Embodying Wealth in an Exploitative Culture
After a morning of qi gong practice on my back porch, I shower and dress as "wealthy woman". This is my most recent embodiment practice. I come from generational poverty. It's in my body. I embody generational poverty, and that's...that's okay.
But recently...as we get more emails from Kenya and hear about the kids we know suffering with hunger and fund shortages, I am screaming in rage. God sends messages again and again to say, "I want you to unravel your wealth stories and embody wealth, all of the complexities, all of your rage, all of your contradictions and rejection of it. I want you to go there."
After I dress and feel "wealthy woman" embodied in my wardrobe, I feel her just for a moment dripping wealth and immediately descend into lifelong, ancient, generational narratives and trauma stories about why I cannot embody that. It's so in every cell.
Upstairs. Yoga room. One lengthwise mirror. One yoga blanket, chair that folds down, bolster, clean wooden floors, sunlight, blue walls, one hanging painting of two pots that makes me feel in my body what connection means.
I sit.
Pull out my phone. Turn on music. Tribal drums from Spotify.
Relax. Spine fully rested and supported. No effort exerted.
Being here with my body. Listening. Co-creating with her, not against her.
I am seeking to make my Embodiment Practice as enjoyable as I created my laundry folding practice to be. Harnessing my dopamine reward system, to work with my body not against it. So, I set only a 15 minute embodiment practice so that I love it, not dread it.
Every part of the practice my body begs for. She's excited to walk these stairs and land here with me. She's hungry for me to listen and hold her and expand her. She's always ready to work with me. Hungry to work for me, with me, on behalf of, beholden to, enamored with, infatuated, obsessed, in love.
In fact, I've never felt wealthier than when I sit with her in this way. I drip with wealth.
Then my body says no...but we'll get there.
I start with 5 minutes to feel into my blocks today concerning "I am a wealthy woman".
Today, there's this heavy in my chest.
I feel like "hannah" not "wealthy woman" and hannah is supposed to be hannah not wealthy woman.
It's so engrained that I not embody her, and yet...in order to embody "wealthy woman" I must also listen to, accept, and embody every single "no". That's how power loosens, lovingkindness is born, and space is carved.
I feel a dark heavy in my chest. Accentuate that feeling. Lean into it. Do not deny it. Do not try to fix it. Feel it until it gets larger and larger and becomes me. Witness this part of me.
This part of me shrinks. She is afraid. I embody the shape, contorting and twisting my body into her. I raise my hands in front of my chest, palms out. "No." I am saying no even to good things coming my way. I will not receive them.
As I allow this "no" to form, my spine twists and curls and braces. My elbows squeeze into my chest, and my head bows low. I am bracing against a blow.
This part of me is always with me, formed in childhood. She protects me and keeps me small. She is the only one imagining safety for me right now.
I become her. I allow her.
Even though she is not who I want to be. She holds my medicine. She is my power.
So, I let her say no. I don't try to stop her from saying no. I learn what no means to her, and I learn what she needs from me. The "wealthy woman" includes her and never rejects her. The "wealthy woman" can never be wealthy without her.
The five minute timer gives way to an alarm of birds chirping and breeze blowing. I shift.
The next five minutes are rooted in gratitude for the wealth I do have.
I feel the gratitude fill my body and pull up a new mental movie. When did I last feel wealth in my body? Can I pause with that wealth? Can I hold it in gratitude and feel that in my body?
I'm immediately drawn to the lavender latte and friend date I had yesterday. The lavender herb was sprinkled along the caramel and cream colored design handed to me in a hot round white mug.
Feeling that and the presence of my good friend, holding her presence in my heart...our relationship. I feel so grateful. So full. I am already wealthy. This was wealth. I am given wealth and embody wealth. I define wealth and what it means for me.
The timer.
And for the next five minutes, I center on receiving wealth "beyond my wildest imagination".
For five minutes, allow the feelings to course through me.
Allow the resistance to get bigger and bigger. In this way, my nervous system expands it's ability to feel things I have only ever known to push away and ignore.
Nothing needs to change. Nothing needs to be fixed. This practice is already in effect just by feeling.
In my mind's eye, I see a check for $50,000. I am screaming and giddy and showing Jake. I can't believe it. I allow that feeling to get bigger and bigger in my body. I lift my hands to my heart to take the shape then immediately release them down.
