The risk of being alive.

We collectively wander about wringing our hands or disassociating or bypassing, and very few of us have tried actively engaging. Very few of us move healthfully towards conflict. We have so many conflicts brought about by our lack of presence, and we keep trying to find new and fancy solutions to those individual problems. Yet, if we just worked on healing our sense of presence, many if not most of the most pressing problems we carry today ( both personally and as a society) would organically resolve. 

Unless you develop the capacity to be present with suffering, you can never be fully present with anything else. Because your nervous system will always be holding you back from accepting the emotional risk of being alive. 

This translates into disrespecting your boundaries and the boundaries of others to maintain a comfortable distance from the risk. This has an effect on our personal and social relationships. Over generations, this has an effect on culture. Dominant Culture today thrives on avoiding suffering, discomfort, and conflict.

We practice patience with suffering not to persist in a state of pain, but to access the clarity, creativity, and courage necessary for opening to healing and actions to alleviating suffering (compassion).

Can you genuinely be yourself? 

Presence is allowing your mind, body, heart, and environment to freely communicate. Allowing your internal and external environments to communicate allows you to be part of the physiological experience of the world. To belong. To yourself, to another, to humanity, to Earth, to the universe. Some of belonging is the vulnerability and presence to show up, and another part is to be accepted. We must all be doing our part to be actively present on both sides of this reciprocal exchange. 

Chronic Stress is what removes us from a natural state of presence but we won’t be able to access states of calm and relaxation without addressing the root cause. We need to heal our capacity to be present. There is no relaxing without presence. Presence requires we work physiologically with our nervous systems and how our nervous systems relate within our internal and external environments. We can’t just piecemeal the parts we like of this practice, because that only emboldens our current strengths and weaknesses. We need to be playing at the edges, start strengthening the capacities we have been compensating for. This will be uncomfortable! We need to practice with our capacity for suffering. We need to get comfortable with the risk of being alive.

Or we will miss our chance. And we will miss a lot of other beautiful things along the way. 

SOUNDheart Zoom Lunch Dates, Mondays 1pm ET ZOOM beginning January 9th 

Join Sherene for lunch over zoom on Mondays for discussion and practices regarding our ability to maintain emotional integrity, moral courage, and attunement while engaging with personal, social, political, economic, and ecological conflicts. Part of The Whole Health Center’s Membership Program

For the next several months we will be working with the concept of Presence. Each month we will focus on one of the 10 aspects of healing presence. Weekly discussion, meditation, and takeaway practices will be provided.

January: What is presence?

February: Non-Judging

March: Patience

April:Beginner’s Mind

May:Trust

June: Non-Striving

July:Acceptance

August:Gratitude

Sept:Generosity

October:Compassion

This program is also available in private sessions, please contact me for more info. 

LEARN MORE

6 ways to tend your nervous system in trying times

For me, my personal practice is grounded in my commitment to the whole. My personal practice is grounded in my commitment to be of service. In order to maintain my moral courage and emotional integrity in trying times, I work to prepare for hardship. Not in a pessimistic "life is hard" kind of way, more in a relevant reciprocal communication kind of way. Being present with the world right now calls me to be aware that there is a need to prepare my body, mind, and spirit to manage difficult things. So, that is what I do. And I can do that in joy and with joy because my practice also supports me holding the infinite vastness of emotions, together. 

We do a lot of work to support ourselves in this way at The Whole Health Center, but the SOUNDheart program has this as the defining purpose. The SOUNDheart program offers a space for practicing integrative practices in connection with our grief and anticipatory grief related to the trying times we are living and the days to come. If you worry about the days to come, this program is for you. I hope you will join us this Sunday at 4pm. We always gather for discussion, a guided meditation practice, and some take home practices for the coming month. This week I will offer one of my favorite guided meditations, one I think will give us something to hold and work with as we navigate Spring. 

