To Eleven

I’d never worn a wetsuit before.

I slid into the lake for my first kite lesson and began swimming towards the middle, and I was awed at how vast everything was… I felt tiny, surrounded by these huge mountains and an expanse of water that was much bigger from the center than it looked.

Juan had taken me through all the steps on land, first, and there were a multitude of details before we even got to the water:

check the space. check the wind. lay out the kite. untangle the lines. red line on the left when you’re facing downwind. tie the knots to each line. pump the kite, but first, hook it to the pump, so it doesn’t fly away. make sure the chicken loop is all the way out. don’t hold from the chicken loop, hold from the line. check the lines .…

My first lessons would be all about kite control before getting on a board. There were four lines tied to each corner of the kite, and a bar that held them in the middle, to catch and release the tension.

It was technical. It was precise. And it was all about learning to work with the wind.

From the midst of the lake I learned to navigate the wind speeds, the subtle shifts, the four strings to control the kite, needing only the subtlest of touch (except when it needed more).

I learned how to point my body in the direction I needed to go, to let the wind carry me: “body-dragging”.

I learned to look mostly where I was going, and feel the kite’s power and shifts.

The most challenging part was unlearning the response to grab and clutch on, when a gust of wind would pull me up out of the water… the sheer force of this would catch my whole body by surprise, and every instinct said to pull back, to control.

But this was actually the moment to release the bar, so that the impact from the wind would lessen.

And so, it became a dance.

Release. Catch. Release the left. Catch the right. Less. More to the left. Steer upwind. Look where you’re going. Release. Here come some waves. Untwist the lines. Red line on the left. Push the bar out. Catch from your elbow more. From the shoulder, now. Look where you’re going. Switch between looking at the kite and the direction you’re headed. Now, wait for the wind. Lighter touch, lighter!

Both hands on the bar. Now release. now catch!! Push away!!! Remember you need to push away!!

“Remember, we talked about that?  Remember, today, when we were on the land?” Juan was saying to me.

… we were on the land, today?!

……. What’s Land???

My brain’s always had the tendency to drop quickly into a hyper-focused state, so that the world goes away (it’s a double-edged sword)…. and right now, there was definitely nothing that existed outside of water and wind and sky, and the far-off mountains, surrounding the valley of the lake.  This moment was a whole universe of its own.

Paradox

But there was that key to navigating it all: when you felt like grabbing on, when you felt out of control by a gust of wind that was going to carry you away– that was exactly the moment to release the bar.

Grabbing would intensify the surge of power, causing the kite’s pull to get stronger.

Release. Breathe.

Feel the intensity. Stay present. And release.

The inner dance I was in was matched only by the extremes of the wind and the expansive lake and the water.

A boat passed, sending unexpected waves and I felt myself go under. Choking on the water, I tried to catch my breath.

I felt myself being tossed back and forth, pushed and pulled with the waves and the wind. Being out in the water had always scared me a bit. And this lake felt huge. But here I was.

Dancing with the elements in their extremes will call you exactly where you need to go.

Triggers

And then there was the lesson, a few days in, when it just wasn’t clicking.

..it wasn’t working.

All the pieces. All the places to focus at once. The kite, the wind, the strings, the control, the waves, the speed, my elbow, my shoulder, and my body in the water. I was tired, already. It felt frustrating. It felt like overload.

The enormous strength of the wind out of nowhere seized the kite, pulling me up, up, and now flinging me face-forward into the water. The sheer power was awe -inspiring and momentous.

“Release! Release!” Juan was shouting

“…what happened? what did you do?”

“I don’t know!” I was fighting tears, now.

“Too much. too much power” Juan said.

“Remember, just a little. let the wind do the work.”

Frustration swelled inside my chest. The waves pounded outside. Inside, my heart raced. I tried to catch my breath/ And now, another huge gust of wind — pulling me completely out of the water and launching me forward, like a twig. I crashed on the water’s surface, desperately tried to keep control of the kite. Which string? Where was I pulling, now? Where was I releasing? And the kite was pulling me forward, powering me through the water at crazy speeds as the wind had just picked up.

“Feet down. Don’t swim! Feet down. Don’t Swim!” Juan was calling to me.

“But Juan —- my feet float UP when I don’t swim!!”

“… that’s okay. just go with it”

…. now it wasn’t even making any sense. And what Juan was saying wasn’t making sense with what I was experiencing, and my body was on sheer overload. My neck hurt from craning against my life-jacket, to see the kite. My limbs felt exhausted. The unexpected jolt of being lifted up and then flung forward and plunged underwater had my heart racing, panic rising.

Feeling my physical body in pain, or stressed, (or terrified) triggers deep stuff for me. And I felt scared, now.

In the intensity of the wind and the water, with everything amplified times a thousand, I felt the panic rising.

I was feeling the panic.

feeling unheard.

… I’d known somehow that the kite would teach me exactly what was needed.

And the elements know how to bring forward exactly what needs to be healed.

…the intensity of the experience was calling up decades of chaos and pain and panic, stored in my body.

The Body, Unheard

Doctors.

Lots of doctors.

