Thomas Hübl: Welcome to Point of Relation. My name is Thomas Hübl. This is my podcast and I’m happy to be here with Michelle Cassandra Johnson. So Michelle warm welcome to our podcast here.
Michelle Cassandra Johnson: Thank you. I’m so happy to be here with you.
Thomas: Yeah, you were also part of our Summit this year. Thank you for that. And you made a great contribution. So lovely. And I think we have many things in common obviously, that we are passionate about and that we will unpack that. But as I’ve heard from you, you are a beekeeper and though that immediately caught my attention, so maybe tell us a little bit about that because that sounds fascinating.
Michelle: Yeah, so I’m really glad that we’re starting with this because I’m in North Carolina and the weather is starting to, the mornings are colder and the bees are preparing for winter and there’s less light as well. So it’s darker for them. They have less time to forage and when it gets colder and in the winter, the bees cluster together to stay warm and if it gets above about 50 degrees, they’ll go out for cleansing flights. But it takes energy to break the cluster and then recreate the cluster. And so I’m thinking about the bees, I’m about to winterize their hives to make it so that it’s a little easier and they don’t have to expend as much energy trying to survive the winter. I’ve had bees for five years and I have three hives right now. And they came to me before I’d ever taken a beekeeping class.
They came to me through a dream and then I ordered all these things to get bees and wasn’t exactly sure why, but later I learned that bees are Psychopomps, which means they work between realms. And my mother was sick at the time when the bees came to me is what I should say. And so the thought was that they were showing up to help her transition. She didn’t, she’s still here in physical form, but we thought she was going to. So that’s how they came to me. And as I’m thinking about this winter, I’ve gotten many hives through winter and some haven’t survived winter because of climate chaos and untenable conditions and the ways we’re asking the ecosystem to adapt in ways that are just not reasonable, they can’t adapt fast enough. I’m thinking about the time on the planet and this, yes, the cycle and season of winter and darkness and also what it might mean to weather the winter given the cultural context, the political context, the ground feels like it’s shifting in ways they don’t necessarily feel new.
And there’s something different about this time, and maybe it’s the pace at which things are happening and the information and how I’m receiving information about the ground and the way it’s shifting. And so I’ve been sitting with the bees and thinking about what they do to survive winter and what we can learn from them about weathering winter and even conditions that are really difficult to weather and the lessons they teach us about collective care because bees are super organisms. So an individual bee doesn’t think of themselves as an individual bee. They think of themselves as an extension of the hive. And often I wonder what it would be like if humans thought in the same way and operated from this place of I am an extension of you, I’m an extension of all time and space and everything that has been, I’m an extension of the human and more than human world. So that’s a little about the bees and also an offering about who I am and how I show up in the world and what I believe and strive for.
Thomas: Wow, that’s beautiful. There are so many questions that come up in me when I listen to you. One is you said before that when peace go through the winter and then with climate change, their regular processes being disturbed, can you share a little bit more how it’s being disturbed?
Michelle: Yeah, so I actually have a story of two hives that didn’t make it through winter two winters ago because it got down to seven degrees in, I’m in the middle of the state in the triad in North Carolina, and we don’t have seven degree weather in the winter. That is, it was unseasonably cold, there was an arctic front moving through and we did everything that one does. We wrapped the hives, we protected them as much as we could and they couldn’t keep up. So they couldn’t do what they normally do, which is fan their wings to stay warm and generate heat. It wasn’t enough to match seven degree weather, which in this region they’re not used to experiencing. And so both hives died and the way I knew they had transitioned was I had a dream about them and then went out to the hives. That’s how my bees let me know something’s wrong.
It’s through dreams or to check the hives to make sure everything’s okay. And I just knew they weren’t alive anymore and that was true. And so I’m not sure we, and I’m saying we and including myself, I’m not sure I think about all of the actions that I take every day and how they’re contributing to climate chaos. While I feel heartbroken by climate chaos, there are many things I do in ways. I participate in systems that contribute to climate chaos and disrupt the bees and the larger ecosystem and ecologies. And I wonder what it would be like if humans thought about the actions we take daily that are disrupting the balance of the ecosystem, which we know that the ecosystem wants to be in balance and that’s what it’s striving for. So the bees, were doing what they normally do fanning their wings, but it wasn’t enough to meet the changes that we have contributed to as we think about the climate.
