the quantum effect : sensitivity : Jewish

Writing can be a battle. I have so many thoughts swirling in my head that I want to get onto paper while my body has a hard time slowing down. I know your mind wants punctuation in that last sentence and is struggling to correct the grammar some way. Bear with me. This is the way I talk and experience things.

I went to a gentle yoga class today. I’m not a yoga person. I have a hard time following someone else’s movements. It’s how I get injured. Lately I’ve been open to trying yoga again to help stretch and restore. It was so hard to be still! I wanted to wiggle every time we shifted postures. I wiggled. We did this one standing posture, wide stance, knees bent, slowly lifting hands over head, palms up, and held it for a really long time. Everything lit up from the core. It was a challenge. Could I be sensitive and take in the lesson - the stretch into the unknown length of time. Not knowing how long we would be holding this (as a group), and knowing that whatever the length of time, it was not going to kill me. I would continue to breath. I can go beyond limits that I can’t define. I can trust that our teacher is watching the clock and won’t let me die.

I’ve been thinking about what it means to be sensitive. How I have felt/feel/will continue to feel shame around being a sensitive person. Like it’s an affliction that should be medicated or hidden. I can recall people reacting to me from a young age in these deep states of feeling sadness or joy. My extreme expression of those emotions was at times not socially acceptable.  I would get sad. Very sad. Looking back at Oakland School year book photos, I am scowling, body language closed. 

Today I feel deeply happy. I feel the quantum effect of my happiness as it moves from my smile to the smile of the person I pass on Cesear Chavez crossing Mission. Earphones in, listening to the live version of 10,000 Emerald Pools which I am obsessively listening to in almost every free moment. That’s a great example of what it feels like to be *sensitive* , to be in my body <——feeling music deeply when I feel it. Feeling that new song in my ears like a constant wallpapering of sound.

So this sensitive person is lifting up and flying out a little further in the world. I am heading to Europe. One-way ticket! Haven’t done that since I was 23 :)  First stop - Berlin. I know, I’m as surprised as you are. Intuition is leading. Next stop Dublin. Then Findhorn. Then London. Then??? I expect to spend a good bit of time in France, don’t ask when or how. I just know it will be.  I’ll be doing a few Movement Medicine workshops. Mostly I’ll be looking for four-leafed clovers, pots of gold, rainbows and magic. I’ll let everyone else worry about the heavy stuff for a while. Trusting. Surrender.

I will say that I feel called to do this movement medicine work in Germany in a way that feels deeply spiritual and connected with healing ancestral trauma. My direct blood ancestry does not flow through Germany. I am Jewish. My grandparents all came to the U.S. from the Pale of Settlement a hundred years ago. They were not nationals of any European state. They were Jews. They struggled to make their way.  They experienced anti-semitism in Pittsburgh, PA while WWII raged on in Europe. I find myself afraid to write about this knowing it will be read by people who know me. I feel fear around expressing my thoughts/feelings/senses about religion/nationality/traditions/spirituality. I fear I will be judged or misunderstood.  And I know it is important for me to communicate my truth. My truth is that I have always felt like an outsider of the Jewish community. I feel awkward inside organized Jewish events, synagogues, services. My body feels unease.