Empowerment

This month at Serenity Now, I started running a group called the 16 Step Empowerment Group for Women.  I have belonged to a 16 Step group off and on for the past five years and have benefitted so much from the support and strength I have received from other women. 

The 16 Step group was conceived to help people grow, expand and access their wisdom, feelings and power.  The belief is that when we fill our lives with connection, joy, purpose and love, the pull of addiction and dependency will lose its power.  Dr. Charlotte Kasl who designed the 16 Step program started by asking herself the question:  “what is it that will help me heal and become whole as a woman in this culture?”.  She found out by asking this question, she was not alone in her quest.  Since starting the 16 Step program, Dr. Kasl says “the greatest power we have comes from speaking from our experience and our heart”. 

Dr. Kasl defines what is necessary for women to feel empowered in our culture: first and foremost  is love.  We all have a human need to bond with others in both power and joy.  Second, empowerment needs to come from an approach that combines body, mind, spirit and community.  For instance, for recovery, people may need to learn about good nutrition, avoiding harmful relationships and the impact of childhood abuse on their lives. 

Empowerment involves the process of rechanneling our energy to relieve pain through addictions into positive and constructive uses such as a good job and friends who support us.  Dr. Kasl also talks about empowerment being about choice.  There is no one way all people can grow and we need to try different approaches that feel right for us.  Empowerment also involves living with complexity.  Healing from addiction and dependency means healing from wanting quick fixes and simple answers to opening our minds to uncertainty and learning from our mistakes. Empowerment involves being flexible to our needs as we grow and change.  Part of becoming a whole, empowered person is to be receptive to wisdom that comes from listening to others, taking in new information and tuning into our internal wisdom. 

Lastly, empowerment  encourages creativity and teaches us to trust our wisdom.  The more we live connected to our creativity and passion, the more alive we feel.  And the more alive we feel, our motivation to stay away from addictions becomes stronger.  Even though we can learn from books and other people, the source of true wisdom lies within.  We alone are the experts on our own lives and eventually if we listen within long enough, we will find our inner voice.

Embodiment in the Minoan culture

On a recent trip to Greece, I had a chance to visit the island of Crete.  I have always wanted to visit this island as it is a place where the ancient Minoans lived for thousands of years.  The Minoans are one of the longest living cultures to worship the Goddess divinity and the cycles of the natural world.  Looking at their artwork and craftsmanship, you can see the worship of seasons, sexuality, life and death.  The female form was considered to be divine as females gave birth, nursed their young with their bodies, and followed the cycles of the moon with their menstrual cycles.  Minoans were keen observers of nature and conducted many rituals and lived their lives attuned to these cycles.  Both women and men held positions of power in the community and religious leaders.  Figures of the priestess in a trance with snakes wrapped around her arms symbolize the power of regeneration.  Other figures include the priestess with a bird on the crown of her head, transporting her with its wings to another realm to bring back visions to share with the community.  Vases, rhytons, and ritual vessels depict spirals to demonstrate the interconnectedness of the cycles of birth, death and rebirth.  How would our world be different if we lived in this way?  My guess is we would be living in attunement with our bodies and the world around us.  Seems we could learn something from these ancient people.

Shania Twain and Body Psychotherapy

In Shania Twain’s autobiography, she talks about her history of witnessing domestic abuse, living in poverty, and the tragedy of her parents’ death.  She mentions learning to keep her feelings to herself and learning not to show weakness.  In her life she experienced losing her voice and being unable to sing when she began having marital problems.  In our most intimate relationships, we will often relive the pain of our childhood if that pain has been unresolved.  According to body psychotherapy, our bodies hold the pain of the past at a cellular level.  When we re-experience a traumatic event in adulthood or a re-triggering event, our bodies will respond as though the old trauma is happening again.  In Shania Twain’s case, she was abandoned by her husband in the marriage and she was abandoned by her parents in a car crash.  The pain of abandonment can be overwhelming and devastating.  When we are young, the loss of our parents is a loss of our basic ability to survive in the world.  As an adult, a major loss that resembles the original loss, will feel as devastating as it did the first time.  As for the loss of her voice, the throat segment of the body represents the ability to express oneself and receive nourishment.  In witnessing domestic violence as a child and being helpless to do anything about it, the body will often manifest this trauma as a block in the throat.  As she was unable to ask for help or tell anyone about it and had to continue to live with the ongoing abuse in the home, it is no wonder that she would lose her voice in adulthood feeling helpless once again.  Body psychotherapy can resolve these issues by connecting with the subconscious language of the body using breath and movement and integrating the memories of the past with insight.  In Shania’s case, opening up the held muscles in the throat with breath, sound and movement and expressing the emotional pain of the past connected to the pain of the present, would allow her body to release the pain of the past and find a new pathway in the body to experience well-being.   It is like being released from a cage that has kept you prisoner all your life.  The body may hold the trauma, but it is also the key to freedom from it.  If we listen to our bodies, the body will let us know when something is wrong and the body will guide us to its natural state of openness, energy, and aliveness.

