Body Language

My New Favorite Book

The collicular self has the power to turn to something or turn away from it without our awareness of that ‘decision.’

Learning More About the Brain (some very basic basics in 3 parts)

This is the second of several posts I’m making in attempts to digest this really important read. Here, I’m breaking down some new brain info.

Subcortical Brainstem Structures Involved in Immediate Responses to Traumatic Events

1) Superior Colliculi WHERE	2) Periaqueductal Gray WHAT	3) Locus Coeruleus SHOCK
A multisensory integration center, registering novelty in the visual, auditory and somatosensory fields. Coordinating immediate orienting behavior.	Involved in the generation of affective (e.g., panic/grief, rage, fear and defensive (e.g., fight, flight, freeze) responding.	A noradrenaline system with diffuse projections across the cerebral cortex. Heavily involved in arousal and attention. Signaling extreme levels of volatility.

Orienting to WHERE

One of the first things we are being asked to learn in order to deliver DBR therapy is to help our clients locate a central place in their being from which they sense the world and know where they are in it. Anatomically, this place is represented by a brain structure called the Superior Colliculus. It sits on top of the periaqueductal gray, about which we will go into deeper detail later. It looks, maybe, a little like this:

Midbrain and Upper Brainstem Component of the WHERE System, the Superior Colliculus – This is an orienting structure which “has sensorimotor capacities for effecting inquisitive, acquisitive, and protective responses in relation to the unknown.” (pg 6)

“The collicular self has the power to turn to something or turn away from it without our awareness of that ‘decision.'”

I’m making mental notes here that the Superior Colliculi (Pg 16):

Serve as an integrative hub for mapping the self in space
Receive information from the retina, spinal cord and cerebral cortex
Orient to what is unexpected and novel about the world around us

“You have a sense of your body’s position – how the limbs, torso, neck, and head are placed – and how you are gently held in your chair by the earth’s gravitational field. You are in the place where all this information comes together. This ‘collicular perspective’ is the integrative hub from which your attention radiates outwards to illuminate space with your awareness. Before identifying what you see or hear, you are first aware of WHERE.“

As academics and psychologists, we have long been witness to mixed responses from youngsters and adults alike who are both attracted (compelled to attach) to someone because they represent the very things they need to survive, but at the same time are compelled to escape because they elicit great fear or confusion. This same disorganized response is the domain of the Superior Colliculi, as it turns out–at the micro level. It’s where those opposing orientations begin.

Opposing orientations have important implications for how we understand the effects of interpersonal stimuli that are both a source of nourishment and threat. (Pg 23)

“Horrific experiences activate simultaneous forces of attraction and aversion beyond our control, resulting in an entanglement of orienting responses.” (Pg 24) And this is what DBR is uniquely suited to do. To slow the process (social interaction) down enough so that these opposing orientations can be witnessed, held, and worked out by the body, with the help of a safe objective witness, once and for all.

The WHAT – The Generation of Affective and Defensive Responding

Midbrain Periaqueductal Gray (the primary structure for the WHAT response system) – our defenses: fight, flight, and freeze, and our affects: fear, rage, and panic/grief arise from this brain structure. The periaqueductal gray has a role in active and passive defense responses and their associated autonomic nervous system changes. (Pg 6)

It is sweet to have a real basis for knowing and discussing the fact that deep somatic and visceral pain of interpersonal origin actually exists. We can know this now because of the machines that are indeed measuring it as we write and read this, and the scientists who are formulating these measures. We can also know that others are, in fact, investing their academic careers to studying the behavioral relevance of such pain.

It’s reassuring and validating to read descriptors such as “social rejection” in scientific journals. Even though few of us, outside the field, have given much thought about the moment by moment, day by day, year by year interpersonal events from the perspective of our newborn, or infant self. Or that in our parents’ or grandparents’ generations infants were thought not to actually have a self, feelings or memories. An infant’s perspective might not occur in words, but it most certainly endures in the form of somatic memories.

