The Tension of Emergence: Thriving in a world that remakes, not breaks

Consent to Being Undone: A Simple Practice for When Life Doesn’t Go as Planned with Jennifer England

• Jennifer England • Season 4 • Episode 9

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 8:22

In this practice episode, Jennifer England invites you into the courageous act of consenting to be undone.

Drawing on her recent conversation with cultural worker and author Stephen Jenkinson (Matrimony: Ritual, Culture and the Heart’s Work), Jennifer reflects on how, in a world filled with urgency, grief, and collapsing certainties, true participation requires both patrimony (our inheritance of grief, beauty, and obligation) and matrimony (a ritualized consent with the unseen).

From this larger vision, Jennifer distills a simple yet powerful practice:

  • Notice when things don’t go as planned — a delay, an interruption, a conflict.
  • Pause and soften your body’s resistance.
  • Ask: What might open if I allow this moment to undo me, just a little?

This practice offers a counterweight to urgency and the need to fix. It nurtures intimacy with the unknown, and a deeper participation in what is always remaking itself.

🌿 If you’re navigating transition, longing for ease, or wrestling with the question what is yours to do in a world breaking open, this practice will be supportive.

Links & resources—



Gratitude for this show’s theme song Inside the House, composed by the talented Yukon musician, multi-instrumentalist and sound artist Jordy Walker. Artwork by the imaginative writer, filmmaker and artist Jon Marro. 

S4. Ep 10. Consenting to being Undone with Jennifer England
===

Jennifer: [00:00:00] Recently I had the great honour of talking with Steven Jenkinson, who is a Canadian cultural worker, a Ceremonialist, and the author of the new book, Matrimony: Ritual, Culture and the Heart's Work. And if you haven't listened to that episode yet, I encourage you to go back when you have time. It's a beautiful exploration of matrimony as a ritual of becoming, of making village, and participating in a vow to say yes, to becoming and to becoming undone.

And in our conversation in the arc of this season four, as you know, I've been sitting with this question around what is mine to do at this juncture of so much breaking [00:01:00] urgency and grief in our culture? And my conversation with Steven double clicked on a way of approaching this question that offers me some relief.

And he reminds me that to fully participate in the world that I consider is always remaking itself, requires both patrimony and matrimony. Patrimony is what we inherit. The grief and beauty, the stories, the burden and the obligations and matrimony is a ritualized consent with the unseen world .

Stephen Roots, matrimony in vow in ritual, and the mothering of culture. A vision larger than I can hold here, but as we do in our practice episodes, I want to take an element of our [00:02:00] conversation and offer a practice, and that is consenting to be undone. And you might be wondering like, okay, what does this mean?

But I love this because it involves both surrender and the unknown, and. For me, in a culture obsessed with certainty, control, and arrival points, which I can get caught up into being undone, ah, might feel like it. You're giving up or you're giving your power away.

And yet I think it's a really essential element of how we can generously contribute at this cultural moment. Of so many breaking points. So here's a practice for you this week.

I had love you to notice maybe daily when something doesn't go as planned, and this could be super small. You have a delayed appointment, your kid has interrupted you, you have a workday that gets [00:03:00] away from you. There's a tension with a colleague. You have a fight with your partner.

want you to notice what happens in your body when you bump up against the unplanned. Does your jaw clinch? Maybe your chest tightens, your breath quickens, or you might notice how thoughts and emotions begin to swirl in the mix. There's like a flavour of aversion. Or resistance to the unplanned Second, I invite you to pause, and bring your attention to the one part of your body that is most obviously constricted, un clench the jaw. Let your shoulders drop just a bit.

Breathe out for one or two seconds longer than your breathing in and with this somatic cue. See if that can help you relax the resistance or the aversion to the [00:04:00] unplanned nature of the thing.

Third ask yourself, what might open up if I allow this moment to undo me Just a little. Just for a breath.

The benefit of this practice is that you are observing your attachment to how things should go. The unique way you resist when something doesn't match your expectation and points you towards befriending your resistance. And then with the body encourages a softening.

This helps you strengthen the muscle of undoing in small daily steps, and then you can watch for what surprises you for what opens up, allows for greater participation with what lies beyond you.

For example, recently I was at a retreat and I found myself resisting this return to [00:05:00] the cushion. It was super hot where I was and I didn't wanna be hot or overheating and sitting still and then secondly, if I was to be on the cushion, I wanted something from it. I wanted a shift, an insight, or a gain for my labor, and yet nothing came.

I didn't have any major awakenings. I just had to sit through my discomfort and consent again and again to being present to being undone. For trusting what was working below the surface and day in, day out, I was like, yeah, nothing's happening. Not much at all. And yet by the end, and it's really difficult for me to describe, but there was this rich texture that I became aware of my life, the people in my life, a sense of being alive, grateful, [00:06:00] and I know that consenting to being undone over and over and over again helped me contact that something beyond explanation, rationalization, and a gift of just more aliveness and more. 

Ease off the cushion, where this matters is I am in so many different transitions. I am entering midlife, I'm writing a book. My family constellation is changing. As my kids move into full adulting, my roles are shifting in my community and part of me wants to know, define, explain, and map it, and yet when I can remember. This practice of consenting to be undone, there's a bubbling up of aliveness and purpose that forms a counterweight to my own urgency and need to [00:07:00] fix or solve.

And this feels like an essential practice in this question or koan that I'm living, that you might be living about. What is ours to do in a world that feels out of control, it's breaking beyond measure and filled with overwhelm. So I hope this serves you.

I hope this supports you and just a reminder that practice isn't a quick tool or a mindset trick. It's a way of paying attention. It's a way of practicing new doings that reshapes us over time, and it's experimental, alive and rooted in your own direct experience. So with that, thank you so much for being here, being part of this conversation and this practice field.

I hope this feels like a bit of a sanctuary from all the chaos. And if any of this has been helpful for you, please share with a friend. And if you [00:08:00] could take a moment to leave a review, that would be amazing On Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

It means a world to me, as this show spreads and finds new roots, throughout the planet. So with that, thank you so much. I'm Jennifer England. Thank you for being here today.