“We are what we repeatedly do.” - Aristotle

To live your authentic voice can require reshaping or, in my example, re-hairing, as I’ll share - so keep reading.

Tour de Fat bike ride/parade last weekend.

However and whatever got you here - to radical change and transformation - know this - what you choose to practice can engage and support that becoming or can refute those changes.

I’m going to talk about Experimental Threshold Crossings (ETC’s) as one tool or practice to support change and to play with living your authentic voice. It’s about nudges - little actions - taken from the standpoint of your vision self. Little nudges every day will shift and build up over time. It’s a practice.

To live your authentic voice is to get out of your Ego or your conscious self - the one we perform for ourselves and others. To move from the ‘you who you think you are’ into the ‘one you want to be' or are at your truest core. What prevents this shift is often some inner critic/gremlin/protector who pops up quickly to ‘protect’ us from using our voice. We, in turn, end up self-silencing which often, then, gets reinforced by societal and cultural silencing done by others.

What we have forgotten in this modern busyness is that these mini-cycles of life-death-life - of transformation - are what we are meant to be - regenerative rather than stuck in one stage or place of development.

When we want change but continue old patterns, these actions/thinking reinforce old ways of being or identities that you’ve already identified no longer serve what you want or vision or goals. I see this often in chatting with prospective clients and even current ones around the 3-4 month mark of transformation. Our wise self wants change and our ego will go along with a smidge but as soon as it gets real or close. BAM. Shut down.

To help with this, I want to introduce you then to the practice of Experimental Threshold Crossings (ETC’s) from Bill Plotkin in his book, The Journey of Soul Initiation. He created the Institute I did my backpacking quest with last month.

The goal is to trust yourself, put faith in your vision of becoming, and to practice action from that place. In my own practice, I find it is often about playing at the threshold or edge of comfort/discomfort. It’s been about putting my visioned self out - letting her show up to meetings or go out around town. A client described this as both freeing AND unsettling.

Here is the general process and Experimental Threshold Crossings steps:

Experience the becoming - feel into the feels, felt body sensations, what are you dreaming/visioning for yourself and the transformation that the world needs of you?
Engage your imagination - imagine you as that becoming. Bring it into imaginative play as much as you can - draw, paint, pretend, daydream, whatever works for you.
Identify behaviors or expressions that you as that becoming might do - how does that becoming you move and engage in the day to day? When you are in the place of your becoming, how do you act, speak, move, dress, etc?
Do it. Pick small or big actions to practice. It is meant to be a public practice - one that you do out in front of others whether they notice or not. Whether others notice or not, it is the practice of getting unsettled and then comfortable changing.
Repeat.

Time to circle back to the hairy legs and pits as one of my ETC examples. Summary is I stopped shaving legs and armpits before the quest (a practice I do during winter but had not yet in summer). Upon returning almost a month ago, I decided to not shave until I felt the becoming Me was integrated enough. Until then, it would be a reminder of my connection as a Nature Being - my wild part - my I don’t give a fuck about gender norming rules. Those are voices I’ve wanted to LIVE BOLDLY for awhile. Those voices - wild, bold, and no fucks to give - are all a part of my becoming Me version and have been.

Here’s why this somatic lived practice of ETC matters. My cognitive brain knows the sexism, body shaming, heteronormative of shaving. I know shaving was used in the early 1900’s as profit making for the beauty industry. And how toxic patriarchal capitalism needs us to spend time, money, and emotions on appearance rather than anarchy and change.

But….all that known…. my protector parts or gremlins want to protect me from embarrassment and social exclusion. They have underlying fears of not being liked and not belonging.

Instead. My becoming Me holds those fears and beliefs at an arms length with some compassion and a bit of pity in that ‘ohhhh, look at you with your big, unfounded feels.’ Look at you with making something so minor matter and take up space in your mind-body-actions.

In the last month, I have more days and moments now of wondering why it’s taken me so long to stop shaving. Doubting I’ll shave before winter comes. And I still have brief moments when I look with a flash of that rude judgy self, ‘oafffff, that’s gross.’ But I laugh at myself and move on, embracing the feeling of wind rushing through the hairs of my legs.

What is your voice and vision asking you to practice?
Where have you been stuck in transforming?
What voices arise to protect you from change?