I hope that you are doing well, reaching deep into the soil of the earth for nutrients through the challenge of winter, feeling the call of spring that will be coming. |
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I am excited about what is going to pop out of the soil this spring and then sprout leaves, and blossom, and bear fruit.
I myself have been percolating deep in the darkness, poking around in basements and caves in my unconscious, looking for insight and hidden treasure. I’ve found a few precious things down there. If you click on this link you will find a 17 question “journey inventory” that brought some rich insights and perspective for me when I filled it out for myself a few weeks ago. |
Doing the survey I realized that my journey of actively looking for the way forward started when I chose to take a semester off from college. I had felt that I was on a track to be a default person and to live a default life, and that I would not be fully alive. I didn’t know about trauma or life force or the intersection of emotions and the nervous system. But I knew that where I was headed wasn’t going to work. Given how that path turned out, there must have been other paths that could have been less painful. But those paths might not have led to the deep diving that has allowed me to break out of the fog of confusion, suppression and shutdown that for me were the fruits of developmental trauma. I invite you to try out the above questionnaire for yourself and see what surfaces for you. And feel free to reach out and share some of that with me if you care to! Also from the depth of deep soil in this dramatic winter, I have continued to record additional trauma-healing resources. This week instead of shining the spotlight on one particular recording, I’m sharing a list of (pretty much) all of the recordings that are currently available on my Soundcloud page. Again, if you care to, let me know which ones you try and how it goes for you. Sometimes I like to choose one recorded process and just repeat it every day for a week or so. This past week, I’ve been working with the “Assessing Life Force” process. |
Acknowledging up front that I know they are not perfectly executed, I welcome your feedback on these recorded exercises. And, drum roll please! |
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As I connect in my own body with the liberation that I’ve found for myself and the shifts I’m still encountering in my life toward ease, intimacy, trust, and joy, I know that I can work with people in group settings to support others in navigating similar shifts. But in looking back over the many group programs I have been in over three decades, there were few explicitly designed for people with significant developmental trauma. And even those groups turned out to not be emotionally safe enough. In many places, despite receiving real healing, I still got emotionally bumped and bruised in the process. I didn’t quite fit, people didn’t understand me, they saw motives in me that weren’t there, or they assumed that since I was emotionally dysregulated that I didn’t understand myself at all. And really this isn’t a complaint, it kind of makes sense. Those of us with significant developmental trauma tend to be rather difficult to understand, connect with and support. But it has to be possible to do better. I’m trying to design an environment where real and significant personal connections and personal healing can occur, and where misunderstandings or discomforts are minimized, where there is a foundation of emotional safety, and where there is genuine recognition of the humanity, creativity and courage of everyone in the group. I believe it is possible to build an environment that can lovingly meet us where we are, even when we are “difficult” people. And here is where I am asking for your eager or hopeful participation! I am looking for 15 to 40 people to participate in a series of small group meetings where we will try out experiential exercises and activities designed to support the healing of developmental trauma. You sign up, you get invited to a whole bunch small group meetings, and you agree to attend at least some of them. Each meeting will include no more than 8 participants. The meetings will occur starting on or about February 18 and will continue for 4 to 6 weeks. There will be 2 to 4 meetings per week, and each meeting will be 45 to 90 minutes long. The only commitment is that you agree to RSVP and show up for at least one meeting within the first 3 weeks, and that you agree to provide brief feedback on your experience after each meeting that you attend. I will do my best to schedule at times that work for everyone who is eager to participate. |
If you are not feeling a clear “Sign me up!” or a clear “Not for me!,” I invite you to just allow the invitation to be planted in the soil of your unconscious, and then just relax and be curious and see what sprouts. But don’t wait too long, I am planning to kick off the program on February 15! Spring is coming soon! So much love to you, to all of us! |
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