I’m on Retreat

and I’ve told many people that I’m taking time alone.  I explored a niggling worry back in the deep recesses of my mind about whether I was making best use of this time; taking my retreat seriously enough.  So far, the answer is a deep and resounding YES.  It’s felt divinely guided.  It doesn’t appear that anyone (ethereal or visceral) wants to punish or even scold me for sidestepping my isolation for an evening with friends and family the first day or driving to St. Louis to be with a friend getting medical results on the second.  I’m thanking my lucky angels for all of it.  It’s all as it should be.  The sunshine warmed me as I ate my Ethiopian leftovers (yesterday).  Today I put the finishing touches on the wonky tarot reading we didn’t finish on Monday. This morning I’ve typed up the notes I wanted to share from Sarah Peyton’s hardback book.  Feel free to check that out here.  It’s just so juicy, so relevant and so comforting.  I finished reading Your Resonant Self Workbook, in bed yesterday morning.  I hiked to the creek at the bottom of the hill twice yesterday, the second time with paper and matches so I could build a fire, sit back and read from another great book.

In a nutshell, here’s the tarot reading.  I drew 3 cards from a traditional tarot deck and am referring to Jessica Dore’s book Tarot for Change, with some of my personal story interwoven.

4 of Cups – Throughout my young life, I had been resistant to taking the good stuff that was being offered to me.  Somehow I couldn’t see it.  I was too hurt and sad and angry.  

9 of Cups Reversed – wish fulfillment, contentment, victory, success.  Reversed it speaks of Truth, Loyalty, Liberty. To accept what we want requires us to also accept the pain of not having it.  This card is asking me to articulate my desires from THAT place.  This retreat is the time to turn inward and care for feelings I haven’t had the courage to look at before.  What do I want to acknowledge and validate so that I can heal and grow beyond it?

As a 22 year old I just wanted what I was taught to want.  So as a married adult woman, living with a husband and a child for 4 and 2 years, respectively, I was entering a place where I had to decide who I really was, and what I wanted from my life.  As an 18 year old, I hadn’t been able to imagine anything else but being a mother and a homemaker.  But that wasn’t working out so well.  As my then husband complained, I was just so predictable.  My higher self was urging me to try something else. And so I did.  Boy have I learned a lot about desire since then.  

Words of compassion from Jessica Dore: “Not knowing what you want is often rooted in things that weren’t your choice and aren’t your fault.”

It’s okay if I’m still trying to figure out who I am and what I want.  It’s okay if I’m still learning to make a good wish.

4 of Pentacles – Crowned figure, Pentacle over the crown.  Clasping another pentacle over the heart.  Pentacles under both feet.  Holding very securely that which I have. (knowledge, concepts, ideas).  Pentacles in general signify physical behavior.

Jessica Dore looks at this card through a different lens: “Transcending and accepting limitations or blocks through the physical body.  Moving stuck energy through the body via breath and gaze with gentle curiosity, not force.  Reframing and perspective shifting = storytelling.  When we relate differently to something, we tend to behave differently around it.  Stories don’t mirror life, they shape it.” – Mary Van Hook, a social worker

The simple fact of identifying a block means movement is happening.  Hitting a wall is not a bad thing.  It helps you know that you need to find a door or a window by changing course slightly or drastically.  Or dig a tunnel.

Calling something a block or a limit or a challenge “is a protest in itself, a statement or declaration that you’re not okay with being contained in this particular way and you most certainly do not plan to shape a life around some limitation that really doesn’t need to be there.”

Learning to live in harmony with blocks.  My body has areas of stuckness and limitation.  Which attitudes and narratives are most effective for clearing blocks?  And for learning to live better with them? The pentacles at the crown block awareness. The pentacles at the heart block connection and understanding. The pentacles at the soles of the feet block action.

“With any kind of block, the first task is to be present enough to notice that it’s there – whether it be physical, behavioral, energetic, emotional, or psychological – rather than either avoiding it altogether or trying to muscle through it.”

It’s not dangerous to investigate blocks.  But when I do it, I need to do it with gentleness, giving myself full permission to back off anytime it gets to feel like too much.

Noticing the block is something to celebrate.  That’s when I know I’m ready to do the work.

Poke around.  Find the malleable parts.  The parts that have some give.  Where transformation can happen, little by little.

