The phrase ‘being stretched too thinly’ can apply in a number of different ways.
Often we associate this with stress or overload in our ‘doing’ aspects of life. When we are manically busy and overwhelmed with the number of things that need to be done.
However, I choose to look at this in a different way.
In terms of narrative and inner belief.
Which part of your story is being stretched thin right now?
A friend of mine emailed me this week.
She expressed a deep feeling that the rest of 2020 was only going to get more mad and crazy and not less. She asked what I felt we could do in the face of all our stories breaking down.
I had to stop and think about it.
More than that, I had to feel it in my bones.
Then I walked outside and asked the mountain.
Today, I sat on the mountainside.
My back to a large Ponderosa Pine tree who’s bark smelled like caramel.
The sun had warmed the pine needle carpet underneath me and it pulsed in waves of hot earth aroma, more pungent than oil.
The nearby Juniper tree, spoke softly to me as I worked to quiet my inner noise.
I had to work at it, but eventually, my mind calmed and my thoughts quieted.
I allowed myself to relax and simply notice what was happening around me in the celebration of life.
Chipmunks went about their day and chirruped in surprise when they came across me.
A quiet human.
A rarity in these parts.
Ever wondered how you would react if you found yourself in the midst of crisis?
There is a wildfire burning on the mountain side opposite our home as I sit here and write this. Right now. I am writing this ‘live’ because it feels important to share this as it unfolds.
It’s around 10 miles away from me. Yes, I am safe, and yes, I ran right outside and called in the forces of the land, the elementals and the angels.
Because this is the ‘work’.
An extract from The Soulistic Journey, a forthcoming book that Genevieve is co-writing with Lorna Howarth. Due for publication in Autumn 2020.
Okay, so now we approach one of the oldest and deepest practices that we share with you in this book. It is not to be danced into lightly and indeed is one you may find yourself shying away from rather than running towards. If so, good – that means you are sensing into its power.
Vision quests have been used by indigenous cultures across the world for millennia as a mechanism to remove ourselves from our old story, humbly seeking a higher vision from Nature and the forces in our Universe, in order to inform the next chapter of our life purpose. And vision quests often sneak up on us when we least expect them.
I meant to write this storyhack yesterday. But I was too tired and instead chose to go to bed super early. I also chose to spend half an hour before bed, taking the time to shower, cleanse my skin and do a body oiling practice with home-made olive oil, infused with Pine needles from my home on the mountain in Colorado.
This is me practicing radical self care.
“I wish my secondary school math’s teacher had been you”
I found myself saying during this deep and insightful Tea Session Podcast with my friend Adam Barley.
Adam’s work in embodiment and movement over the last few decades has created transformation for people across the globe as he has guided practices rooted in Five Rhythms and yet emergent into new evolutionary ways of expressing what is feels like and means to be human.
This week we have been treated to many inspiring and innovating sessions as we have moved through World Unity Week. From waves of indigenous-led blessings over the solstice weekend, through song, movement and dance and archetypal patterning, we have truly entered into the realm of the imaginal.
One of the sessions that resonated most strongly with me, was the one held by Richard Olivier from Mythodrama on accessing archetypal wisdom. Having worked with archetypes as energetic patterns of identity and narrative for many years, I love Richard’s work (with his co-creator Lawrence Hillman) in bringing to life the planetary archetypes of our solar system in their evolving forms.
Well, hasn’t 2020 been full of unexpected gifts?
Some of you may disagree but through the turmoil and chaos and sadness comes awareness, choice and resolution. The global pandemic has been just that – ‘global’. For the first time in many centuries (if not ‘the first’ time ever), we have collectively begun to realise the interdependency of our global systems and our global story. We have also started to see where it needs changing – and fast!
What if this rollercoaster of emotion we are all strapped into is actually the evolutionary journey of our species and our planet? What if we are all being given the possibility of choice in the emerging story of humanity?
What if …..
“The funny thing about unity”, I often find myself saying, “is that when we truly embody it, there is no one else. You can’t be in unity one moment and out of it the next. Unity awareness completely destroys the ‘other’”
But we can forget.
WITH PAUL CLARKE
Restorying Life Podcast – A New Story of Sustainability
Join Genevieve Boast, Founder of Beyond Human Stories as she adventures into the new territory of restorying sustainability. She will dialogue with changemakers, visionaries, elders and story hackers, discovering how human resilience and invention are transforming the old stories for good. These ‘bright spots’ of innovation are the forerunners for a new story of sustainability on Earth. They serve as inspirations and reminders for each of us to choose how we will participate in the change all around us.
