Body Presencing™ - Healing the Root of the Matter

"Even if you fall on your face, you are still moving forward." -Victor Kiam This has been quite a year. I have written about my father with inspirational stories, with what I have learned about myself, my family, and from my patients. It has been a year of weaving my life and stories and learning with that of my father and a memorial of sorts to him. We all have family stories and beliefs, events, thoughts, and memories that have shaped us. If felt important to me to bring this together for my learning and to share what I have learned with you. As this year is nearing completion, what does the future hold? That is a question we can all ask ourselves as the new year is approaching; what does the future hold? This  has been a year of talking a lot about family, our parents, and their influence on us. It has been a year of talking about interrupted bonds between us and our caretakers, talking about truth and grief and mourning, talking about aging and the winter of o

"Most people think that shadows follow, precede, or surround beings or objects. The truth is that they also surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses, and memories.” -Elie Wiesel These days many of us use the social media of Facebook to find and re-connect with old friends and/or school acquaintances of the past. This can be quite fun and bring back many old memories we haven’t thought of in a long time. As I am coming to the end of this year, 2015, in my attempt to honor my father’s life in a true way, I am intrigued with the memories that are surfacing for me. It is through these old memories, blasts from the past, that we can also gain greater insights into ourselves. We can use these to see old patterns of our parents, our grandparents if we know them or hear stories of them, and ourselves. Seeing the patterns helps us to bring consciousness to them for us and then to make different choices in our lives. Through my work, I love to continue to learn for my

"No memory is ever alone; at the end of a trail of memories, a dozen trails that each have their own associations.” -Louis L”Amour Memories are interesting things. They can be elusive and we can make them intractable by constantly repeating them to ourselves and others. They can also be beautiful tools to help understand ourselves, and rarely are they factual or objective. Our memories tell us about our perspective of people, things, and events. We can get many people in a room and have them talk about their memories of the same event, and everyone will remember it differently. With my father, he loved to repeat stories over and over again, and they become unchangeable in his mind. This happens with all of us. Yet these memories or stories help us to understand us and others. What we remember, how we remember, the words said that we remember, and our reactions to our story help us to understand our unconscious. I love it when I facilitate constellations for others in

"Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others.” -Rosa Parks What do you do on Sunday mornings? I bet most of you have a Sunday morning ritual. Some of my best memories of my father reside with Sunday mornings. If you have been following my blogs for the year, I have been writing a memoir of my father, what I have learned from him, how it pertains to what I learn with my patients, and family stories and tools to help us to live fuller, whole and vital lives. Even to this day my Sundays are influenced by him in a good way. I have written about some of my negative learning experiences, and this is a positive one. Sundays were a more leisure day which began with a morning adventure and then a breakfast outing. He worked a lot and was very available for his patients, and Sunday mornings felt like our time; me and dad sometimes, and often, me and the family except for our mother. Sunday mornings dad gave her a gift of sleeping in until we were ol

I wrote this blog just before my father passed. As I re-read it now, it is very poignant. I have no regrets between the two of us and feel complete. In fact, as his last years were so difficult, I feel much relief with his passing. "There is always tension between the possibilities we aspire to and our wounded memories and past mistakes.” -Sean Brady Throughout this year, I have been going over memories and stories and thoughts and feelings regarding my father and his legacy and entwined them with stories in my life and with my patients. It is already November as I am coming close to the end of this year of writing, my father is also coming closer to the end of his life. When we are nearing the end of anything often many bitter/sweet memories begin to swirl in our minds. Often at our death beds our main thoughts revolve around our families. We hold on to life for them, we reach out to them, we yearn for them, and so much more. As we near the end of something rich

"Better three hours late than a minute too soon.”  -William Shakespeare  I remember when I was young time seemed to go on forever. My days were shaped by others; particularly my parents. It is time to wake up, it is time to go to bed, it is time for lunch, it is time for dinner, it is time to go to the store, and it is time to go to school, and so on. It felt as if time was not mine and I was a slave of sorts to time. I would play and wait after school until it was time for dinner. I couldn’t eat before then. My mother wasn’t the type who invited help so that it wasn’t even a thought as I got a bit older to ask if I could help her in the kitchen to prepare a meal. Weekends could last so long with lots of unstructured time. I also think that as adults it is easy for us to forget that what seems like a short period of time for us can seem like an eternity for a child. We can say to a child, I will be right back; it might be 5 minutes for us, and seem like forever for the

"Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” -William Penn Just like most everyone I know I enjoy a good dramatic series. I like watching the characters and what motivates them. As I watch them I am exercising my abilities to see how people affect and influence us, even over generations. Yet if I am honest with myself, I am watching and am in my head, and not really feeling how it affects me. I don’t often take the time to look at myself and my family and use what I am seeing to feel and see similar things and dynamics in myself and my family. We also do this in life, not just in watching a dramatic show. We see and sometimes invite drama into our lives and we don’t see what we are doing or feel what we are doing. One of the things I do in my work with my patients is to blend physical/Chiropractic work with emotional/spiritual work. There are many ways I do this. One way is to listen to their words as I am working with them. I listen to the language of their bod