Super excited to see what the rest of my retreat will bring.  I’m here until Friday!

Tarot Reading for Today

This spread perfectly describes my takeaway from a recent Constellations Circle. Absolutely love Jessica Dore’s Tarot for Change

Six of Cups  The intellect sifts out what is true; the will reaches out for what is good.  But there is a third dimension to reality: Beauty.  Our whole being resonates with what is beautiful.  When we experience beauty, we start to speak about emotions, and the more we are touched on an emotional level, the more we seek to celebrate the experience, and it’s there that we begin to create ritual.  Benedictine Monk David Steindl-Rast writes that all rituals have to do with, and celebrate, belonging.

The tenderness of the image on the Six of Cups cards tells a secret.  

What if, all I’m trying to do here is to create rituals that have the potential to mark, preserve, and facilitate a return to emotional experiences that are sacred to us?

To feel safe is sacred.  

To be soothed is sacred.

I am a lover of beauty and belonging.  I am a lover of deep emotional resonance.  I am just trying to recall some sacred feeling.  

I am exploring new ways to recall those feelings – and new rituals for feeling safe and soothed.

Page of Wands: Childlike Enthusiasm, Innocence, Wonder, Youth.  Knowing absolutely what I like and don’t like.  According to James Hillman (along with Bert Hellinger): We each come into the world with a calling.

There is something (apart from nature/nurture) unique about each of us – a part of our being that is connected to our “daemon,” which was similar to the Roman concept of genius: Something that you are, that you have, that is not the same as the personality you think you are.

Mythologist Martin Shaw: as adults, too many of us have become “heavily defended against experiences of our own beauty.”

What do I love? 

What captivates my attention?

What grips me?

What lights me up?  What claims me?

Invitation to reconnect with something raw and original within us, something many of us relinquish as we cross the threshold into adulthood.

My specific calling is never far from reach.

Wands show me how to protect the spark and keep it safe so that it can warm me, and also warm whole villages.

Nine of Cups 

Values Clarification.  If I’m going to do the hard work of change, what will make it worth it?  A life compass.  Am I moving toward or away from what is precious?

Knowing what you want is deceptively challenging.  

Exploring what we desire can be hard because:

  1. Often the physical reality of our lives doesn’t line up with what we desire.
    • To accept what we want requires us also to accept the pain of not having it.
  2. Identifying what’s personally meaningful and articulating desires from that place is often in and of itself a whole healing process.
  3. Making a wish sounds like fun until you realize you have no idea what you want.  Until you realize you’re not even sure what it feels like to truly want something and are not convinced you’d know it if you felt it.  This experience of finding a void where a wish ought to be can be profoundly distressing.
  4. Not knowing what you want can bring up shame.  “I’m 60 years old.  I should know who I am by now.”

Making a wish might be hard because:

  1. Your feelings were constantly invalidated, so you don’t trust your own sense of what you like and long for.
  2. You’ve experienced a lot of frustration trying to get your needs met in life, which makes it difficult to want to try.  Feeling hopeless about or quickly shutting down anything you have an inkling of really wanting is how you’ve learned to feel safe.
  3. The people you relied on in childhood were unpredictable or erratic, so you developed the skill of scanning and tending to other people’s needs at the expense of your own needs as being necessarily dictated by the needs of others, so it’s hard to untangle them.
  4. You developed a protective strategy commonly known as perfectionism, which means you organize your life around avoiding contact with any potential indications of being inadequate, defective, or unlovable.  Wishing for or trying new things is a direct threat to that defense.
  5. When you were growing up, no one around you had any coping skills, so you didn’t get any, either, and instead you carry an intense fear of the feelings that come with wanting something and not getting it. Fused with a belief that those feelings are unmanageable, the stakes of having a true wish are simply too high.
  6. A heart’s desire sprouts from a sense of self that’s sturdy enough to have preferences independent of external factors.

There are so many factors that go into the maturation of a budding sense of self, and probably infinite ways to botch it, so even though adolescence is technically the time when we are “supposed” to be doing the work of figuring out who we are and what we like, there are enormous swaths of us doing it in all decades of life.  And we’re often doing it not just once but over and over again as the conditions of our lives change, and with them, our wants and needs.

Sometimes, learning to make a good wish is the work.

