Mind|Body|Spirit Academy

I hope you’ve been riding the bumps of our new calendar year and what many are saying is the beginning of a Great Year (2,166 year cycle).

I’ve been experiencing a lot of creative energy coming through, and struggling to get the remaining blocks out of the way to let it express more fully.

One of ways this looks is that addressing the aches and pains from weird postural habits and guitar playing, as well as from injuries to my lower limbs (from skiing, gardening, etc.) has led to me to look at Feldenkrais (mostly with Thomas Hannah’s book right now) and to continue to have TEB work for fuller primitive reflex integration, as well as focusing on my face head and neck in somatic experiencing sessions, and work with my friend Amy Linville who is an esthetician and RCST (biodynamic cranio-sacral therapist). Which by the way has been a mindblowing experience in being cared for and nurturedface and body, in a safe, loving way with herbals on top!

The short of it is, I uncovered a whole bunch of holding that was still there in my body that I was (mostly) unaware of. So now it’s available to work on, being more in consciousness.

When I started to do the Thomas Hannah exercises, following the instructions at one point to look at my seated posture in sideline, I had my husband take a picture because I couldn’t get a true look with my head turned. My back was indeed straighter, but, above my shoulder blades, I was hunched over and could not change it easily. When I saw that picture, it was like the full knowledge of all of the years of shielding from the front, from behind, from the sides, was evident in that photo. It leveled me. I cried on and off for days. The image did not track with words “maybe it wasn’t really that bad”. The feeling of the image made me physically ill.

I continue to investigate what’s going on in my head, face, neck and shoulders. It’s an adventure, for sure. I feel a little more of those parts of my body, and keep feeling into the fear, the bracing, the protection that’s there. My glasses are a part of it, too. I ask myself, is it really safe to see, hear, know everything? I remember being shamed and told to mind my own business when adults thought they could spell over my head and were wrong. Seeing things so terrible I couldn’t let myself really see them. Lifelong tenderness of my head, ringing ears, electricity running through me at the slightest touch or attention from another. Flinching when adults walked near or raised an arm. Unmistakable signs of my experience that I tried to hide at school, and from others, for much of my life.

I’m so grateful for the brilliant practitioners whose paths I fall into and who I am held and healed by.

Really unexpected ones, like the people who I learned about myopia from, and who support my continued exploration of how habits, traumas, modern life, and the brain and body are implicated in how well the eyes see.

I’ve had to be reminded, yet again, through discovering it in myself, how much masking, shielding, holding back we all do with our faces and voices. I often get a sense of it when inviting someone in my office to make a simple sound that matches how they feel or do something silly. I watch them subsequently crumble, stutter, laugh, change the subject, or collapse in fear, or try to stuff their annoyance with me.

So, I’m just naming my curiosity here about my own face and body holding and armoring, for you to try on, just in case you might sense you are also wearing a mask, or bracing for blows, and something unfinished in you likes hearing me name it, and there’s a little crack in your armoring because of it.

The crack is how the light gets in, you know.

What if every day could be your birthday?

As if there were

a whole wide world out there,

each day anew,

unexplored,

expectant

holding its breath,

with all of the things

just waiting for you

to notice for the first time

and burst into full being

when you bless them with your

spontaneous

unedited

wonder and awe?

I knew it would come. This time when I would need a real channel, a craft, for this creative energy to move through. This indescribable impulse, an energy with colors and sounds and emotions and sensations all bound together, wanting to be something, to play.

I do it in my work with others. I think that’s why it works so well. I cannot seem to adhere to any guru’s template, though I draw from them all in the background.

I’ve done it in my “business”. I could not do it the way others said I had to in order to be successful. My website is not shiny and tech-y. Whatever I’m doing is working enough. I don’t need to make it more efficient or markety or entertainy. Because I don’t want to.

I do it when I write. IT just writes.

