Yielding as practice

Our relationship to gravity and a peek into the Reclaiming home membership

Hello, I’m Sara. I write about mindfulness & somatics and understanding the ways we can be alongside our messy and beautiful human-ness. Outside of this space I run a gentle quarterly membership also called ‘Reclaiming Home’ The doors are currently open for enrollment and I’d love to see you there. You can read all about it here

Seeing as Reclaiming Home my membership space (hosted on the brilliant and world-changing The Portal) is open again for the Spring quarter (beginning in March) I thought I’d offer you a peek behind the curtain into one of our first themes back in December.

If you don’t know what the Reclaiming Home membership is all about, it’s a somatic practice space where the invitation is to explore what it means to feel at home in your own skin. Over 3 sessions a month, I offer a community space for us to move, get curious, and create somatic skills that’ll empower you to meet the full spectrum of life’s moments with greater ease. It’s a bloody lovely and generative space and you can read all about it in detail HERE.

In December, our first monthly theme was an exploration of yielding which at its simplest is the understanding of how we actively meet something: the ground beneath our feet, our relationships, the conversations we engage in. Yielding is one of our most foundational and primal relationships and it begins with our innate connection to gravity.

When we’re born, we transition from being the aquatic creatures we were in the womb to becoming land dwellers. This shift asks us to learn how to feel safe and held in a totally new environment. We move away from the comforting, three-dimensional embrace of the water we’ve floated in for nine months into a world where we have to renegotiate what safety and support feel like in our bodies.

This huge change in environment asks us to learn how to trust and feel safe - first with our caregivers and then with the Earth and gravity, in a brand new and wonderful way.

Of course, this relationship isn’t fixed; it’s shaped by our experiences and the patterns we develop over time. What was once an intuitive, effortless ability to yield into support in infancy might become harder to access as we grow older. Life’s stresses, habitual tensions, and learned behaviors can create a sense of resistance, making it more difficult to trust, to let go, and to fully rest into what holds us.

But yielding isn’t lost to us - the art and practice of yielding is something we can relearn our connection to. What we choose to focus on has the power to transform our experience.

Through mindful movement practices, we can actively rekindle this essential relationship, reminding ourselves that safety and support are inherent. Our connection to the Earth, to gravity and to the support that exists is one that can sustain us, and as we deepen this awareness, we cultivate our ability to relax into ourselves—continually awakening to the process of engaging, connecting, and being held.

Below is a section from a 60-minute Reclaiming Home session that explores developmental movement patterns and a way to understand yielding and its relationship to gravity as a feeling in your own body. Remember to take things at your own pace and feel free to reach out with any questions.

A yielding practice:

I absolutely believe that by remembering how to soften into the support of the Earth, we invite nourishment, resilience, and responsiveness into our bodies.

Over time, a practice of yielding can restore a deep sense of agency and freedom in your body, bringing balance to both stability and mobility.

I’d really love to know how it goes if you explore. And if you’d like to continue your exploration, you might want to go a little deeper with these prompts:

• Where in my life am I resisting support, and what might it feel like to yield instead?

• How does my relationship with the ground reflect my relationship with trust, both physically and emotionally?

I hope you enjoy this little taste of what the Reclaiming Home membership can feel like and the kind of adventures we go on. I’d really love to have you join us to deepen into community and the world of somatics together. Ask away with any questions you have either by replying to this email or popping a comment below ❤️

With love

Sara x

PS: if you enjoy my work and want to know more…

• Find out about 1-1 somatic coaching. or to book a discovery call all the details are over HERE

• If you enjoy the practices I share here you might want to sign up to Moments of Connection: *currently half price 30 recordings and daily journal prompts to edge you towards greater body connection for €30 HERE

• Follow me on Instagram HERE