Riding the Wind horse

Podcast Transcript:

Welcome to the Pattern Breaking Podcast.

I have been revisiting old Disney movies and watching some of the new ones for the very first time. My daughter is two and a half years old, and we’re not a screen-free family. We are a family that stands for having a healthy relationship with screens because our modern life incorporates them.

So for me, it feels less aligned to ban screens entirely from my daughter’s life and instead to integrate them in a healthy way. And so as I navigate that, one of the things that comes up is there’s just so much, I don’t know, flashy garbage for children in terms of visual entertainment, videos, et cetera.

And much as the Disney movies are wrought with, I don’t know, imperfections, especially when it comes to modern standards of women’s roles and relationships and all these things, much as that leaves something to be desired in a lot of the Disney movies, I have wanted to revisit them because they are beautiful. They’re works of art. The music and the visuals are beautiful and transporting.

Honestly, when it comes to entertainment for children, I can’t think of anything much better to be beautiful, high quality entertainment. So I’m revisiting all these Disney movies, and one of the things that I noticed is all of the “follow your heart, follow your dreams” messaging, and how I realized revisiting all of this, how I always took that stuff seriously.

I have a feeling that the majority of adults, and maybe even children, listen to those messages and don’t really think anything of it, don’t really internalize it, don’t really take it literally, because, you know, right alongside of this “follow your heart” and “follow your dreams” messaging is all kinds of magic and things that aren’t real.

I just am reflecting on the fact that even as a child, I took those messages to heart, and it really has influenced me. It has really shaped the way that I guide myself through life and shaped the way that I view the world and shaped my values in a fundamental way.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve done, and you know it from listening to this podcast, I have always gone towards the things that I’m feeling called to. I’ve always, even when they didn’t make sense, even when they were scary and took me to far off places and asked me to live on the fringes of the world, I’ve done it.

And what’s wild is that even though I’ve done it, even though I’ve lived in the middle of nowhere Montana, moving there without knowing anybody, starting a farm without ever having run a farm before, even though I moved across the world to Italy and started a family there, not knowing how in the world I would ever make it work to, you know, continue to stay connected to my family at home in the United States, I’ve followed all of the trails that my heart has pulled me down. And yet, it’s not done.

I’m sitting here today feeling pulled towards new, different things that honestly scare me. And you would think that that feeling of self-trust and that feeling of knowing that you have to heed the call would stop me or prevent me from feeling fear in the face of what’s new and next.

But it doesn’t. That fear is still there.

So I’ll be completely honest. The thing I’m feeling called to do this year that brings me right up against my edges is writing a book, and actually writing multiple books.

I am ready to put my methods, my patternmaking methods, into a series of books where I teach what I’ve been teaching in the Confident Pattern Making and Grading course in book form.

And there’s so many things about that that scare me. It’s vulnerable to put my methodology out into the world for scrutiny. It’s vulnerable to put it out to the public for the cost of a textbook instead of having it safe at the cost of a full online course with me.

And yet, it feels like I don’t want this to be something where when I get to the end of my life, I realize that I didn’t do that. I haven’t written the book. I haven’t published my methods.

When I think about that, when I weigh the choice of doing it scared or getting to the end of my life and realizing that I haven’t done it, it becomes completely clear that that is what I’m meant to do.

I feel a bit like the universe has delivered this idea of the book being the next thing because it is exactly all the things I’ve been talking about on this podcast, about how honestly the book feels in this moment like an illogical move.

I don’t know that it would feel like that to you on the receiving end of this podcast today, but for me, it’s scary that I have gotten used to selling my, like, I’ve gotten used to my main work in the world being selling an online course that generates a healthy amount of income for me. And the idea of pulling focus, however much that’s going to be, away from my course and putting it into a book, each unit of which will make me an extremely small amount of money compared to what I make when I sell spots in my patternmaking school, it feels like an illogical move.

And yet I can feel my heart calling me to it.

And the timing of this isn’t perfect, right? Life has been lifing big time for a while now. I feel like it really kicked off a year ago, just over a year ago, when our dog died suddenly and unexpectedly. And when something like that happens and the earth just shifts under your feet, everything about your day-to-day life suddenly feels different, feels heavier, feels sadder.

I can’t deny the effect that grief has on your life. And I’ve continued, right? I’ve continued to show up and been equal parts in absolute joy over motherhood and having this gorgeous, hilarious, fun little girl that I get to spend time with every single day, that I get to watch grow, and also experiencing tremendous loss of part of our family, our dog that was so important to us.

