crossing the threshold again, again, again…

I’m sitting here the night before the third threshold circle at swan hill studios, and i find myself wanting to write some of this down before it begins.

first, gratitude. sam pooley has been so generous in allowing me to use this beautiful old house for these gatherings. there’s something about the space itself that holds things. it does some of the work before anyone even arrives.

and now, here I am. nearly a year into running these circles. learning as I go. letting it evolve.

I think what I’ve come to understand — slowly, and not always comfortably — is that I need to release the search for perfection. in how I deliver these experiences. in how I hold space. much like my art, the work asks me to let go of the idea that I can control what it becomes.

what I’ve also had to reckon with is something more fundamental about my place in all of this. I exist on the edges of things. the threshold, by its nature, is a liminal space — and that means the people who come to work with me will often move in very different directions in response to the same experience. to call those directions positive or negative feels too simple. but there is something real to name here.

some people arrive, take the drum journey, make something quietly, and leave having processed something that needed to move — emotion or energy or shadow that has been sitting somewhere it shouldn’t. that experience may not feel pleasant. it might be uncomfortable in the body, confrontational in ways they weren’t entirely prepared for. and that is not a failure. that is, perhaps, exactly what was needed.

others will find the same circle deeply restful. pleasurable. a kind of regulated, mindful softening. no less valuable. just different.

when I first began holding circles, I wanted everyone to leave feeling good. I think I’d either lost sight of, or hadn’t yet fully recognised, that people come to these spaces to move things through — through their bodies, and out into the world in whatever way best serves them. and that process isn’t always going to feel nice, especially when it involves something we’ve been reluctant to look at.

I’ve made a kind of peace with that now. my role is to create the container. to offer guidance and gentle nudges. but ultimately, each person arrives at their own threshold at their own point in their own journey. I am not directing that. I’m just tending the space where it can happen.

the drum has become something I didn’t expect it to be for me personally. when I’m drumming, I notice my body in an unusual way. I am committed to one repetitive action. I cannot allow myself to be distracted by passing thoughts. and in that, I journey too. I let the drum tell me the rhythm, the force, the place to strike. it is its own kind of surrender.

the bowls are different. calmer in their energy. but they bring up something harder in me — a self-judgment that sits quietly in that space and watches. I think this has to do with something much older and more ingrained: my relationship with sound, with expression through sound, with whether that expression belongs to me at all. I can trace it, if I’m honest, back to specific moments. things that became foundational in how I learned to hold myself back in that particular way.

that’s probably a post for another evening.

for now, the circle opens tomorrow. and I am, as always, standing at the threshold, ready to lead others across.

altar space from the second circle - hawthorn medicine.