Today I have been sitting out under the shade of a young oak tree. He has been in our garden since we moved here 8 years ago and we have grown up together.
In recent years, due to all the travel with my work, I had rarely found the time to come and hang out with this incredible being. Since COVID and lockdown everything has changed – in this case for the better.
In my calling as a storyteller and storymaker, I am blessed to connect with people all over the world who are aspiring writers of some kind. Frequently they are seeking inspiration on how to find their authentic voice. Often they are wondering how to make a living as a storyteller.
However, more recently, I have noticed a distinct shift in the dialogues.
It is a shift away from us (the humans) writing about life as it happens to us, and a shift towards us (the conscious evolving souls) allowing life to write through us as we experience it.
This week my family and I decided to undertake a daily gratitude practice. The longer the lockdown continues, the deeper we are able to connect and create in new ways. Remember, reconnect and restory is a mantra that will not leave me these days.
Never before have I been in one place for so long and never before have I seen the gifts of quiet inner time.
Everyone seems to be talking about returning to a ‘new normal’ but I am choosing to see this as an opportunity to return to a ‘ new natural’ balance. One than honours the inner and outer arcs of attention in our human and more than human lives.
WITH ADAM WILLIAMS
Restorying Life Podcast – A New Story of Sustainability
Join Genevieve Boast, Founder of Beyond Human Stories as she adventures into the new territory of restorying sustainability. She will dialogue with changemakers, visionaries, elders and story hackers, discovering how human resilience and invention are transforming the old stories for good. These ‘bright spots’ of innovation are the forerunners for a new story of sustainability on Earth. They serve as inspirations and reminders for each of us to choose how we will participate in the change all around us.
This Spring has been glorious in the UK and, as most of us have been at home in lockdown, we’ve able to notice and enjoy it despite the challenges of COVID.
The sun has been shining for days on end, causing buds on the trees to break forth in their glorious, fresh, green hues. They’re vibrant, and new, and shining like candy.
The hawthorn tree (sacred to Beltane on the 1st May) has burst into tiny white blossoms that have the most subtle yet enticing smell if you stop of partake of their nectar. The wild herbs are equally abundant and growing out of every nook and cranny, begging for attention. Many plants have been plucked and tasted as I have taken my daily walks through the landscape and, of course, I have done nothing but stop to smell the flowers of all shapes and sizes.
This week the Swallows have returned to Avebury too. Their playful exuberance is lighting up the skies as they swoop, dive and play over my home.
For those who have access to the natural world it’s all so exquisite that it would be easy to slip off into a blissful dream and forget that we are in the middle of a crisis.
Or are we?
How often do you find yourself wondering about the new ‘normal’?
What will life look, feel and sound like when this current COVID crisis is over?
Socially what will the world look like after lockdown?
Who will return and what new face will they wear?
And will it happen again?
What then?
So we have jumped off the cliff into potential annihilation (of our way of life and ego identity).
We have crossed the threshold and entered into the forest of our imagination, seeking a new vision of what is possible.
And we are lost.
Well and truly lost.
We feel confusion, despair, doubt.
And this is exactly how it should be.
As human ‘beings’ I believe that we have always sought a higher vision.
Whether this seeking is connected to our aspirations for our personal life, or the search for higher and more evolved forms of collective social purpose, we are naturally ‘questing’ creatures, constantly striving to know more, to be more and to experience more.
In the fast changing and tumultuous times we now find ourselves living in, our human hunger for ‘more’ can be seen for what it truly is – a force that is both enabling and destructive.
Hunger itself is neither bad nor good – it is simply the catalyst for a response to the call of evolution. When aligned with the classical hero’s journey, the traits of human hunger can be seen as either destructive or creative depending on our individual and collective response to them.
Yes, we are approaching Spring and Easter, but that is not why I am feeling called to write a storyhack with this title.
I was compelled to get up this morning, come down to my kitchen table and start writing because I realised that this is the story of my life.
Your life too I believe.
The saying that ‘life is full of death….’ may sound like a cliché, but let’s stop for a moment and consider those words.
Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that ‘life evolves through a series of mini deaths’, each one a shedding of an old way of living, an outworn belief, or even a global system that is long past the time of it being useful to ALL.
And ALL is the watch word of this decade. Watch and see.
