Liberated To the Bone by Raffo Susan;

Author:Raffo, Susan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AK Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

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1. To learn more about Training for Change, visit their website at trainingforchange.org.

2. Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s work, including links to her books and videos, can be found at bodymindcentering.com/about/bonnie-bainbridge-cohen.

ON REST AND BEING PART OF A PACK

Humans are like coyotes. Coyotes are like humans. We have both learned how to survive as part of a pack and as lone individuals. We are both able to move back and forth between sharing power with members of a group and navigating the world alone. Coyotes and humans do this without diminishing our ability to survive. This is not true for all mammals. Most mammals are more heavily conditioned for one or the other. This means that, in moments of crisis, most mammals either depend on survival through a pack or strike out on their own. They can’t switch back and forth. Coyotes have also figured out, like raccoons, foxes, and deer, how to thrive among the chaotic disruption of human urbanization and change. Coyotes are cool.

We are okay with a group and we are okay alone. Not okay as in how it feels, but okay as in able to survive. We make instinctive choices based on the context around us. We make choices based on what we have been taught or have experienced that makes us lean more toward connection with others or look for our own way.

While we can survive in both ways, they do not mix or match. Our ancestors were wiser than that. They shared forward a range of strategies to survive and thrive that work best in different situations. They practiced this over and over again, as it became instinct. And we are each born with these instincts, curled up in our cells and waiting to unfurl. As we grow up, those instincts can get overridden by culture or by violence or by a host of other things. Overridden does not mean disappeared. The instincts are still there, deeper and older; a gift from all those relatives who lived before. Healing, coming home, coming more deeply into our connected lives, helps those instincts sit up and pay attention again. Coyotes, like humans, when under great stress and overwhelm, will leave their pack and scatter across the land as lone individuals or in pairs. Like coyotes, we can scatter from the collective, go it on our own. In these moments of crisis and high intensity, if there is no one else around, our bodies will still work, our brains will still think, and we have the capacity to find our way through impossible times. On the other side of impossible times is the possibility of rest. This is not the best way to survive—except when it is the best way to survive.

To survive means to rest. We share the instinct to rest with pretty much every living thing. To rest is to not act. It is to not think, move, protect, forage, find, fight, flee, or even feel much. To rest is to let other

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