Expanding gloriously - a two part teaching collaboration on the nervous system and our capacity to feel

Through our body, we experience the divine with SEP Zoe Renee

My writing has the tendency to overflow with sentences on which I could write whole articles, however I am rarely satisfied with going deep on one thought. As soon as the concepts, theories, practices and knowledge is understood and integrated (lived rather than thought about) I don´t bother writing to explain them and rather connect them to other interesting thoughts, ideas and teachings. To a degree that a simple yet profound sentence can easily be overlooked.

Zoe Renee

spotted one of them from my recent article on dragons:

The truth about dragon power

and together we even wrote two pieces to go in depth about this specific line:

Listen to Zoe´s words here or read on for written words from both of us.

Priestess Presence

As a professional priestess I have learned a lot about what it means to be truly present, as it is a prerequisite for space holding, including creating ceremonies. No robes, candles or roses will create healing if the facilitator is not able to truly be a present witness and/or mirror. Why is that the case?Most people are not really present in the moment. They are either preoccupied with thoughts about the past or the future or they lose themselves in daydreams, worries or fears. This lack of presence and awareness can lead to feelings of unhappiness, dissatisfaction and disconnection from self and others.
Practicing presence involves focusing on the present moment, activating your senses, practicing mindfulness meditation, cultivating gratitude, letting go of distractions, and being patient with yourself and others. By integrating mindfulness practices into your daily life, you can cultivate a presence.

BUT: Don't let these practices become another distraction or a new item on your to-do list!

Excerpt from the first day of the previously held Cacao Dieta, which you can read for free over on Kakaozauber | Cacao Enchantmentin the archives. Hop over here for a cacao ritual and presence practice.

Practicing Presence is simple but not easy. It requires radical self honesty and inner work - at least in a society as distracted, entertained and “productive” as ours.

We have been trained to be everything else than present.

This goes even so far as to us filling our mindfulness practices with something to do, avoiding emotions or triggers to emerge or try to escape from change, aim to control the outcome in order not to feel the discomfort of the unknown - or the boredom of the known.

Hunter Gatherer societies however, think the Hadzabe in Tansania for example, are not struggling to be present. It is part of their everyday life and moment to moment living. Even the young children can sit around the fire for hours, watching their father carve an arrow without interfering. Enjoying a few shared words or songs. Around indigenous communities we also find less verbal communication and external stimulation. The natural environment is the playground, the learning zone and the landscape of belonging.

You don´t have to travel far away to experience presence, just go back in time one generation: Grandfathers and grandmothers still to this day are happy looking out of the window. No IPad needed. When I walked through Cuba or Italy I would see people happily sitting on the sidewalks, waiting for busses with divine patience. Something that would infuriate Germans or Brits - like a delayed train - is no reason to stir up any emotions or ruin the day.
Practicing Presence becomes the real inner work: Not trying to change what is - especially when there are outer circumstances or external influences that we don´t have any control over.

I think somewhere down the line the western mind thought that they could and should control everything in order to be safe. Which lead us to exploitation of natural resources and hyper independence with a lack of sovereignty. We are independent in a way that disconnects us from others by relying only on ourselves and avoiding the “need” for help. Yet, through that - someone has to say it: we are not governed by our own free will but our fear of rejection.

I think it is a generational trauma response.

The need to control - anything from time schedules, other people, your own behaviour, including your feelings - is a result of fear. Fear of loosing control. For whatever reason this is scary to you: being hurt, rejected, facing unwanted feelings, to the core probably a survival fear and fear of death or more so: suffering.
Something we seemed to have been conditioned to fear, especially when it comes to avoiding discomfort and “unwanted” emotions: We can´t even endure it to say no when a kid wants the extra piece of chocolate or another toy despite already having so many. As soon as they show any sign of upset we try to mitigate. As a mother, I get it. We want our children to have everything and to always feel loved and adored and just happy! But we are doing them a disservice as they won´t learn how to cope with the full spectrum of life if we don´t learn to cope with it ourselves.
The child won´t be harmed by having had a boundary drawn. They might cry and throw a tantrum, but that is a very healthy release for a child and a great way to practice regulating their emotions. It is us who have to relearn how to hold space for this instinctual behaviour that we got so disconnected from. It is visible in other animals, too: shaking after shock for example. But growing up in the concrete “progressive” wasteland, we most likely we haven´t been taught to express all our feelings because our upbringing is embedded in society´s unnatural expectation of being a “good girl/boy”.

