the INCHWORM + the SNAKE | radical hospitality feat. the King of Pentacles + the Magician
the INCHWORM + the SNAKE | radical hospitality feat. the King of Pentacles + the Magician
a POWER CLASH Soul Sauce + Floss Workout by Dr. MLE | Beach Witch
In celebration of the FRIVOLOUS, DRAMA QUEEN FULL MOON IN LEO, I’m delighted to share my first POWER CLASH Soul Sauce workout with ya’ll: the INCHWORM + the SNAKE!
In this ALCHEMICAL workout, I fuse the magic of the INCHWORM & the SNAKE, two creepy-crawlies that are a fantastic YIN/YANG POWER CLASH. Crafting this workout inspired me to take a metaphysical deep dive into radical hospitality and the fictions we tell ourselves so our lives feel safe, so put on your existential seat belts and take some poetic leaps with me—on and off the mat, on and off the page!
Why the INCHWORM & the SNAKE?
1. Because they are a MAGICAL POWER CLASH.
I’m OBSESSED with POWER CLASHES this year—with my Tarot decks, with my fitness outfits (ya’ll gotta attend a live class to experience one of those, and they are BOMB), in my poems…
The magic of the INCHWORM is curiosity, hospitality, gratitude, humility, unsung heroes, and being overlooked. The INCHWORM is an invitation to GROW YOUR GRATITUDE MUSCLE!
The magic of the SNAKE is knowing HOW and WHEN to STRIKE. The SNAKE invites us to define our moral center. Her forked tongue represents not duplicity but the ability to speak and know multiple truths simultaneously. Her secret is that multiple realities exist at once until the moment we choose; our choice creates the reality to come.
2. Because the INCHWORM is a perfect fitness pair to the SNAKE.
The INCHWORM warms up our core and gets the blood pumping and endorphins flowing, priming us to STRIKE harder, faster, stronger in the SNAKE. Together, the INCHWORM + the SNAKE will work just about every muscle group while building cardiovascular capacity, core strength, and confidence.
3. Because the SNAKE is next month’s featured SOUL SAUCE WORKOUT. That’s right, beloveds! Get ready for some martial-arts-inspired fitness magic in February!
Animal Magic & the Tarot
The snake is conventionally associated with the Tarot’s Magician— in many decks the Magician is depicted wearing an ouroboros—or snake-eating-its-own-tail—belt, urging us to tap into our intuitive powers while staying vigilant against deceitful influences.
I personally associate the earthworm with the King of Pentacles—because the worm is, whether intentionally or not, a community-minded creature that makes life on Earth possible by eating dead matter and pooping out soil.
The Magician & the King of Pentacles
The Magician is a card of resourcefulness and manifestation. He represents RAW CREATIVE POTENTIAL, and is ready to receive DIVINE TRANSMISSIONS and TRANSMUTE DREAMS into REALITY. The question is: is he in it for the LONG GAME, and how will he use his POWERS?
The King of Pentacles has TRUE WEALTH—of self (esteem/worth/etc.) and of community. In contrast to the King of Pentacles, it’s a truly ecological card, that invites us to cultivate the wealth of our needs. For example, in many indigenous cultures of the Pacific Northwest, the chief is considered most powerful and respected based on what he gives away (vs. what he hoards). This is very much the magic of this earthy, confident King.
Together, the Magician + the King of Pentacles invite us to abandon the illusion of a singular, discrete, individuated self (for whom we accumulate and hoard wealth) in favor of a more ecological perspective in which psyche—our wealth of self—is something we are constantly co-creating, through inter-relation, intersubjectivity, and interdependence.
Together, the Magician + the King of Pentacles invite us to consider radical hospitality (vs., say, Manifest Destiny) as a point of departure for ambition/progress/revolution.
Radical Hospitality
Contrary to popular theology, radical hospitality is more than community outreach, more than intentional invitation and welcome, more than extending fellowship beyond the margins, more than sharing food, equipment, medicine, technology, time, labor, knowledge…
Radical hospitality means sharing everything you have: including emotional space, and our most intimate stories…
Radical hospitality is a willingness to be changed. To shed our skins, open our psychic borders, risk ourselves on the altar of total transformation.
Why? Radical and radish share the same root, which is “root.” To be radical is thus to get at the root.
We might think of radical hospitality on a global scale—as an antidote to border anxiety, refugee crises, ecological catastrophe, and our massive cultural dysfunction here in the United States.
