Hello, Beloved fellow humans, friends and travelers,
Let me start out by saying that I am taking new transformational somatic trauma coaching clients. The people who may benefit from working with me are people whose inner experience has always been somewhat uncomfortable and chaotic and who are willing to be curious and explore what is happening in the layers of experience that occur beneath their conscious awareness. If this describes someone you know, you might direct them to my website or invite them to sign up for my newsletters.
Some things my clients report as a result of working with me:
– More capacity to know that they are ok even when things are demanding, both in their bodies and in their lives.
– More spaciousness in their body and energy.
– Re-connection or more consistent connection to hope and vitality.
– The ability to not be swept away when intense and overwhelming emotions arise.
– Knowing they are not crazy for having intense, non-linear feelings and thoughts.
Hi, Beautiful One and Everyone, (originally an email newsletter)
I add “and Everyone” because this is my newsletter, and while I want your nervous system to feel that I am absolutely thinking about you and talking to you directly, I don’t want your nervous system to start out thinking that I have composed this message to you individually – and to then experience a shock when you realize it’s my newsletter that’s going to a whole bunch of people.
That has happened a few times, and I feel a shock in my body when I realize that someone experienced my email as something different than it was.
It’s interesting. A lot of what we do in nervous system healing could be interpreted as “tricking” our nervous system. But I guess I see it as tricking our nervous systems into believing what is already true, when our trauma has us stuck believing things about ourselves that are not true.
For example, today I’m sharing with you a healing process I just put together for myself. The intent of the process is to trick the nervous system into feel loved, blessed and safe. It’s not really a trick. The intent of the process is to invite the nervous system into feel loved, blessed and safe. As humans and mammals, we are pretty programmable, so is there a difference? I think the significant difference may be in our motivation and intent when we seek to re-program ourselves and others.
I hope that you are well. I keep being struck by how amazing it is to be human. And how perplexing and confusing and challenging and disorienting.
I’ve given up pretending to myself that I’m going to send newsletters 2-4 times per month, and I’m going to see if I can find my way to sending them once or twice a month!
But I do have news. I have published a video series about Developmental Trauma. When I am working with clients, or even in conversation with unwitting civilians about trauma, there are a bunch of mini-lectures I find myself sharing repeatedly, little 3 minute overviews of things. This series might be described as a great compilation of all of those bits. It’s 6 videos and a total of about 2 hours’ of content. They offer a basic overview of how I see developmental trauma and the path of healing.
And much bigger news: I have a new grandson! His coming into the world was quite an intense journey for everybody, but here he is, healthy and vibrant!
Baby Korben and me after lots of not sleeping much
No long stories today but I will leave you with this
Here is my long-awaited newsletter. I was delayed a bit because I have accepted some temporary work in my previous field, that I am doing alongside my continually growing coaching practice. In this transition, I am seeking the right balance in my weekly schedule.
All of which is awesome for a few different reasons, but that is a topic for another newsletter. Here’s what I want to share about today: I had an illuminating experience yesterday that was a real-time illustration of what unresolved developmental trauma does to us – or in us – all the time.
Developmental trauma interferes with and fundamentally changes your relationship with your needs and feelings. And since your feelings are your organic built-in GPS for your life, both from moment to moment and in terms of the big picture, this disruption in your relationship with your feelings also interferes with the direction of your life in uncountable ways.
I hope that you are having a safe and awesome summer, filled with pleasant blessings and surprises.
There is a lot that I want to be able to teach you about fear, hope, vitality, overwhelm and the human nervous system.
Some of what I want to teach you, I know really well inside myself. But what I don’t necessarily know are: – how to put words around what I know that will enable you to also know it – how many different things can get in the way of you even understanding what I am talking about
And some of what I want to teach you, I only have glimmers of. There are things I am just beginning to learn inside myself, and I can tell there’s much more. To use a martial arts analogy, I know that I know a lot of stuff, but I don’t know whether I am a first degree black belt or a yellow belt! I know that I know a lot and I know that there is a lot more to know that I can’t even envision yet.
