03/20/2023
When I say aliveness, what do I mean? Aliveness is the opposite of numbness. It is the full capacity for responsive sensation, encapsulating the entire range of the human capacity to feel, from grief to joy. Aliveness is sensuality, eroticism, connection with the natural world around us, with people and with community. It is a sense that all is well with the world, and that the moments when things aren’t well are part of the ebb and flow of the way things are, part of a larger picture that we trust and don't seek to constantly control....
What is aliveness, really?
When I say aliveness, what do I mean? Aliveness is the opposite of numbness. It is the full capacity for responsive sensation, encapsulating the entire range of the human capacity to feel, from gri…
03/19/2023
The Art of Living Body First An Overview Introduction Our birthright is to feel wholly and vibrantly alive. From the moment we came into this world, our bodies guided us to express what we needed to feel complete and well. When we were small and helpless, it was our cries and our body language that cued our caregivers to meet our most basic human needs for food, safety, touch, and love....
The Art of Living Body First – An Overview
The Art of Living Body First An Overview Introduction Our birthright is to feel wholly and vibrantly alive. From the moment we came into this world, our bodies guided us to express what we needed t…
03/14/2023
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Wholeness 101: Beyond Gender and Identity
Wholeness 101: Beyond Gender and Identity A 6-Week Online Group Coaching Experience for members of the Trans/Queer/GNC community Co-Hosted by Ilana Grostern and Zoë Galle.Day and Time TBA, beginnin…
03/13/2023
Wholeness 101: Reclaiming Your Agency Post-Abuse A 6-Week Online Group Coaching Experience Sundays from March 5 running through April 9, 6 – 8pmEST on Zoom. Who is this group coaching for? Abuse, both of the physical, and the less-evident psychological nature, are rampant. Whether you grew up in an abusive family dynamic, or found yourself in one in intimate relationship, the capacity to identify that you are being abused requires quite a bit of capacity to objectively analyze your own situation.��...
Wholeness 101: Reclaiming Your Agency Post-Abuse
Wholeness 101: Reclaiming Your Agency Post-Abuse A 6-Week Online Group Coaching Experience Sundays from March 5 running through April 9, 6 – 8pmEST on Zoom. Who is this group coaching for? Abu…
02/01/2023
A little play on words for you this morning. I've been on a diet for the last few weeks and my mind is SHARP AF, so the double entendres are coming in fast and furious. Coherence matters. The word coherence implies the qualities of a unified whole. Matter is defined as something that takes up space and has weight. And the matter of being human involves being able to orient oneself in space and time - in otherwords, being able to locate ourselves in THIS moment....
Coherence Matters
A little play on words for you this morning. I’ve been on a diet for the last few weeks and my mind is SHARP AF, so the double entendres are coming in fast and furious. Coherence m…
12/12/2022
Did you know you’re living in a bypass?
The problem with not valuing the input from the body and defaulting instead to the story ABOUT the body is that the second we engage with a stimulus we go directly to OUR value. As humans.
Isn’t that nuts? And yet it’s how you live your life. Because you weren’t aware there was any other way.
So instead of dealing with health issues as they arise, and seeing them as they very value neutral messengers that they are, we make them into us as moral failures.
Sound like a stretch? Think about it. Your shoulder hurts because you’ve kept exercising on something that was once a twinge and now is a torn ligament. And now you feel like no one will love you because you are forced to rest and might lose your muscle tone. I’m sure you can think of many other similar examples.
Slide 1 is the pathway we walk so often that we live in the bypass as demonstrated on slide 2.
Our wellness depends, however, on being able to stay for a bit in stimulus —-> sensation —-> sense making FOR AS LONG AS IT TAKES to build a new story of value about the sensation itself. Full stop. And to keep our personal worth out of that equation.
It’s doable. I’m walking people through this novel way of relating to themselves daily. I do it myself. You can learn as well, at any time in your life.
Your symptoms do NOT determine your worth. You do that. On your terms. And you remember that you can be well.
12/08/2022
Is there a more confusing, more nebulous statement a person in a position of authority can make to a person coming to them for wellness support? While well intentioned, statements like this only add to the internal chaos most people are experiencing.
Why? Because “feelings” is the wrong word to use. To feel is to experience sensation. And what we label as emotion, ie - the cognitive translation of sensation, always originates in the body first, as sensation. But the bodymind connection is not established, and so instead of a clear picture of what is going on we get static, AKA anxiety, depression, dread, etc.
Being able to:
A) Notice the sensations of the body (aka interoception),
B) Attend to them - hold attention on them, observe them - without needing to act on them assuming no immediate risk to the self,
C) Develop a new story of value of the sensations of the body and update the habit of mind to corroborate the evidence
is the key to “feeling your feelings”. If you don’t work the body into the equation as the ORIGIN of your distress/discomfort/disease, then being asked to “feel your feelings” will continue to be experienced as a failure on your part to figure yourself out.
Think of this approach as skill building - something it was your birthright to learn during your early developmental years. For many reasons, you were denied access to your birthright, and now is the time to reclaim your authority.
It’s never too late.
01/25/2023
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11/04/2022