Credit goes to Jessica Dore, author of Tarot for Change: Using the Cards for Self-care, Acceptance and Growth

What we Really Want – Redux

A new look at what can be accomplished in groups.

In my travels I’ve met people with varying opinions about bamboo.  Some love it.  It grows fast.  It’s tough and strong, durable; doesn’t break down for a long, long time.  For this reason, it is a good choice as a renewable resource.  A woman I met in Mexico told me she was dedicated to removing bamboo that had been planted and become a nuisance.  She teaches people what can be done with bamboo, and she finds new homes for the plants when she can.  So inspiring, the things people find as their calling in life.

I was thinking about this woman when I was working in a new garden patch in my back yard.  Last fall, I decided to reclaim a patch of earth from a particularly stubborn, tenacious grass that grows back there, which has been serving to cover the ground quite well for decades, requiring nothing but sun and rain and an occasional trim.  But I decided to put in a garden, with watermelon, basil, parsley, mint, greens and tomatoes.   And now I am face to face with this plant – grass, bamboo’s second cousin – that has root systems deep and well established, intertwined and strong and formidable.  It meets the blade of my shovel like iron.  It snickers at my attempts to remove it.  So I get down in there with my hands.  I can find the roots when I get under them, when the soil is damp, and when I’m not in a hurry.  Exerting myself in this way, connecting with dirt and plants really does something for my soul.

In the office, I’ve been fielding more requests for support groups and other types of groupwork.  That is where a lot of my creative energy has been going as of late.  The pattern that is showing up in my one-on-one work has been the particularly tough, entrenched impact of intergenerational trauma that is blocking real progress and growth in the lives of my clients.  It shows up as stubborn and tenacious and sometimes appears impermeable to change.

The feeling is of being really mired in something that keeps sucking one in.  It’s requiring me to take a different look at the way I can offer myself in service to them.  Just so you know, it’s always mutually beneficial because my clients always mirror me and help me move through the processes I desire to work through as they do their work, and they always inspire me, whether they realize it or not. 

I’m noticing that this new shift in the work I’m called to do demands a new level of humility.  It demands that I continuously search out new resources.  I am pushed to continually search for the right tools, and to make care for myself a sacred priority. 

The really good thing about this is that the kind of trauma my clients are bringing to me these days responds to Systemic and Family Constellations Therapy.  

And that is what I want to tell you about now.  Here is a brief description, in case I haven’t already shared this with you.  Over the next weeks, I plan to share on some various themes that I’ve come across in my studies as I’ve been working toward certification.  I’m proud to say that yesterday I completed and submitted my application for Advanced Certification as a Systemic and Family Constellations Facilitator.  I also bought and planted those herbs and greens in my little garden patch, and now it’s raining.  I look forward to seeing what comes of this new vision – of working with others in groups to make real shifts in our experience, to removing obstacles to our being truly generative, vibrant, and expressive of who we came here to be.  I hope they have a short acronym for Systemic and Family Constellations Therapist Facilitator, Advanced! 

Here’s the certificate!

My most recent vision is this:

To more powerfully perform from a place of embodiment so that I can stimulate and support the change that is desired; to collaborate with others to bring about not just a quick fix but transformation in the felt sense of people that I work with – that we finally know what it feels like to be held, to be supported in community, and believe that there is Something Bigger that we can lean into.  And that joy and peace are our natural state, and that it is available to us in these bodies on this earth.  To know what it feels like to be supported to move toward what we want, what we desire, what we need to make this life truly matter.  And to celebrate all the movement (large and small) toward this goal.

Transformational Spring Reading – Hold Me Tight

I have been thinking about belonging, and the various points in my life when I felt I more or less belonged.  At this particular phase where I live a rather secluded life due both to personal choice and the more recent COVID-19 pandemic, all of my attention is going toward taking care of my most basic needs, I set up my daily schedule so I can get all of that important self-care stuff in like I never have before.  My house is set up so it can be as efficient as possible.  If I didn’t make a concerted effort to do it, I assure you, it wouldn’t get done. 

The quality of my life, of my future, depends on how well I meet my basic needs.  This was also true when I was an infant.  Like all infants, I had many needs and obviously a good many of them were met because I survived, right?  I am here writing this blog post.  But as I am getting more clear on my unmet infant needs now, my home was set up primarily to meet everyone else’s needs because either they were providing the income necessary to put a roof over our heads or because they were attending to one urgent emergency after another, juggling financial hardship and probably postpartum depression, leaving me not feeling particularly safe or cherished.  The home was not set up to make sure that my unique needs were well met. 

