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What wants to be born or created? Part V – Integration Journey

You have survived. You are transformed, with an opportunity to emerge anew. Now it’s your job to learn from your experiences, which can strengthen you and help you understand who you are and what you need to thrive. Slow down. Take this opportunity. Digest. What is it that you actually desire?

Question 5: What wants to be born or created? This question is about new ways of being or living, projects, relationships, habits, your next chapter.  What’s trying to come through you?

Whew.  Last week’s post was intense.  Not sure if you were able to hang in there for that.  This week’s post should feel a lot better.  For each of the things that I am releasing, something else emerges in its place.  As you can imagine, when you unload that kind of ancestral garbage, things start rearranging themselves in your psyche.  That has an impact on your body, your relationships, and the way you move in the world.  I’m still working on this, but here’s what it looks like in progress.

1) Love is unconditional.  When we know this, it alters our decisions, our actions, and our way of being in the world.

  • My heart opens.  I soften.
  • I commit to becoming fluent in all emotions that spring from the body/mind.
  • I have a deep inner knowing that emotions bring important information, and that none of them are negative or bad.
  • I am curious toward what is showing up in life, how my body responds, and why.
  • I have a deep inner knowing that whatever happens, I will be okay.
  • I am in perpetual gratitude for all the myriad of things, tiny and humongous, moment by moment, that are actually going well enough.
  • I have a deep inner knowing that my worth is not contingent on what I produce or how I perform.
  • I have a deep inner knowing that I do belong, and that I matter. 
  • I have a deep inner knowing that I actually have very little control over other people and the situations going on around me, and that’s okay. 
  • I have a deep inner knowing that by slowing down and being aware of my body, I can be a better version of myself.
  • I have a deep inner knowing that just by being myself, I make a valuable contribution in the world.
  • I understand that bracing, guardedness and defensiveness don’t actually protect me, but instead send signals to my brain and the beings around me that danger is near. 
  • I commit to recognizing and releasing the tension that I have habitually borne in attempts to hide and prevent the movement of emotions and the legacy of trauma from my body.

2) We are only human. And that is actually okay.  You and I are completely worthy of love and support, and we always have been.   It is right to value and seek feelings of safety and belonging.  We always have the option of doing what we need to do to feel a little bit safer.

  • When we learn what to do with our feelings, they are no longer threatening to us.
  • When we take the time to notice when we are projecting our feelings onto someone else, we can reclaim and work with our emotions and use them to better understand our needs.
  • We become people who know that our needs matter.
  • We become people who strive to balance the giving and receiving in our lives. 
  • We become people who are sometimes strong, responsible and wise, and at other times enjoy and rely upon the strength, wisdom and contributions of others. 
  • We no longer need to blame anyone for our uncomfortable feelings because we know what to do with them, and use them for our benefit.
  • If we find ourselves projecting our undesirable qualities onto others, we can quickly recognize this and do what is necessary to restore our integrity.
  • We can put down any loyalty, responsibility or grudge that does not explicitly belong to us.
  • We can bow to the fates of our ancestors, since we are not in a position to know the full truth or scope of their stories or hardships.
  • We can relinquish the need to be energetically attuned to the emotions of other people.
  • We become people who allow ourselves to receive good things from life with gratitude and delight.
  • We become people who know the difference between a gift and a transaction, and feel capable of negotiating transaction terms that work for us.
  • We become people who feel well supported.
  • We become people who know that we have great worth.
  • We become people who love and accept ourselves unconditionally.
  • We become people who appreciate and enjoy the contributions of others, and enjoy ceding control when others are willing to share their gifts.
  • We become people who are not threatened by emotions – ours or those of others.
  • We become people who accept others exactly as they are, and don’t feel compelled to fix or rescue them.
  • We become people who understand that we always have choices, and that we can usually get what we want and need.
  • We become people who feel and discern rather than project and judge.

3) It is no longer appropriate to protect others at our own expense.  We can only take our place as one human, doing our best to stay grounded and rooted in the larger living organism we comprise together.

