
This photo was taken by the wonderful Aiina Aion Larsson at a recent event that I hosted and performed at. It was so beautiful and it reminded me of how much I truly love live performance. I always think of myself as lassoing the stars into constellations of meaning when I perform in this way and I feel such strength within me and such release as well - I think this is captured in the photo. This got me thinking about stars and navigation and of what I will be doing in the next session of my online course,
We started our course with the question of, ‘What is calling to you and where do you feel it?’ and we all created the ‘shell’ of our authentic self and were invited to place objects/symbols within it that represented the stories and truths that we wished to form our authentic and true self. (Of course we did a lot more than that too.)
The second session was focused on the question, ‘What are you hungry for?’ and we started to create our path of breadcrumbs and identify what gifts we need to feed our authentic self. (Of course we did a lot more than that too.)
Tonights session, which will be the penultimate is focused on the question, `What have you been severed from?´and we will look at how we can reconnect to that and what we can do to keep us on the path towards our authentic self. So how do we stay true to a path? How do we know the path? What can we use to ensure we are going in the right direction? Hence the thoughts on trigonometry and stars and I started to think about the need to have two fixed points in order to ascertain your position and I started to think about what those would be in our lives and it made me think about this:

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This process comes from a book called Narrative Coaching. I often use it but I have adapted and tweaked it a little. It focuses on looking at the story we wish to create and our old, ‘default’ story. Each day we are given tiny choices that can keep us in one or lead us to another. (The axis of change.) The author states that these show up in three different areas: mindset, behaviour and environment.

So, as an example:
If your mindset is such that you think less of yourself than of others, your behaviour will mean you will always put their needs in front of your own which means that your environment is dictated by others.

Does that sound familiar…?
If you want to change that story, you have to give yourself value which will mean that you put yourself ahead of others at times - You will not take the kids to school every day perhaps, or you will not do the washing up every night or always be responsible for organising the evening meals or the children cannot have toys in every room.…. etc. This will lead to you creating space for yourself, whether it be physical or as time.
What has this got to do with trigonometry or navigation?
It lies in the fixed points.
I have often said that I want to make my belly my north star - I am tired of having my body colonised by the dominant narrative which has constantly told me not to trust intuition/feelings/self. My belly laugh and my deep breath come from the same place - I honour it as my fixed point. So if I am true to that, (which means I am true and in connection with my authentic self) then my environment and behaviour are part of my calibration too - am I carving out physical space or time for myself? Am I honouring myself by having boundaries and putting myself first when it matters? These are fixed points I can measure.
I remember a time when there was no space in my house that I could call mine - I was lost, unanchored and my destination was set by the sea of needs of young children and family. It was scary - I lost myself, I lost my self. As I have grown older I anchor myself in space and place, (two fixed points,) even if it is only half a shared desk (as it was for 5 years) in the spare room that was often filled with guests and therefore could not always even be accessed. Now I am lucky enough to have a whole room (unless we have a lot of guests) such bliss, bliss, bliss and it is from here that I will run my course tonight.
Each session also involves a ‘making moment’ where our hands are engaged with doing things.
Tonight I will invite the group to make compasses of some sort and when I researched navigation devices I found some beautiful things that predated compasses:
Kamals that use knotted string and two fixed points and I wonder about what knots of actions we would put in a string to lead us to our authentic self…?


Cross Staffs that again used fixed points and notches - what notches will align us with our authentic self?

Astrolobes that are things of exquisite beauty and still need the fixed points - to create something like this to re-orientate us back to self - how would that look?

And of course sextants - again the two fixed points and look at the shape - a hinge like the one in the exercise for your New Story and your Old Story

So I have a question - what fixed points help you all know you are being true to your authentic self and what is your North Star, whether that be in your role as a leader or a parent or as your own complete human self?
May your constellations hold meaning for you.
Katrice
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