Offerings, Gifts & Invitations

Shocks, Feedback, and Returning Home.

Life is a conversation, a feedback loop.

We sleep we wake up, we inhale we exhale. 

We experience calm, we experience shock. 

Our experience forms loops that adjust according to the information we receive. 

How do you know you’re awake in the morning? This was one of the questions one of my processwork teachers asked us in grad school when we were studying working with altered states of consciousness. The intention of this question was to help us identify what our main sensory channel of experience was so we could reground and return to ourselves when we got too altered. Knowing our main channel is akin to connecting with our ground wire. 

I know I’m awake because I feel something, a desire to stretch, or the feeling of the pillow beneath my head. Each of these signals suggests that feeling or proprioception is one of my primary channels that tells me I’m home. 

The other day I was at home and I got shocked several times. It wasn’t the dangerous kind of electric shock, it was the static kind, short zaps of energy that moved through my hand right as I touched something. First I reached out to touch a pan, and static surged through my fingertips. An hour later I touched a blanket and was shocked again. Then that evening when I was typing on my computer I felt a buzzy sensation coursing through my hands. 

On the day this happened I didn’t think much of it, but today I’m revisiting this moment, wondering why I got zapped so many times? 

Most homes built after 1960 have a ground wire. The purpose of the ground wire is to balance the negative charge of the earth beneath our homes in case a positive charge hits our home. The ground wire protects our home from catching fire or frying the electrical devices within it. Ground wires connect the positive to the negative. 

There is this energy that flows back and forth between positive and negative charges. This energy creates a feedback loop. Some feedback is natural and other exists within systems we create. With the idea of the ground wire, we’ve learned to adapt to a natural feedback system of positive and negative. In this context, feedback can be how we learn and adapt.

Whether it comes from the inside or the outside, feedback helps us orient to what is happening and know how to respond.  Growing up in a culture that focuses so much on literal things it can be easy to miss the feedback that happens in the spaces between, especially if we’re taught to rely on certain kinds of feedback. 

Static shocks and zaps can be a form of feedback.

If you were to ask me what I’m most afraid of I’d say electricity. Throughout my life, I’ve witnessed people I love get shocked, as a child I stuck wires into electrical outlets and got zapped. Electricity has always felt ‘other’ to me, something I wanted to stay away from. 

Yet, looking back on this day of being zapped, the electricity didn’t feel so other. My relationship with it had changed because It felt like the shock was coming through me, instead of it solely happening to me I was a conduit for the electricity. 

We each are electric. Even as we move through the seemingly mundane layers of experience, there’s another form of intelligence that moves through this world via relationships and feedback loops. Call it emergence, myth, light, electricity, or energy, there is a force that we cannot predict that is endlessly creative and unpredictable.
But we need to cultivate it, we need a ground wire to relate to it. Cultivating a relationship with this intelligence has been one of the most enduring connections in my life and yet it is dynamic and ever-changing. 

Enjoy the rest of the newsletter and below there is a link to join a free webinar where we’ll explore these themes further!

The Subtle Fascism of Feedback 

The Other Others, Tyson Yunkaporta speaks to Carol Sanford 

In this podcast, Yunkaporta and Sanford, speak about many things including feedback. 

They speak to how many forms of feedback that are utilized in organizational and educational contexts arose out of behavioralism and can have the effect of overriding people’s capacity for introspection and creating a reliance on external forces for reflection. I found this podcast helpful in thinking about how and why we give feedback, and how we can support individuals to connect with their own internal feedback system. 

Navigating the Mysteries 

By Martin Shaw 

It’s been over a week since I read this article, and still many gems of insight from it are staying with me. This article as a whole offers different frames and invitations for how we can relate to current times. 

Through the myth of Cinderbiter, Shaw highlights how ‘unconventional instincts’ including dreaming can ‘save the day’. He outlines how in the story a young boy slays the monstrous snake that is wrapped around the world, through his wit and imagination. 

Shaw invites us to relate to the unknown as a kind of mystery rather than uncertainty. I found this particularly helpful, as mystery inspires awe and curiosity in me, both of which open my sense and allow me to see more of what is present. 

Toward the end of the article, Shaw outlines four areas for further work and exploration. The two that stood out to me are: 

“Move from seeing to beholding: To behold it is to witness the story. If you dwell entirely on statistics and data, you will be a burnt match within months […] Making a covenant with honesty: Take agency of the life that forged you”.

Thinking in Systems 

By Donella Meadows 

This book outlines systems thinking in a clear and accessible manner. Donella Meadows is an elder in the field of network practice. My colleagues at Converge reference her work often. I appreciate the way she reminds the reader to notice the less quantifiable layers of experience and to continue learning from the systems within and around us. 

Connecting with the Deep Voice 

June 24th & July 1st 4:00-6:00pm PDT

Within each of us, there is a faculty that knows what to say or do before the chatter of our mind kicks in. This is the deep voice, a resonance that is beyond and before words. We experience the deep voice when we are in flow, creating art, in nature, or connected with a sense of purpose that is beyond ourselves. It guides us with ease and adapts to challenges in elegant ways.

This class will offer a spac to better understand the conditions and indicators that support you to align with your deep voice. It will help you to internalize an understanding that is unique to you rather than giving you a general external framework that you need to adapt to fit into.

When we are in touch with the deep voice it becomes easier to speak and engage with the world from a place of clarity. As a result, we can make choices that align with our whole being and are often more supportive of the contexts we find ourselves in learn more HERE. Spaces are limited!

Invite someone you know and get 30% off your fee, email me at elsa@catalysttochange.net to receive this discount.

Grounding in the Deep Voice - Free webinar 45min -

June 22nd, 4:30-5:15 pm PDT

This 45min webinar will be an opportunity to explore the deep voice, resonance and connecting with these capacities within ourselves.

Email: elsa@catalysttochange.net if you’re interested in joining! 

Archetypal Astrology Readings with Sheila Belanger 

I grew up on Whidbey Island, an island off the coast of Seattle in Puget Sound.
When I was young I often heard about Sheila, people I looked up to and respected knew her and went to her for astrological readings. Fast forward and Sheila is a dear friend, mentor, and ally in my life. 

For my last birthday, Sheila gifted me an astrological reading and it was phenomenal. Sheila weaves in Processwork, archetypal work, and astrology to help you understand your inner and outer terrain. She hasn’t been offering readings for a while yet is just beginning to offer them again. 

To learn more click here 

Thank you for reading!
Please feel free to be in touch. I love hearing from you.

As one last gift to you, here’s is a picture from a neighborhood walk