Locate Your Liberate
Dreaming into Possibility
PHOTO BY AERAN SQUIRES
It was our intention today to share this missive on dreaming from Loam co-conspirator—and Weaving Earth Board Member—tayla shanaye as an offering to the New Moon in Capricorn. But we are rattled right now, as many of you are too, by the news of imperialist airstrikes in Yemen.
Dreaming feels tender right now, indulgent or impossible, even. As tayla wrote in her 2022 somatic guide “Locate Your Liberate” (LYL), “an enfleshed moment of awe, a sensation of laughter, or a taste of peace” are insufficient to meet this moment. On the cusp of collapse, we need mass movements in the streets; BDS; creative organizing; and decentralized communities of care.
In the face of so much suffering and instability, invitations into the soma can feel risky. We are returning, again and again, to the work of Palestinian poet Hala Alyan, whose recent series on psychic numbing is a potent reminder to continually orient to those practices that help us sustain our endurance, solidarity, and steadfastness.
So we want to share this practice for dreaming from LYL in service of our communities. As we continue to protest, agitate, and divest, we hope that this offering can support you and your beloveds in dreaming into possibility. What exists on the other side?
FREE PALESTINE
INTRO
I’ve gotten lost in the deep, aching, and unshakable feeling that in the war between Western dominator-extrativist psychosis and Life As Earth, Life is losing. That the lies we have been told about what it means to be human are no longer lies, and that we human animals are also… losing.
This is dread.
This is trauma.
Maybe we’ll make it through this disaster, maybe not, but ultimately we can only be in this disaster together. All of us – you, me, our friends, families, and foes, our more-than-human kin, the elements, the stars – together in this moment, searching for a way through. And that search, I think, is for ourselves and for each other. It’s very easy to get lost, y’all. Given the circumstances, I would say it’s normal to feel overwhelmed, exhausted, battle-scarred, and terrified. It’s normal to feel angry, tender, shameful and judgemental. It’s normal to feel out of sorts, lost, numb, apathetic, helpless, and hopeless. We find ourselves in extraordinarily abnormal circumstances. Despite the popular meme of encouragement, we are not, actually, made for this. We are not organically or evolutionarily equipped to manage this level of crisis.
Let that be liberating. Let that pull any notion that you’re broken out of you. Let that free you into some semblance of peace.
My cycle of overwhelm and settling has me wondering more deeply about the work of dreaming. Dreaming is an unsung labor, and yet it is the source of all that is human made – both our workings of miracles and our creation of nightmares. It’s critical and magik – an incomprehensible access point to the ever-after through our deep rest. To dream is to settle profoundly into rest; it requires safety, stillness, physical comfort, and attention. Retention of our dreams requires attention. To dream our way out of here means we give our energy to the possibilities emergent from rest. To dream our way out of here is the only way. I need your dreams. I need your rest and peace and uninterrupted slumber. And you need mine. We need each other.
DREAM - Make it So
Your dreamscape is a place where you can return to over and over to gather essential information about the world of the unseen, including your internal truths and secrets. It’s a phenomenal and sensational place in the most foundational definitions of these words. To bring back the information we are gifted in our dreams– so we can make use of it in our waking life– expands our understanding of what it means to be human. It’s a radical practice that elevates some of the parts we have had culturally shadowed – the mysterious, intuitive, irrational place of dreams.
In recent years, I’ve been introduced to many practices that help to concretize our dreams. Most recently, while working with the California-based non-profit Weaving Earth, I’ve learned the practice of the Dream Star as taught by elder Gigi Coyle. This practice, when done in community, is a way to weave together the stories collected in the dreamscape by multiple people to better understand our collective dreams. In the weaving, themes emerge, clarity sings forth, and something truly magical reveals itself about how intimately we are interconnected, even in the dream world. People come together to share their dreams while laying together on their backs, allowing the dreams to weave together into one story.
A critical part of this practice is the need to speak the dream in the present tense, as if it were occurring now, and as though it were already true.
The following invitation is inspired by this profoundly medicinal practice and welcomes the possibility of weaving our dreams with our flesh, stitching us to the dreamscape and the promises of the other worlds it knows. It is an embodied act of spell casting – the speaking aloud of the reality we seek, the liberation of our dreams.
INVITATION
You may be supported by setting a timer for 20 minutes.
This invitation is designed to start standing, allowing for ample options to reshape yourself as you move through the prompts. You may move from standing to lying down, still to jumping. You’re also welcome to start in another posture altogether.
Get yourself some space (physically and emotionally). Make sure that the space is clear enough of debris such that you can move as freely as possible. It may also be helpful/supportive to have a time piece available.
Stand, if you are able, legs hips distant apart.
If it feels safe, close your eyes and allow your awareness to wander your whole body, starting at the crown of your head and melting down to your feet. Simply notice yourself, places of tension or ease, sensation or blankness. Notice where energy is and where it isn’t. Be with yourself here at the start.
Take a moment to draw into your mind a dream in which you felt a sense of freedom or liberation. It can be any dream you’ve had over the course of your life in which you encountered a sense of deep liberation.
If none come to mind, allow yourself to fantasize in real time a moment of liberation. It can be from something internal like a limiting belief or unsupportive habit to the collapsing of oppressive systemic policies or social practices.
When the dream/fantasy has come to an end, notice your body again. Become aware if anything has changed about your posture, energy, sensation, temperature, etc. Note change can be a release or an amplification of experience.
Allowing your awareness to linger in your body with what you noticed has shifted, return to the dream or fantasy by beginning to speak it aloud.
Speak in the first person and in the present tense, as if it is happening right now.
Allow your body to follow any impulse to create gestures along with the dream spell you’re casting.
Perhaps the impulse arises from the place of shifting you noticed in internally recalling the dream.
As you speak your dream aloud, let yourself take pauses to notice what arises within you. Practicing interoception and proprioception, notice how you feel in your body as you speak this liberation into the world.
When you’ve spoken and moved with the dream, find a place of stillness lying on your back.
Return your awareness to your body and wander from crown to foot, foot to crown, noticing whatever is alive within you.
Notice what emotions emerge for you as you have spoken your liberation into the world.
Notice your face and the expression it holds.
Notice if any sounds want to come through you.
Take a moment to journal about what you noticed. What emerged? What surprised you or revealed itself?
When you choose to practice this again, you may want to repeat with other dreams or fantasies, or you can return to the same one as often as you like.
One of our big visions this year is to work with tayla shanaye on a self-paced audio education series inspired by her books “Nourishing the Nervous System” (NTNS) and “Locate Your Liberate” (LYL). As we celebrate our new home within the Weaving Earth ecosystem, we hope that this series can signal a fresh chapter.
Over the course of the past few years, readers have woven NTNS into educational curriculum and shared LYL with friends. In 2020, Loam worked with tayla to help her share copies of NTNS for free with families impacted by police brutality. Making this project accessible has always been a core commitment, and it’s our dream that a 2024 reprint can continue to serve communities working toward justice.
For those of you who are new to tayla’s work, NTNS and LYL are (1) print publications that share somatic practices for navigating compounding crisis; and part of a bigger (2) project to create a culture of healing rooted in embodied liberation.
If you’d like to support us in materializing a new iteration of NTNS in 2024, you can make a tax-deductible donation to our Loam Fund. 1We know that many of us right now are feeling the squeeze, and are grateful for whatever you can give, however is nourishing for you.