I used to strongly identify as an empath. When I learned about the concept maybe 10 years ago, it gave me language and context for an experience that was deeply painful and yet one that I didn’t understand: namely, why I was so sensitive, and why the emotions of other people were so overwhelming to me.
Read More“You need to change your mindset” is the go-to refrain of all manner of coaches, business coaches especially, to explain away the otherwise completely mysterious reasons why their clients seem to be self-sabotaging. In a culture that loves to look to the brain and cognitive function as both the cause and the cure to pretty much everything that ails it, this appears to be a solid guess. If our thoughts create our reality, then it makes sense to assume that changing our mindset will finally manifest the results that have been eluding us. Right?
Read MorePOV: You’re a socially-conscious entrepreneur who’s hitting their stride. Your clients love you; you’re doing work that feels both meaningful and fulfilling. You're finally doing the work that you’re meant to be doing, and that big and exciting vision you had for your business feels like it just might be just around the corner.
And yet: you’re not hitting your income goals. Things are not quite sustainable just yet. You KNOW what you need to do to move forward: you’ve invested good money with stellar people who’ve given you all the sales and marketing support you could possibly need. But every time you sit down to take action, you feel the overwhelming urge to take a nap. You're stuck in a state of arrested development.
Read MoreWhat do The Clash, The Rolling Stones, and hermit crabs have to do with trauma repair? Besides the fact that they all rock, they also illustrate one of the most painful moments of the trauma healing journey. Developmental trauma (or C-PTSD) often shows up as stuckness: wanting to move forward, but feeling paralyzed in place by fear.
In this post, we’ll go over: what makes us feel stuck; how we got this way (and why it’s so scary); how the stuckness is rooted in survival; the connection between shame & hope; what your nervous system sucks at (this one is surprising!); and how we can get unstuck and start to move forward.
Read More“Ask me how I know.”
My beloved teacher uses this phrase often during workshops and retreats. It usually follows some piercing insight that would land in my body with the clean weight of a stone dropped in deep water. The implied answer is, I don’t know this because I’ve read it in a book, or heard it in a class, or a TED talk; I know what I know because I had to learn it the hard-ass way (which is the only way,) that is: through blood, sweat, and tears, on my hands and knees in the dirt of real fucking life.
Read MoreAny spiritual endeavor--in fact, any kind of creative act--is a process of transformation. The definition of transformation is “a change in form, appearance, nature, or character.” In yoga therapy, we talk about the everyday process of transformation as changing our state.
But before we talk about changing our state, we need to talk about the most foundational principle in yoga therapy: our true nature. Yoga philosophy posits that we are spiritual beings having a human experience; that we are made of the same stuff as Nature; and that when we know this to be true about ourselves, we experience our true nature as peaceful, easeful, balanced, whole, and complete.
Read More