The Unsung Labor of Dreaming

tayla shanaye on standing at the edge of collapse

PHOTO BY JESS DRAWHORN

Nourishing the Nervous System from somatic counselor tayla shanaye is at the printer! As we eagerly await copies, we want to uplift this (revised) essay by tayla on embodied liberation from her 2022 book Locate Your Liberate. During these troubled times, tayla’s invitation to reflect on dreaming as a daily practice is truly medicine.

And for those of you who pre-ordered a copy of Nourishing the Nervous System—check your emails! We’ve got a discount code to tayla’s upcoming webinar for you all.

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Over the many years I’ve now stewarded Nourishing the Nervous System as both a publication and a prayer, there are several times when I’ve had to stop working on this project for a while. I felt like a sham, and I didn’t want to speak out of turn. I felt as though I was lying to myself. Embodied life is a promise of liberation, yet I was not able to live into it myself. I didn’t want to offer any kind of false hope that an enfleshed moment of awe, a sensation of laughter, or a taste of peace are all that’s needed.

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.

As the spring unfurls around me, I’ve been struck time and time again by the miracle of the cycle. I’ve been brought to tears by the promise of fiddleheads, birch catkins, and the honk of the Canadian Goose. I’ve laughed wholeheartedly, stopped still on the sidewalk, at the first sighting of a Robin. And, from my suffering, I’ve returned again to something essential about embodied life – relationship.

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.