A behavior researchers call “withdrawal” refers to what subjects do, behaviorally, upon experiencing a social loss. Social loss, they say, activates “PANIC/GRIEF systems, related action tendencies of fight (confrontation), flight (socially evasive behaviour), and freeze (social anxiety).” (pg 44)

Characteristics of the Periaqueductal Gray Columns

SHOCK – A Noradrenaline System with Diffuse Projections Across the Cerebral Cortex

Originating at Pons level in the midbrain, the Locus Coeruleus – Heavily involved in arousal and attention, the Locus Coeruleus signals extreme levels of volatility.

Stay tuned for more of my processing of this lovely piece of scholarly work. If you are a counselor or therapist supporting clients with trauma and/or dissociation, or think you might have experienced early relational trauma, I highly recommend that you read it for yourself:

Deep Brain Reorienting: Understanding the Neuroscience of Trauma, Attachment Wounding, and DBR Psychotherapy, by Frank M. Corrigan, Hannah Young and Jessica Christie-Sands

Speaking the Unspeakable

What are you doing here, and why? It’s important to be tuned into this, probably more now than ever before. I am a counselor specializing in childhood trauma. My tools, experience and temperament help clients reconnect with and understand emotional messages from their bodies. Our work together empowers them to honor themselves and achieve their unique paths.

The client that I like to work with is willing to speak of unspeakable things. Which is not easy. But the person I can help is willing. And that seems to be what I have a knack for. To help a person feel safe enough to go there. I help to soften what is calcified and leaking toxins from inside. I help provide a space where what has been longing to be seen and held feels invited and named. When the client is willing, I create the setting where the unspeakable can feel safe enough to emerge. That is what I noticed about therapy I have had in the past–that I just literally could not think of any “logical” problem that I needed help with. The unspeakable needs to be coaxed into the room. It is the unspeakable that I invite, so that it can get the care and attention it is longing and yearning for. So it does not weigh so heavy in the soul. Here are some of the things that feel welcomed and therefore transformed (and unburdened) in these healing spaces.

THE UNSPEAKABLE

Shameful Things

Jealousy
Being Hateful
Resentment
Disappointments
Greed
Rage
Selfishness

Silly Things

Overreactions
Embarrassments
Childish Things

The Pathetic

Things I’ve Learned Not to Focus On For Good Reason
Things That Could Come True or Get Worse If I Think About Them at All
Things That Might Come True If I Dignify Them With Language
Things That If Uttered Aloud Would Make Me Unlovable
The Whiny, the Annoying, the Shameful
Things That Could Send Me Straight to Hell
Things I Should Have Been Punished For. Things I Punish Myself For.
Things My Body Does and Doesn’t Do That Are Too Tedious and Too Embarrassing to Ask Anyone to Help Me Sort Through
Things I Should Have Been Able to Take Care of Long, Long Ago

I can help you if you are brave enough and willing to change, and maybe just need a place you can go to take–not all your scary baggage at once, but–the part that is ready now. I delight in meeting the person who knows they can be more of themselves, and just needs some reassurance, encouragement and a gentle witness to what they are going through, and what they have survived.

You might be aware of the shame and fear you feel about what you have been carrying. But if you are willing to show up anyway, you can unburden yourself. Maybe you have been betrayed; maybe you have betrayed others. But if you are still willing to take the chance, you will find what you seek, because you know the stakes are too great if you don’t. I want to work with you if you are interested in getting the kind of support you have been seeking all along, but somehow not finding. If you want to be supported in following a feeling as it shows you some beautiful thing you didn’t know was sacred about you. In the end, the clients who benefit from what I have to offer give me the astounding gift of seeing how universal our problems really are. I am truly blessed to know you, and hear you speak of unspeakable things.

Photo Credit: AjabaNature

Deep Brain Reorienting – DBR

Deep Brain Reorienting: Understanding the Neuroscience of Trauma, Attachment Wounding, and DBR Psychotherapy, by Frank M. Corrigan, Hannah Young & Jessica Christie-Sands

How can it be that at the highest echelons of mental health, professionals are trained to avoid talking about trauma because it destabilizes patients? Yet, according to Frank M. Corrigan, this seems to be the status quo in our mainstream medical system. Like Frank, I believe that so-called developed countries need to do better in acknowledging the impact early relational trauma has on our nervous systems and our lives. Only in this way can we actually begin to provide the kind of welcome our most vulnerable community members need in order to grow into their best, fullest lives. And only in this way can we begin to reclaim our own nervous systems so that we can live in harmony with our bodies and the planet, starting now, at whatever stage of health we’re at, which is something that is so vital to all of us during this important moment in human history.

