This is the post I wrote for my rosary group today, part 2 of 3:

Crown of Thorns Novena
Day 36 , Thursday, 29 January 2026
Glorious Mysteries:
Walking the Pathway of the Resurrection

On this pathway, we walk through the Garden of Resurrection, the Ascension (Enlightenment), the Coming of the Spirit, the Mother’s Assumption (Dormition), and the Coronation of the Queen of Heaven.

I love the word Somatic. It basically just means “of or relating to the body.” I extend it to mean embodiment. My heart’s desire prayers in recent novenas has been focused on embodiment issues, exploring how I live my feelings in my body, how I move and inhabit my body as I age into this next stage of menopause, how I build my strength, how I experience the world through my senses, how I learn to love and really treasure this body I am in. I am almost 60, about to start my Third Act, and I want to cooperate with and listen to my body as I step onto this stage. I want to keep her healthy as long as I can, and to (as Mary Oliver puts it), “Let the soft animal of my body love what it loves.”

Speaking of stages, I haven’t actually been on dramatic stages much at all since I was the rose seller in Oliver, and sister Berthe in The Sound of Music at Lancaster, PA’s Fulton Theater in my early twenties. But I remember some of the things that bloomed in me when we did warm-up exercises in theater classes. Walk like a giant. Walk like a cow. Walk like a toddler discovering the world. And suddenly, as I walked like a giant, in my five-foot human body, I was a giant, then a cow, then a toddler. For today’s “lesson,” we walk like someone completely unashamed.

After yesterday’s discussion of Shame in the Sorrowful Mysteries, I wonder if we could resurrect some of the certainty and belonging and confidence and courage that inhabits a body unencumbered by shame, simply by walking or standing (or sitting or lying) as someone without shame. What does it feel like in your body to stand without shame? To walk with confidence? To hold your head and shoulders as if what you are saying deserves to be heard?

Sometimes it helps to have an image to work with. I picture Eleanor Roosevelt’s calmly confident face, Harriet Tubman’s fierce belonging, Greta Thunberg’s truth-telling. I picture the Sun card from one of my tarot decks: a person standing, feet shoulder width apart, face and heart lifted to the sun, arms out to the sides in a receiving gesture.

Practice:
Try this Somatic/Embodiment Exercise. 

Stand with your feet shoulder width apart. (Or, if standing is not an option, you can do this to the best of your ability from a sitting or lying position. It’s about what you feel in your body, after all.)
Settle. Breathe. Rest in the Mother’s Arms.
Breathing, straighten your spine.  Roll or shake your shoulders and let them drop slightly.
Breathing, feel your feet on the earth (or the floor or the bed). Send roots down into the earth.
Breathing, tilt your face toward the sun (even if it is a cloudy day and you have no windows).
Breathing, lift your heart toward the sun.
Breathing, open your arms wide, receiving the sun into your body.
Feel comfort and courage and confidence fill you. Let belongingness fill you.

Breathe it in.

If you feel any of those shame-messages whispering in your head, turn each one into a raindrop, and let it drip from your fingers into the earth.
How does confidence and courage and shamelessness feel within your body? What color is it? Does it have a shape or temperature? A voice? A name? Where in your body do you feel it most strongly? Now move—walk or shrug or dance or just feel it in your face—with shameless ease.
You are worthy. You deserve to be here, to take up space, to speak your mind.