Greetings friends,

I’ve been feeling more into urgency culture and embodiment this week after coming back from a silent retreat (with my dear friend and teacher Jaya Ashmore) to a healthy dose of life’s turbulence, noticing the way those deep animal ancestors move through me in moments of rapid response or sudden pivot - urging me forward and singing memories of when we weren’t fast enough, we didn’t get out in time. I’ve been learning more respect for my survival instincts, especially in the times we are living through, and also noticing the many moments when, as Jaya says, our survival instincts don’t actually help us survive.

The paradox (it’s always a paradox isn’t it?) is that when I am able to pause in moments of urgency, even for two breaths with feet on the ground, it literally creates more time. What I mean by this: whenever I’m responding from a state of tightness or rushing, time compresses - by way of misattunements, fumbles, needing to double back and do it over again. In those rare moments when I’m instead able to respond from a place of connection and center, then time stretches out with presence, intention, and care.

And - sometimes we can’t pause. I know my slow Taurus sun can be prejudiced against quickness, and sometimes unbroken quickness is the most sacred thing we can be. But those moments are way fewer and farther between than most of us think.

I hope you’re finding ways to pause this summer, whether that’s by taking a longer break or just two breaths, right here and right now.

I’ve got openings in my schedule for somatic energy work clients this late summer and fall, so please spread the word if you know someone who could benefit from a supported pause. Here’s the link to my booking page and more about who I’m a great fit for working with below.

xo,

RC

Welcome to spring, dear people. It’s happening! New life is returning amidst the chaos and collapse. Feeling into the radical tenderness of this time, all these beings unfurling so bravely anyway. What in you is ready to open?

I’ve been working on some writing over a deep winter hibernation that will come your way soon, but in the meantime just wanted to send an invitation for anyone who’d like to come in for a somatic energy work session this spring - as things ramp up, this season is a great time to tend to your body, shake off whatever internal cobwebs have accumulated, and enter the outward months with more clarity and connection to center.

I’ve got openings for both occasional and regular weekly/biweekly/monthly clients in this sweet quiet office cave in Hillsborough. You can book single sessions online or reach out to me to set up a regular time.

xo,

RC

For beloveds who are not astro-nerds and don’t know what that means, we’re currently in the cosmic hallway between a Pisces lunar eclipse on September 7 and a Virgo solar eclipse on Sept 21. It’s serving up all the chaotic disruptions that eclipse seasons are known for - and it has a deeper lesson it’s asking us to learn.

One of the reasons I love astrology (surprise, surprise) is that it’s a system based on polarities and their integration. The wheel of the year is composed of 6 pairs of “opposing” signs or archetypes. These pairs, often called “axes,” can appear opposite but are in fact two equally-essential sides of the same coin. Each eclipse season highlights one of these axes.

This September, we’re hanging out with / spelunking deeply into the Virgo-Pisces axis. Because these are my natal nodes of the moon (ignore if that means nothing to you), it’s a polarity I know well inside my own life. It can feel like one of the trickier and more diametrically-opposed duos because Virgo is seemingly (read: stereotypically) all about control and Pisces all about surrender.

What I’ve been learning this year is that the integration of the Virgo-Pisces axis is a sublime and beautiful thing that shows us what agency within flow feels like. Moreover, this axis can provide deep medicine for the two-sided coin of our radically delusional and capitalist, productivity-driven world.

Virgo without Pisces can be tight, stressed, perfectionistic, overworked. But in its integrated form, Virgo is simply in love with the labor of creation. My dear friend and astrology teacher Mary Justus describes it as the fertile, busy humming of a bee hive. What seemed scarce becomes abundant, enough for everyone. Perfectionism and purism give way to easeful discernment - this out, this in - in service of the whole.

Virgo with Pisces is the discovery that what is surprisingly (and literally) most efficient is the path of trust, spaciousness, and flow.