At the time of writing this the world has irrevocably changed in just a short few weeks, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
And by the time I write next week’s storyhack it will have transformed completely once again.
Thing is – it always has.
This is the true nature of evolving life and consciousness on Earth (and beyond).
The real challenge has been one of distraction.
“These are the times when we grow”
I found myself writing this to a friend this evening.
This week my husband and I decided to start self-isolating.
Amongst the perceived confusion and chaos currently being experienced in the UK (and across the globe) due to the fast spreading COVID-19, there is a benign virus emerging and its called surrender.
So I woke up this morning with the light from a full Virgo moon streaming down my face as I lay in bed.
It was magical.
Mystical.
And so very natural.
As I sit here at my desk, staring out the window at the view of the mountains for the 100th time today, I am struck by the something fundamental around the emerging story of gender energy on the planet right now: The paradox how our old stories about what is masculine and what is feminine no longer seem to apply.
Let me explain.
What is your story about time? Seriously.
Play with me if you are unsure about this.
Take a moment and complete these sentences to uncover your time story:
Time is……..
My days are……..
I am most focussed in the……
Time runs away when……
Time stops if I.……
My life is here to……
Okay, so, is there a pattern in all of this for you?
A few weeks ago something amazing happened to me.
I felt true peace for perhaps the first time since I had been born (in this lifetime at least).
Peace
Contentment – but more than that also
A sense of being really, truly present in the moment
A moment that could stretch on for eternity
It took me by surprise
And it was humbling
Deeply humbling
This weekend brought Storm Ciara to the UK.
She was relatively minor compared to some of the global symptoms of climate change that we are experiencing in various countries right now and yet dramatic enough for those living here on a small, grey, wet island.
The thing with living on an island is that you can become quite insular.
For the last few weeks I have been cleansing.
Cleaning up what I eat and drink (or not) and how I move and exercise my body. From the 1st of January, I embarked on a 108 day consecutive yoga practice in order to firmly establish a new foundation to my self-care and health in 2020. (If you are wondering why ‘108’, this is an ancient Hindu practice of achieving oneness, nothingness and everything through the vibration of these three numbers…more on this another time!).
I have a good friend who has been helping me to create the audio version of my book ‘Tough Bliss’ for the last year. Fabio is an experienced and multi-talented sound healer, music producer and sonic enchantment weaver! He plays with frequencies and vibration better than anyone I know which is why its such a treat to create with him.
Today as I was facilitating one of the Soulistic Journey circles, I was struck with a realisation. An angle on understanding the role and meaning of ‘soul’ in my life that hadn’t come to me in quite this way before but revolutionised the way I now see my own growth and evolution.
Often when I ask people what their soul feels like, I get various answers like ‘home’, ‘peace’, ‘knowingness’ or ‘love’. I totally agree with each of these in the context of tuning into a higher place of inner wisdom that sits beyond the realm of human form or stories.
However, as I started to reflect on my own experiences of ‘soul’, I realised that my soul often comes into my life to disrupt habits, stretch comfort zones and generally break me out of my security patterns of behaviour.
Therefore, when I invite my soul to take the driving seat in the vehicle of ‘Genevieve’ then things tend to get more than a little crazy.
In fact, they get positively uncomfortable (if not exciting).
Let me explain.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with astrology, this weekend saw one of the most pivotal conjunctions of two planets in our solar system that we will encounter this decade: Pluto and Saturn. Now I am not an expert in astrology, nor astronomy, nor physics, but I do spend a lot of time adventuring in the archetypal realm trying to understand and experience the impact that certain archetypal characters (in this case Pluto and Saturn) have on our stories, psychology and actions.
“We are like fish and our stories are the water in which we swim. Their effect on our lives goes unseen unless we are willing to put our heads above the water and choose to leap into a different pool.”
Twas the week before Christmas
When all through the house of our soul, not a thought was stirring
Not even an email
Ever notice how life acts as a mirror for what you most deeply desire?
Or that which you most deeply fear?
December already.
The cold winter winds in the Northern hemisphere bring with them cleansing, clearing energies that allow us to retreat within and notice things.
One of the patterns that is being spoken to me on the wind right now is linked to the transforming energy of gifting on the planet right now. I am noticing the illusion of commercialism and consumerism is starting to fade and a new light is coming through. One that is connecting and intimate on the deepest of human levels.
