Our February theme, Embodying Resilience, names that resilience lives in the body. While our thoughts route the signals of stress or release, it is our bodies that keep the score.
This can be frustrating because it means we can’t just ignore or overthink our way out of stress, but there is good news too. Various studies have shown ways to care for ourselves: completing the stress cycle, downshifting the nervous system, and returning the body to its sense of safety through rituals and singing and laughing and moving. Community is key to this: the body returns to safety when we are with people we know and love and trust.
Practicing being in our bodies and returning them to safety increases our resilience. We increase our courage and build our capacity to cope with stress.
Our First Church community is building our embodied resilience not only for individual healing, but also so we have the courage to join with our neighbors to resist oppression and transform the conditions that lead to stress.
Together, we care for one another and build the spiritual embodied strength to make the world a better place.
With love,
Jennifer