SOUNDheart is a part of The Whole Health Center's membership program. Members have access to the link through the membership page. More about membership

With Love and Gratitude, 
Sherene

Additional resources for the slides above:

Yawning: 
For more information on the benefits of yawning reference the work of Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman 

Jump, Stomp, Swing: 
Example of quick movement activity here https://vimeo.com/374379276

Sense of Connection:
Access the Everyday Spirituality Tool from The Nurtured Life  https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55aedb4fe4b0f3d81650f710/t/5a969f6671c10b4fee4e6c96/1519820646743/experiencing+spirituality+everyday.pdf

Boundary Issues? Or is it a culture of pervasive disrespect?

I don’t have boundary issues. 

Some people, entities, and organizations have respect issues. 

Compassion recognizes that disrespect of another stems from lack of self-respect. Lack of self-respect is an indication of moral injury, spiritual wounds, and emotional trauma. 

When someone disrespects another to get their needs met( meet their agenda), that is someone being Forceful, not Powerful. 

That’s how we have gotten here. 

One force for another. 

One disrespect over another. 

It’s how we’ve learned to interact with each other. It weakens us in every way. 

I accept I cannot actually protect myself by using force. I can’t use the methods of oppression/disrespect to get my way if my agenda is to remain whole, and connected. 

Therefore, I commit to developing emotional and spiritual integrity, so that I may have clarity and creativity to seek holistic solutions. To offer respect when I am disrespected. Not because I am too weak to fight, but because I am too power-full to do so. 

This takes great practice. We are afraid, aren’t we? Fear of harm leads us to try to be righteous in the meeting of our needs. Then there are those times when force is required. And, we can’t confuse force with power. Force is the left-over option when power has been exhausted. We don’t have much experience with the power of relinquishing, therefore we don’t have much faith in gentleness as power. We may not all even understand what power is. 

It is not force, it is not control, it is not getting your way or a specific outcome- it is the application of patience, wisdom, persistence, integrity, Love. It is hearts broken into confetti, still whole. That is power. 

We will not be able to use force to protect what needs protecting. We will have to be courageous and confident enough in ourselves to find the gentle way forward. I have faith in Us. 

www.thewholehealthcenter.org for information on Grove Immersion Pathway or SOUNDheart. Message at thenuturedlife@icloud.com for information about private coaching.

Overwhelmed by Empathy?

It’s Empathy Fatigue, not Compassion Fatigue. 

When you feel tired, anxious, and overwhelmed by the feelings of others, news stories, and our generalized sense of crisis- that’s empathy overwhelming your system. It doesn’t mean you need to retreat, or that you need time alone (though you might desire time alone for other reasons). It means that you actually need to learn how to support your physical body in processing empathy so that it completes its circuit and results in compassion. Compassion actually activates action centers in our brain which set off a series of physiological mind, body, spirit responses- all which support you in having the energy and presence to maintain compassionate action. It’s not a badge of sensitivity to be overwhelmed. It’s also not a failure. It happens to everyone. And, we can, if we want, learn how to navigate empathy so that we can stay rather than overwhelm. See- given the future we want, we will have to move through a great deal of hard emotions, and that will continue. Peace is found through learning to accept, expect, and navigate conflict, harm, and suffering. Any society that maintains peace maintains the ability to process empathy through to compassion without overwhelm. 

Anger and fear easily overwhelm our empathy circuit because we aren’t designed to feel them for long expanses of time and they activate our fight/flight/freeze response. That’s making someone else’s emotions ours, we are no longer able to feel empathy and compassion for another because our bodies become concerned for ourselves. Sure, there are plenty of unsafe situations where we need to remove ourselves. But if you think back to the last time someone’s anger upset you, you will probably find you were not in any actual danger. 

Learning to process each other’s emotions properly, and healthfully complete our empathy circuits is a requirement for maturity, and our individual and collective evolution. Without this capacity we will not be able to truly serve each other is moments of pain or joy. We will not be able to apologize or take accountability. We will not be truly known to each other. And we will become more isolated, more alone, more overwhelmed. 

Grove Immersion Pathway cultivates the practices for recognizing and respecting organic boundaries - which entails practices for supporting empathetic response so it can find its home in compassion. This is required for parenting, teaching, leading and maintaining healthy relationships. Starts Dec 1,  $25 deposit holds your spot. All scholarships for this program are already taken however if we reach 12 participants we can open two more scholarship spaces.

LINK FOR MORE INFO