I have more clarity about this today because of a book I’m reading called Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love, by Dr. Sue Johnson (a little hint as to what I was needing and not getting).  The book’s basic premise can be summed up with an acronym, A.R.E., which stands for Accessible, Responsive, and Emotionally Engaged. The level of belonging I felt in my family of origin was directly proportionate to the degree to which I felt that my caretakers were accessible, responsive to my needs, and able to emotionally engage with me. 

The quality of my relationships and my adult life have been a reflection of the absence of the accessibility, responsiveness and emotional engagement that nobody but me was even aware of.  Through this lens, I can finally see what it was that caused me to create relationships where I did not feel connected or safe.  And now that I am in the process of parenting myself well, I am experiencing what it feels like to be safe and connected, if only to myself.  And it is with great joy and anticipation that I can say that I feel as though a whole new world awaits me.  As a result of the ongoing dedication I have to caring for myself well, and books and other resources such as this, I am broadening my vocabulary, my capacity to experience new things interpersonally and educating myself about what is possible when we feel truly attuned to, and are accessible to our tender selves, responsive to our own needs, and committed to staying emotionally engaged with ourselves – uncomfortable emotions, vulnerable needs and all. 

I see a very different life opening up for me, where the dialogue involves a whole lot of listening to and paying attention to what delights me (even if that sounds silly or selfish), and at the same time offering myself an environment that provides safety, along with the structure and tangible practicalities that are necessary to meet the more typically recognized needs like adequate rest, good enough hygiene, sufficient exercise, hydration, routines that ensure that my spiritual needs are met, human connection and remedial care that my body requires after a lifetime of neglect.  A lifetime of not being sure that I was the kind of person who could get attuned to, responded to, and emotionally engaged with – at least with a parent or a primary partner.   Holding it all together on the outside is a very different thing from feeling that sense of safety and true belonging on the inside that is a result of strong bonds and healthy intimate relationships, whether it is the mother-infant dyad or the couple who knows how to stay calm and listen and offer assurance when his or her partner is experiencing intense emotions or an automatic reflex that harks back to an earlier traumatic moment.

Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love, by Dr. Sue Johnson is a godsend.  It is just the material I needed to catapult my healing work forward.  I recommend it highly to anyone who wants to experience more depth, connection and oxytocin in intimate relationship.

“…once distressed partners learn to hold each other tight, they continue reaching out to each other, trying to create these transforming and satisfying moments again and again. I believe that A.R.E. interactions turn on this neurochemical love potion honed by millions of years of evolution. Oxytocin seems to be nature’s way of promoting attachment.”

– Dr. Sue Johnson in Hold Me Tight

Closer Than You Think – Book Review

Closer Than You Think, by Trina Brunk is a practical guide to knowing one’s self and dealing with a whole host of existential questions that come with living as humans in these times.  She writes with clarity, wisdom and flow, telling the truth about intimacy and our relationship with the beloved.

But besides being practical, and serving as a guide, this lovely piece is a song – the soundtrack to the soul’s coming back into the body, after a lifetime of exile – and finally learning to stay there.   Enjoy this quote:

The skills to cultivate are not self-denial and heroism, but depth of presence, patience, and staying connected in the face of suffering, in the face of accepting that we can’t always make it better for those who suffer.

The magic and directness of this book told my story, and I suspect it will tell pieces of yours as well, in a way you have not heard it before.  It connected me more firmly with the comfort that is available to all of us, in the form of higher and often less apparent forms of guidance, assistance, and unconditional love.

Chapter 6 made me weep, but first it invited me to read it twice more.  Trina’s book, Closer Than You Think, is a wild, exhilarating ride.  It will have you holding on to your seat.  So. Much. Fun.

Buy her book here!

Learning to Mother and Father Myself

On the roof this morning I was reconnecting with myself after a day of feeling overwhelmed and ungrounded much of the day, yesterday. First thing I did this morning was write a list of things that I feel like all have to be done RIGHT NOW (which helped – they don’t). And while I was doing my stretches on the roof, with a tiny peek of the now-just-waning full moon to the west (we’ve been in full cloud cover for the past week), and the splendid sunrise to the east, I had a series of “downloads” from my guides and muses – you might call them inspiration (I keep my iPhone up there so I can listen to Trina Brunk, doesn’t matter how many times).  I e-mailed those “downloads” to myself so I wouldn’t lose them (technology can be so amazing when we use it consciously).

