In Judgment We Find Safety. It’s Where We Get to Keep Hiding.
“When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.” ~ Wayne Dyer In judgement we find safety. If I can condemn that person in some way, I get to continue hiding. By making someone wrong, I get to keep protecting myself in “right”. In condemning life as “unfair”, I don’t have to ever start living. By judging someone’s artistic expression, I get to continue keeping my inner artist in check. By judging someone’s sorrow, I don’t ever have to feel my own. In judging, I get to keep scapegoating others for the anger and shame held in my self-judgment. Those around me become my screen, my vision of myself. I don’t see them as they are; I see them as I am. […]
Grieving — A Return to Wildness
Grieving is an act of wildness. For a short or long period of time we allow ourselves to be raw, uncontrolled, like the undomesticated nature of life itself. Deeply they are intertwined—grieving and life—one feeding the other. The wildness of grieving opens us to the wildness of life. Something takes hold. A torrent of unexpected sorrow, the urge to scream, the primal instinct to pound the floor, to wail to the stars, to dance, to move as something mysterious and ancient shakes us loose. Like the screaming raven, torrential storms and crashing seas, we too become untamed. Our intimacy with the rigid, fearful, overwhelmed, wounded parts of ourselves, and the world, takes us there, an intimacy with that which aches to be felt and set […]
The Fog We Must Endure When Traveling from Head to Viscera Allegiance
There is a transition when moving from head-allegiance to heart- and gut-allegiance. It can feel as though our mind is getting foggy, forgetful, unclear as the viscera comes more online and the senses alive. Clients in somatic therapy when experiencing trauma resolution will often become disoriented temporarily as the body integrates the healing. As they become more embodied and less governed by the fixated, binding thoughts that accompany unresolved trauma, there is more space in the psyche. This space experienced as temporary spaceyness creates room for their feeling capacity to strengthen and take hold. What we’re moving towards is not an abandonment of rational thinking, but an integration of mind and body such that the heart/gut has greater say and sway in our perception and […]