We have to relearn how to hold space, embracing all that life has to offer, including numbness, despair and “offness”. Practicing presence with what is, not trying to change anything, or to regulate emotions away.

We are so conditioned to be productive or happy. So that when something is not considered good or working or comfortable, we either distract or avoid - basically trying to change what is considered „off“.
When this is simply life being different and giving you opportunity to explore yourself more wholly and holy.

How can you practice presence?
Holding yourself through what emerges?
What would you tell your child?
How would you hold them?
Can you do this with yourself?
Can you accept discomfort, annoyance, life not being „perfect“?

We so often talk over feelings: when a child cries for example, we immediately cuddle them, comfort them, shhhh them, say things like „it’s not that bad“ „don’t worry“ „don´t be upset“ and so on. Can you see how diminishing all this is? How it teaches us from a young age to not value all our feelings?

Plus: are you able to see that it’s not helping at all?

I bet many can relate: have you ever been told by your partner or parent - after expressing concerns or feelings from a sad day or stressful situation at work - „not to worry?“ and felt completely neglected, not understood nor taken seriously?

Take yourself seriously. Aim to understand yourself and why your body is asking for your attention. Give yourself time, affection and (unconditional) love through presence and - drum roll - PATIENCE.

Now, let´s talk about the other side of the coin! When we are not allowing ourselves to fully be present, we are not only keeping uncomfortable emotions at bay but also pleasurable ones. Have you ever considered that you might block bliss and fun by tyring to control and hold onto life as it is supposed to be?

Let me introduce you to

Zoe Renee

who wrote the following piece and without knowing what i was going to write, intuitively filled out the blanks and masterfully rounded up the picture!

Some powerful quotes to get you excited:

And maybe what is happening right now is that there is sadness, anger, rage, grief, or pain present. And what might it look like if you were to show up for that as it is happening? Could you do so without the goal being trying to make it end? What do you do when there is happiness, love, excitement, joyous possibility, or peace present? Do you expand yourself to be able to receive it into your being? What if you allowed spaciousness for those other emotions to be received in? What might happen?

I recognize that the deeper I settle into my own being, the more I recognize the impulses that come from fear, hurt, wounding, & pain. And the more I recognize what impulses & behaviors are driven by those things, the more obvious it becomes to me which behaviors, thoughts, and habits come from something else; love, joy, passion; my essence nature.  

I am a Wild Woman working as a Somatic Experiencing & Polyvagal Practitioner. Here to Re-Mind, Re-Member, & Re-Wild. Join me for a peak into nervous system informed living (+ tools & practices!)

It’s spring here.

The birds come to tell me every morning. 

Today the sun graces my yard. 

It grazes my face & my heart flutters in joy.

I feel as though my heart has arms. 

She is always reaching out.

Reaching out. Reaching reaching.

But not in lack.

Not in want.

In utter celebration of life.

Reaching out as if radiant

& unable to contain the joy & love 

That is both simultaneously coming in & going out at once.

A cyclone of reverence.

I love spring.

It is my favorite time of year

And somehow my love for it grows the older I get.

I think what is most real and true is that the older I get the more I love all of it. All of life. All of the expressions of nature. What I see exuberantly expressed by the nature of this planet we live on, but also the nature of my in-earth, my inner world and the nature of the minds & matter that surround me. A ripple of reflections.

I’ve had both feet dipping into Tantric Philosophy for a few years.

Recently I started reading & listening to Tantra Illuminated by Christopher Hareesh Wallace & now feel waist deep in this philosophy. He said some things I can’t get out of my head. 