Now I want to create even more. But I still have to develop other crafts besides “therapist”. Not get too invested in them being perfected, or as having to do it all myself. If others are needed to help the channel be what is needed for the energy to move through, then I want to be open to that. Geesh is that stupid patriarchal lone wolf thing really a sticky internalized image feeling thing! Sometimes I do want to be alone, undistracted, creating. And sometimes I want to do it with someone (even though I don’t really know what that is or looks like, but thanks, trauma healing! for making it even a thought at all).

I hope you will create too. If you cannot, I hope you will chip away at whatever is preventing you. Or not. Totally your choice. I’m biased. Personally, I hope you will create, too.

I hope you will make something imperfect, uniquely you, and do it now. Right now.

I’m going to go make sounds on a guitar now for 5 minutes.

I can’t wait to see what you make!

I had a little chuckle looking at the dozen or so draft posts from 2023 and even further back that I never finished. Partly because my experience had moved past that time, and it was difficult to finish from that place.

This morning I am short on time, pained with the holding back birthing this burst of writing started a week ago, and unable to ensure its perfection before I post. I am also pained by the AI predicament and vacillate between not wanting my content stolen and repurposed (though it probably already was before the bots), and the knowing that I don’t own it, or anything else.

In the mystery school called “Saggitarius”, Daniel Giamario teaches, we pursue Truth, knowing that it (truth) “is a moving target, not subject to dogma”. Don’t build a church or an altar to any discovery, because it is not static. His post this month on the retrograde is quite lovely. Plus it’s in Sag – that’s me :).

I’m reading Rick Rubin’s book on creativity right now. Surprised that I am a combination of bored and appreciative of his reminders. Maybe it will get better. I’ve read an awful lot of mindfulness hooha, so my review doesn’t really mean anything for you, most likely.

I’m also reading Brilliant Imperfection by Eli Clare. Probably every human should read it, but especially helpers. I notice more and more how much violence we do to each other by assuming things and not asking permission to say, ask or do things to others.

Going back and forth between senselessness and beauty. This is what is happening. Keeps happening. I keep working on my trauma, then I have an opening and I lose my reference point, and panic a little because it feels like nothing matters. I dip into the nihilism pool, and as I look out from the pool, some element of senseless beauty pulls me out, and I am thunderstruck. Then I go on again. It feels like the loop he talks about in Runaway Realization.

Despite holidays, bday, anniversary, I sure am feeling like being introspective right now. I just want time to ponder, to peruse all of my new books, to write, to fiddle with my guitar, to wander in the frozen yard. Not feeling like participating in forced anything or overriding myself at all. It’s different this year. Yes.

Have a beautifully human day, Beautiful Humans!

It’s very difficult to hold one’s seat these days, if one’s not frozen or otherwise shut down. It feels quite urgent, the need to do something, so many angry at the vulnerability, the inaction of those playing the role of perpetuating the situations, both at home, and in the larger world.

It’s been so interesting to me, or rather, shocking, disheartening, and mystifying, how we attack others in our own overwhelm and horror, borne of the urgency to fix things, rather than coming together to find solutions. More clearly than ever it’s evident to me that finding safety in the one up position, as Terry Real calls it, just perpetuates the damage to relationships.

I also see more clearly than ever, how reactivity, no matter how well intentioned, does not mend anyone or anything. Only an increased ability to tolerate the discomfort – ours and others – can reveal possible courses of enlightened action.

Pausing to reflect and tolerate the intensity of the emotion will look to some others with their trauma colored lenses like indifference, immorality, and danger. So it adds another layer of intensity and requires even more discipline and containment to not react, and to not completely check out, though breaks may be needed in order to fully metabolize the intensity.

I’ve been watching this scenario play out for most of my life. It is heartbreaking.