  • I respect myself enough to allow me to be me, with all my emotions, desires, limits, needs, and gifts. 
  • I respect others enough to allow them to be responsible for themselves.
  • I am no longer bound to any vow that does not honor the whole of me. 
  • I become a person who allows her heart to open to embodied love, bonding and belonging to others.
  • I become a person who does not feel compelled to explain herself or apologize for any of her desires, needs or limits.
  • I become a person who embraces and celebrates her own yearnings, longings, and sexual energy.
  • I become a person who values and desires closeness, belonging, and deep, lasting, soul quenching intimacy.
  • I have the support I need to gently, safely and joyfully step into my power.
  • I trust myself with my largeness, my power.
  • As a steward of my body and emotions, I get to know myself and in so doing draw to me and recognize people I enjoy, and who enjoy me.  
  • Love is abundantly and ridiculously available to me.
  • I am swimming in love.  

Come back next week for Question 6: What is the medicine or teaching?

Releasing What Wants To Die – Part IV

This year, I am releasing 1) the need to pick sides, 2) the need to be right, and 3) the need to protect others at my own expense.

This is the 4th post of my Psilocybin Integration Process. If you’d like to start at the beginning, I invite you to begin here.

Question 4: What wants to die or be released? This question addresses old beliefs, patterns, habits, identities, fears, stories, thought loops.  What am I being asked to let go of?

In the very earliest moments of 2026, or maybe the last ones of 2025 it came to me.  This year, I am releasing 1) the need to pick sides, 2) the need to be right, and 3) the need to protect others at my own expense.  That’s where I was, and that was my intention for the year.  Well, apparently, the spirits of the psilocybin mushroom took my intention seriously, and catapulted me forward with regard to the things I had already put into motion.  Through this process, which I believe to be a continuation of that medicine, I take an exhaustive inventory of the inherited garbage that makes such a declaration necessary:

 1) The need to pick sides comes from sensing that love is conditional in the family of origin.

  • The need to judge (right/wrong).
  • The vow to acknowledge, feel and express only “positive” or pleasing feelings.  
  • The vow to stay guarded and protected to avoid the pain of loss and powerlessness.
  • The notion that giving is good and receiving is bad.
  • The notion that accomplishing things is good, and that being idle is bad. 
  • The belief that I must busy myself to avoid bad things.
  • The shame of being a scoundrel, of being untrustworthy, of being up to no good.
  • The decision to close the heart to avoid painful feelings.
  • The vow to keep feelings of disappointment and loss hidden, even from myself.
  • The notion that I am so shameful that I don’t belong to humanity.

2) The need to be right is also modeled in the family of origin.  The only way to be safe is to be on the right side of the right/wrong equation.

  • The need to blame someone else for my uncomfortable feelings.
  • The unspoken notion that feelings are wrong.
  • The tendency to judge, talk, work harder, or stay perpetually in motion in order to avoid feelings.
  • The identity as the one who gives and not the one who receives. 
  • The identity as the strong one, the good one, the responsible one, the wiser one. 
  • The need to blame my mother for my disappointment and discomfort of having unmet needs as an infant and small child.
  • The disappointment and blame projected by my female ancestors onto the men in their lives.
  • The need to punish men out of love and loyalty to my female ancestors because my female ancestors have been hurt and disappointed.
  • The belief that allowing myself to receive good things has a hidden cost, so I must never allow myself to be in the debt of another.
  • The belief that it is not safe to receive good things from other people.
  • The belief that it is not safe to receive support from other people.
  • The notion that I have to be in charge to be safe.
  • The notion that I have to be in charge of my emotions to be safe.
  • The notion that men are children and should not be counted on for anything I truly want.
  • The notion that women are superior to men.
  • The belief that all the good men are already taken.

3) The need to protect others at my own expense.  Growing up with addiction/mental illness, we learn to take care of our adults, hoping that if they can be okay, we can be too.  Babies and children will do anything to ensure safety, regardless of the cost to themselves.  This is biological, instinctual.