Honoring the Feminine Energy Within

Seeing as Mother’s Day is coming this weekend, not all of us are mothers but we can still use this day to honor the feminine energy within.  In our society, we find ourselves being pulled in multiple directions fulfilling all of our different roles living from a place of predominantly masculine energy.  In Chinese medicine, this is the yang energy which is energy directed outward, being active, and focused on doing.  Often we forget that to stay in balance, we also have to slow down and direct our energy inward.  In Chinese medicine, this is the yin energy.  This is the self-nurturing that we neglect and our bodies respond by experiencing fatigue, tension, weakness and burn out trying to get our attention by slowing us down.  Like the seasons, we have cycles in our energy where we can be more active and times when we need more rest.  By engaging in practices that slow you down such as meditation, relaxation yoga, stretching, deep breathing, nature walks, a massage, a Reiki treatment, or any nurturing activities, you will find yourself restored with renewed energy.  Every cell of your body will respond with a deep sigh of gratitude.  Often my body will respond with the message “welcome home” and I know that I've listened to my body's needs and tapped into a deep well of plentiful, restorative energy.  This year, allow yourself to reflect on a new meaning of Mother's Day that will honor your energy within.

Dealing with Uncertainty

Most of us have no idea how our lives will end up or where we are going.  We deal with this uncertainty by making plans and setting goals.  However, what about those times when things didn't work out the way we had planned and things even went sideways?  This happens more often than we would like to admit.  In our society we are judged by just how well we are able to meet our goals.  I love the expression "God laughs when we make plans".   There is nothing wrong with making plans per se, but when we expect certain outcomes is when we get into trouble.  The Buddhists call this attachment and the more we attach to something, the more we are likely to suffer.  From a body-focused perspective, times of uncertainty are times of growth.  Now this doesn't mean pain-free growth.  Often, when we face our biggest challenges is when we will feel the most discomfort.  Our bodies feel like we are getting ready to brace for an impact.  Our bodies tense up, we stop breathing, our minds race.  Sound familiar?  This is just our bodies getting ready to expand into something new and something bigger.  If we can breathe through the discomfort, take big deep breaths, and allow our bodies to shake out the anxiety and fear, we will come out the other side with insight and a new found peace in the body.  Solutions we could not have thought of before just seem to come out of nowhere.  This is the time for action, not before.  When we can trust in the letting go and allow our energy to expand to a place that can hold more, we know we have passed through the uncertainty. 

Mind/Body Counselling: How do I experience more intimacy in my life?

Mind/Body Counselling: How do I experience more intimacy in my life?: "Do you find it difficult to create intimacy in your relationships? Do you cringe at the thought of being vulnerable with your partner?..."

How do I experience more intimacy in my life?

Do you find it difficult to create intimacy in your relationships?  Do you cringe at the thought of being vulnerable with your partner? Being intimate in relationships requires a level of opening ourselves up to another person and exposing our vulnerable side.  If we feel like we will lose ourselves to our partner, we will cut ourselvesoff from an intimate experience.  There is nothing more profound than connecting with another human being and feeling completely safe and seen by another.  If we did not receive the love and nurturing that we needed growing up, we will find this loving place difficult to access and share with someone else. The key is to learn to be comfortable in our own bodies.  When we start to become aware of the feelings and sensations in our bodies, we will get in touch with long buried emotions which we have been shielding ourselves from our whole lives.  By breathing through the pain and expressing our feelings with the support of another who can witness us, we soften up inside and connect to our heart.  This process can be scary and anxiety provoking, but like a wave, we experience the intensity of the emotions and the pain and let it pass through us, feeling washed clean on the other side.  Part of the beauty of the human experience is to feel like we belong and that we matter.  With a loving and caring partner, best friend or trusted counsellor, we can open ourselves up to connection that can heal old wounds. With increased intimacy with another, we then become open to more profound relationships with others on our life's journey and feel an ever-present sense of belonging that becomes a part of our daily lives.  This is our natural state of being in the world and we all deserve to claim this natural birthright.