Throughout 2019, I have found myself in a massive cycle of change and transformation; on every level and in every area of my life. These cycles have come before and seem to be occurring with increasing regularity in the world that we find ourselves inhabiting.
I am going to be really honest now. It has been a crazy, confusing, exhilarating and excruciating period of time where I barely know who, where or what I am from day to day. Just as I think I might have a handle on what is going on and where I am headed, my life throws me something completely new that shakes up the fabric of my story and throws it in the air to see what will settle.
WITH GILES HUTCHINS
Restorying Life Podcast – A New Story of Sustainability
Join Genevieve Boast, Founder of Beyond Human Stories as she adventures into the new territory of restorying sustainability. Over the next 6 months, she will dialogue with change-makers, visionaries, elders and story hackers, discovering how human resilience and invention are transforming the old stories for good. These ‘bright spots’ of innovation are the forerunners for a new story of sustainability on Earth. They serve as inspirations and reminders for each of us to choose how we will participate in the change all around us.
Egypt brings up a great many things.
The land and people here have a habit of presenting me with a hall of heart-mirrors every time I travel here. I have said many times, that whatever we hold in our hearts (consciously and unconsciously) will come up to be seen from the shadows as we walk through the lands of alchemy and light.
As I write this storyhack, I am travelling through the Egyptian desert in my dear friend Hassan’s van on our way to Abydos, Temple of Osiris.
Glamorous? Definitely.
Romantic – yes!
Transformative …..that’s the reason we are here.
This week I am launching into the second of our annual Soulistic Journey retreats in Avebury, England. Each retreat brings with it both a deepening into our own personal story, as well as revealing new maps into previously uncharted territory. The best bit is that we never really know where we are going until we gather together and take our first steps on the journey together!
In preparing for our circle this week, I started contemplating the word ‘retreat’ in the context of our modern social story. With all the perceived political, environmental and cultural chaos right now are we really being called to ‘retreat’?
We are living in times of true grit.
All around us, social and environmental systems appear to be in collapse and transformation. Cultures are merging and changing form. Young people across the planet are showing us what it REALLY means to be a global citizen. As I have spoken about many times, the story and archetype of the modern warrior is transforming and it’s being taken on by ‘normal’ people like you and me.
For a long time I have been using a powerful storyhack exercise known as a ‘Narrative Lens’. It is one of the fastest ways I know to immediately change the story that you find yourself living in by bringing your attention to the characters, environments and choices that create your life story.
Want to try it with me?
It’s fast. It’s powerful, and it transforms.
I have found myself pondering meta-myths lately.
You know, the ones that keep showing up in different forms, with different faces?
The ones that appear in our collective dreams in archetypal form and haunt us for days with their subtle power.
One that has stalked me of late has been that of Pistas Sophia – the fallen female Christ.
I am sat in my hotel room in Athens.
The delicious noise of the city outside, flourishing with life and light.
The sound of the Mediterranean Sea gently lapping the shoreline over my shoulder.
The Athenian mountains rising in the distance.
I have arrived.
Have you noticed this phenomenon lately?
Recently, whenever I find myself gathering in a group setting where there is a shared intention or vision, the power to manifest new outcomes and social stories seems to be turbo charged!
Perhaps it is the astrology of these times?
Perhaps it is the social, environmental and economic ‘crisis’ breeding a sense of urgency in our creative process?
Or perhaps this ‘gathering’ is an ancient power practice of storymaking that we are coming to see the importance of as we strive for change?
Much of my work involves meta-stories; deep and ancient narratives with characters that evolve and shape-shift over time.
One of the themes I have been working with personally and professionally in recent weeks has been that of the emerging feminine warrior. Often perceived through archetypes like Strength in the Tarot, Inanna/Ishtar the Sumerian Goddess of Love and Justice or Athena, the Greek Goddess of Wisdom and War, the emerging feminine warrior is taking back her power on our planet.
I sit here writing this in the place of my dreams.
I sit here in a house that was built by the voice of a land that has been calling me ‘home’ since I was six years old.
I sit here crying tears of grace for the ‘tough bliss’ of a long journey, walked well (most of the time anyway…).
I sit here in a beautiful house made of glass, wood and love in the mountains of Colorado; the place of my birth; the place I left over 35 years ago; my heart home that has finally become my body, mind and soul home.
This has been a year of revelations. The last few months have been incredible, scary, traumatic, empowering and liberating; all coming in waves, breath by breath.
I have been remembering.