  • The notion that it is my responsibility to censor myself in the presence of others if my emotions are anything less than positive or pleasing.
  • The notion that it is my responsibility to protect people from pain and discomfort – theirs and mine.
  • The belief that I should be willing to sacrifice everything for love and belonging.
  • The notion that I must be willing to sacrifice myself so that others can be comfortable.
  • The notion that I need to do something so that others don’t have to feel uncomfortable feelings.
  • The notion that men (other people) cannot be responsible for themselves.
  • The vow to hide my “negative” feelings, even from myself.
  • The notion that I should be ashamed when I break my vows. 
  • The belief that it is dangerous to allow my heart to open to embodied love, bonding and belonging to others.
  • The notion that I can help my parents by carrying their shame and grief.
  • The notion that I need to explain myself or apologize for any of my desires, needs or limits.
  • The directive that I must protect myself against my own yearnings, longings, sexual desire.
  • The belief that all of these things are bad and extremely dangerous.
  • The directive that I must protect myself against the desire for closeness, the desire for belonging, the desire to experience deep, lasting, soul quenching intimacy.
  • The belief that all of these things are foolish, a waste of time and disruptive.
  • The fear of my own power.
  • The doubt that I can actually handle and be trusted with my power.
  • The fear of opening myself to be truly known, only to be rejected.  
  • The doubt that love is really possible for me.  

Come back next week for Question 5: What wants to be born or created?

Photo Shoot – Being In My Body (Estar En Mi Cuerpo)

This is what emotional work can look like!

This past couple days has been so interesting, as I wrestle with my body’s terror about being the center of attention and knee-jerk reactions to staying present in situations where resources are coming from others to me, specifically.  It’s really stretching my mind and my understanding and challenges the wiring of my brain.  Not always fun, and not always comfortable, but always held in love and gentleness and so much kindness and creativity.

Hope you like my photo collection!  Watch for more photos from the shoot which will be appearing on Facebook and other forms of social media over the next couple months.  They will make up the launch for Estar En Mi Cuerpo, but they will be professional photographs by Kitzia, who I am sure you are going to love.  For those of you who don’t know, Estar En Mi Cuerpo is the Spanish title for Being In My Body, What You Might Not Have Known About Trauma, Dissociation, & The Brain.  The other women in the photos are so dear to my heart – my translator, Mariana and her sister, Margarita.

Margarita, setting the tone for Day 1

Mariana, Shoot Director, Translator and Publisher

Kitzia, Photographer

Kitzia, Mariana, Margarita, at Bicycle Snack Station

Bicycle wheel table and reading the coffee grounds

Juice and coffee stop

Kitzia loves this pup

Photograph the photographer – What a love

It just doesn’t get any sweeter than this.

Aren’t I photogenic?

The Crew – Day 2

Trauma Therapist Podcast – Interview

I was recently interviewed by Harvard-trained Guy McPherson of the Trauma Therapist Podcast.  I highly recommend his creative endeavor, which you can check out here. He is truly inspired, seeing that people first starting out on the road to being effective therapists can and should draw on the wisdom of others who were once beginners too.

Listen to my interview here.

Slowing Way Down

I’m watching the sky light up this morning.  I begin watching well before the sun comes up (6:45 is early enough, actually), so that I can be a witness to the contrast of the darkness, where the stars are still visible.  It’s nippy out, and I have leg warmers, fluffy socks, and three layers up above.  I’m wearing a fluffy purple muffler to keep my neck warm.  I’ve finished my tea and I’m at a point now where I might usually go and start my stretches because nothing is really beckoning me to continue watching the pre-sunrise sky in the east.  Then I notice two little groups of birds flying with each other.  They are flying in tandem.  They make sort of a figure 8 in the sky; they float toward and through each other and then out again in this rhythm where they are repeating the pattern over and over and over again, flying with each other.  It seems to me that they are playing.  As they continue this pattern, it’s kind of hypnotic to watch, and interesting too because they know what they are doing and they are doing it purposefully, and for some reason that I can only imagine.