I’ve had the recent pleasure to read James Gilligan’s book Violence, and it’s really satisfying to see the data that supports what I’ve been witnessing for so long, and the patterns I have sensed, and that nondual spirituality and nonviolent communication practices have assumed at their core:

• violence begets violence
• intolerable shame is at the core of violence
• shame is created by the social structure
• all people just want love and belonging, but such dependency is shamed, especially for men
• our social structure is highly segregated by patriarchal rules of honor
• patriarchy’s honor system fatalizes vulnerability, and assigns male and female roles
• males are violence objects, and women are sex objects – violating the rules brings shame
• those at the top of the structure have no interest in changing that structure because it serves them
• we are largely unconsciousness of the structure
• rules and laws reinforce the structure by multiple means (I highly recommend reading the list of ways on p. 187-189)
• warring middle and lower classes and the growing economic disparities perpetuate the structure

And one of the most amazing things to me is that this book was published in 1996, but if you didn’t know it, it would make no difference. In fact, it might be even more valid now.

The pattern is quite simple when revealed, but the cure is anything but. I myself am just now starting to be able to witness rude, dismissive, or shaming behavior without losing the ability to be present. It is still a shock. Shocking how many people do it as a way of life – family, friends, strangers – no one is immune. It pops up, it fucking stings, I work with it, it gets lighter. It still amazes me how bad disconnection resulting from shaming, indifference, coldness, or condescenscion, can feel. I’m glad to be able to feel it and stay connected to myself, simultaneous to the pain, and to the firm knowledge that the person’s response in that moment is born of an unkindness more original than them.

I can’t believe how long it’s been since my last post all the way back in January. So much has happened. So much has changed. I plan to write more about all of those changes, but first I want to take a moment to thank the Lightworkers – the healers, of others, themselves and the earth, of broken systems and cultures and communities, out there doing the living, loving work of repair in the world.

I so appreciate all of the folks out there who have a gift of seeing the whole picture, driven to find the links and breaks, in the matrix of the interconnectedness of all things. Naming it, over and over. Lovingly pointing to it, doing it, and holding the ground for others to awaken and join in the quest for peace, love, safety, belonging, and healthy connection to the earth. We don’t have to figure everything out for ourselves. We don’t have to start from scratch. We can use the groundwork already laid as a jumping off point!

Just a few of them:

