When the World Feels Off: Finding a Way Back to Your Heart

Disconnecting from the rush. Listening to the earth.

There is a lot moving at the moment.

You may be experiencing it as intensity, uncertainty, unexpected changes, heightened emotions — or simply a feeling that things are not quite as stable or easy to interpret as they once were.

Things just feel… off.

I feel these periods very strongly in my body. Often, I seem to feel them before people around me do.

Recently that has looked like unusuallly deep headaches, a hot throbbing at the base of my skull, aching through some of my joints and energy levels that don't necessarily correspond with what's happening in my everyday life.

At the same time, my digestive system has felt remarkably easy. Almost like a clearing.

And then there are my nights.

When my body starts talking

For the past couple of years, I've experienced energetic activity overnight that comes in waves. I've noticed that these experiences tend to return during periods when I sense a lot of energy moving.

Energy builds at my base, travels up my spine and culminates in a flash through my third eye.

Sometimes it's one experience. Sometimes it's flow after flow.

Recently I've also felt what I can only describe as adjustments around my sacral and solar plexus.

And one night I experienced something completely unexpected.

I had the visceral sensation of menstruating.

I'm post-menopausal, so I knew this wasn't physically happening. But I could feel it and, at the same time, had an experience of seeing what was happening within my body.

I asked why I was being shown this.

The answer I received from Atum — a presence I experience as a guide, and one I haven't spoken about publicly before — was simply:

"New beginnings."

I don't know exactly what is being born. And I'm not trying to. Because something I feel very strongly is that the moment we define what comes next, we limit the possibilities of what it can become.

We can become so uncomfortable with uncertainty that we rush to fill the empty space with a prediction.

But what if we don't know because we're not supposed to know yet?

What if part of the work is leaving enough space for possibilities we cannot currently imagine?

Disconnecting from the rush

Not denying what is happening.

Not burying our heads in the sand.

But becoming much more conscious of what we consume and where we place our attention — particularly when fear, prediction and conflicting information pull us further away from ourselves.

When things feel off, our instinct can be to look outside ourselves for an explanation.

What's happening?

What does this person think?

What is that person predicting?

Who is right?

What should I be doing?

And the more uncertain things become, the more desperately we can search for certainty.

But I wonder if the invitation is actually to move in the opposite direction.

Not to know less.

But to become less dependent upon the outside world to tell us what we know.

The heart needs to become our compass again

This is where something I've been learning about the pericardium has become deeply important to me.

In Chinese Medicine, the pericardium protects the heart.

But the nuance I've been understanding is this:

The pericardium doesn't have its own source of intelligence. It needs the wisdom of the heart.

And so many of us have become disconnected from our hearts.

We've experienced hurt. Fear. Conditioning.

We've learnt that vulnerability isn't safe.

Armour develops around the heart for very good reasons.

The answer isn't to rip that armour away. If anything, that creates another experience of not being safe. We need to understand why it is there.

Because when the heart remains inaccessible behind its protection, the system isn't operating as it should.

The protector is trying to protect, but it has become disconnected from the very intelligence it needs to know how to protect.

So we look elsewhere for our compass.

Other people.

Rules.

Systems.

Expectations.

Predictions.

The endless noise of what we should think, feel and do.

And perhaps we can function perfectly well that way when the external world feels stable.

But what happens when the external markers start moving?

What happens when things no longer behave as we expect?

What happens when the people we trusted disagree, systems wobble and nobody can tell us with certainty what comes next?

Without an internal compass, fear can take over extraordinarily quickly.

So the work isn't simply:

Come back to your heart.

For many people, that isn't simple at all.

The work is to find a way back to your heart.

To create enough safety that the armour can begin to soften.

To develop a relationship with your body — physically, emotionally and spiritually.

To allow yourself to be vulnerable.

To practise listening.

And gradually, to allow the heart to take its place as the compass again.

Nature seems to be listening too

I've also been watching nature.

The wattle around me has flowered early twice this year.

A butcher bird had a baby before winter, when I would normally expect that after winter.

And recently the corellas have begun arriving at Freshwater Beach in the mornings.

They're loud, mischievous and hilarious — hanging around traffic lights and towers and getting themselves into all sorts of unusual places. They remind me of teenage boys mucking about.

But my experiences with the birds go deeper than observing unusual behaviour.

During Qigong, they interact with us. They move through the group. They sing while I speak. I've repeatedly experienced them becoming silent when we move into meditation.

An egret exploring the bush around our qigong practice.

The butcher birds and currawongs communicate with me too.

And when I allow myself to become quiet enough, often I do understand.

It's not necessarily language.

Sometimes it's a feeling.

Sometimes a connection.

Sometimes simply a knowing.

I've even experienced this kind of interaction with a fly.

And alongside that connection, I have a st

rong sense that nature knows something we don't yet know.

We already know animals can sense things before we do. A coming storm. Seasonal change. Shifts in their environment.

Perhaps nature is responding to changes we haven't yet learnt how to perceive.

I don't know.

But I am paying attention.

And perhaps that's the important part.

Not immediately translating.

Not deciding.

Listening.

We need a balance of the frequencies

Another message came through recently:

“We need a balance of the frequencies.”

This has stayed with me.

Because not everybody is here to experience life in the same way.

You may not resonate with what somebody else is seeing, feeling or predicting.

That doesn't necessarily mean you need to decide they're wrong.

And it certainly doesn't mean you need to abandon what your own body and heart are telling you and adopt their reality instead.

Their path can be real for them without being the path you are being asked to follow.

Can I hear another person's truth without needing to make it mine?

Can I notice resonance?

Can I notice dissonance?

Can I remain in a space of non-judgment?

Can I listen to another perspective and still find my way back to myself?

This, to me, is sovereignty.

Not isolation.

Not I know and everyone else is wrong.

A relationship with ourselves strong enough that difference doesn't automatically threaten us.

More flow, less struggle

One of the greatest lessons of my life has been around control.

The more I try to control, the more I interrupt the flow.

So I've practised letting go.

Not doing letting go.

Sitting back.

Allowing.

Being silent.

Getting bored.

Spending time in nature.

Questioning systems I've automatically accepted.

Listening to my body.

Listening to my heart.

Spending time alone.

And seeking community when I need ballast.

Because finding our own internal compass doesn't mean doing everything alone.

Sometimes another person helps us remember ourselves.

The guidance I've received recently has been beautifully simple:

“More in the flow, less struggle.”

“Allow yourself to sit in a space of non-judgment, non-control.”

“Trust and let it be.”

And perhaps my favourite:

“Keep tending to your garden. Keep watering your garden. Keep feeding your garden. Your garden will grow.”

Perhaps that is enough.

We don't have to understand everything that's moving.

We don't have to predict what comes next.

And we certainly don't need to consume every prediction about where somebody else thinks we're going.

Tend to your garden.

Develop your relationship with your body — physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Create enough safety for your heart to speak.

Find people who help you remember yourself.

Listen to nature.

Notice what resonates.

Notice what doesn't.

And leave enough space around the future that it can become something none of us could have imagined.

We don't need to know exactly what comes next.

We need to find our way back to the part of ourselves that will know how to meet it.