Body Presencing™ - Healing the Root of the Matter

“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts,  there can be no more hurt, only more love.” - Mother Teresa Life is inspiring; or should I say it can be. The seemingly cold depths of February are actually a period of thawing before the coming of spring.   We may feel as though we are enmeshed in cold and snow, but underneath the surface life is full of vigor, vitality, and new growth. I personally find February a difficult month. When I was in high school, I found I was frequently melancholy and it disturbed me until I one day realized that I get this way every February. It is like I have an internal threshold of tolerance for cold and shorter periods of light. By the time February rolls around, my tolerance has expired. I am ready for spring. Yet, we have at least one more full month of cold and dreary weather. We all have internal thresholds for things. We even have internal thresholds for happiness and love. In an unconscious way, we h

“Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.”                                                                                 -H. Jackson Brown, Jr. Everyone wants to fall in love and experience the fullness of love, but not everyone believes that they are loveable or deserve love. Not everyone realizes that we love in a way that we have been loved and in a way that we love ourselves. For those reasons and more, falling and being in love also stirs up our unresolved “stuff”. Yet falling in love and being in love and loving another gives us an opportunity to face and resolve old family issues. As we do so, we regain our strength and a sense of wholeness and vitality in our lives. Loving gives us the opportunity to work on that old “stuff” as we experience life with and through another’s eyes. If we don’t really feel we deserve to be loved, when we are loved somewhere inside we might feel like “what is wrong with them that they love me?” Sometimes we choose part

“Lord, help me the person my dog thinks I am.” -   Unknown If you have a dog or are an animal lover I am sure you know exactly what that quote means.   And if you are a dog lover, like me, I am sure at least one has been your favorite, and that there are many stories you could tell me about your friend and what you have learned from him/her. Dogs are loyal and through their loyalty they teach us so much about the patient nature of unconditional love.   But love and loyalty are only two of the many lessons they teach us.   A third lesson is about simplifying our lives. When my son was thirteen, we had two dogs, Moscow and Samantha. Samantha was a Malamute mix with blue eyes, and was gentle and loving. Moscow was a black and tan Akita who was strong and gentle, loving and loyal and fiercely protective. My son was wanted a dog of his own, so we researched breeds and decided on a Great Pyrenees. Up until this point, Samantha and Moscow were great frie

“Love is the greatest power on earth. It conquers all things.” -   Unknown It is February. If you are like me, I find this month challenging because it is about this time when I am getting tired of the cold and shorter days. And we have at least another month of cold and snowy weather to come. Yet, it is at this time when we have a holiday to celebrate love; and which warms our hearts. Even though warmth is not in the air yet, celebrating who we love is. I’d like to share a true story about the power of love and its ability to warm our hearts and help us to move gracefully through the rest of winter. There is a man who was married for just a few years who was getting to know his wife’s family and was becoming closer to them. This man came from a very different family from his wife’s. In his family, no one spoke about their feelings, his siblings were not close, and if his father told him he would be there, he the son, never knew if his father would sh

“The pine stays green in winter……..wisdom in hardship.”                                                                                          -Norman Douglas Seasons embody the flow and unfolding of life. Spring is about birth and our young years. Summer is about youth. Fall is about our adulthood, and winter is about our senior years, and the years in the Grove of Elders. I have had a marvelous opportunity to spend a lot of time with my father in his grove of elders and also in his last years as his powers are fading. This is a very rich time; filled with times of great sweetness, great sadness, great loss, and great times where I can support him. I have had the honor and the pain of helping my father, as much as he can let anyone help him, in this last stage of his life. He is an example of someone who never was able to let either of his parents in. One of the results is that he is not able to let others help him and he is not able to see who is trustworthy or not. He

"Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart." -Victor Hugo  When we are young, we think we are immortal and invincible. Youth is, what can I say, youth. There is energy and innocence. As we slowly age, we become aware that life is challenging, that not all our dreams come true, and we slide or trudge or step or skip our way through life. By the time we come to the winter of our lives, many of us have been beaten down by life, and some of us thrive and become older and wiser. There are not many people I know in their eighties who embody fullness and growth and whose minds are vibrant even though their bodies are failing in different ways and to different extents. Those that continue to grow and share and see life in its fullness are inspirations to us all. Some people think that choice is not a part of their fate. I tend to believe and know through my life and experiences that there is always a choice. How we deal with life is a choice.