• Ron Finley and all the other gangsta gardeners out there fighting food deserts and connecting people, food and the earth
• Sage Hayes, Francine Kelley, and all the rest of you who tirelessly work for equality and social justice, both inside the Somatic Experiencing community, and beyond, who aren’t afraid to call it out, forcing us to expand, wake up, and be accountable
• Dr. Zach Bush, for explaining the link between illness and the food produced by dead soil
• Dr. Daniel Siegel, for explaining mindfulness, interpersonal neurobiology and attachment, and going beyond mindfulness, to explain the importance of community and belonging, and healing ourselves from the sickness of othering
• Dr. Raja Selvam, for explaining the importance of, and the how to simply address stuck emotions
• Katie Bowman, for sharing the importance of movement, for both the body and for the earth, and teaching us how to feed the body the movements it so desperately needs through her books, and direct support resources
• Dr. Doug Tallamy, for identifying and teaching all of us about the importance of supporting and nurturing keystone plant species in our own yards to support biodiversity, and for creating Homegrown National Park
• Dr. Eva Detkoj, Kim Beekman, and Edward Mannix, for courageously naming the energy component of trauma healing, without reservation or apology, and teaching people how to do it
• Thomas Hübl, for the amazing work and integrity to directly name and tackle what’s needed to work with groups and with collective trauma
• Dr. Tom O’Bryan’s expertise on gut health, and amazing supplements for healing leaky brains and guts
• Dr. Isaac Eliaz, for his simple modified citrus pectin solution to heal from the trauma induced cellular production of the galectin-3 protein
• Jamie Samms, of the Wolf Clan Teaching Lodge, for sharing the vision of the grandmothers and the badly needed medicine of indiginous wisdom with the western world
• Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer for her beautiful contemplations and invitations to the world to reconnect with the our Mother, the Earth, and all our Relations as equals rather than “it”
• All of my teachers and colleagues who are supporting others through teaching and providing therapy using holistic mind body and nervous system approaches on the journey to wellness
• Dr. Peter Levine, Pat Ogden, Eugene Gendlin, Moshé Feldenkrais, Stephen Porges, and all of the foundational elders and theories underpinning the development of Somatic Experiencing
• Ray Castellino, Kate White, Gary Peterson, and every single person working in PPN (pre/perinatal) fields
• Franklinton Farms, the nonprofit urban farm in Columbus, Ohio, and all the organic farmers and farmer’s markets who keep working and showing up to feed us, and put up with our cluelessness and apathy
• Kathy Forest, for teaching others how to awaken to the divine feminine, reconnect to the earth, and heal using forgotten earth medicine
• Daniel Giamario, for his Shamanic Astrology paradigm
• Prairie Moon Nursery, for making native plants and seeds available to anyone anywhere
• Nick Lowe, for his beautiful and real lyrics and music, and to all the other music makers who dare to make music about what is real
• Amy Linville, for her beautiful being and ability to combine art, beauty, life, skin love/care, and biodynamic cranial sacral therapy and Transforming Touch
• Marianne Williamson, for sharing and making A Course in Miracles relevant and accessible, for her courage to continue to run for president, and for her courage to name the healing that is needed
• All of the beautiful writers who name the ineffable in nature and ourselves, and point us to the need to heal our broken connection to the earth: Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver, and too many more to count
• Chris Anderson, at Catch the Water LLC, for his work in central Ohio and elswhere helping people bring permaculture and sustainability to their own yards
• All of my courageous clients who do the messy and challenging work of identifying and integrating their own shadows, as a gift to themselves, their children, their ancestors, and the world, who teach me and are such a gift to me
• The beautiful people who’ve helped me heal so much in my own journey so far through personal sessions and teaching demonstrations: Dave Berger, Abi Blakeslee, Nicholas Bolton, Margaret Crockett, Pam Hatch, Eve Hermann, Jean Leslie, Peter Levine, Karen Miner, Gary Peterson, Shel Rasch, Raja Selvam, Mary Ware, Neal Winblad
• We’Moon, Maria Thun, and other makers of art, calendars, and tools and information for connecting mind body and spirit to the cycles of the moon and the planet, and for living closer to the earth
• Margaret Wheatley, Peter Senge, Paulo Freire, Otto Scharmer, and others who aren’t afraid to name what’s needed to heal the world and its institutions, and aren’t afraid of the word “love
• All those involved in the making of the Green Power Machine, and The Need to Grow film
• My Love, Paul Clingan, for his seemingly unending capacity for supporting my growth, and his kindness toward others

Thank you to all of you for your labor, your integrity, and for inspiring me to start where I am, helping me to not give up or give in, and for making me feel so much less alone in the world and in the efforts to heal and vision a healthier more connected, just and healthy world for all life and for the Mother.

I so look forward to sharing more with you.

It’s been a strange couple of months, with much geysering of emotions, memories (my own, and pretty much everyone else, too, from what I’m hearing), and watching myself be in old patterns and feeling the intense frustration of it. I’ve been feeling the call to listen, in a way I just don’t remember ever feeling it before. Not to read books, or take classes, but to listen. Just be quiet and listen. All urgency to hurry up and get busy or make decisions must stand aside right now.

I’m feeling picky about what I let into my brain, recently. I don’t care about the source, but I can instantly sense yes/no to consume this or not. This feels aligned with the deep listening impulse.

And I haven’t done enough of the listening recently. Holidays and busyness slowly overtook it, even though I’ve always sensed the risk of ignoring the call. Aha moment today…I see how my religious upbringing co-opted that sense of “I’m going to be in trouble if I don’t…”, but it’s actually my own innner intelligence. Yes, that’s also God or the One or the Divine, but it’s not “out there” that the reckoning will happen, but right here. I’ve felt an intense pull to be quiet for awhile. I hope to do more of that in the coming week.

