Body Presencing™ - Healing the Root of the Matter

“I t is not the events of our lives that shape us, but our beliefs as to what events mean.”                                                                                 - Tony Robbins Our parent’s influence on us is profound. Whether we want them to influence us, and no matter how close we are to them or how long we lived with then, their influence on us is profound. There is the genetic aspect, there is a generational aspect, there is the power of their beliefs on us and our sense of belonging, the power of modeling behavior, and also the power of something that is intangible; hard to put words to. We are learning that our experience in the womb is more impactful on every aspect of us than we previously knew.  Genetic material is developed and passed to us, unresolved traumas in our parent’s lives and their parents lives are passed to us, and we are completely connected to and with our mothers. Our mother’s feelings we feel. We are aware of every sound around us and

“A wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future.”                                                                             -Herbert Spencer There is no greater way I know of to know ourselves than through our relationships. We have relationships with ourselves, with our family members, our friends, our colleagues, and with significant others in our lives. Our future relationships are so influenced by our first ones; our parents and caretakers. What is unresolved in these first primary relationships gets played out within us, and all our other relationships. We may think we have worked everything out and have hashed out their early effects on us, and then something or someone comes along and we become triggered or reactive. How do we know we are triggered or reactive? We know through a feeling. Suddenly we may feel angry, or we may feel defensive or we may have an uncomfortable or unsettling feeling in our bellies. The que

“ Acceptance doesn’t mean resignation, it means understanding that something is what it is and that there has got to be a way through it.”                                                                                                                           -Michael J. Fox The Long and Winding Road is a Beatles song and also the paths our lives take. Just as in all paths of healing, they are not straight, but they wind around and sometimes we don’t know where they are taking us. What we have with us is our own unique moral compass that leads our way.  There are so many self-help books and gurus and guides as well as meditation techniques all really there to help us to tune into our own small inner voice. This inner voice is what we call our soul and our true voice. It is who we are connected to and with all that is. I had written before about what I call living in the mean time. This is living day to day not knowing where each day is taking us and knowing in our bones th

“My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.” -Michael J. Fox We are all our mother’s children. Once in a while one of has a wonderful experience with our mothers. Often, though, this experience with our mothers is a very flawed one. Our birth gives us a chance to grow and to develop our very souls; to become who we truly are. It is not easy. This means to honor our bond with our mother, whatever the bond is and more importantly and with great difficulty, accepting our mothers as they are. I was working with a woman who is often angry, especially when it comes to spending money that she doesn’t want to spend. This could come as a surprise bill or spending money on a hotel when she could have spent time with her family, at no monetary expense. It felt to me like there was confusion in her relationship with her and her mother and that she had great trouble valuing her, and of course valuing her mother. We did a c

“The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.”                                                                                   - Nathaniel Branden Have you ever spent time with an elder, an elderly parent, someone with a stroke or other disability? Have you noticed that being with them involves us slowing down to their movements and their rhythms of thought and expression? If so, have you also experienced that when we are present with them in our thoughts and feelings and movements that it also takes us in a different dimension of time where things that used to matter don’t, and other things do? When events in life slow us down we become more open to feelings, thoughts, and perceptions which we ordinarily only allow in small moments and increments. As we age and find our minds slowing down or becoming less agile, or we are dealing with life changes such as a stroke, things which we were too much in a rush to pay much attention to become more i

“ No legacy is so rich as honesty. ”                                                                  - William Shakespeare There are so many ways to look at faces. We can look at the color of our eyes, the shape of our lips, and the length of our noses. We can also look at our coloring, our ethnicity, the shape of our faces, and the pallor of our skin. These are all literal ways to look at each other. The Chinese and Japanese have ways of analyzing our health through the lines on our faces, the marks on our skin, the colorizations in our eyes, and the shape of our lips. There are many other ways to see each other through what our faces reveal.  Have you noticed that we know when someone is sad without saying or hearing a word? We know through a feeling and what our faces reveal. There might be downturned lips which usually are slightly curved upwards. There might be a sad caste in the eyes. There are ways to know each other at a deeper level through our faces.  I have

“ Truth is generally the best vindication against slander. ”                                                                                    - Abraham Lincoln How often do we look for opportunities to be alone unless we are completely overwhelmed? It seems that most of us have a great fear of being alone. We stay in stagnant relationships or we make bad choices in roommates or we emotionally blackmail people or children to stay with us. Being alone is a great fear many of us carry.  If we look at the word, alone, we can see that in taking it apart in two syllables, it is “ al ” “ one ” . We know that in our heads we are really all one, but feeling our oneness and connection while we are by ourselves is another matter altogether. Many times this comes from the impact on us of imperfect parenting experiences. Many of us had aloof, or distant, or depressed, or sad mothers. Many of us were raised by one parent, or an abusive parent or suffered a great loss of a caretaker o