Align Your Orbit #92 - Peepshow Aftercare

Align Your Orbit is a series of philosophical and somatic experiments to guide intentionality and impact. Find delight in these journeys of exploration. If you would like to receive these offerings as an email on the new moon, sign up here.

You offer such a narrow scope of yourself to the world, and that takes a toll. But, it’s not so easy to drop all your masks at once. Clothing is decoration, after all, and it’s not always warm. Still, you must find places to become more naked—bare this slice of skin here, that slice there.

What is the next vulnerability you’re prepared to put on the table? Refusing is stasis. Tend to your body in the aftermath. We’ll be going uphill for a while, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look downhill while we walk. Laugh and cry, smile and grieve. We’re facing every extreme—how are you surviving?

Want to experience these experiments as a Tidal playlist?

New Experiments

1.       one tool in the toolbox – Language is not our native communication method. Reconnect with the ways you use your expressions and body language to express yourself. Give your vocal cords a break.

Challenge Mode: 🔥 🥰 🙌 💋 😘

2.       on the edge of taboo – We know that we can’t not talk about it. What, you want something to fester? Nuh uh. Not an option. Drag all the skeletons out of the closet—

we need to take an honest look and bury the bones. Have the hard conversation. Ask the unforgiveable question. Everyone has something to honor and grieve.

Challenge Mode: Existential horror and laughter knit themselves together in an inseparable tapestry. This is a primal way to weave in safety, to invite the body into this new reality. Shake. Laugh. Chant. Growl. The natural world wants a fertile mess, silly and wild.

3.       flip a coin – When you find yourself teetering on any edge, flip a coin, use a pendulum, or roll a die. Decision labor comes at a premium, and you trust randomness to show your reaction to the result. Numbered sets exist in the quantum realm and do wonders in showing us the way.

Challenge Mode: What is the tiniest change you can make right now that might just shift the whole universe? Toss a pinecone, pick up a piece of plastic, move a stone. Demonstrate you have free will.  

4.       pull every thread – What if every fiber in your body wants to move and stretch? Move in in a way you’ve never moved before. Stretch places you never even knew you had. Watch a video on dance or qi gong. Do yoga with someone a different age than you.

Challenge Mode: Your body is capable of spontaneous healing—what do you need to widen that path? It doesn’t come when you expect it, but that doesn’t mean you can’t prepare the bed for it to arrive. Take a nap, wiggle your hips, flick your fingers.

andra’s Recap of No Edges

The experiments for the previous moon cycle included it’s all a construct (challenge mode: defrag your mind); ask what someone needs (challenge mode: nonverbal interactions); pattern recognition (challenge mode: prepare for every future); and nothing but the basics (challenge mode: balance the players on your field).

Standing on the edge of doing family therapy with my seven-person household, I want to enter with the my most generous interpretations close at hand. And, simultaneously, I vow to tend to my own realities, treating them as equally real, true, and valuable as anyone else’s.

My imposter syndrome isn’t serving me anymore. My villain complex is cracking. I’m a new person than I was before. I can’t not be. We can’t not be. The world shatters again and again every day. The empty well digs itself deeper and finds sweetness, nectar, purpose. This is my defrag—capacity shift.

I’m not here to play savior—I’m here to empower everyone to save themselves. Together. We can’t do this alone. I’ve been asking the answers questions. And in the midst of all the chaos, all the screaming and crying, there are smiles. There are days outside watching the pattern of trees against sky. Our fingertips type and type and type the stories we have lived. Haven’t lived. Want to live.

[We’ve even started sharing those stories on Royal Road and Patreon (early access + bonus content under a pen name)].

As a person, I have been deeply committed to transparency, but like anyone, I edit myself to suit the moment. I take all the edges out of my voice before I speak. I think rather than speak my prayers. But I spoke my truth—everything relevant—with my family while they visited this past month, even when I feared it would change the nature of the relationship.

I need every shred of capacity I have, and I’m making all the crutches I carry visible. I’m not here to pretend that this life doesn’t hurt sometimes. More often than I’d like to admit. Time for the masks to drop.

And yet, it hurts. It gets worse before it gets better.

So we take care of ourselves, our body, and the bodies of others. We seek out muscles begging for release. We remember how to use our teeth. We spend hours decorating our online avatars. We take baths with the baby.

We relish because that’s what’s sustainable, what makes everything in this exact moment worth experiencing. If we don’t like it, the story isn’t finished yet. Keep writing.

I can’t stop. <3

Please enjoy this month’s experiments. I know I will.