The Imperative of Possibility

May 15

The Paradox of Change: How do we create change without reinforcing old paradigms?

We live in a culture obsessed with fixing, controlling, and in many ways, sabotaging our way to transformation. But what if the very mindset that created the chaos can’t be the one that heals it? This is the paradox of change, and is also the place where Brain Body Being (our clinical somatic educator and therapist training) begins.

For the past number of years I have been thinking a lot about change - I’m sure you have as well! The world is in chaos (and has been for a long time), and as such we long for remediation and reconciliation of the deep injustices we witness (or experience) on a daily basis.

Yet, we all know we cannot create change from the very epistemology, or paradigm, that created the chaos. This knowing, however, is easier said than lived into.

For me, it took a really big f**ing deep dive to live into changing my inner everything to find change in my outer experience.

Four years ago, my life was in crisis. I had experienced more than a year of being present for multiple overdoses and suicide attempts, care-giving in mental health crises, and being essentially terrified on a daily basis of what the next hour could bring. My latest relationship crumbled, as it was a bond I had made in a severe trauma-state, and my finances were tight due to my parenting role taking precedence. The pandemic began and my beloveds’ addiction spiralled, as their social supports and daily activities disappeared overnight. A few months later, a life-changing diagnosis came my way.

I felt a desperation, as I knew there was no outside support, no one thing, that could step in and change these experiences. People were telling me to give up on my kids, and that wasn’t an option. But things as they were weren’t helping anyone. I knew that the change I sought could only start with me. But how?!!

I had studied psychology, trauma, somatics, and mystical sciences for the previous 13+ years, and now it was time to navigate a radical application of all of my internal resources.

This paradox is the doorway into a new way of being. In the next piece, we will explore how to stay present with what is, whether that is illness, fear, or grief, while also holding open the possibility of transformation.

Holding Both: How do we face what is while still imagining what’s possible?

Finding space through somatic practices

It’s easy to collapse into struggle, or to bypass it in search of silver linings. The challenge, and the practice, is to hold both: the rawness of what’s happening right now and the possibility of change that hasn’t yet arrived. Somatics gives us the ground to do this.

I started with Somatic Experiencing (SE). I had two sessions a week at first, as my nervous system was in such an activated state. As slivers of space began to open, I started integrating other supports, such as guided yoga nidras and possibility practices. For me, drawing what I appreciated about a moment, or that day, allowed me to begin to envision various things I wanted for my life, a grander scope I hadn’t taken in years because nothing beyond our crisis-intervention-living seemed possible.

Slowly, combining SE, possibility scaffolding, and new information, my paradigm of how this life actually works began to shift.

When we are changing our lives, what we are really changing is how we relate to the people, dynamics/circumstances and societal expectations we are immersed in. I had to learn new acceptance of my children’s lives and choices, which meant that I came up against feeling like I was a horrible parent, abandoning the humans I loved most (what kind of parent was I if I didn’t worry to death when my child was living on the streets?!)

Through my SE and possibility work alongside an incredible Family Constellations session with Marianne Trauten, I had a felt sense, a visceral knowing, that while my love was supportive, my children did not need saving. That while vulnerable and experiencing daily oppression, my viewing these vulnerabilities without also seeing who they truly were and their ancestors that were always supporting them, was creating a dynamic that wasn’t actually benefitting anyone.

Thus the question: how to be present for the realness of what IS (addiction, vulnerability to being a MMIWG, disability, micro and macro racist aggressions, mental health crises), while also holding the radical possibilities for my children’s lives?

Paradoxically, as I accepted aspects of their lives while showing up in love and possibility, their lives have changed drastically. Ease alongside harm reduction in-action, living independently, and envisioning what they want for their lives.

This question continued to arise in my own life as well: How might I be present with my diagnosis, honouring the fear and difficulty and symptoms, without creating an identity around it?

Through somatics, I studied the anatomy of illness, the science of regeneration, and over time I taught my body the felt sense of wellness. This process wasn’t glamorous, but it did lead to a reversal of said MS diagnosis.

When we’re connecting to the fear, pain, devastation of anything, somatic practices can help us meet them without toxic optimism or over-coupling our identity with the experience. And when we feel the slivers of space, the science of possibility practices can support the material and cellular transformation we are desiring.

Allowing ourselves to hold both suffering and possibility, change becomes less about forcing an outcome and more about creating space for what wants to emerge. In the final piece, we will widen the lens to the collective and explore how these practices can guide us through global chaos.

Collective Chaos: What does all of this mean for the world we’re living in?

Somatics as the bridge between what IS and possibility

The world is unraveling in ways that are impossible to ignore. Systems are collapsing, and devastation is everywhere we look. Yet within this rupture lies an opening: the chance to imagine and embody something entirely new, together.

So, how does this theory apply to a world in chaos?

We must look towards, we must look at a devastation directly. Be in our felt responses. And through this looking towards, we might have enough space in our collective nervous system to imagine that a seemingly impossible outcome is possible. Not an idealistic outcome, but one where the person experiencing the horror might be able to decide it for themselves (with all the support they might need). This looking towards also includes actions required for these kinds of possibilities to come to fruition. Act, donate, speak up for policy change, DO.

When we define others or our world by the worst thing that has happened, we are perpetuating the very thing causing the suffering. This does not mean look away. But can we look towards, holding what currently IS and what is possible at the same time?

I think this might be the imperative of possibility (to actually be able to imagine and feel the change we seek), and the imperative of somatics (the practice that teaches us how to do the former).

Indeed, perhaps there’s something emerging from this personal and collective chaos, a potential clarity (albeit the tiny seeds of it) of how we might be better humans together.

Somatics and possibility practices don’t just help us survive upheaval, they give us the ground to imagine and embody something entirely new. If this work speaks to you, I invite you to join our trainings, or simply stay connected as we continue to build a community that holds both the reality of now and the future we long for.

“It’s not possible to constantly hold onto crisis. You have to have the love, you have to have the magic. That’s also life.”

— Toni Morrison

Journal prompts for exploring possibility

What is my relationship with possibility?

Do I feel like I am abandoning myself, others or the world when I imagine that things might actually work out? That solutions may arise, even are presently arising, from the chaos?

What place does possibility have in organizing for community and global justice?

What place does possibility have in my own personal healing journey?

Do I long to feel possibility but I just can’t access it? Or does it feel touchable, even easy to access?