And so they couldn’t make it through winter. So that’s an example of disruption in that way. There are other chemicals that contribute to colony collapse and how people keep bees too. I am a much more of a natural beekeeper. I’m not a commercial beekeeper. It’s not how I make my living, right. I’m relational with them. I feel like they’re part of me and I’m part of them and I want to be a student of them and not extract from them. So I also feel like that’s a way to actually disrupt the chaos that’s happening on the planet to figure out how can we be relational, which they’ve taught me a lot about.
Thomas: Yeah, that’s beautiful. And I love how you make the connection to a certain behavior that you learn from the bees and how we look at climate and how we look, what we do and how we are part of a collective. And what’s that awareness. So maybe you can tell me a little bit what are the things you learned from the bees as a collective being about our collective as humans or our collective as biosphere? We could also say where is the distinction? And so maybe you can share a little bit because you’re, and then we will transition also to collective healing and to healing in general. But what are the principles that you see when you observe bees that you think are important for your understanding of collective health, for example?
Michelle: Yeah, a few things come to heart in response to your question. And one is that bees attuned to one another and the environment around them. So they do this through sound vibration, movement, dancing, even to share where resources are or orient to their hives. And they’re not only attuned to the conditions present in their physical hive, their home, they’re present to the conditions outside of the hive because they’re forging in the environment outside of the hive and bringing resources back. And there’s a higher intelligence. They embody, I believe a higher intelligence, a higher understanding because they’re in relationship with the sun, the rain, the trees. They collect tree resin to create a substance called propolis to protect their hives. So they’re working with the environment around them in a way that I think is not unfamiliar. As I think about lineage, it’s not unfamiliar to my lineage, but as I think about technology and the world, and as I mentioned the pace at which things are moving and how I’m receiving information, those things disrupt my ability to attune to my environment and my internal environment, my nervous system and other people and the more than human world.
And so I think I’ve learned a lot about just from observing them, how they’re in constant communication regulating the balance of their hive, not separate from what is happening outside of their home, their hive.
That’s like one lesson. And the other I mentioned is that, so this idea that we’re an extension of one another, which they emulate and illustrate to us all of the time. And one way to think about this is that most times honeybees, their life cycle is about six to eight weeks unless they’re winter bees. Winter bees live longer so they can get the hive through winter and foraging is the final stage of their lifecycle and they’re foraging for nectar and water and tree resin and pollen and the foragers may never see the benefit of those resources they are gathering, but they gather them anyway for the future. I love this lesson. What does it mean to engage in practice and work for a future that I may not see It just that is such a profound lesson from them. And finally, and there are many, but finally what I’ll share is that everything they create is medicinal. So honeycomb, propolis, the nectar that they transform and alchemize into honey, even be venom, which I don’t collect, be venom or use that in some way, although some people do that. I don’t take that resource from the bees, but everything about them is medicine. And I love to think about what is my medicine? What is your medicine, what is our medicine? What is our offering? So those are a few lessons.
Thomas: Amazing. First of all, I love to listen to you and to feel your passion and your care and your love. It’s beautiful to listen to you and I can feel how you’re in it. You’re really in it and it’s lovely that you transmitted. So that’s beautiful. And I think you said again so many things that, but let’s focus on one thing that you said is when you see that things are happening too fast, you said it two or three times that the speed of life is too fast and adaptation is not easily possible. Maybe you can speak a little bit to when we translate this to what we see right now in the world. So what do you see are effects of too fastness in our world and what can we pay attention to or do to work with that consciously versus being unconsciously enrolled in too fast?
Michelle: Yeah, yeah. Thank you for the question. I have said it a few times, so it must be present, right? Really present for me. And I’ve thought about it before and I think it is mid to late November right now on the heels of an election in the us. And I feel like I’m more present to it now because every day I feel like the chaos I am responding to as I work with people and hold space for healing and the chaos that I just am responding to internally, that it feels more intense. And it’s not that it’s new. The patterns that are showing up that we might be responding to now don’t feel new to me. And as I mentioned, there’s just an intensity about them and the fast pace feels connected to, in my experience, how systems like capitalism want me to be distracted and consuming so I’m not attuned to what’s actually happening. If I actually felt into, when I go outside and sit with my bees or the trees or the ravine that’s in my backyard or feel my feet on the earth, there is a natural pause in slowing down and connection that happens
When I am consuming in a way that’s very transactional and not relational. I’m distracted from the way I’m connected to all things and I can look on my phone right now and receive updates about almost anything. And I remember a time when I didn’t have a cell phone and I didn’t have a computer and I didn’t have an email.
