On “Integration” After Long Journeys

It has been about a month since I returned to the USA, to my family home, from my trip to Thailand. While I was conscious about taking my time to ease into life while maintaining the rituals I’d become comfortable with while traveling, I think the time kind of went by fast.

Often, I found myself desiring to return to this travel storytelling series to pen my thoughts and feelings around integrating into a different reality. Having been a nomad for a significant part of my life thus far, I know much about integration. It’s a reason why my life is so simple and ritualistic. I’ve learned that simplicity and ritual are grounding, though movement can be exciting and fun. I suppose these attributes of simplicity and ritual also feel somewhat like home because of where my soul is reflected in the cosmos — 6th house (Virgo) stellium, including my sun and moon (in Leo, though — cue excitement and fun!).

Even then, the past month has been replete with things, and I assigned some deeper level of my consciousness to get to gathering insights On “Integration” After Long Journeys, so when I gathered myself to write this piece, we could flow with it.

In the above photo are some different Thai soups at the market. They look delicious to me. I had a great experience with street food while in Bangkok, so I’d dive right in. Would you?

Anyhow, this concept of integration is one often used in the spiritual work I do both as a Sacred Feminine Embodiment Guide and through Wellspringwords® — but what is meant by “integration”?

It’s a question my sister asked me when I returned to California as we gisted on the surface level about my trip. Looking back to that conversation, perhaps it was the jetlag, but I was totally still on a Qi high from all the Qi I’d cultivated through my Yoqi retreat and afterwards.

In our spiritual work I refer to “integration” as a period of time when what has been stirred up or cultivated can rest, relax, and make sense of itself. To me, integration speaks to the organic intelligence of all things. When we practice Yoga through an asana practice, after a series of movements, we typically come into Savasana to allow the intelligence of the Prana we’ve moved through the breath, physical movements, and energetic movements through the nadis to settle and flow where their intelligence is most effective.

In Qigong, it’s the same. After a series of Yang movements, we take a Yin stance where we become still and allow the Qi to settle, integrate, and “flow where it needs to flow for healing, harmony, and longevity in the body.”

A lover at heart, I know she is. What is the poetry that exists at the gentle crease between the eyes of another human? I wish to learn her story…

When we think of cooking, integrating is like a folding in of ingredients; a weaving of flavors to create something completely different. Something unique. It’s different than the integration of settling, but holds a similar notion of organic intelligence. Because when we integrate red and blue, we create purple, which is a different manifestation of creative intelligence than red and blue on their own, isn’t it?

So, integrating my month-long experience in Thailand this year (and Mexico, as it was just the month prior) means considering how I’ve let my life now back from my travels shape itself into something completely new — an integration of my experiences abroad interwoven with the day-to-day experiences here.

She caught me catching her. I find that cute. There’s a sharpness and clarity and interest to her gaze that makes me wonder who she is and what she is creating.

As a younger traveler returning from trips abroad, I would so dearly miss the experiences I was leaving to travel “home”. I would miss the people, the food, the taste of the air through my breath and how it always somehow tasted better than wherever I was situated in my home base. That sense of missing is what always kept one hand on my wallet, ready to book another flight. It’s what eventually gave me the reputation of people not knowing where in the world I am.

But I now understand, through perspective, that while the jet-setting life is indeed thrilling and appears glamorous, I was unable to appreciate my present circumstances. I was unable to be grounded and feel safe in my experience. When you’re constantly on the move, you don’t develop the deeper sensitivity groundedness offers. When you’re constantly on a rhythm of movement, eyes constantly looking to what could be next or better or best or better than best, you don’t see how beautiful the sun makes everything around you. You don’t see the small things, talk less of appreciating them. You don’t stick around long enough to cultivate layered and complex relationships whereby people feel safe with you.

Safety goes both ways.

And when I write “you” I mean “I”.

Looking into this shop at The Artist House in Bangkok, I loved the composition of the image I saw through my eyes, so I snapped it. It reminds me of a “more than meets the eye” kind of place. Go in and buy your tea and ceramics, then enter through a portal and journey into a world of esoteric mysticism.

Integration is a s l o w process. Necessarily, it moves in opposition to movement; it moves in opposition to whatever was experienced before the period of integration. As I see it and am experiencing it, integration is a function of harmony in our lives. It allows us to return to balance and see that a new experience of life is now possible because we have been changed. Life has been changed.

But change doesn’t need to be upending. Change can be a gentle weaving in of new experience with remembered experiences.

And precisely because of this element of living in a changed way, a period of integration allows us to become clearer on our purpose, intention, clarity and quality of presence — having new experiences means that there isn’t room for all old experiences to join; some stuff must fall away. Likewise, returning to remembered experiences means that there isn’t room for all new experiences to come with; some stuff must fall away.

Integration lets us become clear with ourselves on what stays and what falls away from either experience. It’s a way to cultivate personal discernment, clarify boundaries, end cycles, and begin new seasons.

And just as we begin new seasons with periods of integration, we must remember that they are seasons — they don’t last forever. What is now new eventually becomes out of date. Travel has always made me aware of this in a way that has taken other experiences much longer to make me aware of.

I am currently not in an experience of travel. I am currently cultivating groundedness to bring my spirit to balance and harmony after a decade of being constantly on the move. Daily, I allow the sun to linger on my face and body. I open the soles of my feet to the Earth and let our energies mingle. I do laundry for the house. I clean the kitchen as I use it. I don’t recall how often I use a car in a week’s time. I eat whatever is available in the house. I make my art from the materials existing in my studio and in the home. I make friends with the finches and hummingbirds. I enjoy an afternoon chai or cardamom tea. I spend hours talking to a friend on the phone. Yes, I do my work — but unhurriedly. Unrushed.

I nap more. My bones crack (a bit) less.

I drink more water. My eyes and skin are clear.

Poetry sings to me in the hypnagogic state.

I laugh with my dad.

I watch my mom glide through the kitchen as she cooks.

I let people know my schedule and witness as they make space for me.

I make space for others in my heart.

Life is nice, and I let it be its own kind of wonderment at this time.

Integration has blessed me with this… presence.