I cherish these nuggets of inspiration, and know that they will sit patiently in my Hotmail inbox until I can get to them. One of the downloads I got came from the realization (again) that I am fully supported, that I have all the time I need, and that when I feel overwhelmed, I can stop and parent myself. Feeling overwhelmed is actually a message from my younger self that I need some care and attention. I sometimes need to be reminded that I am held in loving arms. What occurred to me is that I could easily go back and re-read letters I had written to myself after a “playshop retreat” created by my sisters (Tami and Trina).

I’ll share the letters with you here. They are from my Inner Masculine and Inner Feminine.


From My Inner Masculine:

June 2013: My Dearest Toni,

I am so sorry I have not been fully here for you during the first part of your life. It has truly been my loss and I would like to reconnect now. I understand, now, how much I adore and appreciate you. I give you permission, now, to be all you came here to be, to be a woman in all senses of the word – to experience the joy of physical pleasure. Toni, you are the master of your experience and it is yours to explore pleasure and find what gives you joy and fulfillment. Go ahead. Take those steps. I will be here to support you if you’re not sure at first. I am here. I will continue to be here, whatever direction you decide to go. You will not disappoint me. I promise you this. Trust yourself. Your instincts are good. Your judgment, your discernment can be trusted. I am so proud of you, and excited about this work you are about to do.

I love you. You deserve deep satisfaction, contentment, and the fulfilment of your heart’s desires. You are good. You are pure. You are kind. You are enough.

Go forward. Be yourself.

Your Inner Masculine.


From My Inner Feminine:

June 2013

My Beloved Toni,

I adore you. You are a child of God. I give you permission to be all you came here to be. Take your time. Take all the time you need. I am strong enough to nurture you, while you explore who you are and what you will do next and next and next. How precious you are to me. I can’t wait to see what you next discover about yourself, your strengths, your yet unexplored gifts and qualities and potentials. I give you permission and my blessing to indulge in pleasure, to explore the world, inner and outer, to be great, to be vulnerable, to be playful, to be a beginner – to be exactly who you are now. I am holding this space and time for you while you do this very important work. Go ahead. Let yourself feel your emotions. It is safe to be in your body now. Listen to what it tells you. I will offer you guidance and direction through your sensory experience and I encourage you to enter the full expression of your deepest self, from this moment onward. You are enough. You are so precious to me. I love you so.

I will be here for you always.

Your Inner Feminine

Now Available!

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Being In My Body is now available at Amazon.com

You can also get it at CreateSpace

I am in the process of scheduling a book tour for the spring, and speaking/training events for 2017.  If you’d like to get on the calendar, please e-mail me at:

e-mail address

Here’s what readers are saying about Being In My Body

“Toni has gifted us with a readable and rich handbook on how to deal with trauma. She carefully weaves well-researched information with examples and healing techniques. Toni stays with you as you read and you can feel her compassion coming through.”

David Richo, PhD: Author of When the Past is Present (Shambhala)

“Being In My Body is a testimony both to Toni Rahman’s personal work and her professional and clinical skills.  This book is not only easy to read and understand, but interesting and informative.

“Toni does an excellent job of explaining the different kinds of trauma, which is an important contribution to field of traumatology.

“I found myself feeling comfortable in my own body as I read her book, which told me that she was in HER body as she was writing it.

“Most of all, I appreciate Toni’s open-hearted writing style, and her compassionate approach towards herself, her family, her clients and her readers.”

Janae B. Weinhold, PhD LPC, Co-author of Developmental Trauma: The Game Changer in the Mental Health Profession, Counterdependency: The Flight From Intimacy & Breaking Free of the Codependency Trap

“Toni presents a unique and well-thought-out perspective on healing from trauma and attachment disorders. As a couple therapist whose business it is to put the dyad first, I nonetheless respect the importance she gives to individual healing. Toni offers a comprehensive primer on some of the key concepts for healing that are derived from neuroscience, attachment theory, and somatization/embodiment. And she brilliantly puts them together in a way that creates more than the sum of the whole.”

Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT is a clinician and teacher; he developed A Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy® (PACT), which integrates attachment theory, developmental neuroscience, and arousal regulation, and founded the PACT Institute.

Being In My Body offers a way for us to integrate with our bodies, not just to discover historic trauma, but also to obtain daily awareness of what is going on in our lives.  It seems so obvious, but we completely ignore our bodies instead of listening to them.”

“I feel like your book reached me in many different ways. So it was really a privilege to live with it over the last few weeks. I don’t think I’ll ever feel the same about or deal with my body in quite the same way (not that I disliked my body). It has opened new avenues for me to reconsider how I work with my body and perhaps bring out in the open locked memories and finally release them. Definitely serendipity for me at this time.”

– Stephanie Brooks, Business Manager, MSSD

“Being In My Body is a beautiful synthesis of powerful teachings, practices, and stories that have helped me tremendously in my still-unfolding journey towards greater self-understanding, self-acceptance, and embodiment. Toni Rahman has helped me understand the ways in which I experienced developmental trauma, how it has impacted me, and perhaps most importantly, what I can do about it in the present moment. This book has left me feeling empowered, supported, and deeply understood.  I have read many books that touch on these topics and themes, and what I found most unique about this book was Toni’s willingness to be vulnerable and open with her readers. As I read Being In My Body, I felt like I was being accompanied through difficult terrain by a gentle guide who was willing to share her own journey in the hopes that it would help others along on theirs. In my case, it certainly has, and I hope that many others will benefit as well.”

– Megan Farmer, Postgraduate Psychology Student, Calif.

Becoming Embodied, One Ache at a Time

Bringing my spirit back into my body.

That is what I’m about.

Those places that let me hear from them

Are God’s voice, calling me back where I belong.

 

So yesterday I started to notice a real achiness in my lower left back–in my ribcage when I turned my body in a particular way.  Oh no.  Now what? was my initial response.  What’s wrong now?  Why me?  I quickly ruled out travel.  I’d actually made a very long journey, but it had been kind and it had been a couple days since I had arrived home safe and sound.  I went to bed hoping that it would be gone in the morning.

No such luck.  So I made tai chi and my date with my beloved on the roof a priority.  First thing, I was on the roof with my tea in hand.  No gorgeous sunrise, though.  Not even visible stars, with Hurricane Matthew roaring off in the east somewhere.  As I listened to Trina Brunk on my iPhone, I heard her words and they penetrated my soul, opened my heart.

Remembering that my task is to live what I ask others to do, I brought my awareness to my ribcage.  Tight.  Frightened.  Abandoned.

And I realized that as my spirit enters my body, it may need to do so little by little.  And that is what is happening here, though without realizing it, I had been resisting it out of fear.

And so I made an adjustment in my perspective.  Today my spirit is entering my ribcage.  Am I going to greet it with “You are too much!”  “Go away!” “You are such a pain!”  It is asking me for my caring, tenderness, touch.  Curiosity, listening.

Yes, I think I can do that.  What else might be in order?  I could check with a couple books to see what “ribcage” might suggest.  What it means in the universal language of dreams and nature.  What I already know is that this has to do with breathing deeply, turning to the left and flexibility in the face of expanding capacity.

I can rub myself gently and be aware of this tender place in my beloved, vulnerable body.  I can slow down.  I can pause and say, “I notice you, and I’m wondering what you need.  Are you okay?  You have been protecting me and supporting me for all this time, and I have not even acknowledged you.  I am so grateful for what you do for me.  I honor your presence in my body as part of my system.  I recognize that you have needs and I am interested in understanding what you have to say.  Your pain is not so great that I need to shut it out.  I am not afraid of you.  Thank you for communicating with me.  You matter to me.

Ahhhh, that feels better.  And I can add Mantak Chia to my meditation regimen, which will encourage me to breathe more consciously and bring awareness to my organs and inner energy flow.  I realize that I am needing a little more structure to provide boundaries to my days.  I also realize I am needing a durable but expandable container that allows for movement of the whole, while protecting the vital vulnerable parts inside.  Thank you, ribcage.  Welcome, spirit, into my body.  Thank you for your wisdom that I can know with just the right timing and in just the right way that I can understand and allow this amazing, transformative process.  I am willing.  I am grateful.  Aho.