Thomas: Me too. Exactly.
Michelle: People somehow communicated with each other and we showed up and met each other and had conversations and had circles and did rituals with one another. And we’re in ceremony. And I know those things are still happening now, and there’s so much in the way that in my experience, culture works to pull me away from my center and really the center. And what I mean is the way we are interconnected when I say that in this moment, and I love technology and also it feels like I can be distracted 24 hours a day if I wish.
And I have to work consciously to remember that I belong to this earth and that I belong to others and everything that has been. And that for me only comes through a pause and a slowing down and a turning away from everything meant to distract me from the truth of who I am, which is in deep relationship with all things. So it’s chaos and it’s the fast pace and it’s distraction. And I think the chaos and trauma, collective trauma persist because of our distraction and the inability to have space to heal, which can come through remembering our connection to all things. And in many other ways too. I’m not suggesting that’s the only way, and yet that feels like a central component to our healing. So that’s a little about this moment. And the swirling people have been using that word a lot with me lately.
I’ve held a lot of spaces for grief in the last two weeks. I do it a lot anyway, but in the last two weeks, people’ve invited me to hold a lot of spaces for grief and people keep saying things are swirling, and I’m like, yeah, there’s an energy swirling that we can’t catch up to, right? It’s like it’s caught us and what happens when we’re hooked or caught up in things? In my experience, the outcome usually is not good of being wrapped up in the swirl that feels like it’s moving so fast that we can’t catch our breath.
Thomas: Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. And it’s also lovely. I want to point out one thing because it sounds simple, but I don’t think it’s that simple, is when I listened to you before you spoke about the pace of life and then said, when I slow down and the transmission of your nervous system slowed down, so
Your words and the slowing down in your nervous system were coherent. So I can feel the slowing down that you speak about, and I think that’s a very important mechanism. That’s why I’m underscoring it a bit because I think that if we can regulate our nervous system and slow down when we need and want to slow down and then transmit this into the space that we are in, then it affects people either your transmission affected, I could feel your slowing down. So it had an effect in my nervous system and I think that that’s an important, it looks like something small, but it’s actually something big that in our collective. And then I’m curious, when you spoke about the collective trauma, we don’t have the spaces or the circumstances to heal. Can you speak a bit about what do we need for us as communities or collectives to heal and what do we not have and maybe why we don’t have what we don’t have for it because we should be our own medicine, but often we are not. So we can look at it, why is the medicine not here or what is the medicine that we need and how can we create it together? So maybe you can speak to that a bit.
Michelle: Yeah, I want to uplift what you said about what you noticed that often I say it seems subtle, but it’s not right. So that what you noticed about, you said it sounds small, it’s not small, right? Because there’s an attunement happening between us and you felt it and your nervous system responded to it. So I just want to uplift that. And I also want to name, I mean, I’m in circles multiple times a day where we are centering our healing and medicine, so I want to name it is happening, we know this, we create these kind of spaces, many people do. And I name it and want to just start with the here because when I forget that it’s happening, I’m wrapped up in that swirl that I mentioned. So I want to name that people are in so many ways resisting systems and cultural norms and dominance and hierarchies through making space to be in ritual and ceremony with one another and to ask people, how is your heart?
How are you in this moment? What do you need? What can I offer? What do I need that is happening? And I think has always happened, I mean haven’t always been here, I’m about to be 50, but I’ve been here for a little while and I have some ancestral knowledge, I think not new for us to operate in this way. And I do think there are things in the way. I think that I have a background as a clinical social worker, and so worked in a mental health system that pathologized people. I love social workers, I love being a social worker. And yet the system I was in and the way I had to diagnose people and to get paid from insurance and just all of the interactions, it was based on pathology. Instead of looking at the system of mental health and saying, what is the pathology present in this system that is causing us to be unwell or not have access truly to what we need to heal?