How can it be anything but obvious that our earliest experiences set the tone for our lives, and that the tender love and consistent-enough attention of our mothers is central to our wellbeing and development? So much so that in the first hours and days following birth, the availability or absence of a warm and conscious presence imprints on the nervous system and puts in motion ways of being in the body that will shape our relationships and our physical health for a lifetime. What should not be earth shattering news is that when a human infant does not get these early needs met, the body responds with shock. If these ruptures are not repaired, it will leave the body in a chronic state of hypervigilance and trauma.

This is what mental health providers the world over are facing today. How to help clients and patients with chronic anxiety, depression, troubled relationships, and a general sense of disconnection from themselves, others and their own agency in the world.

Frank M. Corrigan suggests a sort of cultural dissociation from the reality of early relational trauma that lies not-so-subtly alongside an implied institutionalized decision by our medical establishments that trauma-derived disorders are simply too expensive to treat. Frank M. Corrigan is speaking my language. Though it’s clearly not USAian English. In fact, he’s Scottish! Corrigan is the creator of Deep Brain Reorienting, a body-oriented tool to treat shock, trauma, attachment wounding and deeply stored, unprocessed pain.

Deep Brain Reorienting brings something revolutionary to my toolbox, though I’ve specialized in trauma for almost 20 years. With DBR, we are slowing things down, looking under the hood, and addressing some important things that happen in the brain well before trauma sets in – even before emotions. It’s basic physiology, but it’s also sociopolitical. In this trailblazing book, I’m finding answers to questions I didn’t even know I had. Frank M. Corrigan speaks to my nervous system in a way I’ve never been spoken to before.

Learning Yet Another Technique

With DBR, “The therapist must be directive in eliciting the underlying sequence and then supportive as the healing process flows from within the client towards a new perspective.” (Pg 9)

Orienting Tension

As a practitioner of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), I have learned how to watch for the subtle cues that tell me when a client is effectively processing trauma; I know the landmarks that happen when we effectively transform a vivid, sensory-laden memory that feels here and now when recalled, into a narrative story that can be told with thoughtfulness, current-moment presence, and compassion for the self. But what EMDR is not as good at is effectively addressing pre-verbal trauma. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t acquire the use of spoken language as a means of communication until I was probably well into my third year. And as much as it vexes me, talking about the unresolved trauma my nervous system has been managing since birth would not be a worthwhile pursuit for me in a therapy session. Still, growing up in a family that had little time or energy for emotions, there is still a considerable amount of work to do in that addled nervous system of mine. Lucky for me, now that I’ve been introduced to Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR), I understand that there is a whole additional set of cues that we can become familiar with when we work with clients, and when we begin to heal our own nervous systems from the ruptures in attachment we experienced when we – as infants, toddlers and small children – were so completely dependent on the adults in our lives. And when we address these things, our worlds begin to expand. We are capable of so much more than we ever imagined.

This new set of cues includes tension in the muscles at the base of the skull, around the eyes, and/or in the forehead. The sensations here are referred to as orienting tension because they include muscles that become activated when “our attention is drawn to something salient, even if we do not move our eyes or our head.”

This orienting tension provides a connection with the system for the ‘whereness’ of the body, and (during therapy) it enables attention to traumatic material without being dislocated from present reality. This is where we obtain the grounding anchor, which reduces the risk of being overwhelmed during trauma processing. (Pg 5)

In the next weeks and months, I hope to process and share more about Frank Corrigan and colleagues findings and thoughts. Here are a few of the things I want to take in and “digest.”