I wonder what it would be like if we had a different way of holding this day…the eve of the new year. I noticed the familiar let down feeling of not being invited anywhere, the scramble feeling of trying to figure out how to organize something that resembles the images of this day that we’re fed. In reality, that image has never felt right for me. I did the fancy dress up party thing in Cleveland once. It was fun, but rang hollow in some way. Maybe it wasn’t the party; maybe it was just me.

This day feels to me like a day for depth. A day to grieve the losses and sheddings, acknowledge the fear of leaving the past behind, celebrate the wins (meaning, correctly interpreting and executing my soul’s call), and explore the possiblity of listening even more deeply. To feel the gentle lengthening of the gray days, and assess what might be planted in the coming months. 

For me it’s no longer a day for making magical wishes to fulfill a self-improvement list dictated by cultural norms. Tried that and flopped, over and over and OVER. My soul, I realize, doesn’t give a shit about any of that stuff. My ego worries that hearing and aligning with the soul’s call will will leave me alone, ugly, unwanted, in unbearable pain. That it will take me places I don’t want to go. But right now everyone else’s definitions of anything feel flat, no matter how many pretty pictues or words or how much logic they are wrapped in, so, “Hello, empty space I’m left with!”.

It’s a different day, now. I can stay and feel the fear talking. Unexamined, I could let it run its program, and walk me on the safe side of things. The joy of doing so much developmental trauma work is that after enough support to experience safety, it drops away as the priority. I can feel it dropping away – it’s already in progress. ACK! I don’t know where this leads. And there is fear even as I write this truth. 

I could turn away from the deepening. Immerse myself in “manifesting”, and comfort, and a million different self improvement projects, or martyring projects. Go finish my Phd. I might appear more normal. Only I would know I am betraying my depth. 

I continue to receive messages from others that the depth is not welcome. It’s amazing how loudly and clearly others say it and I try not to hear. I’ve heard it my whole life. I scale myself back out of respect, to keep the peace. Perhaps I could stop doing that and just let others deal with it, see it, move away from it and me if they must. I know I can tolerate the pain of that now. I’ve got good supports and a lot of skill now for letting those feelings wash through, letting that fire transform me. And still, it scares the living fuck out of me at times.

So this is what sovereignty is? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! A bit of a giant cosmic joke feeling here. If people knew, well, geez, I don’t know. Would they really want it?

I’ve gone long. This started as a little FB comment on Adya’s clip about depth, but here we are.

Please know you are not alone. You can acknowledge your depth. There are others. Even though we live in a culture that at best, doesn’t support it, and at worst, despises depth, you can still walk this path. YOUR path. No matter what it is. 

I love knowing you’re out there. If you feel the call, I hope you’ll listen, even just a little. I like to think about what the world might be like everyone listened to their depth and allowed it to express through them, even just a little.

It sure does take awhile to shift to living from a life of surviving, pretending, and waiting for things to get better.

When it’s finally time to land in the doing and living of life, it can suddenly feel pointless. The weightless feeling of a rug pulled out from under. I could convince myself “nothingness” is really okay.

But,

I remind myself that that was also the past feeling of trying to do anything that wasn’t “allowed” – an energy suck that kept me safe from doing much to get me in trouble. It was tinged with a pain, though.

This seems different (different is good, we say, in SE land…).

I wonder if it’s like another layer of self-protection…not even knowing what to do with the freedom, then feeling lost, time drained by a million distractions.

Don’t know how many times it will be going back to basics, just simply making space to be, each day…

to eat

to move

to do some work

to be interested in what’s moving outdoors, or inside me

and connect to that for a minute or awhile

to make a plan

to fail to get the plan done just right

and just return to the simplicity of

my aliveness

life in my backyard

and easy gratitude

without needing to be anything more

then doing it all again tomorrow.

It takes a lot of practice to be convinced that it’s all right to just be here. Maybe that’s all I’m supposed to do, practice that. I don’t know what’s next. I’ll let you know.