Residential at Galilee Retreat Centre, Arnprior, Ontario.
Madeline combines her experience as a gifted teacher and facilitator with her exquisite sensitivity to guide us into unlocking pleasure. In her gentle way she helps us to make friends with our bodies, softening the places where we feel resistance, shame and pain and learn how to tune into the myriad sensations of pleasure. She embodies her teaching and the expression of her own pleasure is contagious. Madeline creates a safe space to (re)discover that we are wired for pleasure and can overcome the negative conditioning of fear, trauma, and messages of “not good enough”.
I’m always grateful when people from my tribe send me poems, articles, or videos on the topic of pleasure. As I’ve been writing this blog of 10 years I also need inspiration on the topic of Pleasure.
Thank you Natalie, a Pathwork colleague, who sent me this really impactful video by Bessel van der Kolk MD, the eminent Dutch trauma researcher, and best selling author of The Body Keeps the Score.
In this short video he talks about the connection between physical and emotional developmental neglect, and the process of brain development. In particular how the brain/body adjusts to what’s available or not, as a survival strategy.
Our innate human ability to imagine, to conjure up, to create various scenarios with our minds, in our minds, realities that may never exist in our “real concrete world”, is one of our most potent human capacities. We use this skill to imagine or to create in our mind’s eye, frequently, in all aspects of our day to day life. This ability to imagine is the basis of bringing anything into reality – first we imagine it! You may often have heard the phrase “If you can imagine it, you can create it.” While that may be an overly optimistic idea, in its essence, the phrase holds truth.
Read more > Dec 05, 2023I want to draw your attention to the dance we all do between certainty and uncertainty.
We want certainty and we don’t want uncertainty – immediately there a dualistic push pull that takes your energy and causes tension inside. I invite you to notice that tension whenever you find yourself triggered by the need for certainty.
To be human is to live with uncertainty, and …. we can also build tools to live more gracefully with it.
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