The Nervous System Structures involved in the orienting reflex and shock
Neurological foundations of Disorganized Attachment – And how they’re healed
Implications of the diffuse pain of an infant for whom there is insufficient meeting of the need for contact
The sense of personal agency, and how it responds to early attachment disruptions
Neurochemical Dissociation and the endogenous opioids that deliver analgesia for emotional pain
Recognizing the physiological symptoms of shock
Bracing: The degree of holding in the axial structures is indicative of the level of underlying pain that is being continually braced against

Photo Credit: Rosy Ziegler / Bad Homburg / Germany

The Tarot of Tuesday’s Emotions

I was indulged with several readings at a coffee shop on Tuesday morning by a gifted friend in JC who is studying tarot. The reading I’m going to talk about here is a 5-card Life Purpose spread that is telling me a lot about emotions, which is delightfully aligned with the Constellations topic for Winter 2025. Here goes:

Card #1: II Wands (Reversed) – This position in the spread signifies how I’m really doing right now. The fact that it’s reversed tells me something about surprise, wonder, enchantment, emotion, trouble, and also fear. What Jessica Dore says about it in her book, Tarot for Change, is that this card has to do with staying stuck in a wrong situation to avoid the disappointment of something not living up to what my fantasies about it were. It’s about how one walks away from such fantasies, and back into flow; into what really is. The two wands represent a doorway of sorts. Each wand, or staff, represents an aspect of this particular moment in time. One staff rests on a battlement (war, suffering, chagrin), and the other is fixed in a ring (riches, fortune, magnificence). The picture is worth a thousand words. The man in the image holds a globe in his hand, and he’s standing in front of a stunning vista that is apparently his domain. Will he focus on the replica or the real thing?

Card #2: VI Swords (Reversed) – This position in the spread signifies what I am really good at. The fact that it is reversed speaks of declaration, confession, and publicity (proposal of love). According to Jessica Dore, this card is about breaking old patterns, which involves being honest about how I may be actually choosing things that bring me suffering and connecting with the fear that lies at the heart of that choice. This requires that I be willing to do what’s necessary to bring my attention to the emotions that I have for so long avoided (with good reason). This exact location, Dore says, is where the pattern can be broken.

She compares what happens in this realm as “driving a bus of monsters toward what matters to me.” The huddled figures on the raft that is crossing the water could represent self doubt, self criticism, feelings of inadequacy. The card, she says, points at the act of moving through inner obstacles on our way toward what is personally meaningful. Hell yeah. I’m good at that. That’s what I do. “Fear is not just a thing to be tolerated, but in fact an indelible part of living in alignment with what’s precious.” “Fear is the cost of admission.” Accepting fear as part of who I am, my mantra moving forward could be: I am willing to take a new route if it’s a better one. I am willing to grow.

Card #3: King of Cups – This position in the spread signifies what my purpose is, right now. (It is not reversed.) This card showed up in several places during the morning reading extravaganza, and each time it was upright, which tickles me no end. Cups, it appears, have to do with emotions. And as I well know, emotions appear to defy logic. Dore says that the cups suit is about delineators. “To understand water is to give oneself over to its currents, instead of trying to put it into containers with labels.” This card signifies, she says, that we’ve talked and reasoned and prepared enough, and now it’s necessary to drop into the water itself. And according to this spread, this is my purpose, right now. Go figure.

“People in cultures all over the world in geographic isolation from one another have generated and told stories with motifs and characters that echo or resemble one another since time out of mind. Queens belong to the realm of imagination while kings belong to the domain of will. But for King of Cups – King of Imagination – will looks different.” Here we see a more receptive application of will, or active acquiescence. So my mantra might be: I am prepared and ready to do what is required in order to accept and stay afloat as the waters rise. Luckily, the card tells me that I have the competence to find resolution where others have been unable to.

“Emotions are often passed down through generations until they reach someone who has the right set of resources and abilities to resolve them. Clearing a space for them to emerge, unfold, and find full expression.”

“The King of Cups protects the rights of emotions to have and experience the full cycle of life: to be born, to have a safe space to fully express and to die, eventually.” Emotions have a beginning, a middle, and an end (unless, of course, we clamp down on them to keep them from moving through, or otherwise repress them).

“Knowing this helps us to become willing to actually feel what we feel. Humans can endure more pain when they know it’s time limited.”

“This is the way an emotion makes its way out of an individual, out of a family, and ultimately out of a bloodline. And so if you are feeling something big and deep, consider your kingship.”

My takeaway from this card: I have the tools and temperament to usher the thing through once and for all, and this is actually my purpose now.