I feel a smile organically cross my face then it releases just as quickly. I feel resistance again, and allow my body to take on the shape and feel and texture of that resistance.
My hands come up to block the flow. "No". I kept seeing this as negative, but the more that I embrace it, the more I see, "a wealthy woman has powerful boundaries."
Five minutes end.
I look in the mirror, and see Hannah. The old Hannah who's still there and will always be. She wants me to listen and accept her even though she is not the embodiment of "wealthy woman". She's holding wisdom I haven't yet discovered. Wisdom I reject. Wisdom I need.
Wealth embodiment in a consumerist-capitalist
colonization-founded
slavery-created
white-supremacy-dominated
patriarchal
earth-destorying culture
What does it actually mean to embody wealth in that distorted, sick culture?
A culture that sources it's clothes and phones through slavery.
A culture that burns the planet for supposed progress.
A culture that dumps unthinkable pounds of food while orphans starve.
A culture that goes to war for economic gain
A culture so centered on individualism that power is relegated to the few on the backs of the whole
A culture whose coping mechanism is work...so that people spend their lives in fight-flight just to survive.
A culture that believes it's acceptable for workers to make minimum wage and be forced into 60+ hours a week of wage labor in order to survive at the lowest levels.
If you embody wealth in this culture and don't feel rage, I wonder where your ethics lie. I cannot be the "wealthy woman" and be ethically sound if I'm not simultaneously feeling the full range of rage in my body for a culture that enslaves other bodies in order to achieve empty wealth, colonization, and power.
The way that our culture defines and sources wealth is treacherous.
This is where manifestation misses something important:
If you manifest wealth by becoming wealth in a culture that gains wealth through exploitation at the expense of other human beings, your wealth is death.
We must redefine wealth.
Can we embody wealth without exploitation and slavery?
Can we embody wealth without gatekeeping and closing others out?
None of us are islands unto ourselves. All the wealth you have is given because of how the collective supported you.
We are individual and collective. We are both/and.
Mediate on every person, tree, animal, and reason you are who you have become.
We are inseparable from each other.
All wealth must be held with sacred gratitude and deep recognition of the bodies who contributed to it's manifestation. When you embody this collective body-respect, your ambition and extraction of resources may be challenged.
This is how you co-create with your body and the collective body through embodiment practice.
The last moments of my practice...I turn on the Tribal Drum Music once more before I leave the room.
I stand in front of the mirror and feel the heavy heart of Hannah. I struggle to accept her. It's a big struggle.
I dance.
Watch my hips move in the mirror. My shoulders loosen grip arms falling to my side. Throat open, face relax. Whole body movement. Sway dance jump free. Hannah is still here, but suddenly I see "wealthy woman"
For me, "wealthy woman" waits for the $50,000 check and dreams of the silver black stone necklace in the art gallery and the big tropical pattern flowing dress that is $200+ online, but she doesn't need those things to feel wealthy. This dance is her wealth.
This embodiment is her wealth embodied.
The Embodiment Practice to Try:
Turn on some Spotify Music that helps you go in deep.
Get extremely comfortable. Turn off all distractions. Find a peaceful location.
Set the intention for what you'd like to embody or manifest. All 15 minutes will be dedicated to this intention. The practice will be most effective over time. You are expanding your nervous system, holding space for deep wounds, shifting your procedural memory, and embodying a new identity. Shit's deep.
5 minutes: identify one block today. That voice that says you can't. Feel it in your body without AT ALL trying to fix it. Just let the feeling grow. As the feeling grows larger and larger, let your body form it's shape. Are your hands pushing out to say no? Does your body want to brace? Stomach tense? Any shape. Let your body take and release it.
5 minutes: Have the agency to step away from your blocks and notice how your desire is already showing up in your reality. Feel into the gratitude of what is already here and let that sensation grow and take shape in your body. Physically embody any shapes that come to you.
5 minutes: Receive your desire. Feel in your body the energy of receiving what it is you long for. Let it wash over you and allow that feeling to rise in your body, taking any shapes that may come to you. If resistance or blocks simultaneously enter, allow them to come. Take their shape to. You accept all of it. You allow all of you. None of you is rejected in embodiment.