Pisces without Virgo can be flowing to the point of formless - escapist, delusional, bypassing, unmoored. This too we all know well, living in a society whose appetite for perverse levels of productivity is enabled by a steady diet of fantasy and compulsive distraction. We live inside one possible marriage of these two archetypes, or at least their distortion. But a true integration of the wisdom of Virgo with Pisces provides the flexible backbone that allows us to play and drift and flow without losing touch with what is grounded and important (i.e. building systems that actually support life).

Pisces with Virgo is putting in the real work that allows us to – fully and with integrity – let go.

I’ve been feeling the integration of this axis in those moments when I’m showing up, in my lane, offering what I can with ease, and relaxing into the support of my teachers, ancestors, earth, and skills built through dedicated effort.

May we keep building towards a world where labor is easeful and joyful and treated with respect, and where rest can feed us fully and return us to the real work: allowing what wants to come through us to come through.

Virgo & Pisces
tender, skillful
wash each the
others’ hands in
the basin of their
great expanse.

xo,
RC

Image: recreated synagogue ceiling in the POLIN Museum in Warszawa, Poland featuring the wheel of the zodiac - more on my journey to this ancestral land soon.

“When grief remains unexpressed, it hardens, becomes solid as stone. We, in turn, become rigid and stop moving in rhythm with the soul. When we are in touch with all of our emotions, on the other hand, we are more verb than noun, more a movement than a thing.” - Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow

A longer window of time has passed than I’d planned since I last wrote you, but that’s how it is, isn’t it? We stride out in one direction and then life takes over.

This spring I said goodbye to two beloved friends within a few days of each other – one human, one canine – and so entered a wave of grief’s wild holy unfolding. A member of my chosen family always reminds me how all grief flows from the same underground river. Each loss opens us to the potency of all other losses – and the intense contact with preciousness this paradoxically conveys. And there it all is: grief for the pangs of our living-dying planet, for deportation-disappearances, for Gaza, for our own fleetingness. It floored me – and at the same time, I felt the relief of grief tracing cracks in years of subtle freeze in my system, and my heart swelled open.

When people asked how I was, what kept coming was some version of - tired, tender, and open.

During that same season, I got to attend a screening of Come See Me in the Good Light, the new documentary film about poets Andrea Gibson & Megan Falley and their jaw-dropping love affair with life and each other through Andrea’s long cancer journey and their collective apprenticeship to mortality. It’s not streaming yet but when it is this fall, cue it up first thing.

A few weeks ago this summer, Andrea left their body, and since then they’ve been exploding outwards in a firework of poetry and tenderly felt tributes blanketing social media feeds.

Here’s an excerpt from one of my favorite poems Andrea wrote:

“Whenever I spend the day crying,
my friends tell me I look high. Good grief,

they finally understand me.
Even when the arena is empty, I thank god

for the shots I miss. If you ever catch me
only thanking god for the shots I make,

remind me I’m not thanking god. Remind me
all my prayers were answered

the moment I started praying
for what I already have.”

It is no small thing. To love and fight for life while also learning to walk with death as a friend. To witness the immense pain of this world and to hold, as fervently as we do and must, a deep wish and real work for its transformation. And, in the same moment, to know prayerfully all that we already have, in the brief heartbeat before it is gone.

Because in the river of grief, what can seem like two sides of the coin are in fact the exact same movement.

Andrea Gibson – and another recently departed teacher, Joanna Macy, and my dear sweet friends David Hamilton and Luna the dog – have all been such clear mirrors for me that living and loving generously are what enable us to grow wide enough to feel the fullness of our pain, and that wading into the dark river of grief and loss is what enables up to embody life fully in turn.

Thank you, beloveds, for reminding me I am not a noun but a verb, not a thing but a movement -

one moment brightly here and here and here and then —

xo,

RC

p.s. If you are an existing somatic energy work client or someone looking for support in moving with grief, aliveness, and everything beyond and in between, here’s my updated booking page for 1:1 sessions.