Card #4: II Swords (Reversed) – This position in the spread signifies whatever might be getting in my way. The fact that it is reversed speaks of Imposture, falsehood, duplicity, disloyalty. Swords are the domain of thought. I have long been aware that I rely heavily on my mind. This card tells me that I can use my intellect to my advantage and that I have skill at this. But it also signifies that it is my mind that can get most in my way. Fears of imposture, duplicity, disloyalty. Working with this card demands that I continually examine which thoughts I give weight to, and which ones I choose to speak out loud. It asks me to be exquisitely aware and present when I speak about who I am and what I desire right now. This has been a particularly important aspect of my life right now, as my identity shifts and morphs as I step more fully into these roles in my life that acknowledge and honor even more of me. Dore also points out that this card is about honing knife skills, which involve cultivating a bit of cunning.

In staying in contact with what one knows to be true, Dore says, sometimes you need to lift your head up, roll your shoulders back and act like you know. Here’s an interesting line from this chapter: “I’m too scared to admit what I know, or to do what knowing requires of me.” And keeping the blindfold on (not making a decision) can be protective when it’s not the right time to make a choice.

“We form an alliance with ourselves by choosing narratives that are supportive and empowering rather than disparaging. If you wouldn’t describe a friend who was hesitating to act on what they know to be true as ‘confused’ or ‘lost’ maybe don’t talk about yourself that way either.” I really appreciate this.

Card #5: Ace of Cups (Reversed) – This position in the spread signifies how I can love myself so I have the energy to fulfill my purpose. The fact that it is reversed speaks of mutation, instability, revolution; House of the false heart. This card was exactly what I needed during this time, as my focus is on emotions; on seeing and dealing with them newly. I have not known my emotions well enough to name them, much less to be true to them, but I am willing to grow from here. It is the work of a lifetime, making good enough friends of our bodies so that we can access what is alive in us in the moment.

Ace of Cups represents “House of the true heart, joy, content, abode, nourishment, abundance, fertility; Holy Table, felicity hereof.” In this chapter, Dore talks about how psyche is something we exist within – it’s bigger than our physical body. She points out what mystics have known for centuries, that internal and external life are linked. As this card shows up in a spread, it might be asking, What is my environment expressing through me?

This card is also linked to the High Priestess, and the practice of contemplation (as the creative process of coming into dialogue with other forces such as emotions). Breaking down the roots of the word contemplation, she points out that “The prefix con-, meaning ‘with,’ tells us that it’s a collaborative process, and templum, the Latin word for temple, connotes a sacred space where a deity was believed to reside.” And so to contemplate is to engage in spiritual dialogue, which, like all dialogues, is going to involve both speaking and listening.

This card encourages me to slow down enough to listen. “What you’re listening for might be an invisible force, like that of helping spirits, energetic currents, or a Higher Power. Or you could be listening for something concrete, like a river over rocks, birdsong, a groundhog’s rustle through high grass. This way of being in a receptive relationship with what surrounds us seems difficult for modern people of the West to understand. We think in terms of the individual, the hero, the character who performs tasks and overcomes obstacles.

“But the cups, in addition to being emotional, are also symbolic of a certain receptivity, as a cup receives water. Receptivity implies relationship and asks us: What would a more relational way of engaging with our surroundings look like? What would happen if we reoriented the imagination toward a way that sees the self both as dreamer and that which is dreamt?

“Could we make room for the possibility that what we feel and experience in the flesh house of the body is not always rooted in a private individual experience, but comes from an ecosystem to which we belong? What if, for example, rather than seeing ourselves as taking a walk through the woods, we see ourselves as being a wave of energy rippling through the consciousness of a family of redwoods? How would this change the way we move through the environments we dwell in? How would it change the way we relate to our experiences?

“Emotions are how we understand our raw experiences, not in an evaluative or judgmental way as with intellectual understanding but rather as an intuitive, felt, cellular-type knowing. The trick – and what’s taught in many behavioral therapies – is learning to suspend action for long enough that this kind of knowing can move through us.

“In her Dear Sugar column, Cheryl Strayed once advised a reader, ‘Don’t own other people’s crap.’ And I’ve thought about that a lot over the years. To understand the cups suit, we have to get clear on what aspects of our experience even fall into the realm of ownership. For example, my behavior is something I can ‘own’ or be accountable for, while other people’s behavior is not something that I can or should. But with emotions, it’s not always clear who ‘owns’ them. I’ve woken up heavy with the boulder of my grandmother’s grief on my chest, breathed deeply while sweating from the fire of my mother’s rage, and I could say, ‘That’s theirs, not mine,’ if I wanted to, but what good would that do? Emotions are living energetic currents with life cycles of their own. They tend to survive down the vertical and horizontal lines of human relationships – through generations, through communities – until they arrive to the place where they can be fully experienced and expressed. That can take a while.”