And then there’s been other kinds of loss in this too. I mentioned on the first episode of this podcast that my mom has had a series of strokes and lost a lot of function, and she’s still here with us, but I’ve lost a lot of my mom.

Much as it’s a dream come true to have part of my life here in Ohio with my family and part of my life in Italy with my husband’s family, that has created a real complexity and challenge where we can’t be in both places at once. And so one side of the family is always distant as a result.

And when both of our parents, my husband’s parents and my parents, are aging and getting sick and dealing with the consequences of aging, it is a really challenging thing to navigate so that they feel loved, everyone feels connected despite the distance and despite our choice to spend time in one place or the other.

And as I navigate all of that, I’m holding a real business these days where my business is no longer just me. I sign someone to join my course, I have real overhead now in terms of paying my two co-teachers.

And so suddenly my business has high expenses, which means that income isn’t just nice to have, it’s necessary.

I’ve been feeling like I’ve been living this metaphor for the last six months or a year that I’m like some kind of extremely skilled fighter pilot, that I’ve got it all under control, that I am in this fast-moving plane and there are obstacles around me, and that I can just pull off one impossible move after another, but that I’m completely in control.

And you know, it’s like Tom Cruise in Maverick, where you’re just going so fast that your brain isn’t even really functioning anymore, like from the g-forces or whatever, and you’re rapidly approaching a mountain, right? Rapidly approaching a mountain. It looks like you’re going to collide into it, but at the very last moment, you pull off the impossible move and shoot up into the sky and avoid the complete destruction.

I’ve been navigating a lot of real challenging things, a lot of real disruptive things in my life while carrying a business that’s more complex and more demanding of me than ever, and I’ve been feeling like this cool, under-control kind of feeling about it.

Until now. Until now, where it’s starting to feel like I’m not in control, but like I’m being taken for a ride.

And what’s crazy is how this metaphor of feeling like I’m being taken for a ride has just shown up so many times in the last 24 hours.

So what I was working with, what I’m trying to tease apart here, is why that fighter pilot, “I’ve got things under control, I’m cool-headed and capable of pulling off impossible moves,” why that is no longer the energy, the metaphor, with which I want to approach my life.

The reason is because I feel, yes, it’s incredible. Yes, I can do that. Yes, I can pull off the impossible moves. Yes, I can trust myself to land the plane, so to speak, in the perfect moment.

But I’m feeling very tired of pulling off stunts, and I want more of a trust fall, more of a sense of, I want to invite something. I want to invite new things into my life. It’s starting to feel like I’m in a pattern and in a plateau where my patternmaking school has become very predictable, has become very steady, has become very reliable.

And I’m able to pull it off. I’m able to open the doors to the course, get people in, and close the doors. And I’m able to do that within this stunt-like move. I’m able to do that while life is lifing, and while I’m grieving, and while I’m holding the duality of how gorgeous and beautiful my life is right alongside of how tragically beautiful it is.

I’m able to do that all from this very “I can pull it off, I’ve got this under control” kind of energy.

But after I closed the doors on this most recent launch, I felt myself surrendering to what’s next. I could feel that there was something coming next.

So it’s that. It’s that I want to talk about that energy of not grasping at control, not pulling on the, I don’t even know what it’s called, the steering wheel of the plane, like not holding the controls of the plane, but letting things unfold truly for the first time in a long time.

So I had this conversation this week with my mentor in her mastermind space. So this is my mentor, Jaclyn Shaw.

And what came up is it can feel like life can feel like you’re riding a mechanical bull, right? Like life is this bucking wild thing, and I just can’t help but feel like there’s something about the mechanical bull metaphor that feels especially apt now in the age of AI and how that is something that’s inevitably going to be influencing our lives, our day-to-day lives, and how inevitably that mechanical robot bucking and tossing is going to be— it just feels like the perfect metaphor, right? This mechanical robot animal. This unpredictable wild moving thing that we are meant to ride into the future.

And what came up on the call that just made this, that I wanted to talk about here, that is just hilarious but so true, is how when you’re riding a mechanical bull, you can’t get rigid. You get thrown right off.

When you’re riding the mechanical bull, the only way to stay on is to hold on, but to flow with it. To turn into the bull-riding noodle where your whole body sways and wiggles and waves with this bucking, wild, twisting mechanical animal.

So this metaphor feels so real to me right now because it’s like I’ve been treating it like life is this steady but fast-moving plane that I’m in complete control of. And what that did was it gave me a life that was very steady, with occasional peaks of activity.

