Body Presencing™ - Healing the Root of the Matter

“Don't spend time beating on a wall hoping to transform it to a door.” -CoCo Channel I was watching a television series which captivated me. It is called, “The Slap”, but it is so much more. It depicts a family story and then in separate episodes it focus’ on each major player in the family so that us, the audience, can see inside or on a deeper level what each person brings to their selves and to the world. It is a beautiful example of characterizations which imitate life. I think it succeeds in showing us as the flawed and yet potentially beautiful humans we are. It shows our flaws and shows our strengths. One of the characters, a young man, says at a poignant moment, “we are all trying to just get through the day”. Now, that might not sound like a romantic way to look at life and yet, isn’t that what we often do? We like to think we are better than that, and sometimes we truly are. But often, because of our blindness’s, we act in ways to make it through our day. Agai

“Lost time is never found again.” -Benjamin Franklin Our parents have a great influence on us in negative and positive ways. Last week, I began talking about this and used an example of how parents can influence in a positive way. Negative influences give us an opportunity to grow and learn. Many times our best learning come through difficult experiences. Through challenging relationships, we can really stretch and grow and gain strengths we can use throughout our lives. One of the exercises I do with my patients who are having a difficult time with their relationships is that I ask them to write out what they like about their parents individually, and what they don’t like. This exercise gives both them and me important information about them and how they experience life and what they bring to their relationships with others. Many times the very things we have the most trouble with in our parents are the things which we tend to continue. Another way of saying this is that t

“ The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troubles one work to undertake the alternation of old beliefs.”                                                                                        - John Dewey We all have stories we carry with us from our life experiences. These stories are based on events that happened in our lives from the time of our birth as well as stories that have been passed down over generations to us. These stories live within us. We are shaped by them. An interesting thing about these stories is that they may or may not be true to what actually happened. In addition, every story passed down is like the game of telephone we all played as children. As we pass them forward, they are slightly changed or altered by our perception of them and what is said to us. Another interesting thing is that we all view the same events that happened in which we were participants or observers differently. We all have a di

“I would never die for my beliefs because they might be wrong.”                                                                                         - Bertrand Russell In last week’s blog, I spoke about interrupted bonds; what are they and how an interruption in the bond between parent and child affect us. This week I am writing about how this early break looks through the effects on a couple of patients. By helping them to see some of the dynamics in this breach of a bond, it can help them to begin the healing process. As they listen to their words and watch their movements and how the process of using footsteps in the use of the tool of Family Constellations looks and feels, light and awareness can be shed for them to understand what they are experiencing. I am working with someone who has been having a difficult time for quite awhile, and is in the active process of consciously learning herself and desires a good and happy life in connection with her family and with h

“It is our own small voice within that is our oppressor; it says we are not worthy and not powerful enough. Our limited beliefs are the real foes we need to fight and conquer.”                                                                                    - Yehuda Berg I was reading something the other day which spoke to me about the way that darkness, our inner darkness, is necessary to be an active part in our growing our strength and our lightness of being. The concept here is that not only do we need to go into our own dark places; but that the dark places their selves have an active role in bringing them to the light to be seen. We see our dark places through our issues we carry, through our physical symptoms, through the words we use to describe us and our issues, through the movies we love, the books we love, etc. We even get a window through our illnesses, including something like a simple cold. One powerful way that we get wounded, thus creating a dark place insi

“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