I’d better stop before I owe Jessica too much for using her material, but I think you get my point. My reading was a blessing, as is Jessica Dore’s Tarot for Change: Using the Cards for Self-Care, Acceptance & Growth. Maybe I’ll put you in touch with my tarot reader friend, too, if you want. She’s amazing.

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!

Playing With Subtle Energies: Explaining the Unexplainable

Hello Friends,

Many years ago I was introduced to this mysterious, powerful, and beautiful therapeutic modality called Family Constellations. Immediately fascinated and enchanted, I sought out a group or a therapist here in the Midwest, and had my own constellation done. I had to drive all the way to Sedalia, MO and the group that assembled there was quite small, yet still powerful. That therapist has since passed on, and I’ve moved forward in my life as well. In Mexico, I learned that Family Constellations work is extremely popular, and most of the therapists I met had been trained in it, use it in their therapies, and many offer regular groups. In 2013 I attended a 5-day “congress” about Family Constellations in Acapulco, Mexico, attended by a huge number of people, with speakers from all over the world, and my adventures south of the border kicked off that way – in the realm of the magical, Explicando lo Inexplicable (Explaining the Unexplainable). I began attending these groups in Guadalajara as often as I could. Often they brought me to tears, even in Spanish, because they worked with something much older and much more powerful than words. And I could feel things shifting and reaching greater integration in my body, a deeper, very resonant feeling that my problems are not so unique, and that so many of them have been passed down, from past generations. In the world of Family Constellations, things can be put right though. Repairs can be made, and it is a truly beautiful and awe-inspiring thing.

I’m telling you about this now because I have a desire to play with the subtle energies of this therapeutic modality, and as I am still learning how groups in general work, I won’t be charging what most constellators charge. And I want it to be available, even for people who have limited resources. Contact me if you want more information, if you think you and a few people in your community might like to set something up. We need anywhere from 8 to 18 people, and a place that is quiet and large enough for us to move around in.

I can see how my exposure to Family Constellations as well as my training and background in CranioSacral Therapy both shape and affect my EMDR practice, and I now use a kind of hybrid of all three with my clients. We have started a constellation group in Columbia and our first four circles have been extremely powerful. Having the ability to take my work into a group context excites me no end. I’ve included a couple links so you can check it out below. Let me know what you think.

https://www.ulsamer.com/family-constellation/family-constellations-according-to-bert-hellinger/

Rupert Sheldrake talks about Family Constellations and the morphogenic field. You may want to Google that topic and follow your own curiosity.

The swirling blue on white figures in the image I include with this post make me think of the “as above, so below” phenomenon that we see in nature, and the correspondence between different planes of existence. Here, I almost see both the neurons that make up any living organism (or a brain!) and the humans that make up any living community. The design was part of the 2013 Constellations Congress I attended in Acapulco.

Learn about the Zulu origins of Family Constellations here.

Announcing my Body-Owner’s Manual

Happy October everybody. I wanted to let you know that the manual is up and available for purchase at Amazon. However, it is also available in PDF or Word format. Just let me know if you’d like your own copy. Just send me an e-mail and I’d be happy to give that to you for free.

To me it feels tragic that a person can go through any significant portion of their lives feeling alone and unsupported! I’d like to say that at the ripe old age of 56 I have put this feeling thoroughly and completely behind me. And I think this manual is what turned the key. I am so so so so excited!! I’ll tell you a little secret: I started taking tango lessons!!!!