“There is no future moment when God will be more fully revealed than it already is… Our real nature is always available to us in some measure… I said ‘this is as God as it gets’ not ‘this is as free as it gets’... When you give your hearts consent to what is, then you are no longer struggling for a better situation and therefore you are free to fully show up for what is actually happening now.”

And maybe what is happening right now is that there is sadness, anger, rage, grief, or pain present. And what might it look like if you were to show up for that as it is happening? Could you do so without the goal being trying to make it end? What do you do when there is happiness, love, excitement, joyous possibility, or peace present? Do you expand yourself to be able to receive it into your being? What if you allowed spaciousness for those other emotions to be received in? What might happen?

I am willing to bet you it is not what you think it is. Since receiving Somatic Experiencing Therapy & subsequently spending 4 years in training to become an SEP because I could not LIVE on this earth without LIVING & BREATHING THIS MODALITY (woah… calm down) I have questioned to myself; 

“Does Peter Levine (Daddy SEP & Creator of the Somatic Experiencing Modality) realize that he has created a modality for awakening?” 

I have questioned this with ever more vigor the deeper I go into my own somatic experience & philosophical study of enlightenment. The reason being is that I recognize that the deeper I settle into my own being, the more I recognize the impulses that come from fear, hurt, wounding, & pain. And the more I recognize what impulses & behaviors are driven by those things, the more obvious it becomes to me which behaviors, thoughts, and habits come from something else; love, joy, passion; my essence nature.  

There has been an increased contrast between what is fear and loathing (in las vegas) and what is love & joy. With this increased contrast has come a more obvious indication of what thoughts, wants, desires, & motives feel & sound like when they come from a place of wounding vs. a place of wellness. And considering it is our sensations, thoughts, emotions, and impulses that dictate our behavior (the way we move through & interact with the world) and therefore create our future, it is really important to understand if those thoughts, emotions, and impulses are coming from our essence nature (that unwoundable indestructible wholeness within us) or from adaptations that have evolved in response to experiencing physical, spiritual, emotional, or mental hurts (trauma).

What I have come to recognize through this work is that it is CRUCIAL to my success in attaining wellness, joy, happiness, purpose, and DEEP satisfaction, for me to be able to FEEL my body's response to EVERYTHING I experience; the good, the bad, the traumatizing, and the euphoric. My body's response to it all is SHOWING ME SOMETHING. It is showing me what to move towards and away from. It is showing me what is right for me and what is definitely wrong for me.

Learning to decipher all of these signals has become my life's work so far. And as this understanding reveals herself more and more to me through my own experience with it, I live now to teach others how to decipher and decode these messages within themselves. BECAUSE WE DESERVE TO BE IN BLISS (FOR FUCKS SAKE)!! And we deserve to be in a world with more joy filled, resilient, and emotionally intelligent friends, lovers, caretakers, & leaders (FOR FUCKS SAKE!!). Whoops, I'm yelling again… 

I was reading a beautiful essay on the mythos and symbolism of the dragon written by

Laura Durban

from

Sovereign with Laura Durban

.

In it she says:

“When we are honest with ourselves, we soon feel a difference between genuine intention & heart-led desire to create, do, give, be, act, not act - and the mental construction of should, could, would.

As soon as you become aware of a sense of urgency that… feels uneasy and contracted in your body,... it is time to not give into this urgency but observe and allow whatever feeling to come up that this urgency tries to distract (read: protect) you from.

Hold it.

Create a container for yourself that feels safe for you to… process. Practice your dragon breath (whatever this means to you!) to keep yourself present without regulating possible pain away.”

That is it. (& also the inspiration for this essay)

So much of our modern human existence is motivated by a desire to avoid. Avoid failure, avoid pain, avoid confrontation, avoid boredom, avoid challenges, avoid avoid avoid. But why? Ultimately what we are attempting to avoid is variations of discomfort. And it appears to the untrained eye that maybe we can? I mean we have enough stimulation, distractions, drugs, and alcohol to do so… right?

And with the technology we now all have access to, that power to avoid all of it exists within our hands without ANY obstacle giving us a second for a second thought. We have become so accustomed to avoiding discomfort that it is now an autonomic process to avoid even before we have consciously realized what it is we are avoiding. For example, in stillness we easily and without thought, find ourselves 3 swipes deep into our social media feed before we even realize what happened. 

