Body Presencing™ - Healing the Root of the Matter

“You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.”                                                                                               -George Bernard Shaw Have you ever had the privilege of witnessing a person or animal die?  It is an amazing experience. A few months ago I was with my 13 year old Great Pyrenees as we put her to sleep. She was here one moment, and in a last breath, she was gone. You can feel the presence of one ’ s soul, one ’ s being, and you know when it is gone. If you had ever questioned the presence of our soul, witnessing the soul leave and the difference in the body before and after lets you know there is a distinct and palpable difference. Our essence lights us up. As we liv...

“ Self absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. ”                                                                                     - Daniel Goleman I think we are all born selfish. We have to be for our survival. We selfishly need food and warmth and touch and love to survive and flourish. I love the word, “ flourish ” . To me it sounds like its meaning; to grow well, to thrive, and to prosper. I want to write this with a flourish. We need everything, and to us, the world revolves around us. In the best of worlds, our parents and caretakers sense our needs and provide them in a timely manner and with care, and most hopefully, with love. We survive and grow. There comes a time when just “ taking ” and just having the world revolve around us is not...

  “ The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected. ”                                                                                 - Robert Frost We all love something. What would happen if we really followed our loves instead of following what our mothers or fathers want or believe? Or following our friends or our communities or even more importantly, following our “ shoulds ” ? Maybe we would be happier. I would like to think that what we spend most of our lives doing are the things we enjoy and even love. Over breakfasts our family would talk about things like love and honesty and integrity. All or most of our discussions were led by my father. He was passionate about “ saving ” others. I don ’ t know if he loved it, but he certainly had a lot of energy around i...

“ Most people don ’ t grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children and call that maturity.  What that is, is aging. ” -Maya Angelou It is important to know who we are. As funny as life it, we come into life needing our mother in an ongoing interplay to know we exist, we are loved, and who we are. We then spend a large part of our lives separating ourselves from our mothers to see ourselves clearly. We are ever connected to our mothers and yet separate from them. If we get too close, it is uncomfortable, and if we become too distanced, it is uncomfortable.  This year I am entwining stories and patient cases with memories of my father and his impact on my life personally and metaphorically. What comes to mind is the importance of our early years and how they impact us and our development in life. My father was his parent ’ s only child, and a child of the great Depression. Being born in 1927 he was a c-sec...

“ They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. ” - Andy Warhol Living through another person ’ s journey is a powerful experience. Last week I wrote about my journey and experience through a very small part of my father ’ s life. This journey could be witnessing the growth of your child, standing by a friend going through a difficult time, watching a loved one losing their mind, and so on. Through it all is a strand that connects every one of us …… our minds.  Our minds are mysterious. They are both what sets us apart, and what connects us all. We are learning so much about our brains and how they function and the biology of belief. Our brains are also amazing and powerful, and yet they are not the same as our minds. What is true is that as we believe something, everything in our mind and thoughts follows the belief; including our biology. An example of this phenomenon is with illness. I have seen people riddled with migraines for ex...

“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”                                                                                                          - John Green My father just visited. He was relocated to Denver by us, his children, last October. This was his first visit here since he relocated. I have gone to visit him a couple of times, but this was his first visit back home. This time, we needed to take him directly to the airline gate, and pick him up directly at the gate. He can no longer negotiate new spaces by himself. He is not the man he had been. He is in the throes of dementia. It is very weird and sad to be with the man I have always known as my father and find him in ways the same, and in ways so di...

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking."                                                                                         - Albert Einstein         Rituals are an important aspect of our lives; or they can be. They could be as simple as saying a prayer before the dinner meal, or reading a bed time story to the children before sleep. In our family, it was breakfast together; mostly Sunday breakfasts. These rituals bring us something important. Often they are little nuggets we incorporate as a way of belonging with our families. For me, it was the time set aside to be together, away from the usual day to day life happenings. We would go out for Sunday breakfast, ...