Hi Reader,

It was so great re-connecting with you all the other month! I really appreciated the kind notes many of you sent me about the new direction of my work doing somatic trauma recovery coaching (👈🏼 come follow my new IG!)😊.

Below I share how body doubling helped me launch my new website.

The Power of Creative Cohorts

A few weeks ago I completed my Somatic Experiencing Advanced 1 course 🎉! I've got one final class to go and then I'll officially be a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner by the end of the year. Below is a pic with my dear SE buddy the wise, intuitive and talented Nat Piconē and me. We connected during the first part of our training in a BIPOC online cohort so it was a treat to finally meet in real life!

Our friendship speaks to the power of having trusted creative cohorts...

I loved that early on in our online training, Nat asked if I wanted to have lunch together during our meal breaks. They said that if we were taking an in-person training we'd probably be hanging out with our classmates while we ate lunch, so why not replicate that as best we could on FaceTime?! Brilliant! Our virtual lunch hangs became a ritual of sorts. We'd check in with each other on how the class was going that day, we'd help each other regulate our nervous systems when the content was activating (cuz let's face it we were covering all sorts of trauma in the training!), we'd ask each other to clarify the material if we didn't quite understand it and we'd enjoy countless belly laughs.

Who do you have in your inner circle to turn to when you need to talk through something, get a different perspective on a problem you're facing or to remember to enjoy life?

Body Doubling: How my new site got done...

Nat was actually a huge catalyst for me finally getting my new website up! We met regularly to do what Nat referred to as body doubling (a practice used by ADHDers and other neurodiverse folks to help them get things done). We'd get on Zoom for a couple of hours to focus on building our sites and writing our directory listings together. Just having another person's intentional presence alone is supportive! Bonus: Knowing that I'd be meeting with Nat for body doubling sessions actually helped motivate me to work on my site even outside of our scheduled time! Love how that works!

I've done similar types of parallel work or co-working with others in the past to help create structure and accountability for tasks that I may be avoiding, to take a self-paced training with others interested in learning and discussing together or to just be in shared space with others who are also in their creative process. Back in the day, folks on my mentorship program team used to hold what I referred to as "catalyst chats" where people would gather on a Livestream and share in chat what they wanted to get done in the next hour or so, they'd go off and work and then toward the end of the time they'd report back in the chat about what they completed. Soooo much got done in those catalyst chat sessions with such a simple structure.

As a multi-passionate person with limited spoons it can be challenging for me sometimes (ok a lot of the time these days 😆) to get the things that I want to get done done. Body doubling or parallel work is a great way to focus, get support and keep momentum going.

What projects have you been putting off? What task always falls to the bottom of your to-do list? Which of your creative cohorts could you enlist to do parallel work with you?

Some tips: Decide whether you want to meet online or in-person. Pick a time and duration. Then during the session let the other person(s) know what you'd like to work on. Create agreements about whether it'd be supportive to check-in with each other occasionally or to ask questions during the session or if you all want completely uninterrupted time. Then leave 5-10 minutes at the end to give an update on how it went.

BTW, this structure doesn't have to be for "work" related things. For instance, you could cook dinner with a friend over FaceTime, you could practice meditation with a buddy for 15 min daily over Zoom, both write your online dating profile, or you could set aside 20 min. a week to call/write your representatives or sign petitions together. You also don't have to be working on the same thing while you share time and space.

If you try this out or if it's something you practice already, I'd love to hear what you were able to accomplish! Email me and let me know for an asynchronous form of parallel work/accountability!