I’m back in Oaxaca, Mexico for the month. Each time I come here I spend time with the medicine women of the surrounding villages and towns. Learning about their spiritual practices reminds me of the importance of the day-to-day, the ordinary things that surround us all the time that speak to the sacred. Each home and often the business too, including the busy markets, have altars.
Read more > Feb 14, 2023Ceremonies have been a part of human cultures for centuries and have played an important role in religious, spiritual and social events. They help us to mark significant moments in our lives, honor traditions, and provide a sense of community and connection.
Read more > Nov 08, 2022As a somatic therapist and spiritual counsellor I often reflect on the interconnection between body and spirit In my work I use the phrase “embodied spirituality”. This means a spirituality that’s experienced in the body, and considers our bodies as sacred vessels, that hold our spirits.
For many, it can be a radical idea to consider one’s relationship with your body, as core to
one’s spiritual nature. Collectively we still harbour remnants of religious world views that are suspicious of the body and it’s sensuous nature. From these world views, the body is an aspect of self to control and distance from, to pursue one’s spiritual aspects. The upshot of this is to separate one’s self from the ground of one’s being.
Denial and the accompanying numbness that supports denial, is a very common response to loss. This is particularly true if the loss comes suddenly, unexpectedly, or in an untimely way.
Denial is traditionally one of the early stages of grief. I believe it serves to slow the grieving person down, to have a little time to absorb the impact of a sudden or particularly complicated or traumatic loss.
Read more > May 05, 2021I’m preparing to facilitate a workshop at the end of this month as part of a series for my Pathwork community in Japan. The title of the series is, “The Unwanted.”
It’s so timely. Hasn’t this just been a year of “the unwanted”?
The unwanted shows up in everyone’s life at some time, in some form - lost loves, lost dreams, losses in general, and then of course there’s death - the big unwanted.
At the heart of this topic is grieving. We can’t just skip to acceptance, although hopefully we get there in time. When the unwanted hits, we need to feel all the feelings, in order to move through to real acceptance.
Grieving is part of that process and has many faces, but sadness and crying is always there.
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