Body Presencing™ - Healing the Root of the Matter

"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

“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