And that’s just one example. So I wonder what would happen if we looked at not just within mental health, but other systems, larger systems that people make up and enact. What is the pathology present that is making us sick or creating obstacles to our healing? That’s one thought. And I also notice in the spaces I hold people, often people it just happened yesterday, think what they’re doing as what they’re offering as a contribution to collective liberation and healing isn’t enough. And so I think there is a narrative about a lack of enoughness which can inhibit people from engaging their medicine for their own healing and the healing of the collective. And I’m not saying that originates from us. I mean, I think there are messages that many humans receive about not being enough, right? From family, from systems, from interpersonal interactions they have from ancestral trauma that’s moving through them.
And that can get in the way of, in my experience, of us thinking about, oh, I have what I need to heal and what would happen if I believed that and engaged it in some way in community with others, which is the third thing I’ll name is a lot of people I’ve noticed over the past couple of weeks are talking about leaning into community. And this happened during Covid where people talked more about mutual aid even though it was not a new way of being. Mutual aid had been around for a very long time and yet more people, there was a collective consciousness around mutual aid because of a global pandemic we were living through and trying to survive. And the flavor of what’s happening now of lean into community feels connected to that for me. And I think it’s true that I am never not in communion with the planet, my ancestors, humans the more than human world.
So even when I am engaged in practices that feel like they’re solo practices, they’re not, there’s something else supporting me. And I invite people to remember that and also to engage and be in community with one another, working with rituals and in ceremony and showing up authentically as we are and being received by one another. That feels like part of the healing too and trusting that we can, I do think we have what we need to heal the collective if we all remember that we have medicine in the way we’re talking about and have a space for that medicine to be received.
Thomas: Yeah, beautiful. Yeah. Again, so many different routes I know to go from here and yeah, I want to just pick scarcity for a moment, like the feeling of not enough. And I think this is very interesting to me that because what I also experience in our communities and our spaces that we open up that at the moment we feel more seen this scarcity or the lack of not having been seen or the collective trauma that is like a vacuum. It needs support, it needs safety, it needs love, it needs protection. It needs something that wasn’t there maybe for hundreds of years. And so when it opens up, it’s is like all the air of the room wants to go into this space. And I think that’s a very important point, how we honor that there is a lack and at the same time not be sucked into the vortex because then all around the world there is a lack of something because trauma creates a lack.
It’s like a lack of something. So I want to highlight what you said, how spaces around healing or collective healing learn how to work with that lack in a way, in a good way. And you spoke about your version, but I think that’s an important point that sometimes then if we are not aware of it and we start to struggle with it, and if you’re aware of it, so we can navigate through it and honor that there is a leg and not be sucked into it and not collectively. So I think that’s important. And if you want to say anything about this sense of, because trauma happens often because there is a lack of safety, there’s a lack of protection, there’s a lack of love, there’s a lack of relationality, there’s when it happens usually is an expression of that. And yeah, maybe you have any thoughts on that?
Michelle: Yeah, I appreciate you highlighting it and naming how it shows up and can take over a process that really is focused on our healing. And what is coming to me is often I think about the void, the mystery that which I cannot see but can feel and sense. I may not be able to touch it. I also think about spirit and spirit forward work. And so I wonder about in the spaces you’re talking about what you named is true, that lack is connected to trauma and people are reeling from that in some way and can be consumed by that, which gets in the way of healing. I mean, I’ve seen it time and time again, and it’s exactly what I said when I said I’m never not in communion with the mystery, whatever that is, it makes me wonder about in these communities and circles what it means to lean into what we don’t know or we can’t remember, not yet or we can’t see it.
There’s such a fixation on the tangible I feel and results and I need to hold this. And as I age, I’ve fallen in love with the mystery. I’m like, yeah, the darkness, the void, the mystery, the stars, the larger cosmos that holds me spirit, the things that I know are around me, and I trust that there is some unfolding I’m not in charge of and I’m part of. And I wonder if that in some way would be medicinal and supportive for this lack that shows up. And it’s difficult. I talk about the mystery all the time and people are like, what? I’m like, there’s this other force that’s happening and unfolding and we are part of it and we don’t have to know everything. I don’t feel like I have to know everything about it. I just have to know it’s there.
Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think it’s a beautiful response because the more we are connected to that mystery or that unfolding, that gives us a great resource to be with the pain and all the aspects of trauma. Definitely. Yeah. That’s beautiful. So what are the main principles that you think through your work you distilled? So if you saw many people, if you did many circles, if you did many hold many spaces, if you were to describe some of the principles that you distilled over the time over the course of your work so far, what are there certain principles that you can name that seem to work?
Michelle: Yeah, I’m thinking about principles and practices and one is people often, and my middle name is Cassandra. And you might know the myth of Cassandra, you may not. In Greek mythology, she was a prophetess. She could see the future. People didn’t believe her or they didn’t really want to hear her. I’m not sure I wasn’t there. But my middle name feels very true to form in that I feel like I’m a truth teller and that is what people have said to me. And what this looks like as a principal or practice in a space is that I cannot move forward unless I engage in some excavation process to understand how I came into the particular moment I’m in or how we came into the space we’re in. I don’t know how we can move forward without understanding how we came to be where we are.
And when we try to move forward without that excavation process, more trauma happens, more harm happens. I mean, I don’t know that will probably land with people. That’s what’s happening. And so that feels like just a principle and practices, I’ve built practices around that excavation process. So I’m not trying to retraumatize people. I want us though to be able to talk about what is really happening here in the relative plane, the relative truth, what is happening as we understand it, and why do we think it’s happening? How have we been shaped? This is another piece of my work shaped and conditioned to be in that swirl that we’ve been talking about or that vortex or be wrapped up in or hooked by narratives and systems and how do we begin to unlearn, which is another practice, the unlearning through consciousness raising with one another. There’s so much I don’t know. And I am a humble student and humble facilitator and space holder. And so as I name these things, it’s not as if I’ve arrived. I’m still on the path and I’m learning, which feels like another principle and practice to be humble and curious and open. It also feels connected mystery in the way that I spoke about it. And another principle is, I said it earlier, I believe we have what we need to heal.
And I am wedded to that belief. I mean, I can feel it in my body. I’m unwilling to give that up. I think we have what we need. And so part of what we practice is remembering that we have what we need. We do this through circle and song and speaking the truth and silence and witnessing one another and contemplative practices and engaging with the more than human world. And another one that’s coming to me is about grief. I do a lot of work around grief and in the excavation process, often what arises trauma and grief or when people realize the world is not what they thought it was, right? Our paradigm has shifted and the ground has shifted underneath us. And I don’t think we can bypass grief. And so a principle is to make space for grief and understand how my grief is in connection to your grief, that it’s not happening in this isolated way. And so what does it mean to talk about it through this frame of collective grief and collective trauma and what’s happening to us? And then what is our medicine and the ways we’ve talked about because we have what we need to heal this collectively. So there’s more, but those are a few of the principles and practices.
Thomas: Amazing. Yeah, it is like you downloaded very precisely different principles. Lovely. It is very good. Yeah, I resonate a lot with everything you just said. I think these are all great principles that feel very right when I listen to them in relationship to trauma, to integration to wholeness. And so they’re very beautiful. And now you spoke about grief before. You said that in the last two weeks you were doing a lot of grief circles, so maybe you can speak a little bit, what’s the need right now in this moment that the political landscape has shifted? And I know you’re also in North Carolina, so maybe also what happened through the hurricane. I dunno if you have been directly affected by it, but most probably your environment has. So maybe you can speak a little bit what happens right now for you in your work. What are the needs that are showing up? How can we tend to these needs? Just what’s your experience?
Michelle: Yeah, yeah. So as I mentioned, I’m in the middle of the state. I’m about an hour and a half to two hours from the areas that were most affected by Hurricane Helene. And I’ve been to both Boone and Asheville since the hurricane and been involved with some groups doing work on the front lines with people and also thinking about what support can we offer to folks. And your question is making me think about recovery and how long it takes to recover from the hurricane in this political moment. We’re in the cultural context and sometimes I’m going to talk about the hurricane that people are rebuilding people’s homes and their spaces and businesses are trying to rebuild and people are trying to ensure that folks have water and shelter and food, and there’s that recovery basic needs. And then there’s the trauma of what it means to live through a disaster that was so unusual to hit Western North Carolina and for water to submerge areas of cities in this way.
