Recently, in training with an astro-herbalist I was reintroduced to plant energetics. This is, for example, the categorization of herbs as cooling, warming, moistening, and drying, stimulating or sedating, modulating, etc.

I found this so curious and wondered how humans came to understand the properties of plants in this way at the time. And then.

A few days ago I was eating a delicious mango (it's mango season – my favorite time of year) and I began to feel HEAT in my belly. When I say heat, I feel it both internally and externally from putting my hand on my belly. Now, I have to mention that I have eaten mangoes for years and never had this experience before. But this time it was very noticeable. Out of curiosity I did a search of whether mango is considered warming according to systems of Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine. And what do you know, it IS! I read that mango is a food that stimulates Pitta (associated with digestive fire), and also is known in people with excess Pitta to cause inflammation.

I was truly amazed. Not only that mango is warming, but also that for the first time in my life I had the somatic awareness in my body to notice my belly warm from eating it. This is the magic of regular somatic practice, that it brings that body sensation back into our conscious awareness over time, and that awareness allows us to take embodied action.

If you have read my recent essays, I have been dealing with an excess of fire from ancestral rage related to ongoing abuse and injustice in my personal life. When I felt that heat in my belly from the mango, I decided to take action to engage with some cooling foods to counteract the warming from the mango. I settled on eating cucumber salad with purslane and my homemade kombucha vinegar oxymel with lemongrass, basil and coleus (aka Joseph's coat). Shortly after eating this cooling salad I felt my belly come back into balance and the heat dissipate. I also researched some ways to prepare mango so that the warming is not so impactful, and began to understand the drink Mango Lassi I have had at Indian restaurants - mango blended with yogurt, rosewater, and coriander seed which are all cooling and balance the Pitta energetics of mango.

I share this story because even after 6 years of regular somatic practice, and being trained in 4 different somatic modalities, I am still peeling back layers and coming into deeper awareness of my body. I have come to understand that knowing myself is a lifelong journey, not a destination to achieve. That's not to say that I haven't seen significant progress and thriving through this journey, nor that I don't experience breakthroughs – I definitely have. However, reorienting my expectations around this being an ongoing practice has helped me recognize there is no rush to "heal," no need to perform wellness, or to center achievement in this work. The work really is moving into deeper connection and integration with myself, which facilitates deeper connection with others.

Our bodies are beautiful and complex organisms. I am still in awe of my own body from this mango experience, and this is the same wonder I bring into somatic sessions with others who allow me to hold space for them. The body's wisdom is profound, and I deeply respect the individual embodied wisdom each of our somas carry.

This experience of listening to my body's signals and responding has also shaped how I understand the practice of holding space for others. Since my peer support training recently has reached 120 hours (!!) and 6 years of ongoing practice, I am exploring the integration of peer support and somatics again. Unlike traditional therapy, peer support is meant to be a space of mutuality. Somatic practice, I have found, is also much more enlivening and supportive in peer practice. There is a time and place for somatic practice that is "client" oriented as well, and I don't discount this. When someone is in an acute crisis, or at the beginning of their journey exploring body-based support with somatic practice, it can be life-saving to have sessions entirely focused on one's experience without the expectation of mutually holding space.

However, over time I find I prefer to practice somatics with my friends in pairs or small groups where we can be held and hold space for one another instead of having the one-sided dynamic forever. In part because holding space can be a warming experience too, and having space held is cooling. Being able to switch back and forth can prevent the relationship from overheating and causing burnout of the one holding space singularly. This balance creates a more sustainable, mutual container. In an ideal world where we weren't being traumatized and overstimulated constantly, I believe cultural somatic practices would be a part of our regular interactions within our communities and that vulnerability would be much more normalized. I deeply desire to create microclimates of this ideal world within the communities that support my daily life.

This "mango experience" was also exciting because it felt as though I crossed a threshold where now I have noticeably greater access to interoception, and that the internal numbness that I've felt normal for most of my life is dissipating. Practicing somatics with the politicized somatics community Monday - Thursday, daily Qi Gong, and working with ancestral rage have created more room within me for my body to communicate with me. I am now able to sense how the choices I am making relating to food and emotional habits are impacting my temperature, which in turn allows me greater agency to tailor my behavior and dietary choices to what my body needs in that day and moment. I find this type of mutuality between my consciousness and my body heartening and frankly fascinating! It's also a reminder to me that we are collaborators with our bodies and do well to honor the intelligence our bodies hold, even when we don't fully understand all the reactions we experience to activation.

It's a particular comfort to know that my body is actually working very hard to protect and take care of me, to keep me safe, and to communicate with me. We are not enemies or foes–we are collaborators. Reflecting on this also makes me wonder how our world might be different if we responded with more curiosity and honor to the communication our ecosystems are sending us (through warming, trauma reactions, and death). Just as I listened to the mango's heat, I wonder what would happen if we listened to the earth's heating, dysregulated weather, extinction events, and shifting of centuries-old seasonal patterns? Perhaps by being more connected to our bodies collectively, there is a way opening for us collectively through this climate crisis as well.

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