When you grow up in an unstable environment…
… whether that’s addiction, abuse, war or even just a lot of moving around…
… you tend to grow up wanting to control your environment as much as possible.
This is how your nervous system copes with what it perceives as a threat.
This is how your body tries to protect you.
This is how you create stability for yourself.
For those of us who have learned to control our environment and follow “THE PLAN”…
It’s incredibly confronting to suddenly pivot, and change direction on a whim.
It will rub up against all your beliefs. All your systems. All your structures.
And it will fuck with your ego.
The Pivot.
It will challenge all your attachments. All your stories. All your rules.
And provoke your Inner Critic.
The Pivot.
Every time I say it, I think of a pirouette.
Perhaps because it’s become more of a graceful dance for me.
Here’s the deal…
This concept, embodied, has led me to become a healthier and happier human,
become a much more successful business person,
and a woman able to receive and be open to Divine Synchronicities.
I used to be the least flexible human ever.
Pivoting was NOT in my lexicon.
And the idea of “flowing through life” sounded like my personal nightmare.
If a friend called to change plans, I panicked.
If my intuition nudged me in a different direction than my initial vision, I ignored it.
If a program wasn’t working, I just pushed harder instead of re-routing.
I was inflexible and incredibly attached to how I imagined things were supposed to go.
And when they didn’t, it felt like my world was crumbling.
For me, this was a result of living the first 7 years of my life in a war-struck country – where I never knew when the next bomb would strike.
For you, it might have been a different kind of “bomb” in your environment. Either way, you unconsciously learned to hold it all SO tightly.
Let’s observe the same pattern on an embodied level…
When we get on a dance floor, we usually have a particular dance move we naturally go to – whether we realize it or not.
We all have body patterns etched in us.
And as long as we move through the same familiar movements, we will have the same experience in our body.
But the moment you twirl in the opposite direction or stretch through your non-dominant arm or linger in your exhale twice as long as usual, your movement will shift and it will kick off a whole new experience in your body. And your whole somatic world can open.
This is what a pivot does in your life. It disturbs the pattern and opens a whole new world of opportunities to you. Ones your conscious mind can’t even envision.
On January 2nd, I landed back in San Diego with a simple plan for January: clean up some systems and processes in my business, onboard all my new clients and have lots of space for the creation of two new EMBODY projects.
I’m writing this on February 2nd in NYC after an extreme pivot that took me from signing a lease on a beautiful house with 3 other awesome humans in sunny San Diego to moving to NYC (in February!) with two suitcases and no lease.
(Why I did that is for another email but I made this decision and executed it in 10 days.)
5 years ago, I would have never been able to pull that off. I would have fainted at the thought of it.
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For those of us who have these controlling, rigid ways of operating…
whether in our business,
on the dance floor,
or in the bedroom,
… the pivot is a KEY tool.
Because the pivot is your intuition, your higher self, the universe working through you to create possibilities your nervous system doesn’t even know how to envision.
It’s outside your conscious parameters because your amygdala and your reptilian brain are blocking it out.
When you are unable to open and explore in your movement,
you will be unable to open to your lover,
and you will be unable to open to the Divine that wants to flow through you and into your business.
And then you wonder why it’s not working and why you can’t connect with your intuition to create something bigger than you.
This is why EMBODIMENT is key. I will say it over and over again.
Because you are HOLDING ON. You are contracted. You are in fear. And you are focused on you.
Again, this is not because anything is wrong with you. On the contrary, you can give thanks to your body for being so wise and for your reptilian brain for trying to protect you.
But it’s no longer relevant. You aren’t in a war zone. You aren’t in the jungle. You are safe – and the world is your oyster.
So today: Try it.
Take 5 minutes today to put on a song that you love and move to it. Except go in the opposite direction. Use the other limb. Stretch a different way and see where it takes you. Breathe at a different pace and see what it does to you.
And then let me know… How did it feel? What came up for you?