But in all seriousness, the feeling of isolation, having only oneself to count on, and chronic touch deficit is entirely too prevalent in our society, and only exacerbated by Covid-19 and our political divisions. It is my belief that the current state of our country has its cause deep in early relational trauma, which leaves people feeling that they are different, alone, and lacking in essential resources and belonging. And people who feel like this are susceptible to the messages and shenanigans of narcissists and sociopaths. They have yet to find a durable and supportive tribe or connect with stable roots. As they move through life, these feelings become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Body Owner’s Guide for the Stewards of the New Earth: My Meta Self Owner’s Guide offers you eight chapters, channeled by eight loving ethereal masters, offering nuggets of wisdom in a format that can be read from start to finish or opened at random to spark your creative juices and inspire you to reach for more of what your soul is longing for. This handy reference book includes affirmations, dream interpretations and more, with the intention of bringing into focus a vision of a post-trauma future.

Though this manual was created for me, it is also intended to inspire you to strengthen your connections with your own angels, guides and ancestors. They are always there, and there is nothing they would like more than to see you learn how to care for yourself well. May this set you on the path of creating your own personal volume.

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

Pain

It is normal to have little sensitive points in our body. These points tell us about how the body is functioning. They are sore or sensitive not to tell us how we have failed. They are not there as a form of punishment. Making the pain along these points stop hurting is not our objective. It’s not that we can be healthier if they don’t hurt. I think sore points are our body’s way of saying This needs attention. There is a story here, and it wants to be told. And “this” is not just a point on your leg. “This” is a point on a map – the map which is possibly on a meridian line that runs through the gall bladder and up into the jaw, and that that point of pain is like a little push pin. It’s like a little light blinking, saying: HERE. THIS IS HOW YOU CAN CARE FOR YOURSELF, BY NOTING THIS, BY BEING CURIOUS ABOUT THIS, BY SLOWING DOWN, ASKING FOR HELP AND APPLYING THE INFORMATION YOU RECEIVE.

Pain Really

Pain is when I’m simultaneously reaching for something and smacking myself back for reaching for it.

I’d like to open up a conversation about talking about pain, talking about our pain with other people. Gosh, where to start? All kinds of feelings of shame and embarrassment come up for me whenever I am telling people these days about the most exciting and the most fascinating project that I’ve been working on, which is correcting my bite, so that my body functions like it was intended to function, and I am not chronically defended or clenched and body parts are not cut off from my awareness. And with some people I can approach the subject more easily. But with other people, they have this reflexive response to the mere mention of pain (you included, maybe). They think it is their responsibility to do something about it, when all I really want is to see if this is anything similar to what they experience. I mention that I’ve had pain and chronic clenching, and for me that is progress – cause for celebration, actually. But they reflexively wince, and apologize for my experience, which they are not in any way responsible for. I am learning about the pain from my childhood and how to put words on it and share my ideas with other people because my numbness is parting (subsiding). I am having moments of feedback from my body which is what I want, which is possibly what you want, too. So what I’m talking about when I say “pain” is not anything approaching suffering. Suffering is akin to victimhood…it’s got an element of powerlessness to it that makes it inescapable, possibly helpless. So for you right now, suffering might be the ongoing barrage of information about how you are not living up to some expectation that you or some other person put on you, or a chronic resistance to the changes that are going on in your world, or a non-acceptance of something that life has offered you (emotions included). Or it is you unknowingly fighting against yourself. So you just suffer (tolerate, and cope in whatever way you can) it.

I am thinking and talking about the pain in my neck or discovering from some therapist or another that this is happening in my body because of something I reflexively did to cope with my emotions as a child, and the last thing I want is to be that person who is obsessing about their pain, wallowing in discomfort – the person who talks about themselves incessantly. But I am longing to share my ideas with other people because this is such a vast topic and I really don’t think I’m the only person doing this, and I think it is incumbent upon us all to take responsibility for bringing our unconscious pain to awareness so we can properly care for ourselves and move past the pain and suffering; to move into the fully-lived embodied present. And we cannot do that alone.

Retreat from Pain

What is pain anyway, but information. It’s upsetting to me when I tell my dentist that my tooth doesn’t feel right. The tooth feels like it is being pushed out, I tell her. I feel frustration when even talking about what’s happening with my tooth because it doesn’t “hurt.” It is holding frustration. It feels like it is being pushed out by my body. When the dentist tries to pin me down for a better explanation, and she goes about tapping it to determine whether it “hurts” or not, I’m just like, “It doesn’t hurt, but if you don’t stop that I AM GOING TO SMACK YOU.” That’s NOT physical pain. It’s a flavor of sensation (frustration? despair?). Nuance. It is information wanting to be acknowledged, to be put into words. Heard.

