Consent to being Undone- a simple practice for when life doesn’t go as planned with Jennifer England
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?
Jennifer shares her own experience of resistance on a meditation retreat, where no breakthrough came on cue — only the slow, quiet texture of aliveness that emerged from consenting, again and again, to being undone.
This practice, she suggests, becomes 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—
Listen to Jennifer’s full conversation with Stephen Jenkinson
For more practices and inspiration from Jennifer get inspiring emails to help you navigate the hard mess of leading and being human