…. I was fourteen, and I was visiting doctor after doctor to try to figure out what was wrong…. the doctors said it seemed to be a strange virus, that just wouldn’t go away.

It had already been months of the bizarre fatigue, the random dizzy spells, and every nerve on my body feeling like it was on fire. My once-photographic memory had been replaced with brain fog so severe that I struggled to make sense out of a strings of words on a page.

And there were no answers anywhere.

I moved through my teenage years without words to explain the bizarre reality I was living in… trying not to feel the pain in my body that I lived with, everyday. And I stuffed it all inside.

It would be five years before I’d get a diagnosis: Myalgic Encephalitis/ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. An automimmune condition, possibly triggered by the Ebstein-Barr Virus. (At least there was a name for it, now).

But the relief at the diagnosis would be short-lived, as it soon became clear that there were still no real answers.

At 19, along with the diagnosis, I learned to give myself shots everyday of a medication that was supposed to boost my immune system. I took all the meds. And then I turned towards what would become a decades-long search into the journey of alternative and holistic healing.

And so the quest began.

Lessons from the Kite

In the water, again.

Feeling the fear, breathing through it. Staying present. Letting myself feel the fear, and choosing where to put my focus, because there are fourteen different things that are demanding my attention right now, and checking out wasn’t an option.

The wind direction. The waves. Engage my core. Release the left line. Pull just a touch on the right. Push the bar out. More pull on the left. Look upwind. Look where I’m going. Release, again.

Feel the kite, feel the wind. Feel the emotions. Breathe. Focus.

Over and over and over. And the next moment, and the next and the next.

The kite calls you into a radical kind of presence.

There was a potency in meeting each moment.. it required me to show up completely, present to the subtlest change of the wind, the feeling of the kite strings on my fingers, the connection to my core, the awareness of the lake surrounding. And present to the breath, to allowing each breath to deepen just a bit more, to consciously choose to not go into fear.

It doesn’t matter how intense it gets… in kiting, there’s no running from the present.

I can do this.

Breathe.

Disorganization to Organization

There was a concept I’d learned in my SEP Training, about how stored trauma’s released from the body, that had always fascinated me…

Before a movement into greater organization (healing, regulation, clarity)… there’s what appears to be a movement into disorganization.

Energy that’s been tightly bound in fixated patterns is released… and things appear to be more chaotic before getting better.

(It has to do with the fact that in a regulated nervous system, there’s capacity for more energy, now).

I thought of this, over and over as I met the toughest places in my journey with the kite… sometimes stepping into something greater brings a seeming movement towards more chaos. It brings out what’s buried.

The stored energy, the stuck emotion all gets released… to be met and felt and re-organized.

It’s safe to feel all the sensations. Safe to feel all the stuff.

And sometimes the most intense and deeply challenging moments are right before the massive breakthroughs.

Over and over, I watched how the feelings of “I can’t do it” would be the strongest right before the next leap forward happened, and suddenly it was easy.

Another Lesson

Another day’s lesson…. I was getting used to the feel of being in the midst of the vast lake. It didn’t feel so overwhelming, now.

And used to the feel of the wind…. even when it lifted me by surprise, completely out of the water.

From the center of the lake, I took a moment to look around at the mountains surrounding me.

The view from here was like nothing else.

There was nothing like this. And the feeling of being here was like nothing else. I came for this.

And suddenly, there were tears, again.

..but this time they were tears of joy.

On the Board

Breathe.

Let the wind do the work.

My kite control was good. I was working on the board, now.

Light touch on the kite. Lighter, lighter.

catch. release. catch. release. now push away. pull, pull! now push away, push away!!

We practiced, as if on the face of a clock…12 o’clock was directly up. I’d practice catch-and-release, taking the kite from 12 on the face of the clock, down to two, then back and forth between one o clock and two.

Then, the gentle tug to encourage it in the other direction, and we’d go from ten o’clock to eleven and back again.

“let it fall, let it fall!” “now, catch, steady catch!!” “right there! keep the kite steady, right there!” catch a bit more. look where you’re going! catch a bit more. look where you’re going! look upwind.”

“……….. you’ve got it” Juan was saying, now.

“excellent, perfect control, perfect reflexes right there!”

Now the wind was picking up, and I was being pulled downwind, faster and faster and it was exhilarating.

My mind might pull, the fear in my body might call for my attention, and I could choose every moment to feel it, and stay present, and breathe, mastering this dance and flow with my body and the water and the wind.

Flying

I was soaring with the kite now, feet on the board, my body at a 45 degree angle leaning back, dancing with the board and the kite in it’s figure eights, and there was absolutely nothing else but the feel of flying with the wind and sailing through the water.

From Ten to Eleven and back again, I wove the kite, completely absorbed in the moment, in the feel of the water and wind and the freedom that was here.

“Eleven, eleven, eleven!!!

“Go back to eleven!

“Go up more. More, more, more!!! Go up, go up, up to eleven!”

Oh shit….. I suddenly realized Juan had been talking to me. Shouting, in fact – from right next to me.

… I’d been so absorbed in feeling the energy of the kite that I hadn’t heard him – – there’d been nothing else for a bit but the feeling of flying with the wind.