For me, pain, right now, is information. It is necessary, it is desirable. I want to know about my body.

I notice that when I cop to having sensations I don’t have shame. But when I cop to being in pain or having been in pain for a long time or having chronically tensed muscles (against some numbed-out historical stressor), I’m slipping over into another territory, which people interpret as “suffering” and the moment people do that, I want to just retreat into my solitude because I don’t want to be that person.

Being Vulnerable Has Been Dangerous

So maybe that is why we have healers. Because good healers are naturally curious about the kinds of sensations we are getting because that’s what they work with. That is their medium. And when we talk to other people about our journey with pain (physical or emotional); our experience, and we are reaching for understanding; we are reaching for more information to help us emerge and know ourselves and overcome suffering, it’s scary maybe because being vulnerable has been dangerous for us in the past.

Dear Diary

2/13/19 Thoughts Today

I went to visit my sister Tracy yesterday and while I was at her house I was really grateful to have her in town so I could just go to her house, sit on her bed and do what I wanted to do. Yesterday I pulled my Spanish homework out of my bag and I just started reading. She was on deadline, and she waved me to her room, told me to make myself comfortable. She had a very comfortable bed and she also had some construction going on in her house. I was happy it was not my problem. The landlord and her plumber were there and had the bathroom torn apart. “The toilet is chupando agua,” I heard one of them say (sucking water). Maybe there is some kind of leak so they told her she can’t use it until it’s fixed. They told her she could go downstairs and use the one in the apartment that is being renovated on the ground level.

I was noticing some feelings: Admiration and also a little envy. Tracy’s house is amazing. She has started to develop some really healthy routines and self-care strategies. She has developed what seem to be some really healthy friendships in her neighborhood and she kind of “lights up” when she talks about them. She brought me some nettle tea, I ate some grapefruit I had packed in my bag, and when she was able to take a break, she invited me to the kitchen so we could prepare some lunch. She was so excited. I noticed that when I was trying to talk to her I was having trouble finding my words. I was stumbling, groping, grasping. Place names. People names. They just weren’t coming. And I wanted to share with her so much. I wanted to be big and social and important like her. And I also noticed that she was very attentive and very (as usual) very good at advocating for herself (a bit differently this time, maybe), but really attuning to me and demonstrating her care and loyalty to me, regardless of my inability to express myself as fluidly as her.

Digesting later, what that experience was like, I noticed some negative thought patterns that come up and tell me that she’s doing it better, that I should be different – that I’m behind. All those things definitely irrational today (relics from her being 6 when I was 2, probably). But they helped me identify the feelings.

When I give such negative thought patterns my time and attention I can see that I’m exactly where I should be. I have so so so much support: human support, economic support, emotional support, physical support, divine support. I have what I need and I have permission to ask for more.

I talk to myself gently: My house is simple and uncluttered because visually I need that. My life is spacious because that is what I’m asking for. My systems are still under construction. I’m still developing systems because my whole structure is rearranging – with my diet – requiring things that are soft to eat. Exploring – feeling my way through that whole process and having extra appointments to support the physical reconstruction and anatomical adjustments that are being made to correct my bite. I’m grateful for exactly where I am right now. There are so many things I’m looking forward to and the project I’m working on right now (which may not look that exciting; that doesn’t vibrate at such a social level), but is mine to do right now: fixing my bite so that I’m not in pain all the time! And that is a project that has an end point to it. I will be completing those physical things – the re-patterning of my muscle memory. The fixing of my molars so that I can eat without pain and the application of my braces so that my teeth actually look like they have been cared for and that I have the means to take care of myself well. And maybe even opening up my avenue of expression so that I can more easily and fluidly and confidently express my thoughts and ideas.

I think about why this was not taken care of before, in the “developed” United States, where I grew up and lived for so long. More feelings. And understanding. Compassion for myself and for my parents. I mean, how could I have taken care of all of this in the US? A single mom with no insurance for dental care? Making barely enough to get by? How could my parents have taken care of this with nine children, aversion to credit and boot-strap values? They couldn’t have. And I couldn’t have while I was raising children either. But that’s another topic. That is what I’m thinking about today.