Body Presencing™ - Healing the Root of the Matter

I have noticed a new catchword being used a lot; present or presence. I use that word also, and in fact, I use it for my web presence and my work. Being present means so many things at once, it is complicated, and yet it is so simple. Being present to oneself is about staying in our center, noticing when we are drawn out, paying attention to what draws us out, feeling what happens inside of us when we aren't centered and are reactive, being available to us and others, and being ourselves out in the world, and so much more. It is simple in that we have so much power and availability when we are present to us. It is hard in that we are taught from a young age to be present to almost everyone else except for us. Lately, I have had a couple of experiences which keeps teaching me about being present to myself and what happens when I am not. In one instance I was with a young woman who wanted to learn from me. As I was with her I noticed that as much as she said she wanted to lea...

  A Poem Becoming dormant like the green leaves of springtime. Closing in without closing down Hunkering in front of the fire, reading a book Bundling up to brave the wind  Slowing down and going more within Giving in and going with winters movements Feeling the great quiet language of the trees as their rich inner life deepens Reaching deep inside and imagining our ancestors telling life’s stories by the fire Going into my bone marrow to remember and to make it richer as winter speaks to us in its deep growl. My soothing words of wisdom for the week is about all the anger around us:

It is the New Year; a time to celebrate. All across the globe, people celebrate and ring in the new year through parties, groups, drink, and frivolity. What are we really celebrating? What if we were to take this opportunity for celebration and consciously celebrate bringing in new into our lives?  It would be a great time to say goodbye to people and things about us which no longer serve us, and to allow space for new ideas, new opportunities, new people, new feelings to take root inside of us. Saying goodbye to what no longer serves us and who no longer serves us does not always occur in the way we wish. In fact much of the time we let go when a great loss happens in our lives or when something gets so bad we just have to let go. That seems to be the way we humans function in this world.  This is a great time to ask ourselves what we would truly like to do in this life, and who or what types of people we would most like to attract into our lives and to take the ...

Peace is sitting quietly in stillness, or sitting with our pets, allowing all thoughts and feelings to permeate our souls, accepting them all as they are today, and  welcoming who we are with all our warts and all our beauty. Peace is accepting where we come from and all our ancestors for who they are and also feeling our yearnings and desires for more or for something else.  Peace is listening quietly to another and holding our tongues when we disagree so that we can just listen and learn from another whom we might be angry with, disagree with, dislike, and to instead listen, learn and see where their words and actions touch us.  Peace is letting our toxic places inside have some air so we can let go of the old festering wounds.  Peace is listening to music, walking in nature, building a fire, being ourselves and being ok with ourselves. Peace is. Happy Holidays, and may peace be with you, Gail My soothing words of wisdom for t...

Sometimes we are so immersed in being angry or frantic or upset that we think that is us feeling our feelings. What we are doing when we feel that way is that we are either reacting to the deep feelings coming up within us or we are experiencing deep feelings without words so that we have no way to categorize or to understand the deep things coming up inside of us. Either way, experiencing such terrible feelings or reactions can be no fun and very disturbing. I have a patient who experiences this phenomenon frequently. Suddenly she becomes terribly frantic and upset. Often in those times she is unable to be the detective and to figure out what set her off. Sometimes it just takes lots of stuff to do or something she read and she is off and running, with no off button in sight. One day in the recent past this occurred again. She phoned me in a state of panic. She asked me if I was trying to rub salt in her wound by writing what I did as an affirmation for her. No, I was not...

We are getting close to the end of the year. Many of us have had quite a year of surprises. Trump becoming president of the United States was a surprise. There have been many surprises throughout the world, and many of them very difficult and painful ones. And we personally, many of us, have experienced lots of surprises this year. Life happens. Surprises happen. It is how we respond to them that really makes the difference for us, and for our future generations. I had a dream last night where it was going to be the end of the world as we know it. We had one more day until this event happened and somehow I knew it was going to transpire, but not how. In my dream when I awoke the next day there was white rice all over the ground in my bedroom and there was lots of traffic moving. The only evidence of the end of the world as I knew it was the rice on the floor. Strange dream. As I looked at my dream more closely I realized it was really about my expectation of something not good a...

We had an amazing eclipse season this year. The world, and especially North America became very aware of one in particular on August 21st that went across the middle of America. Thousands of folk descended on the areas where the eclipse was in totality; across mid-America, and millions watched it from afar, from telescopes, and with specially made glasses. The last time such an eclipse impacted us in this way was over two hundred years ago. An eclipse eclipses some of the light or takes some of the light. If we look at this symbolically, what takes away some of our light? We all have a spirit and soul and body. It is our soul that gives life to our bodies and which informs our bodies. We often don't realize how much we are feeling or even what we are feeling until we get a message from our body such as a stomach ache, a headache, hip pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, etc. In the Jewish faith, we often think that every one of us has a spark of God within us and all together, al...