Image gallery above (clockwise): 1) David Hamilton memorial altar; 2) lawn lounging with Luna the dog in her final days; 3) mountain stream in Gerton, NC, nine months after Hurricane Helene; 4) Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley in a pile of pups; 4) Joanna Macy as drawn by her 13-year-old friend, Logan Navar; 5) tulip tree silk moth.

Register here for an afternoon of restorative practice on Sunday April 27 from 3-5pm in honor of the Taurus new moon. I’ll share some embodied movement practices, astrological grounding for the coming month, seasonal herbal tea, and self-holds that support rest and digestion of all we are moving with together. Please sign up in advance as space is limited.

During Last Friday on April 25, we’re hosting a birthday party / open house at 121 N Churton St. in Hillsborough where I share office space with a lovely group of massage therapists, energy workers, and other healing arts providers. Swing by to see the space, meet the practitioners, check out local art on display, and enjoy some cake, mocktails, and other treats. You’ll find us under the red awning around the back side of the Mercantile Center facing the parking lot.

Shout-Outs:

• Pay-what-you-can community acupuncture with Austin Dixon at Practice Space!

• Upcoming offerings from Milkweed Mutual Aid Collective in Hillsborough, including a cyber security workshop on April 26.

• Free yoga classes with Shakira Bonique at NorthStar Church of the Arts in Durham.

• Generative Somatics practice group every other Wednesday at People’s Solidarity Hub!

Hello dear people,

I’m launching this newsletter to share upcoming offerings and to stay connected in the midst of this collective moment of great upheaval, destruction, and change.

As I’m planting seeds to grow my somatic energy work & Polarity Therapy practice this spring (read more below about how this work can be a powerful tool for this time), I’m inviting my community and past clients to help connect me to new clients who are seeking this kind of support. Until May 1, refer someone new to me and you’ll both receive 50% off a session once they book!

What is Polarity Therapy?

Polarity Therapy is a form of somatic energy work that combines supportive touch tablework, somatic witnessing (curiosity about what’s happening in the body and sensations), mindful movement, and collaboration for making shifts towards greater authenticity, agency, freedom, and alignment.

The name refers to the polarities and cycles we all dance with in this life: In and out. Quickness and slowness. Giving and receiving. Expanding and contracting. Birth and death. Polarity Therapy also invites us into greater integration and balance between the elements that make up our bodies and world: earth, water, fire, air, and ether.

Above all, Polarity is a practice of allowing what is ready to come through:

allowing what is ready to flow through and release
to flow through and release

what is ready to shake up and shift
to shake up and shift

what is ready to steady and ground
to steady and ground

what is ready to grieve or rage
to grieve or rage

what is ready to rest and be held
to rest and be held.

Why now?

Coming from a background in social movement work, I’ve been continually struck by how aligned Polarity Therapy feels for our current collective moment. This practice can be a deep resource for building greater capacity to move with the fullness of our experiences, as well as tapping into the individual and collective strength we need for wholehearted participation in hard times. It can feel paradoxical to slow down and tend to our inner worlds when the outer world is on fire, but the world truly needs people who are more awake, connected, responsive, and centered in their power in the present moment. None of us are meant to navigate any of this alone; it is only by reaching out for collaboration, support, and co-regulation — in many forms, including embodiment and nervous system support practices like Polarity — that we inhabit the fullest, freest versions of ourselves in service of the whole.

Ok I’m interested, now what?

Respond to this email with any questions or to set up a short intro call, visit my website for more information on what to expect during a session, or book a session at my office in Hillsborough. If you and a new client you refer want to access the 50% discount, leave a note when you book. I also have openings for regular clients who come every other week or once a month - this consistent rhythm is key for folks who want to transform deeper patterns and build sustainable shifts.

In gratitude and in it together,

RC / Rachel Cotterman
(they/them)