After I’m done I don’t just go back inside, I stay in the garden - I am mesmerized by the smell of the night flowers and the vastness of the night sky. Barefoot on the ground. I’m melting with the warm humid air. As I’m taking it all in through my senses, I feel that I’m simultaneously everything and nothing at all. I’m experiencing Awe.

This right there is one of my most formative memories and… one of my earliest spiritual experiences.

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Nowhere in my life do I experience myself as a spiritual being more than when I’m communing with Nature.

As a teenager, one late night I stumble upon “Before Sunrise” on cable TV and it alters me completely: this one long encounter and conversation between Céline and Jesse is an exact depiction of what love feels like to me. Somehow I feel less alone and at the same time, I touch a deep sense of yearning. One scene specifically, where Céline talks about God becoming manifest in connection between people, gives me language for what God feels like to me - a language I desperately need after my loud and rebellious divorce from the catholic church.

In connection, with many, oh so many words, or none at all, with just breath and sound and skin - that’s where my spirituality lives.

I’m not sure how people feel about the word “spiritual” these days. I have a sense that for many it sounds lofty. For others, performative or fake. For others still, confusing and distant, maybe even boring. For me, it sounds familiar, self-evident and comforting. And it’s not a set of beliefs but rather a direct experience of reality. I have been in that direct communion with more subtle layers of reality my whole life. And that connection has never been something I questioned. And I question a lot around me - especially the things that others find to be solid and exempt from inquiry.

My rootedness in and easy access to spiritual life does not mean that I continuously operate from that place or that I consider myself “enlightened” in any way. And I definitely do not aspire to any idea of transcendence - of somehow rising “above” the mundane and the ordinary. I also don’t want to pray or meditate myself into oblivion, even though I regularly fantasize about running away, “leaving the world behind” and becoming a monk in a cave - which I tend to interpret as a sign of overwhelm and needing deep rest. In those moments I suffer from temporary amnesia and I tend to lose track of my direct line to spirit, and in that, to my authentic self (or the other way around).

And yet, somehow, I always find my way back. Often, that’s what I call magic - when in the deep throws of suffering and disconnect little reminders and signs start popping up, and all I need to do is simply follow - like the most dependable GPS signal. It’s then when I realize time and time again that embodied spirituality is not about big flashy rituals or high level awakening experiences. These can be a wonderful and beautiful way to get a kind of high octane infusion of the “source energy” and magic. But what I call spiritual practice lies closer to this:

1. Get lost (again)

2. Notice the reminders and follow

3. Remember (again)

4. Consciously choose to “plug in”

5. Encounter aliveness in the everyday mundane simple reality of being fully human

In other words, it’s a gentle loving discipline of returning to the source through any path available:

On the dance floor.

Or in a movement practice.

In song and sound.

In my son’s eyes or his breath I hear at night, lying next to him long after he falls asleep.

In circle, in silent resonance.

In my drum.

In mine and my friends’ rambunctious laughter.

In freshly baked bread with butter, tomato and salt.

In tears.

And in an exhale.

When out of nowhere a space of solace, connection, and inner guidance opens up effortlessly and spontaneously, where surrender is inevitable and sweet sweet tenderness envelops my heart.

And I’m back in the garden…

And I’d love for this exploration to go both ways: what would help you exhale right now? What’s alive for you? Send me a question, a word, a feeling - some of what you send may become an inspiration for an episode of e x h a l e itself.

***

Paulina Bolek is a somatic coach, embodiment + circle facilitator, and singer-songwriter. She helps people come back to their bodies and to each other. Feminist, queer, ND solo mom.