12 Questions Kids Need and Long to Hear ~ The Consent of Inquiry and How it Cultivates Self-esteem, Trust and Respect
“Trust children. Nothing could be more simple, or more difficult. Difficult because to trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves, and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.” ~ John Holt 12 Questions (Scroll to the bottom for 6 follow-up questions) What do you want? What do you need? What do you feel / think? How do you feel (about that)? What does your heart / intuition / gut say? What feels right / true to you? What brings you joy? What’s your dream? What would feel like fun? What would you love to do? What matters to you? What do you hope for? Jack’s story “One major study of 700 preschool classrooms in 11 states found […]
The COVID-19 Pandemic is Not What it Seems
“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke Friends, it’s not what it seems. Point too much and you miss the larger picture. Resist too much and you lack trust in what’s trying to unfold. Even in those darkest of intentions there’s light acting out, finding its way through, making way for the rebirth of these times that Easter symbolically holds. The main agenda now is to up our spiritual game, not to fight the dark energy. To rise as we are meant to, as One Being, as one taking […]
From Caterpillar to Butterfly: Quarantine is Humanity’s Necessary Metamorphic Time in the Chrysalis
Use this time of quarantine wisely. It’s not a time to push away the silence and pine for the “good old days”; rather, it’s a unique opportunity for self- and world-reflection. This is not a time to wish us quickly back to the comforts and familiarities of “normal”, to the life of the caterpillar; rather, it’s an essential right of passage, a metamorphic period where “normal” must dissolve into the butterfly. The metamorphosis of caterpillar to butterfly is a widely-held representation of the stages of transformation that no human being can avoid, try as they might; a transformative period we are now in the thrust of. The stages are, in essence: 1) Leaving the known and comfortable; 2) Incubation and dissolution of self; 3) Emergence […]
Healing and Self-Love: The Courage to No Longer Diminish the Truth of Our Childhood Adversity
Listed at the bottom are 26 examples of adverse experiences you may have diminished in order to cope and survive. I’ve also included a short video to add further context. There’s a saying: “Love is a place we go when we no longer wish to hide.” The same is true with healing. Because healing is seeing and feeling something for what it is, without diminishment, which is an act of self-love. Healing occurs when we no longer diminish our childhood adversity — both what happened (verbal and physical abuse, for example) and what didn’t happen that we desperately needed (affection, for example). It occurs when we own the magnitude of the environmental failures endured. We own the stark reality that our older brother beat us, […]
COVID-19: A Call to Wake from the Perennial Dream of “Normal”
When the world pushes you to your knees you are in the perfect position to pray. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi In times like this, with the world besieged by outright panic and high levels of uncertainty, the words of ancient wisdom keepers, such as Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi, resonate loudest. Now is a good time to take in the sages whose words have so often fallen on deaf ears. Indeed, with growing fear and a collapse of global infrastructure—sporting events, conferences, schools, businesses, etc.—collectively, we are being brought to our knees. The slowing and stoppages bestow a rare opportunity to see/consider something we cannot when lost in the busyness of everyday living; when upright in our usual stance. We are being forced to uncover […]
The Co-Arising of Play and Grief: How Empowered Choices Draw Out the Pains of Childhood
It’s been said, and it’s certainly been true in my experience, that if you laugh long enough you’ll cry, and if you cry long enough you’ll laugh. Two sides of the same coin, these emotions are closely entangled. As participants connect to the joys of play in my playshops, it’s common for them to feel the stirrings of grief rising within. With each moment of exuberance and freedom reclaiming its rightful place in their body, it becomes harder to deny the despair from having lost their innocence decades ago; from forgoing beauty and wonderment to survive a challenging or unbearable childhood. Indeed, for many who delve deep into the wild fields of childlikeness, grief co-arises with newfound playfulness. Play draws it out from its sleepy […]
Sacrificing Authenticity for Attachment: The Adaptive Survival Responses of Children and Their Influence on Future Relationships
“If our environment cannot support our gut feelings and our emotions, then the child, in order to ‘belong’ and ‘fit in’ will automatically, unwittingly and unconsciously, suppress their emotions and their connections to themselves, for the sake of staying connected to the nurturing environment, without which the child cannot survive. A lot of children are in this dilemma – ‘can I feel and express what I feel or do I have to suppress that in order to be acceptable, to be a good kid, to be a nice kid?’” ~ Dr. Gabor Mate As children, we learn to sacrifice authenticity for connection. Done mostly unconsciously, our body’s intelligence recognizes that if we are our full, vibrant self, we’ll lose the attachment with our parents. We […]
How Better Attunement to Children Co-arises with Empathy and Care for Mother Earth
As we better attune to the needs of children, we cannot help but feel the needs of Mother Earth more deeply. And vice versa. This ripening sensitivity reveals what indigenous people have known for millennia: that children, we, are not separate from our environment. For generations, however, this awareness, empathy and care has been marginal, at best, in western culture. We’ve lived and treated our environment, including its inhabitants, as distinct from our body. And historic attachment disruptions with children have co-existed as expressions of this fundamental disconnect from the land and its manifold creatures. Colonizing hearts, minds and lands While indigenous cultures have long placed the child at the centre of the circle around which the family and community extends, western culture has built […]
4 Reasons I Take Issue With Teaching Children Meditation in School
I take issue with teaching children meditation in school, particularly when done without a wider view of the systemic causes for child dysregulation and a more thorough understanding of trauma. Yes, meditation has been proven to be effective with young ones. I know the research is there backing it up. But… Take a moment to consider the four points below, and ask yourself: What is the real issue at hand? What do children fundamentally need? And if we addressed the issues I lay out, while better meeting children’s core biological needs for love and safety, would we still need to teach meditation? Or wouldn’t the desired result of meditation—calm—arise more organically? 1. Anxious systems The problem is not the child, but rather the systems they are […]
From Being a Helper to Being of Service
One who is of service knows something the helper does not. Well-intentioned, the helper climbs down into the well of suffering to join someone in their darkness. They try to help, and so often do, but in their helping get lost in and with the suffering other, mixing and mingling with their pain. And this is because, without knowing it, helpers often seek to help themselves, to heal their unresolved pain, through the suffering other. The greater the pain, the greater the impulse can be to “help”. I will lead you out of the well I myself am lost in. And so we join together in this old dance, not realizing that on some level I am asking you to help me as I am […]