Plan, Start, Keep Going! Clarify and set your most important intention(s). (For example, to love and forgive myself) Make a specific and simple plan to support your intention. (Five to ten times per day for a week, I will put my hand on my heart, breathe, soften, drop my shoulders and say, “I love me and I forgive myself”) Make a backup plan for when something goes wrong. (I will put reminders in my calendar and put up sticky notes.) Start following your plan.
When you inevitably find yourself off the track:
Do not:
Analyze how you got here
Criticize or judge yourself
Assume or declare that you have failed
Do:
Remember your intention and why it was important to you
Return to the plan and/or
Go to the back up plan
Keep going
The temptation to analyze or judge is an insidious distraction. You can analyze after the time period has ended.
Gratitude for all of the great fathering in our lives, and compassion for all of the pain and grief around lost fathers and fathers who were not there or were not able to really see us and support us.
First off, I’ve recorded a new meditation that is available on SoundCloud. Until now, all of the longer recordings included some sort of active engagement with emotion or nervous system activation. This one is a 22 minute guided process that’s just about relaxing, letting go, grounding, feeling supported, that sort of thing. You can find it right here. Enjoy!!
Here in Maryland and surrounding states we are being serenaded by the chorus of cicadas that make a visitation every 17 years. I find it a rather pleasant background song.
I have an important update and a request for volunteers.
I am working on a self-led course, designed to be done as a weekend retreat. The course will include video segments, audio exercises, written exercises and other activities.
The intent is that the program will help folks clarify their goals and obstacles, and help them identify practices which will allow them to shift the obstacles and move toward their goals.
Once I have the course put together I will be looking for some beta-testers for the program, but right now I am looking for some alpha-testers, to view, listen to or try out individual pieces of content and give me feedback on how well they to or don’t resonate with you.
I am having a very non-linear experience in putting this course together. I expect to be sending you one to four pieces – and emails – per week, for three to six weeks. And my request, if you sign up, is that you will try out at least one piece per week and send me some feedback.
So if you have enough time and that sounds intriguing to you, and you don’t mind getting the emails, you can join my alpha-testing team by clicking on this button and signing up on the next page.
Here in Maryland, the dogwoods are in full bloom, approaching the end of their spring display, and there are Star of Bethlehem flowers in many of the lawns in the neighborhood. Since I took over cutting my own lawn again, I was able to mow around these lovely white flowers and give them another week or two to adorn my yard.
In the US, COVID cases are dropping. The virus may never go away and may continue to kill thousands of people every month, due to the combination of vaccine fears and new variants. But by sometime this year, life should be able to find a new normal that allows us to gather in person again.
In India, though, COVID is spiking dramatically. Because of widespread poverty and close quarters, the virus is very difficult to manage and contain there.
Thank you for whatever you are doing that supports health and healing in your family and in the world.
And in the interest of psychological and nervous system healing, I have declared May to be the month of small personal practices!
May is the month of small personal practices!
I invite you to join with me in setting the intention to do personal practices every day (or most every day), or to add additional practices to your standing regimen.
How is it helpful to do more small personal practices? If I am doing pretty ok, why should I trouble myself with trying to fit one more thing onto my plate?
Let’s start there. The intention in doing personal practices is not to add an item to your to do list that will increase your stress. We want to reduce stress and increase flow. So if setting an intention will cause you stress, then perhaps you can just have an idea of maybe trying something out if you feel like it.
But let me explain why personal practices are useful, and then I invite you to find a way to fit them in with a spoonful of joy rather than stress.
One of my practices this past month or so has been to walk around the block once or twice most days. This is me walking around the block with the sun behind me. If you look closely you can see my foot in the shadow at the bottom of the pic.
Hmm, I could segue into a discussion of shadow, but I don’t think that is where this particular email is going..
Based on my conversations with people seeking healing and growth, folks really want potent experiences and significant breakthroughs. We want to feel clearly in our bodies that something has shifted, that there is more room for us to be free, to feel, and to be ourselves.
I actually had the pleasure of such a shift just this past weekend. It was not a single event or insight, but four days in an intensive trauma training called ISP, integralsomaticpsychology.com, in which I got to do several practice sessions both as a facilitator and as a client.
