What I mean or FAQ’s

Words and what they mean are a helpful thing to talk about. Below is a small list to offer clarity on my meaning.

Guidance

Guidance is the word that best describes the interplay of mind-body coaching, cycle awareness (menstrual, seasonal, and lunar) and the various spiritual modalities I use to work with to support and listen with and for you.

Soma

The soma is our body+. In our western medicine informed culture the word body usually only refers to the biological form.  Soma is a Greek word meaning “the living organism in its wholeness.” So our soma is the body with the interconnection of our thoughts, emotions, choices, actions and how we see the world as relational, social and spiritual beings. Soma is the living body in its wholeness; mind, body and soul.

Somatic

Staci K. Haines gives a helpful definition in her book The Politics of Trauma. Staci writes, “Somatics is a holistic way to transform. It engages our thinking, feeling, sensing, and action. Transformation, from a somatic view means that the way we are, relate, and act become aligned with our visions and values - even under pressure.” We are more than just our thoughts or beliefs. Our bodies hold wisdom that can help us truly become the change we want for ourselves, our families and our communities.

Cycle Awareness

Cycle awareness is the practice of living within the framework of the cycles of our bodies and of nature. Cycles are patterns of experience that repeat themselves over and over again. The tides follow the cycle of the moon. Our understanding of time follows the cycles of the sun rising and setting and the change of the seasons. The cycles of life and death, beginnings and endings, growing and harvesting and the monthly experience of menstruation are all ways we live connected to cycles. Cycle awareness is the mindful way we can live in relationship to these processes of nature and our bodies.

Intuitive Guidance

I use the word intuitive to acknowledge the way in which I work by being open and curious to the unknown.  Sometimes it can be difficult to not know. Being willing to “not know” allows our mind and body’s intelligence time and space to discover our inner wisdom at our own pace.

Embodiment

Is the experience of living in our body. Embodied Transformation is when our actions align with our vision and values even under the same old pressures.

Kissing the Hag

It is Autumn again, the season of slowing down, gathering and turning our focus inward. It is also a season of truth telling, encountering our shadows and monsters and maybe even kissing the hag.

What do I mean by “kissing the hag”? The hag is a symbol of the parts of us we have deemed impossible to love and so impossible to want to live with. I have found that this odd visual of ‘kissing the hag’ is a powerful invitation to radically love the ugly, scary, and often crazy parts of myself. 

In folklore and fairy tales I see this invitation in moments as in Beauty and the Beast when the prince would not accept a rose from the poor, ugly, old woman. Or in Bluebeard, when the young new wife opens the forbidden cellar door to find the gruesome scene of a multitude of women’s corpses with their throats slit. In Vasilisa the Brave, Vasilisa brings home Baba Yaga’s skull fire and burns her step-family to ashes. And the moment in Cinderella when her stepsisters' are willing to cut off their own body parts in hopes they’d marry a prince.

There is a method of reading stories as where the reader is all of the characters. This can also often done with dreams as well. When I am willing to hear stories this way I’m invited to notice my own scary parts. These parts are my “hags”, warty, crazy and repulsive. They are the parts of me that feel most terrifying and unwelcome. Offering radical love sounds like an impossible proposition. “For who could ever love a beast,” goes the opening monologue.

This is the invitation that Halloween and Autumn offer, to meet the “villainous” and unwanted parts of ourselves, to let them be seen and to learn how to radically love and forgive them.

Radical love needs to include forgiveness. To kiss the hags with our eyes closed, grimacing and counting the seconds until its over, is not love. That is endurance. To truly love these parts of ourselves the invitation is to acknowledge and bring compassion to what they/we have done in the name of normalcy, love, safety and belonging. When I can look my unwanted parts in the eye and not shame them, turn away or make excuses, then radical love is possible and the kissing can commence.

When I can hear the wind singing and the moon shows her face then I know it is a good time to practice gathering the bones that I have left to be forgotten in some dark cellar. It is a good time to accept a gift from an old, ugly party crasher. It is a good time to ask why did the fire burn away those voices and not mine? It is a good time to pause before I cut off a part of myself to be loved and accepted. It is a good time to listen to the stories, gasp at the scary parts, laugh at the ridiculous and cry for the loneliness of being forgotten, unwanted and shunned. Let go the myth of normal and allow how it feels to be seen, forgiven and loved, warts and all, kissing a few hags in the process.

Inspired in part by Sharon Blackie’s Hagitude

The Stories We tell

We are surrounded by stories, and I believe it matters which ones we choose to listen to and agree with. Some stories can be louder than they have a right to be, and others are barely heard even when they are speaking for our truest self. Some stories will only get louder until we stop and truly listen.

We are storied creatures constantly telling, creating and listening for them to help guide and ground us - often to help make sense of moments that were too big for us to hold. Stories can illuminate the ways we have been trapped and isolated by our experiences of others and ourselves. Stories of harm can loop so even when we are out of the moment of pain we continue to live as though we aren’t. Sometimes stories are passed down from ancestors or caregivers. Some we feel strongly about and some are so “normal” we don’t notice they are a part of us. Cultural, historical and family stories need to be told from an embodied place so they no longer run the narrative for us. Our bodies and hearts carry stories and sometimes they become so ingrained we forget they are in an active state of retelling.

We are relational creatures. We have a deep need to be seen and heard. We experience harm in relationship, and through relationship we will find repair. Just as La Loba sang to the bones to remind them of their life, we all need help to be sung back to our belonging, to be rebound to our embodied spirit.

I want to help you gather the stories of your life - especially the forgotten and hard stories - to help you illuminate the parts of yourself that need to be heard, the parts that are stuck in loops, and the parts that are ready to run free.

Gathering the bones for new life

There is a story told of an ancient woman who abides in the desert. She spends her time searching, unearthing and gathering bones. Bones are of the soul, the indestructible parts that remain when death seems to have had the last say. Her name is La Loba or La Que Sabe and she is the one who gathers and sorts, who sings life back into that which has been lost and forgotten in the sands of time. When the heavens are in harmony she will begin the rites of enchanting while a fire in the hearth leaps and the moon watches with hope. She sings over and to the bones and as they listen they begin to vibrate, to sing along becoming enchanted. The bones begin to reform, to take on matter, flesh and skin, until they are whole and wildly alive. Then perhaps the shape of a bear, or a deer, or a wolf will leap up and run into the night. If you keep watching you may see as the creature bounds across the river she changes into a laughing woman whose hair has many colors, flowing as freely as the wild untamed wind.

Adapted from Women Who Run With Wolves

by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés