You can listen to an audio version of this blog post here.

And you can listen to part one of “Your Mind Is Here to Change” here.

If we want to learn a musical instrument, practice is required. Our bodymind is an instrument and to learn new habits of body and mind we must be willing to engage practices of awareness, self compassion and insight. Our wish to change our relationship to ourselves or our world, depends upon this commitment.

Real change requires effort.

In the work I do, practices of applied neuroscience include focused self awareness and active imagination. Who we are lives in our imagination; we are creating our self image every moment. Challenges arise when we are so attached to who it is we think we are, that when life demands its inevitable changes, we are unable to respond which feels much like a loss of freedom.

The therapeutic healing arts I engage provide skillful ways to meet, name and transform the inevitable anxiety that is part of life.

Decades of Feldenkrais(r) work have taught me how to rest into the wordless connection and attunement necessary to listen deeply simultaneously to myself and another.

Hakomi Body Centered Psychotherapy work invites an integration between felt sense and language which is vital for keeping our bodymind and heart vividly present. Internal Family Systems reveals the diversity that is alive within our own psyche and compassionately welcomes all parts of ourselves.

Thirty five years and counting of practice & study in various traditions of Tibetan Buddhism continue to allow me to trust the inherent wisdom present in everyone and provides me with a place to rest.

Whole Systems Thinking keeps me awake to the profound interrelatedness of our personal healing and the healing we offer the world through our efforts. Not one drop of insight, compassion, love or sincerity are ever wasted!

None of these methods are new. There’s a renaissance in the reclamation of experiential processes of intuition, revelation and trust of felt sense that open the doors of perception. These ways of knowing ourselves and our world are our birthright.

Our work together is collaborative and begins with “original wholeness”. No one is broken, no one needs to be fixed and I’m not the “fixer”. Instead we open ourselves to the creative solutions that want to move through us and move us through challenges.

“Some people mistake being loving for being a sap. Quite the contrary, the most loving people are often the most fierce and the most acutely armed for battle… for they care about preserving & protecting those goodly endeavors that cannot be allowed to perish from this earth…”
“The Dangerous Old Woman” by CP Estes

When I put those two words together “fierce compassion” it confuses people. How could we be both fierce & compassionate at the same time? My response is “how could we not be in this day and age?”

The term “compassion” has been beaten down to a sad apology served on soggy toast. Sometimes it’s a plea to be liked or to appear “spiritual”.

Fierce compassion means being kind and clear. It invites us to meet a soft edge within ourselves and fierce compassion is not willing to be complicit. When we are complicit with others’ bad behavior we “disappear ourselves” and set ourselves up for more resentment or harm.

Fierce compassion reveals our inner worth and it is our inner worth that determines outer conditions.

Fierce compassion gives a damn, it’s that simple. Fierce compassion reveals what we care about, it shines a light on our values and allows us to embody self respect and dignity–it is a key to living an authentic, empowered life. Where in your life could there be more of this quality?

Practices that support our inner life cultivate a refuge we can rely upon day in and day out. Without consistent training in what feeds our inner life we have nothing to rely on especially in times of crisis.

The Greek poet Archilochos said “We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.” We could substitute the word “training” here with the words practices or rituals–the bottom line non negotiables that feed us regularly.

These days more than ever we need to be deliberate about where we take our refuge. The intent of our refuge determines the shape of our days and the quality of our life.

Whether it’s a walk through a city park, a cuppa tea, formal prayer or meditation practices, journalling, painting, engaging a craft, preparing simple meals, contemplative reading, beautiful music in the background, a good nap, simple night time rituals. These practices can be simple and inexpensive but the key is they are done with intent.

Where do you take refuge?

Compassion and empathy: there’s confusion about these two qualities and with good reason, they are often used interchangeably. Given the amount of challenges and fatigue we face in our world today, it’s helpful to make distinctions between them. The third quality I’ll speak to here is self compassion.

Empathy

Empathy is a state of being where we feel what another feels either physically or emotionally. There’s been much written about the necessity and value of empathy recently. It’s a wonderful thing, until it isn’t. There are excellent resources for being more healthfully empathetic including Dr. Judith Orloff’s work (https://drjudithorloff.com) and Dr. Laura Graye’s article “How Your Empathetic Body is Betraying You” (https://medium.com/mediagraytion/how-your-empathetic-body-is-betraying-you-416c73c65426).

In neuroscience studies (https://www.matthieuricard.org/en/blog/posts/empathy-and-the-cultivation-of-compassion) it has been shown that relying on the elemental emotional skills of empathy alone to be helpful to others leads to despair. It’s good to feel what other beings feel. However, empathy by itself doesn’t help us out of the emotional weeds of blending too closely with other beings.

Compassion

Compassion is a more complex state than empathy. Compassion says: “I see your pain and there are actions I am able to take to support you.” Those actions may include holding someone’s hand, making a cuppa tea, bringing meals, checking in on a regular basis or helping a person gather resources they need. There is the care we feel for other beings along with our wish and ability to act, which makes it different than empathy.

There is no end to compassion. Compassion never tires. We can wish for the well being of any being any time without losing ourselves in the process. There is such a thing as “empathetic distress” when we become so burdened by the pain around us that we are exhausted: that exhaustion is a signal that we need to cultivate self compassion.

Self Compassion

Self compassion is a necessity for our well being. Our compassion toward others is as good as our self compassion.

Self compassion offers sanctuary for all that is beautiful and exiled in our lives. Are there parts of myself I deem unworthy of self compassion? If so, how do I meet those barriers? This is tender, intimate work that invites honesty. Real change can only happen when we become intimate with ourselves and our world.

One early May morning while on solitary retreat this year, I woke up with the word “Faithwalk”. It was loud, clear and provocative: “FAITHWALK”! I laid in bed for a bit to take it in: it was clearly a command and both a noun and a verb.

“Faith” is a word often used in reference to a religious path but I don’t experience it that way. I do have faith. My faith is drawn from the deep natural rhythms of life: spring follows winter, fall follows summer. Growing up with acres of fields and woods to roam about, I was held in the daily and seasonal rounds. I trusted those rhythms of both life and death and I still do. The inhale and exhale of the natural world hums inside my bones and some day, those bones will return to the earth as part of the great round. I am a contemplative who feels naturally held by whatever you call the larger forces in the universe and to everything there is a season.

We are entranced with the belief that life moves in a straight line. Life does not move in a straight line, it moves in fits and bursts, then still points, and surprise, it arises again in unexpected ways. Life moves like a toddler wearing new clothes jumping in mud puddles. Unnecessary suffering happens anytime we impose linear thinking on life and that suffering is at the root of much of the anxiety that’s prevalent now. Yes, life contains suffering and we can learn to cause ourselves less of it by not pushing.

The experience I had that morning in May upon awakening called me to an edgy place of commitment within myself.

“For far too long we have been seduced into walking a path that did not lead us to ourselves. For far too long we have said yes when we wanted to say no. And for far too long we have said no when we desperately wanted to say yes. . . . When we don’t listen to our intuition, we abandon our souls. And we abandon our souls because we are afraid if we don’t, others will abandon us.”
~Terry Tempest Williams

“Faithwalk” carries for me, the potent message to trust the dark, defy consensual reality, hold the larger picture, stay steady in these polarized times, trust there is a way forward, trust intuition and trust that we can transform our wounds into wisdom, especially the wounds of where we have abandoned ourselves.