Paired with this is the starkest rise in mental health difficulties ever documented in our history so far. In essence we don’t have to feel, so we choose not to. But there is a price to pay for not feeling because at our core we are feeling creatures and our felt sense is what allows us the ability to move, create, and relate intelligently. In fact according to recent studies

“Individuals who struggle to perceive their bodily feelings find it more difficult to articulate and regulate their emotions.”

– Matt Warren and Miriam Frankel

To stave off feeling discomfort 2 things are set in motion:

1. We rely on our nervous system to dissociate from our felt sense in order to avoid discomfort. Dissociation has one gauge… the higher it goes, the less we feel (periodt), the lower it goes, the more we feel (periodt.). There is no distinction between feeling comfort vs. discomfort. We don’t have a discomfort gauge that we can turn down and a comfort gauge we can turn up. Bummer… I know.

2. Once we start avoiding, we cannot stop avoiding in order to continue to avoid. Meaning… once we start running from discomfort, we must continue to run in order for the discomfort to not catch up with us. Meaning, we must maintain distraction 100% of the time in order to not have that discomfort creep in, in moments of stillness.

The challenge with that last one is that… we have to sleep. And what happens when our phone dies? And what happens when there's no one available to hang out with? And what happens when things get so hard that nothing can distract you from the big life shit?

Allowing, Observing, Witnessing, Having compassion for, and staying present with the everyday emotional, physical, and mental responses we have to our lived experience strengthens our nervous systems capacity to hold BIGGER emotional, physical, and mental responses. The hard AND the glorious! 

If your internal voice is anything like mine you're thinking… “Well I don't WANT to hold the bigger harder things anyway!” We don’t want to hold bigger, harder things. I get that. But unfortunately we don’t have much of a say in what comes our way. I say to my inner little one who wants ease and softness 24/7/365/infinity “Would you rather have the strength and not need it or need the strength and not have it?”

“Welp… fuck me I guess” – my inner softy says.

The flip side to this is that as we strengthen our capacity to be with, hold, and digest (aka integrate) the BIG HARD, we also have an expanded capacity to be fully touched and elevated by the BIG GLORIOUS. 

The definition of integration is to make into a whole by bringing all parts together; unify. Ultimately what tends to wound us the most is our denial of our authentic expression. In doing so, we disintegrate. We bury, hide, or deny aspects of ourselves to ensure safety usually in the form of belonging. All while still attempting to be a functional human at work and in our relationships. So much of what we disown is our emotional experiences. Yet we can literally not be separated from them. The best our system can do is numb our senses through the dorsal complex of our nervous system. Dulling our felt sense, increasing our pain tolerance, and limiting access to emotional feeling. When what is in fact real and true is that our ability to BE WELL lies entirely in our ability to FEEL WELLNESS in the first place (which; & this likely goes without saying but I’ll say it anyway, takes being able to FEEL). 

Being with, observing, learning from, distinguishing essence self impulses from wounded self impulses, and digesting our emotional experiences takes a lot of practice and a system or formula to become successful at. In essence it’s a skill we must learn that most of us were not taught. A skill that acts as a life raft that keeps us from drowning within our emotional ocean or being completely possessed or taken over by an emotion. It takes practice to not be compromised by our emotions (impaired by).  A skill that WE. ARE. MADE. TO. MASTER! (whoops, yelling again… I think this is who I am, guys…). We have all the ingredients to be really good at this! And it is a skill that stands to connect us to our source, our essence, to humanity at large, and deeper consciousness for more ALIVE living. 

I have been deeply inspired by this work. 

I am working on a self-paced program that will go into detail on how to alchemize emotional experiences for an expanded capacity to not become compromised by emotional responses to life's heavy hitting experiences, greater emotional resilience, and increased emotional & relational intelligence. 

What do you want to understand better?

Is there any emotion that you would want to learn how to navigate more successfully?

I’d love your input as I put the curriculum together.