Got it!! I shouted, now, to let him know I’d heard.

To Eleven!!!!

I effortlessly brought the kite from ten on the clock, up to eleven.

“Excellent! perfect reflexes, perfect control!” Juan’s excitement might have been as much as mine.

“A lot of advancement, today!!”

I wove the kite in steady figure eights, up and down, from ten to eleven and back again.

Time Jumps

I lay in bed that night, listening to a recording of an old astrology reading from 2019.

Though I knew my chart inside and out, I’d needed an outside perspective to understand the monumental shift I’d just gone through, and had gone to one of my teachers, Michael Lennox, for a reading.

“I wanted insight, but also…. well, I really booked this reading as a celebration...”

it was a strange feeling, as I lay in bed in Colombia, with the fan overhead and the frog chorus outside, to hear the voice of my past self, shaking with the tears beneath the surface as I sat in Michael’s home office on that day in 2019.

“… the thing I couldn’t even hope for has happened”.

It was in 2019 that he saga with my health, that started when I was fourteen… that had morphed into a crazy journey of managing chronic symptoms for three decades…. was finally done.

And there was that day when I realized I was actually in a body that felt effortlessly good, as just a normal, baseline everyday thing.

I was almost in disbelief…. except, I could feel it. Everyday.

It had been over two months now of feeling good everyday, and it was real.

My body was free from the nerves feeling on fire, the inexplicable random pain, the bizarre and overpowering fatigue, the brain fog, the food allergies, the multiple chemical sensitivities, the endless weird symptoms. All of it.

I just felt good, everyday.

And I was completely off all the meds. 

It had been a wild journey, culminating with a particularly harrowing year after I came off the antidepressant meds…  which had apparently done double duty in both balancing brain chemistry, and moderating huge amounts of pain and random autoimmune symptoms. The withdrawal symptoms coming off fifteen years of Effexor had been intense beyond words and near-unbearable, and had lasted for over a year.

… I’d made it through a year that I didn’t actually expect to survive.

But that was when the deepest levels of strength and resilience had actually been called forward.

And when I’d finally learned to trust my body, to fully trust what I was feeling no matter how little sense it seemed to make (and even when there were no words to explain).

That year was also when I’d been introduced to the transformational power of nervous system healing and regulation… and had been blown away enough by the power of this work to dive into a three year training as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, knowing I needed to learn this magic that had unhooked a missing piece in my body, so I could bring it to my clients.

Leo Midheaven

“Is it about Joy?” Michael was asking.

… my attention was drawn back to 2019, and the recording I was listening to….

“Look. look here, your Leo midheaven: ‘Out of the house’.

“… there’s a strong setup in your natal chart describing extreme challenges in the body… but this is really about you moving from the inner world into the outer. And about having the FREEDOM to move out in the world. In a way that you couldn’t do for most of your life.”

“The big shift here is about moving from the inner world, into the outer.

“And having Leo here is all about the joy… the joy that’s your birthright.”

I’d forgotten these words… and lying in bed in Colombia that night, I was stuck by how clearly this had all played out.

At that moment in 2019, I had no idea what was next. I’d only known that I was finally in a body that was fully healed.

After thirty years, the miracle that I hadn’t dared to hope for had happened.

Opening

It had been less than five years ago that my life had completely changed, and a (literal) world of possibilities opened up.

And lying in my bed that night, exhausted and blissed from a day of kiting… I knew, now, what had inspired me to pack up my life and take off and travel the world.

After reconciling myself to managing all the chronic health symptoms as a way of life, I would never have dreamed that an adventure like this would be possible in this lifetime.

And I never would have dreamed I’d be in the middle of a giant lake in Colombia, surrounded by mountains, dancing with the elements in a glorious way and being fully challenged inside out to show up to all the feelings. it was enormous. 

And it was clear, now, what the journey was about.

It was about living fully, exploring as broad and as deep as I could go, about the immersion in the present, the radical showing up, the water rushing, the mountains surrounding. The trust in each moment, the clarity in each day, the experiences and the fullest living of the story I was creating.

it was about pure joy calling me forward.

Joy, turned up to eleven.

The Boat

We’d finished the kite lesson, and I felt appropriately worn out.

As would happen, we’d drifted downwind a long ways, almost to the ferry, and the boat was coming to pick us up now — tiny, across the vast lake.

Raul reached a hand to pulled me safely into the boat, while Juan expertly flipped himself over the side.

Deliciously exhausted, I felt the air rushing past and the water spraying. I loved this part…. resting on the edge of the boat, being carried home, after being stretched to the extremes in the water.

An unusually chilly breeze sprung up as we raced back across the water, and I shivered in my wetsuit, but it felt good.

We passed the dock where S and I had first sat and watched the sunset, and it felt like a lifetime or two ago.  Was that this lifetime?

Only a few weeks ago? 

Could I transform that much in a few weeks?

… but time was different, here.

We sped across the water, the boat dipping up and down and the surf splashing; Raul expertly steering us home, where Alex and Safi would have a delicious lunch prepared for us, and I was ravenous.

The mountains towered above, the breeze blowing.

Across the water, a single heron flew.