in secret over three months in 2020. Learn more here.)

#what she knows #the 100 day project #100 day project #creativity #making art #oracle deck #personal work #card deck #wise self

Day 9:

I'm still a dancer even if I haven't been able go to an actual social dance since 2019. Even if I only managed to attend three classes at the start of 2022 before having to drop out. Even if I only dance in my studio before starting work, if I move nothing more than my hands, if it's clumsy or repetitive or rusty. Even if no one can see me.

I am still four years old in a home-made ribbon skirt. Ten in a pair of jazz flats. Sixteen learning my first swing out. Twenty-one stumbling into the Tango House on SE 17th and Morrison. Thirty-three in the kitchen in close embrace with an old friend.

This is still a part of me.

#What she knows #The 100 day project #100 day project #Wise self #Social dance #personal work #oracle deck

Day 7

Mornings aren’t for everyone, but as far as my internal clock is concerned, they’re everything. In Portland, I slept under an east-facing window on the second floor for seven years. I miss it every day; rolling over to see the clouds blazing pink above Mount Tabor, the warmth of the early sun on my skin, and sometimes, if I was lucky, a fleeting sliver of moon.

Early time is secret time. Sacred time. It’s walking around the block with my dad in the pitch black of 5am, or listening to Erik Satie at the kitchen table together before going to school. It’s time to know myself before the world intrudes with its many additional opinions about What I Should Be Doing.

When caregiving finds me still spoon-feeding my dad dinner at 9:30pm or struggling to change him at 11, I tend towards despair. But on those precious nights away from home, when I manage to get into bed at 9pm, I snuggle under the covers and cackle.

Tomorrow I will wake up early, and I’ll be rich.

#what she knows #card deck #oracle deck #the 100 day project #100 day project #wise self #mornings

How to Access Higher Wisdom through Automatic Writing

Totally alone.

That’s how you feel. You’ve been wanting an answer to a question that has been weighing on your mind. You’ve turned to friends, family, your therapist, self-help articles, and books. But the advice that people have given you (if they make time for you) have felt generic, useless, recycled, or just don’t resonate with you.

There’s no one else to turn to. Or is there?

Actuall…

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#automatic writing #higher self #spirituality #wisdom #wise self #writing