When summer finally hit Colorado, it hit HOT.

In ways, it feels even worse than usual. The usual acclimation process didn't happen due to an unusually long, wet, and cool start to this summer. Then, with a climate crisis heat wave pattern, it flipped to 85-95+ highs.

Last week, I sat outside in the shade working as long as I could to help my body adjust to the higher temperatures. I felt the discomfort set in at 85, so I stayed until 88 then I was back inside with the fans.

Summer is the season that teaches us to embody being too much with its big temperatures and extra hours of light. Sometimes, summer pushes me to feel and experience too much. Too hot. Too long in the sun. Too much clothing. And add pre/menopause/post variable high body temps.

I opt for plunges into the Poudre River to cool off. Snow melt water from the Rockies is divine.

Many other factors force felt sensations in the summer: bugs, A/C, fans, water play, and the taste of garden veggies. All of the felt sensations of summer shift us into embodiment whether we like it or not.

This makes for a ripe conversation on acclimating to embodying TOO MUCH rather than shrinking and hiding away from big emotions, thoughts, and felt sensations.

On one level, there’s acclimating your body with embodiment practices to reconnect to your inner needs and experiences. I’ve been talking about this process of Assessing and Accessing over the last few weeks.

Today, I want to bring in another layer - a more macro level: embodiment as the fundamental right to ourselves - our bodies and our own will - in a world that oppresses and shames.

This summer, I’m reading Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed with my 1:1 clients in our Grow Boldly Community. As a group, we decided to shift how we do book club this summer and are using three guiding questions for our discussions. One of those questions is about embodiment.

How or what is this work asking me to embody?

or

What does embodying this work look like to me?

Ahmed opens with how feminism is a felt sensation - felt in our bodies, by our bodies, with our bodies. In a world that taught so many of us that we were too much, reclaiming feminism is about reclaiming yourself, wholly and fully.

Ahmed writes about how society, parents, educators, and the law all determine that willfulness is disobedience - because it’s too much. For many who inhabit a girl’s, woman’s, trans, brown or black or queer body, we are raised being told that our bodies, minds, and actions are to serve others in their will. Our own will - our embodiment - is taken away by punishments, or even the mere threat of punishment for many of us because we know the consequences of disappointing others.

These early impressions leave the wound of unworthiness and teach us how to perform people-pleasing behaviors. All reclaiming work then is unlearning these lessons of too-muchness and instead reclaiming the slowing down, feeling the sadness, grief, anger, loneliness, and befriending them through the body.

When I first bring in embodiment to new groups or clients, there’s often this discomfort in the room or virtual space. Over the years of guiding mindfulness and bodywork both in and out of the classroom, I’ve learned to sit in that dis-ease of bringing attention to the body. We can use this tension to grow bigger again.

(Re)Claim your too-muchness and willfulness:

List all the ways you’ve been told (explicitly and passively) that you are TOO MUCH or too willful.
Ask yourself for each: is this something I want to acclimate myself to or do I want to let it go?
Rewrite those stories with the strength of stepping into and embodying TOO MUCH. Reshape unwillingness into the reclaiming positive strength that it is.

It’s time to make intentional willfulness the “connecting tissue” between your former disconnection and your future embodied reconnection.