It’s almost unbelievable that, I mean, it happened, but it feels like this happened in western North Carolina. This is very unusual for water to sit the river in Asheville. The water stayed for a while, and I’m thinking about that layer of recovery and what will be required after people’s basic needs are met. The next time there’s a threat of a storm or it rains, right? Their relationship with water has shifted, right? Or not having clean water, having to boil water. I mean, as I think about it energetically and spiritually and on a soul level, I am attuned to recovery and how we actually need to think about recovery beyond basic needs. And I think that’s relevant to this political moment too. We know folks who have been marginalized are going to experience more marginalization. We’ve been told that actually that’s kind of the reality. It’s not a secret.
And we also know people are reeling in the spaces I’m in. Some people are saying, how did this happen? And other people are saying, I feel betrayed. That’s come up more than once. And I mean multiple times. And people really just unsure their nervous systems are, they’re just unsure of where the ground is. And I’m wondering about in this moment, what does recovery look like so that folks can feel integrated enough to feel their feet on the ground? And then what’s the next layer of recovery? Because the unfolding will continue to happen and it’s not a one-time event. And so I’m thinking about ways that my ancestors survived times like these and that they set up to communicate, to travel at night in the dark, safe houses, all of the things we might need to actually create for people to be safe. And I’m thinking about the strategy around that as I’m holding what I said earlier about we have what we need and so how will I contribute in this moment to the healing coming up in this spaces, the betrayal, the where do we go from here? And I just always, I remind people this isn’t new. That flavor may feel new, I’m not sure, but the patterns that led to this moment have been present for a long time. Exactly. And so how do we disrupt these patterns on a larger scale and name them for what they are, I would say.
Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. What comes up in me when I listen to you two streams, one is what you just said at the end is this is not new. And we see this same as we individuals go through patterns in our life. And these patterns seem to run us sometimes more than we are aware of where those patterns originate unless we do this deep work that’s required. I don’t think we have by far any effective mechanism to deal with a collective architecture like kind of a collective healthcare system for trauma that is not one-on-one trauma relief work that is really a statewide institutionalized space that we can integrate it and stop repeating the past. So I think you’re absolutely right, and as long as we don’t have that, but we know we need it, and if we don’t do it, it’s not responsible. So how can we all work together that we stop this cycle really?
But for this, we need to go deep into the collective wound to change something that it can literally change also in the So-called outer World. And the other thing that I came up in when I listened to you was what are ways? Because you are very right with what you said. I mean, there is an unfolding and there is the ecosystem is not healthy. And so when the ecosystem is not healthy, what kind of ecosystems within that ecosystem do we need to create that help us to transform that insecurity, the fear, whatever comes up and stabilize like create ecosystems that counter the toxicity in the system?
And I think that’s very interesting. The spaces or the circles that you do are coherence building spaces that help people to feel, oh wow, here’s a place I can relax into when I can relax, I can digest and I can become part of something new, otherwise I stay in the old. And so how do we create that on a larger scale so that it begins like this, some bacteria that dissolve the toxicity in water so that the water becomes more healthy. And I think this is what I think we need that in the society, a similar process. And so I’m wondering what you feel or think when I say these things, what comes up in you?
Michelle: I love everything you just said, and it’s such a curious question like this. And pondering an example of there are examples in the more than human world of transmutation, they’re all around us and we can do that as well. And that’s what I feel like that’s the word that came up as you were talking about the bacteria and water and clearing that can happen to remove the toxicity. And so what is the form that can take as we think about humanity and our role? And I am also thinking about, I know we talked about the bees, and one thing my mother always says to me is, Michelle, the bees have been around for millions of years.
Sometimes I forget, and I only say that to name, that they have adapted, even if we’re asking them to adapt to untenable circumstances at this point in time, they have adapted time and time again. They actually, honeybees come from, they came from a solitary bee and then all of a sudden needed to be in community with one another. And that’s how they function and don’t at this point know another way to function. And so I just name that for us and people listening to think about longevity and lessons that we can gather from the more than human world. Because what I said earlier is it is constantly trying to move into balance as we are destabilizing it in the ways that you named. And so even inviting people to think about that, what does it look like to remove toxicity and what’s required? What do I need to do to create conditions for that?
