Collapse
as restoration not giving up
Collapse now. Let your body go a little limp. If you’re sitting down, let your body lean forward, head down, as much as feels comfortable. Take a few breaths, feeling what you feel. Let yourself feel—relief? A wave of tears? Emptiness? Resignation? Acceptance? A sense of finally? Finally some rest?
When you’re ready, slowly let yourself come back up, at whatever pace feels right to you. Feel yourself in the chair—the parts of yourself that are supported by the chair (where your body is in space and time: proprioception). Then look around a little, a soft looking—seeing the colors and shapes.
Collapse can be a reset of the system. An ending of a threat response cycle. The signal to the body that it can begin anew.
I have been thinking of collapse a lot. Not making any metaphors about the collapse of the infrastructure, civil society, or any of that. I have been thinking about that type of collapse too. But that’s not what I mean here.
I mean momentary rest. Momentary signals to the physiological system, and how we are often trained just to power through everything and then try and rest, and how so many of us find rest illusive. I have been thinking of natural cycles. How when I try and plant my warm loving plants too early, it doesn’t benefit them. They have their own cycles. Their own ways of knowing when to thrive. I have been thinking about (as always) how out of tune we are, as a species almost, with our bodies, our natural world, and how little, really, it takes to become more attuned.
We often override the simple, natural ability to attune, with all kinds of spiritual overrides, self-care attempts, go-go-go/give-up cycles, and turning against those who we could align with.
But it just takes these small things. Not touching grass, but touching below the grass, to the dirt. getting dirt in the fingernails. Letting yourself love something in the natural world, and letting yourself really see it, the details of it. Letting yourself feel something in the body besides defeat or anxiety. Feeling the impulse for collapse and letting yourself lean into that. Recognizing it as a friend.
