Whatever this is,
whatever we are touching here,


it isn’t a story.




It’s the closest I can come with words
to name a relational truth
I first experienced in the wild:


“Lead from the shared awareness between you.”

A Grounded Invitation Into My Field of Experience


Through Atla — my lead dog, my teacher in embodied orientation





Before we go anywhere together,
I want to bring you into a memory
that still lives as my body.


Not something I recall.
Something I inhabit.


Let’s slow down.

Let your breath fall a little deeper into (y)our belly.
Let your shoulders soften.
Let awareness settle behind (y)our heart.





From this quiet place,
come with me into the field 

where my perception 

began to reorganize itself
around something I couldn’t yet name

— to what attunement may or may not be.







"The Snowy Mountain Became the First Place My Mind Could Not Lead"


Backdrop of the story:

My mind was hard wired at that time.

Yoga and tantra softened the experience, and still ~ I observed the battlefight that was happening within. 


a hard wired mind is for me experienced as 

Years ago,

I fell •in•Love•with•Mushing.






I may or may come back to the Essence of that.


For now, I'll just tell you about my lead dog Atla.



I brought HIM home because I was loosely clever enough to know I needed a steady leader ~ as I was about to grow my Pack and surrender to the experience of living OUTside.

He was chosen with intention.






He had experience.
Strength.
Discipline.
A steady mind.
A body built for endurance.
He had led teams through long races across difficult terrain.


i trusted HIM to lead my experience. 



And, when I asked seasoned mushers how to lead a pack with a dog like him,
they didn’t tell me about commands
or control
or strength.



They said something simpler and truer:


“If you want a real team,
you must learn to be INSIDE the head of the dog you are leading."


I didn't know how. 

So I simply started contemplating the mantra "My connection with him IS my direction.”



Without further knowing

At first I didn’t understand.





I thought leadership meant guiding from my own knowledge—
from my mind,
from my planning,
from my determination.





and I love how the mountains had other plans for me.

Storm. Wind. Deep Snow. No Path.





One day me and my pack were gonna train in the high mountains.


It was the kind of winter day where everything disappears:


  • no tracks

  • no horizon

  • no contrast

  • no clear way forward



Just white wind.
White ground.
White sky.



My mind was scared.
My body was tense.
My jaw clenched.


Holy ○ Holy ○ Holy


I believe that was the Day I started to Pray.





I kept rehearsing everything that could go wrong, and at the same time melting into to intensity of a dog-pack eager to START!


When I released the rope that day,  

sled finally moving,

I felt over-powered 

~ likesurrendereing to LIFE FORCE ENERGY




something in me 


shifted 

into a state of Silence.



Not mentally—physically.




My awareness dropped into my legs.
Into the snow under the paws.
Into the rhythm of the team.
Into the steady pull of the gangline.



And suddenly I could sense Atla.

This shy, highly sensitive dog that ~ as magic ~ became a leading STAR everytime he was brought into a harness 

Not sensing as a thought.

Not as interpretation.


But directly—through the line,
through the shared movement of our  bodies.





Read more about that

Experience

Here

Atla 

was reading the mountain
in a way I never could with my mind:

the snowpack,
the wind direction,
the depth under his paws,
the subtle rise and fall of terrain.




And as my fear softened,
I felt myself enter the same field he was in.



We were no longer two separate beings.
We were one moving organism—
twelve bodies, one direction.





Leadership became something shared.
Half Atla’s sensing,
half my listening.





The Moment the Harness Came Off


When we reached my Cabin and stopped,
the storm was still around us
but quieter inside me.




I walked up to Atla
and unbuckled his harness.


And the moment the harness came off,
I felt the shift.




While we were connected through the gangline and harness,
we were one field—
shared attention,
shared intention,
shared movement.



When the harness released,
the connection loosened.
We returned to our "own individual bodies"


not that it was good or bad.


It was simply true.


It just informed me:

Attunement is also physical attunement.


It is created through connection.


And it teaches us more about leadership
than the mind ever can.





What Atla Taught Me About Leading Through the Body


Atla never followed instructions alone.

He followed:

  • the quality of my breath

  • the steadiness of my voice

  • the calmness (or tension) in my body

  • the clarity of my intention

  • my ability to stay open in a storm

  • whether I trusted him, the team, and the mountain





When I tightened, he hesitated.
When I softened, he aligned.
When I rested into open awareness,
the whole pack found its pace.




His leadership wasn’t dominance.
It wasn’t obedience.
It was a felt relationship—
moment by moment, body to body.




Atla taught me to lead
not from certainty,
but from attunement.



Not from force,
but from coherence.



He showed me what it means
to sense direction through the whole field

— not through thought.





I Invite You Into That Field Now

As we sit here together,
you don’t need mountains or huskies
to feel what I’m describing.


All you need is your body.


Let yourself notice:

what happens inside you
when you stop trying to understand
and simply let your awareness widen.



Feel for the place where your breath settles.


Feel for the quiet behind the ribs.
Feel for the moment your field expands
just a little beyond your skin.


This is the same place I learned from Atla:


the place where embodied knowing begins,
where direction is not decided
but sensed.



I invite you to step into this with me—
not as a story I tell,
but as a field we share.