There's a hole in the ground. You peer inside. What do you see? Is it a small sapling; eager for soil, sunlight, and sustenance? Is it a living organism; a wiggling worm, a gleeful gopher, a subtle skunk, all searching and surviving just like us? Is it empty; a black hole of obliterated truths that will remain dormant until you commit to unearthing these beliefs? You know the answer, just listen to your gut! Probiotic potential!
I think a lot of good things happen in my life when I lean fully into my intuition. What I've noticed in myself recently is that it's easier to trust myself with large, potentially life-changing decisions vs. the smaller mundane moments in my day-to-day. In an ideal world I would: say no to the 4th tech rooftop mixer in a row; reach out to a distant friend in the world; spring into a conversation with a cute stranger in an informal setting. The golden ticket to adulthood actualization is having the ability to set boundaries for yourself in service of yourself. If you can avoid being hijacked by the whims of people around you, then you can't possibly lose.
So I ask myself: how am I supposed to remedy this unsteady, untrusting mindset?
If I peel back the multi-layered curtain, I remember what my therapist tells me all the time — doubt-driven feelings like hesitation and apprehension all derive their life energy from past (often: childhood) trauma. A lot of us are scared to make even tiny commitments in fear that the perceived irreversibility of any decision will swallow us whole and ruin any semblance of security. This comes from not feeling a sense of belonging or safety in key formative moments in youth: conflicting messages from family vs. friends on what life path to choose, bad breakups that flip your sense of self all topsy turvy, or school institutions that gush inorganic Kool-Aid through an IV drip straight to your brain.
If you've never been in settings where communal openness and creative agency are valued, it's so hard to trust your gut.
Put more lyrically, intuition is about being comfortable with iteration. Even if the initial outcome of your decision doesn't turn out the way you want, that doesn't make it a bad decision. The important part is that you choose. By choosing, you're automatically ahead of many people who never take action. By choosing, you're accumulating mental evidence. This evidence acts as proof points of what your curiosities, capabilities, and confusions look like in certain phases of life. That's the beauty of intuition over logic or emotion: you unequivocally shape your own narrative and resist the polarizing power of perceptions.
I love the intricate connection that intuition has with the "gut". We can only start trusting ourselves and soothing our souls when we're fully in tune with the motions and movements of the body.
To make this piece less of a flowery monologue by an unqualified armchair philosopher, this week I set out to find these "soul massages" to train my ability to be present (somatically) and my ability to intuit more reliably. Thankfully, there's never a shortage of quirky gatherings in NYC, so here are the top 3*:
Hosted by the illuminating Lauren Ducrey, a Night of Poetry and Creativity featured an eclectic mix of poets, artists, writers, producers, dancers, musicians — a rainbow of interesting humans in one gathering ground. Lauren and co-host Ross aimed to create a container where skill level and background loses meaning, where anyone is encouraged show up for a dose of poetry-laced meditation, wholesome connection, and mindless-mindful listening.
I was hit with earth-shattering paradigm shifts tonight. What is now evident to me: poetry is a medium of mindfulness, a mode of expression that channels both play and pleasure. Poetry is a psychedelic, possessing the same brain-altering properties that allow you to access deeply repressed parts. Words stream from the body rather from the head when you take the time to pause and savour each verse, each rhyme, and each metaphor.
In non-technical speak: I think everyone has the capacity to express themselves lyrically, as long as you let your heart do the singing.
Update as of December 13: I took the nerve-wracking plunge and read one of my poems at the next iteration, clairvoyant voyager, which extended the motif of outer space to illustrate the early stages of romantic love. In my terms, it's a cocktail of melancholy, sensuality, and lyricality. Shoutout to my favorite Mongolian momma Bolor, who encouraged me to craft and kept me accountable to share just a morsel, even if it feels like morse code to me.
Migrated from an Indonesian spiritual movement practice called subud, this blindfolded dance class presents the rolodex of intimate bonding activities. The first half featured walking meditations, eye gazes, follower-and-leader touch work, and boundary setting with yeses and nos — all expressly designed to allow participants to loosen up, move freely, and explore touch under the themes of consent and respect. Then comes the main performance: you tie your blindfold on, surrendering access to a core sense to invite the movement in. The warmup is equally arousing. Wild noises and feral war cries bleed into free-flow sensual dance, embellished with staccato sound and uninhibited touch.
If I'm making it sound extra dramatic, it's because such an experience only deserves the most flamboyant descriptors. When I first walked into the room, I was greeted with an electric wave of individuals that represent the Brooklyn mosaic well: curious transplants, performance artists, psychedelic enthusiasts, and experiential seekers. It's in these spaces that prioritize non-judgment and non-attachment where the best kind of serendipity emerges. You willingly whisk yourself into a whirlpool of strangers and sensations, and wash up on a different mental shore than where you began.
While poetry challenges written language and verbal speech as two conductors for the soul, dance is a stronger orchestrator for tapping into your bodily intuition. You activate a flow state as you groove. Even though my party boy phase is largely over, I'm always down to hit the town’s greasy establishments (nightclubs) to bust it down (sober), for both unhinged fun and as somatic catharsis.
I took a class at Frequency that blended breathwork, sound healing and visual geometry. In their words, "we want to create a space of awakening, self-love, expanded consciousness and healing". For the less-spiritually acquainted, breathwork sounds like needlessly spending on a valorized method for a basic activity so inherent to humans. But the same passiveness is often the plight: most people forget to breathe when it counts the most. The Pranayama two-part breath is especially a cheat code. You inhale deeply for 5-7 counts, and exhale slowly. There was a certain kind of magic in the air as we mixed in more aggressive forms (fire breathing, cathartic chanting) with more peaceful rhythms (soothing sighs, yoga nidra).
The breath is just a vehicle for love. When everything is stripped away to its core and nothing is left, love remains. With love, nothingness becomes everything. Equating the act of breathing to loving may seem a bit strange, but we can only build intimacy when we know how to pause and relish, to sit in complete attention with both ourselves and others. Just like bell hooks describes, it is indeed all about love.
It's hard to sum up the impact of what seems to be a mere hour of intense breathing exercises, but it's even harder to understate just how good I felt after walking out of the studio. An airiness in my chest, a groundedness in my step.
I keep playing with the idea of accessing expanded consciousness through lived experience. It’s like we're taking sober psychedelics. A musical matriculation of the mind. We enter into out-of-body experiences within these whimsical worlds, but the jingles of song and dance anchor us back into what’s truly real.
Nowadays, I want to reprogram my inner operating system to think in lyrical poetry instead of static prose. Because to me, that's where I can find new ways to care and connect with others, feeding on continual openness and effervescence of the world.
If possible, I'd like my future readers to savour that same fluttery emotion when they read my works (usually, wonderful invigoration). I want to open a window in their souls and let the fresh air in, gifting an energizing, tingly feeling, a kind of cooling warmth.
Here's to making our souls sing, one mindful practice at a time :)
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