But instead, when I really think about relaxing into what’s coming next and really listening to what I’m being called to do next, it is far more unpredictable than that. It’s far more like the mechanical bull, where I have to expect the unexpected. I have to flow with it. I have to hold on, and I have to ride what’s coming.

And so this metaphor stuck with me, and then literally the next day I listened to an astrology forecast from my favorite astrologer. His name is S.J. Anderson.

And what do you know, he uses the bull metaphor in his astrology forecast as well.

The way that it came up for him is just about the intensity of the moment that we’re in right now.

So I’m listening to S.J. Anderson’s forecast and he brings in this metaphor of riding the bull, of grabbing the bull by its horns and letting it take you where you’re going to go, right? Like holding on but going with the flow.

And his take on this was less about being rigid, but more about grabbing it and getting on.

And the reason for that is that we are in this astrological moment where the energy is super focused in one area of our lives, in one area of the sky.

All of the traditional planets and Neptune, which is one of the more recently discovered planets, are all in, or will all be very soon, in the sign of Aries.

It’s very unusual for there to be that kind of concentration of the planets in one area of our lives. When I say “in one area of our lives,” each sign of the zodiac represents an area of our individual lives depending on our birth chart at the time that we were born, right?

So for all of us, no matter what area of our life it’s concentrated in, there is a strong focus of energy in our lives in a certain area of our lives, and it’s a wild, initiating energy because it’s in the sign of Aries, which is the first sign of the zodiac.

It is the fool stepping off the cliff. It is the new start. It is the naive beginner. It’s the wild go-forth pioneer that doesn’t really know what they’re fully getting themselves into.

So that’s the energy. It’s about new beginnings. It’s about grasping it, but it’s in a forceful way. It’s like we are being asked to grab on and go on something new in our lives right now.

And actually, I would love to know if that’s resonating for you. You could leave a comment on this episode in Spotify and let me know: what area of your life do you feel like there’s a strong focus in, and where do you feel like you’re being asked to grab the bull by the horns and go all in on something that you’ve never felt like going all in on before? I’d be so fascinated to know.

I listened to this podcast and I’m still kind of jet lagged. It’s only been a week that we’ve been back in this time zone and we kind of dove right in and my daughter’s been going to school, and even though I’ve been on a really good sleep schedule, I can definitely feel that my circadian rhythm is still a little bit off.

I’m finding that at like 6:30 p.m. it really feels like midnight, which is exactly what time it would be in Rome. And I’ve also started going to barre classes again here, so I’m getting a lot of physical activity too and doing a lot in my business and everything’s good, but I’m definitely feeling like my energy is lagging, especially in the evenings.

So last night I was feeling that. I was like, gosh, I really just need to rest right now. So I’m going to put on a Disney movie and Paloma and I can just watch a Disney movie for a little while while I rest.

So I put on Frozen because it’s Paloma’s favorite, and it played all the way through, and I didn’t get up to stop it, right? And it started playing after that. It queued up another movie and started playing Frozen 2, which I had never seen.

And honestly, I sat there and watched it even after Paloma fell asleep.

And I was completely floored, like I’m getting chills just thinking about it, by how bizarrely tied into what I’ve been speaking to this movie was.

So spoiler alert. If you would prefer to watch Frozen 2 without me first telling you the entire plot, please pause now, go watch Frozen 2, and then come back. But if you’re okay with me talking about the contents of the Frozen 2 movie without you having seen it first, or if you’ve already seen it, let’s proceed.

In Frozen 2, Elsa is back at home in Arendelle, right? The town that she grew up in, where her castle is, where she is queen. And she keeps hearing this voice calling to her.

Like a siren in the Greek myths. She’s like, “Is anybody else hearing this?” And it’s this voice that’s—

When she follows it, things don’t go smoothly. It takes her on a hell of a journey to the point where she is battling the elements. She’s battling the wind. She’s battling the water. She’s battling fire.

And it turns out that the journey that she’s being called on is about resolving unfinished business in her family lines and about discovering how she is the gift to the world, that she was brought to the world for the purpose of resolving this injustice that was done by her family in the past. That she was being called to her family’s homeland to resolve this. It’s wildly powerful.

And she realizes that she’s being called to this island where her ancestors once lived. The voice is continuing to call her there. And in order to go there, she has to cross the sea.

