“As a primary feature of existence, life calls for renewal.”
While a group of paid subscribers read and discuss themes of personal and collective transformation in our book group, I thought I’d re-post a short piece from a year ago when I was in the middle of an inner change I didn’t yet fully understand.
Are you in a swing change?
You may have seen a video circulating on the internet recently of a pro golfer practicing her swing. She’s standing in her own space at a driving range when we hear a man from outside the frame begin to tell her what she should be doing differently. He doesn’t seem to know (or care) that she is a competitive golfer. She is, after all, a young woman. He corrects her repeatedly and then, when she refocuses herself to whale on the ball, he takes credit for the improvement. It’s a cringe-inducing, funny, and relatable video.
But beyond the grating gender and age dynamics at play in the video, another thing stood out to me that I found my brain rolling around like a Lemonhead on the tongue: an exquisite phrase that the professional golfer used, one which may be common parlance in the world of golf, but was new to me. She explained to the onlooker (several times, ahem) that she was “going through a swing change.” She was well aware that her skill may not appear to be top-level because she was actively reworking her technique. She was consciously deconstructing things in order to enhance her skill and improve her performance for the long term. It might look less than perfect at the moment, but she understood the larger arch and goal.
“I’m going through a swing change at the moment.”
I found myself thinking about this over and over because it felt like the perfect metaphor for times of smaller-scale creative and personal transformation. It’s not a crisis or depression, but it’s also not yet a sailing success. It’s a swing change.
I wrote in my book about the occasional need to deconstruct a former life to make space for the new. I wanted to normalize descents for people in their 20s and 30s in a time of life when everyone is expecting you to be on the ascent. What are you looking forward to? What are your goals? What’s next?
But often, to clarify our paths and make sure we’re on track, we need to take a step backward. We need to take a survey of where we’re at and make sure we’re bringing all of our skills and our whole self to bear. We need to confirm that we’re headed in the direction that feels right for us, not just right for other people. We might need to stumble over and over to find our footing.
Life hates stagnation. Like a body of water without movement or tributaries, a stagnant life will begin to grow mold around the edges. Cosmetic changes alone won’t alter what’s happening under the surface. Things will begin to feel off. As a primary feature of existence, life calls for renewal. To get to renewal, we need to let some things die: relationships, jobs, businesses, patterns, obsessions, interests, and techniques. We need to let go of what is no longer working to make space for the new, even if the new is not yet entirely clear.
On a larger scale, these patterns of death and rebirth appear in frameworks throughout human culture. Alchemy: the various steps to transform base earth into gold. Astrology: a Pluto transit, perhaps, or a Saturn return that will force a person to step it up. Anthropology: an initiation rite. Mythology: the Hero’s Journey and encounters with the Gods, like Persephone’s trip into the underworld. And biology: the snake shedding its skin and the chrysalis that finally delivers the butterfly. In Jungian psychology, it’s the journey of individuation. These frameworks are all different ways of translating some of the invisible truths of life. They don’t overlap exactly. But they each provide a symbolic language beyond medical diagnosis to make sense of psychological and emotional descent. Sometimes things are not going down because of failure, but because of necessity.
I found myself drawn to this video of the golfer because it struck me as poetic language to convey a transformation lite, without the underworld or the caterpillars liquefying in cocoons. This was an intentional shift she had taken on. I may appear messy before I put the pieces back together again. I’m going to get worse at something before I get better. I’m going through a swing change at the moment.
I’m Satya Doyle Byock, psychotherapist, author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood, director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies, and co-host of a podcast on Jung’s Red Book. My work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, Oprah Daily, NPR, The BBC, Literary Hub, The Tamron Hall Show, and on podcasts such as Apple News in Conversation and The Joseph Campbell Foundation Podcast. All links can be found here.
In preparation for the I Ching gathering you're holding later today, Satya, I watched your lesson and did a consultation. I am very clear as to why I received 49 and 43 hexagrams: Shedding/Total Transformation and Deciding-Parting/Determination.
My question had to do with what deeper lesson or message was connected to my various health issues this year (i.e. discovering I've had PCOS for 20 years and didn't know, insulin resistance, losing hair!!). Talk about gobsmacked when I read this! Yes, there is a lot of unplanned but very intentional healing work I have to take on now that I have a clearer sense of my "elevated state of chaos" (from my journaling before tossing coins 😆) and it's root causes.
Literally losing my hair for everyone around me to witness has been such a painful but important experience of shedding ego. I see now, too, there is a way toward healing that ends with health and total integration.
I'm really glad something guided my cursor to stumble on this Substack post of yours! Looking forward to being in community later today.
Radha
This is my favourite post of yours, Satya! I resonated so much with your reflections on "swing change" when you first shared it. It’s such a powerful metaphor for so much of what you capture so beautifully in your work. It even inspired me to write about the messy side of growth—and I quoted your brilliant take in a piece recently published by Katie Couric Media! (Link here if you'd like to peek: https://tinyurl.com/The-Pink-Zones Your reminder about "to let go of what is no longer working to make space for the new, even if the new is not yet entirely clear" —feels so timely and true. Thank you for giving such needed language to this essential part of real transformation.