We might also think of radical hospitality on a more intimate stage—as an antidote the fictions we tell ourselves so our lives feel safe.
The Inchworm + the Snake
Put a pin that; I’ll return to it next month.
For now: as you tackle the INCHWORM + the SNAKE Soul Sauce Workout, I invite you to meditate on radical hospitality, whatever it brings up for you on personally and/or politically. In fact, I invite you to STOP READING NOW, do the Inchworm + the Snake (which will take about 30 minutes), and then return to this missive when you are feeling a bit more breathless.
Seriously, you will get more out of the rest of this missive if you read it when you are feeling breathless.
M. Nourbese Philip + the Radical Hospitality of a Mother’s Breath
Consider the radical hospitality of a mother’s breath. As Canadian poet and lawyer M. Nourbese Philip argues in her heart-opening essay “The Ga(s)p:”
We all begin life in water We all begin life because someone once breathed for us Until we breathe for ourselves Someone breathes for us Everyone has had someone—a woman—breathe for them Until that first ga(s)p For air
Each of us, Nourbese explains, has had someone, a woman, breathe for us. To keep us alive. Each of us has allowed someone, a woman, to breathe for us, our coming to life dependent on an Other breathing for us.
Could we, Nourbese asks, perhaps describe this process as an example and expression of radical hospitality? Radical because although the fetus is genetically comprised of both the mother’s and father’s genes, physiologically the child is also a stranger.
Ordinarily, Nourbese answers, the mother’s body should generate activated T-cells, which would then attach the fetus’s foreign antigens. These is, however, a complex and not-yet-entirely understood process by which the mother’s body turns off the functions of her T-cells, which would normally result in the rejection of the fetus. It is a radical hospitality that entails housing the stranger, which includes breathing for the occupant until that child is able to breathe on its own.
Her essay ends: I can’t breathe; I will breathe for you.
This is RADICAL lesson/message/invitation of the INCHWORM + the SNAKE: I can’t breathe; I will breathe for you.
Breathe
Take a breath, and imagine your mother breathing for you. Even and especially when she felt breathless.
Take another breath, and send it to all the breathless places in your own body.
Take a few more breaths, and drop deeper into your solar system. Let breath keep dropping you in. Let yourself get heavier, sinking into the Earth.
Notice the places in your body it feels like your breath can’t reach, like they have become breathless. Send your breath to that place. Wrap your breath around the tightness.
Notice the miracle of breath, how precious each one is.
Notice that you are precious—nothing to fix, and nothing to extract.
Begin to remember your mother’s breath. Remember that she is precious—nothing to fix, and nothing to extract.
The Reassuring Butterdog
For once, I followed my own instructions, and I meditated on RADICAL HOSPITALITY while doing the INCHWORM & the SNAKE workout.
And the alchemical combination provoked a metaphysical deep dive into the FICTIONS WE TELL OURSELVES SO OUR LIVES FEEL SAFE and some really vulnerable sharing around the biggest and most consistent act of disobedience in my life, which, yes, involves the RADICAL HOSPITALITY of my mother’s breath.
And then I ended up sharing a bunch of things I didn’t know I wanted to say about myself or the world.
Or, at least: that I didn’t know I wanted to say about myself or the world with you in this missive.
I was so shocked that, when I finished I writing, I felt completely unprepared to return to “real life,” I needed a soft landing, a transition, I was like a butterfly emerging from the messy, vulnerable womb work of transformation for the first time.
So I choreographed the REASSURING BUTTERDOG, a MINI Soul Sauce Workout you, too, can use after an intense writing/imagining/ideation session to cool down and ground yourself—vs. rushing off into “real life.”
The REASSURING BUTTERDOG is an alchemical BUTTERFLY + DOG combo that will release emotions (the ugly ones, that we are often storing in our hips), reset your nervous system, encourage flexibility—both physically and mentally—boost circulation and flush out toxins, and invite you to take inventory of your body.
That’s right, ya’ll! TWO HYBRID WORKOUTS in a single missive. The INCHWORM + the SNAKE to PUMP you up and unleash your INNER FIGHTER, and the BUTTERDOG to RELEASE EMOTIONS and FLUSH your nervous system.
This is haaaaaard soul work, and you do not have to do it alone!
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xxxO, Dr. MLE | Beach Witch
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