As a result of that work, I feel like I have more space to be alive. I think that my life-long habit has been that whenever I feel actual eagerness, a dark shadow (there’s the reference to shadow LOL) immediately shows up and pours water all over my eagerness, so I end up muted and wet. But today I noticed an eagerness show up and I noticed that the eagerness just stayed there in me, that nothing came to drown it out.
That is what we want so much, palpable shifts, a clear knowing that who I am today is different than yesterday in some real way.
Do small personal practices bring about these substantive shifts?
No and yes.
The daffodils have come and gone but I wanted to put another flower pic in here.
Most typically, small practices do not directly evoke the profound shifts we are looking for and longing for. If they do not bring about major shifts, what do they do? Small practices can lay the groundwork for big breakthroughs. Here are two ways that our daily (or intermittent) practices support us in coming to major shifts:
First, to state the obvious, any shift is an adjustment, a change in how we feel or in how we perceive things or in what happens inside of us. A shift is a change. That is obvious, but it leads into this point. A small practice generally produces a small change, often temporary, lasting only during the time that we do the practice or for a little while afterward. So, not a permanent shift, but a change nonetheless.
If you do a variety of practices over time, your body experiences a variety of small, often temporary, shifts. Through this, your body learns repeatedly that shift is possible. The habit of shifting your experience through practice makes you more flexible and this allows your body to more easily accept a larger shift when circumstances allow one to arise.
The other element is that major healing shifts tend to be accompanied or even driven by insight and meaning, by shifts in cognitive understanding. The small practices we do every day often gift us with small insights, or with glimpses into a larger understanding that we can touch in our minds but can’t yet feel in our bodies. The accumulation of these smaller experiences of insight can support the meaning making elements of a larger shift, when circumstances allow for that larger shift to be possible.
So when we are in a particularly potent healing container or we have a life-changing event or a profound spiritual experience, the groundwork we have done through our practices creates fertile ground that makes a movement toward healing both more able to occur and more likely to stick.
And sometimes the accumulation of many small insights and shifts blossoms directly into a transformation inside of us. I don’t want to rule that out!
Perhaps June or July will be the month of larger shifts. I will offer ideas and suggestions about how to invite those shifts to happen. In the meantime, all of the small practices that we do in this month of May will indeed support those inevitable and powerful healing experiences that each of us seek.
What practices do you want to try, and how might you try them in a way that is easeful and joyful?
Note that when I say “small practices”, they can be really small.
For example, I just looked up from my laptop, looked out the window at the neighbor’s tree moving in the wind, and took a deep breath. That ten second act brings me a little more calm and a little more present.
I just took some moments to feel my feet, my calves, my thighs, my buttocks, my hips, my belly, my chest, my neck, my shoulders, my arms, my hands, my face, my brain, and the top of my head. It took more time to type about that than the time it took to do it. Yet that simple series of paying attention brought me more connection with my body and breath.
I just raised my arms up in a gesture of gratitude and smiled. That took about 15 seconds, and it softened my heart, my face and my body.
Throughout the month, I will be sharing my small practices daily through Facebook and Instagram and on my blog. I will also share some of them with you through my newsletters.
I invite you now to do one small thing. Stroke your own face lovingly. Or send a prayerful blessing to someone you care about. Or stretch. Or dance. Or breathe – deep breathing or belly breathing or alternate nostril breathing or breath of fire, whatever breathing practice your body loves.
Do one small thing, and then thank yourself for doing it! I wish you a fruitful and joyful month of May!
The dogwood in our front yard has started to bloom.
And happy Covid spring, or at least we can see that spring is going to come. My beloved and I will get our second vaccinations in less than two weeks.
Happy Spring, Dogwood Blossoms!
I am always trying to draw maps of the healing journey. I feel more secure if I have some way to assess where I am, where I’ve been and where I am trying to get to.
So last week I drew a map, or map-ish. You can access the entire PDF by entering your email at the top of the page and adding yourself to my mailing list.