And as she starts to do that, the elements start to fight against her to stop her from doing this thing that she knows in her heart she’s being called to do, to the point where this wind horse appears and is doing everything it can to try to drown her in the sea.

It’s dragging her violently. I mean, it was kind of hard to watch, honestly. I was like, my gosh, if this was an action movie with a real actor in it, I don’t know that I would be able to watch this. She was being dragged through the sea by this mystical horse.

And then the horse was forcing her down into the water, pushing and pushing and pushing her down deep, deep, deep into the sea and holding her down to try to drown her.

It was like, wow, you know, such a powerful metaphor for the way that even though you’re being called towards a dream, even though you’re being called by something in your heart, it is not a promise that it’s going to go smoothly.

For her, it was turning into this death-defying journey.

And yet she turns it around. She uses her magical ice powers to create a harness, and she harnesses this horse that’s trying to drown her.

And she gets on its back and holds it by these reins that she’s just created out of ice. And she’s able to harness the horse, and just like this metaphor that keeps coming up for me this week, she rides this bucking bronco of an ice, ice wind horse, I don’t even know what it is exactly, this elemental horse, until she tames it, until it accepts her, until they kind of start to move as one.

And she harnesses that wild, uncontrollable energy that was even trying to stop her, even trying to put an end to her.

And what ends up happening is she rides that horse across the sea to the place where she was going.

And I kept having the word “wind horse” come to mind as I was watching this, and I was like, why do I know what a wind horse is? Why is “wind horse” a thing, a word that wants to come up in my mouth?

They weren’t saying “wind horse” in Frozen 2. She was referring to the horse as Gale, which I thought was playful, right? Because it’s like Gale being both a woman’s name and a word for the wind.

Afterwards, I was like, what is a wind horse? Why is the word “wind horse” on the tip of my tongue now, and what does that mean? Where does that come from?

So I did just a little bit of research, and it is so fascinating.

The wind horse, a Tibetan lungta, is a mythical creature in Tibetan culture and Buddhism, symbolizing the swift, uplifting energy of life force, fortune, and the human spirit.

The wind horse represents the connection between physical existence and spiritual awakening, frequently seen on Tibetan prayer flags.

The wind horse combines the speed of the wind with the strength of a horse to carry prayers from the earth to the heavens.

Lungta, energy in Tibetan, represents both the creature of the wind horse and one’s own energetic state. When one’s lungta is high, good opportunities abound, and when it is low, obstacles arise.

I can’t even believe this. I don’t know if the creators of Frozen 2 are just very well educated in Tibetan mythology, or if this is just one of those examples of the way that humans layer meaning and metaphor into everything that we do and it all seems to just come through our DNA or what.

But I am so blown away by the synchronicity here, about how just through this example of the concept of the wind horse, or the lungta Tibetan wind horse, and how it’s this beautiful, perfect metaphor for how the human spirit can fly like the wind or it can be heavy and feel held down.

This says, beyond a physical symbol, wind horse represents a state of being, relaxed but alert, often used in mindfulness practices to represent letting go of ego and tapping into energetic potential.

Right? It’s like the wind horse as a symbol in these practices. It’s almost like the mechanical bull. It’s like we are relaxed but alert. We are aware and we are holding on, but we are flowing with what’s coming. We are observant, but we are not rigid.

We are choosing to ride the energy in a high flowing state rather than a heavy, blocked state.

It’s like two sides of the same phenomenon.

If you’re rigid about it, you get bucked off. But if you flow with it, you harness the energy and you move with it.

It’s also incredible how it ties into this idea that the wind horse is the thing that carries the prayers.

The wind horse is both the thing that calls you and the thing that carries you to where you have to go.

Right? You put the prayer out into the universe. The prayer is the call to God. And the wind horse is the ride to realize that prayer.

Okay, I just found an article from the Shambhala Times called “Wind Horse, How to Harness the Energy of Life.” And here at the end of it, the author says, “When someone has wind horse, you can feel it when they enter the room.

“They project a quality of benevolence and upliftedness. Little upsets don’t drag them down, and they are available for the constantly changing dynamics of life.”

Isn’t that it? Available for the constantly changing dynamics of life? Not being weighed down by it, but instead riding above it?

Flowing with it, being flexible with it, letting it ripple through you and flow out the other side instead of letting it break you?

Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the podcast on Spotify. Leave a rating. Leave me a comment. I would love to hear how this is resonating in your life. And if you know someone who you think would love these conversations, tell them about the Pattern Breaking Podcast. It would mean so much to me.