Even asking that question feels like an antidote and a disruption. And the other thing that came to me is that when you were sharing, I was thinking about, I listen to Michael Mead’s podcast a lot and read his work, and there’s a line in one of his books about as we age, we either become more contracted or more expansive. And I know other people have talked about this. And when you were talking, it made me think about that if we don’t heal this trauma and the ways we’ve been talking about, it is difficult to become more expansive and remember all of the things we’ve named. And in fact, given the context, a lot of people, if they’re moving from their fear and trauma, which is a natural response to what is happening, become rigid and contracted instead of more expansive. And there’s a softening as I’m moving my arms back and forth, a softening for me when I open and become more expansive and a narrowing that happens when I’m more contracted. And so for me, there’s something in there about what’s required for us to become more expansive and what does softening look like and how a softening an antidote to the toxicity that is present, which by design is trying to make me more narrow through distraction, through consumerism, through whatever it is, overwhelm to be rigid and contracted and afraid, versus leaning in thinking about my medicine and also surrendering to the great mystery of it all, doing both at the same time.
Thomas: Yeah, that’s very beautiful. I love this. Also, like you said, so many beautiful things. Now that one was the solitary bee came together to form a hive because that was required. And there is kind of a collective longevity. And I love this term because that’s what we need. We need collective longevity. It’s not anymore in this hyper individualized psyche. And sometimes even psychotherapy might strengthen it that yes, we need that, but we need collective spaces that help us to open up to that we function that we are. And that reminds us also because what you said, when we become less contracted as a collective, we are actually opening up much more to and for the future generations, new possibilities.
So the future generations are actually being born into a world with more possibility because trauma collapses possibilities and healing opens them up again. And so this is beautiful, but this reminds me, and then it brings me to maybe the last question, because I see the time, you said before, the bee doesn’t see often the effect of the work. So how do we live a life that opens something up in this lifetime for the next generations, no matter if we see it or not, because we are in tune with that potential future that maybe next generations represent, but also spirit represents for us. And so I’m curious, I think you’re also writing a book about bees, and maybe you can tell us a little bit about what excites you about your book, and then maybe we can round up our conversation here, which is beautiful. I really enjoy the resonance with you as we surf along.
Michelle: Yeah, I know. I love this kind of flow with one another and to see what emerges in it. And I also love the teaching about the first time I heard the teaching was from the Bhagavan Gita about no effort is wasted, wasted, no gain ever reversed. Even a little of this practice will shelter you from sorrow. And the practice that was being talked about was dharma duty, our work, our purpose, and other teachings in the Bhagavan Gita are connected to that verse around effort anyway, because you may not see the fruits of your labor. And what does it mean to effort when we may not see the fruits of our labor? And I think about this a lot because I actually think I see the fruits of my labor a fair amount reflected back to me if I pay attention. I think this conversation is part of, it’s like how do we define fruits of our labor? I would ask people to redefine that for themselves and see how their medicine is rippling out and reflected back.
Thomas: Exactly. Exactly.
Michelle: Probably in many ways. And to also be willing to effort because we may not see the harvest, the big harvest that we want to see in our lifetimes
For future generations. So there’s that. And the book that I have coming out in May of 2025, it’s called The Wisdom of the Hive. I have co-written it with my best friend who, Amy is her name, and she’s a beekeeper. And it has been beautiful to co-write this book with her. And it explores so much of what we’ve talked about and more. It is really about the lessons we can learn from the hive for wellbeing and not just for humans, but the more than human world. And there are practices and rituals and poems in it, and an exploration of polarities, and certainly information about how the hive functions and what we can learn from that. And it’s really a call for us to do what I said earlier, what does it mean to think of ourselves as a super organism and as part of a larger hive?
Thomas: Beautiful. Michelle, this was such a lovely ride together, and there are so much more. Of course, there were so many other routes that we couldn’t take because of the time. But if there’s anything you want to leave our listeners with that you think we didn’t touch, please go ahead and then we will close our conversation.
Michelle: I have a lot of gratitude for you and for this process and the unfolding of the journey short, and it felt like a shaman journey to me that we went on and portals, and I love that because it feels like a dance with the great mystery. It feels like that. And so I just want to offer gratitude for you and your work and your practice and your presence and your listening, and your sharing and sharing being in this dance with me today in this conversation. Thank you.
Thomas: Yeah, it was a pleasure for me and many blessings for your work. I hope that everything unfolds beautifully for you, and thank you for being here.
Michelle: Thanks.
