We Rise Together
Friendship, movement, and remembering I’m not separate. Raising your vibration is not a solo act.
Raising Vibration, Setting Intention
A friend asked me this morning, while we sat in the sunny south-facing windows finishing lunch,
“What’s your intention for today?”
I was surprised by how much resistance I felt.
I told her so.
I said, “You know, I have a lot of experience setting intentions for a program day with kids—for a meeting, a class, a conversation—but not so much for myself. It feels different somehow.”
I was curious about that resistance.
Why was it so easy to set intentions when other people were involved, but so difficult when it was just me?
When I set intentions for others, the questions come naturally:
How do I want to show up for this group? What do I want to bring? What outcome do I hope to create?
But when I turn that same question toward myself—How do I want to show up for me?—it feels like a dead end.
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The Experiment
My friend had brought up intentions because she’s been exploring ways to raise her vibration.
We started talking about different practices she could try—meditation, yoga, stretching, walking, writing, gratitude—and I offered to muscle test which ones might be most powerful for her right now.
As we went through the list, a clear pattern emerged.
Body-based practices came out strong.
Yoga, stretching, walking—all scored higher than meditation.
Progressive relaxation was a 10 out of 10, while meditation landed at a 3.
Then we tested the gratitude writing practice she’s been doing.
Doing a private gratitude practice came in at a 6. Not bad!
But sharing gratitude—even just texting one other person what you’re grateful for, and having them reply—shot off the charts, past the scale entirely, landing at a 14.
The Pattern
Two things stood out:
Body before mind.
The practices that brought her into direct relationship with her body—movement, breath, sensation—had the most power. The body, after all, is the one part of us that only exists in the present.Connection amplifies everything.
Anything involving another person multiplied the energy.
Shared gratitude. Practicing together. Even simply being witnessed.
It reminded me of something she’d said earlier about her work as a therapist. She’s trained in marriage and family therapy, not mental health counseling, because it made more sense to her that way.
“There’s no such thing as mental health in a vacuum,” she said.
“Every issue we face exists in relationship—to someone, to something, to the world.”
I loved that.
And I realized: it’s the same is true for spiritual health.
Vibration itself is relational.
Reframing Intention
When I ask myself, What’s my intention for today? in the usual way—like it’s a private self-improvement task—I freeze. It feels pointless and isolated.
But when I ask,
How do I want to show up as a spiritual being in a human body, participating in the communal experiment of life on Earth?
—everything changes.
Suddenly, the question feels alive again.
It’s not about me alone. It’s about the we that I’m always part of, whether I remember it or not.
→close your eyes, feel into your day, your next activity, what’s your intention?
The List
Once I opened that lens, I started testing what raises my vibration most.
Here’s what came up:
Giving a Feldenkrais Functional Integration session: 10
Working with someone in an energy healing coaching session: 12 (!)
Doing yoga by myself: 3
Going to a yoga class: 6
Cooking dinner alone: 6
Cooking with someone, or for someone: 10
Sharing intentions with another person: 10
Gratitude by myself: 6
Shared gratitude: 10
Swing dancing: 6
Connecting with my Deities: 10
Writing a Substack post: 10
The pattern holds:
Presence + relationship = expansion.
→What practices raise your vibration? Do yours follow these patterns - turbo charged by embodiment and connection?
Today’s Intention
So when I ask myself again, What’s my intention for today?
the first thing that comes is: connection.
To everything else. To everyone else. To the living field I’m part of.
The second is joy.
Just allowing joy to be present.
Letting it rise naturally, like dust motes floating in a beam of sunlight.
Maybe that’s all it really takes.
Not effort, but participation.
Not climbing higher, but remembering we rise together.