I’m still facing east and it strikes me that these birds are right there, in my line of vision, and I keep watching.  It seems to me that there are no other little groups of birds doing anything anywhere else.  But this little group of birds has positioned itself right in front of me.  And I just continue to watch them until they merge and become one group.  And that one group of birds continues flying in my line of sight back and forth and around.  And there are little outsiders, and I watch how they have to fly extra hard to catch up, from time to time, to avoid falling out of the group, and the distance they have to fly to stay in the formation is bigger.  But they do their part to continue to be with the group, and the group continues to function like a group and it just keeps moving and dancing and doing what it does.

I think about this group of birds, and what motivates it to do what it does.  I can’t imagine that it is striving for perfection, or that any of those individual birds are working on a technique, or that they are trying to get it better than any other little group of birds or needing to get any better than they were before.  They are just doing it.  They are flying.  They are flying because that’s what they do.

I’m admiring patterns these days.  Some patterns that are emerging are the similarities I see between bodywork (tai chi, etc.) and being with other people.  The three levels of patterns that are occurring to me are 1) Slow down, 2) Let Pleasure In, and 3) Don’t Try; Just be.  Today I’ll focus just on the first, but I know they are also all woven together.

Slowing down when spending time with other people improves the quality of the connection.  It improves the likelihood that what is being shared is a person’s deepest truth and not some unexamined word pattern that emerges from habit or old wounds; discharge of (and/or distraction from) unfelt emotions, or defenses against really being known.  Our culture does not currently support being slow with one another, but I say this is where so much richness, beauty and potential lies.  What would it take to create an environment in which taking two deep breaths before responding would be natural?  And a listener would not rush in to fill the silence.  An environment like this would offer an unspoken, “There is no need to rush.  Take your time.  Take all the time you need to express yourself fully.”  How amazing and how terrifying would that kind of environment be?

I desire to mend old ways of relating with others: hiding, controlling, defending.  It is my intention to get better at staying connected with myself and my felt sense as I share myself with others, so that I can benefit more from the connection that human sharing can offer.  Talking before connecting with myself, I have found, can result in saying things that might be “true” but are unkind, or “true” only at a superficial (usually injured, egoic) level.  What I communicate when I am fully grounded and embodied is an expression of what I value, it invites a response from you that is an authentic expression of you, and the sharing creates something of value that simply nothing else can.

With the body, in activities such as yoga or tai chi, we are gently coaxed into asanas or forms that are different from what we would habitually assume.  Such activities give us opportunities to slow down – to explore and know ourselves better, to listen to our deeper truth, and to improve the quality of our lives.  Slowing our movements down allows us to bring awareness to unconscious ways we have used our bodies to avoid discomfort or pain it might have just been more “pleasant” to ignore.  When we rush from Point A to Point B we are likely to take the path we have habitually taken, whether it’s the most elegant, most expressive, most effortless, or most ergonomically sensible path.  When we take this path (from A to B) unconsciously, despite the extra effort this route may cost us (both in terms of its inefficiency and the energy required to keep information outside of awareness), we inevitably communicate our unconscious pain in the world – at the very least to the unconscious selves of others, who have brains designed to pick up such information.  Such subtleties match up with other information patterns they have stored in their memory banks, beneath conscious awareness and are likely to later trigger unconscious responses and unexplained emotions in your relating with one another.

In slowing down, we may feel something we’ve been avoiding.  And we might not like that, actually.  But in slowing way down, we may make connections, and gain understandings about ourselves we never had before.  In slowing down, we bring consciousness to those painful places we’ve been avoiding, to find out what is actually there.  And in bringing consciousness there, we can understand that the pain is nothing more than sensation.  You thought that was pain.  But approaching that sensation with curiosity instead of judgment, with gentle exploration and generosity in terms of time and pacing, this “pain” might actually offer you information that heals and pleasure that you hadn’t afforded yourself before (which besides feeling good, brings resilience, vitality and gentle supportive presence to the body).  It’s not the scary thing we’ve been spending so much energy protecting ourselves from and avoiding.

When the person I’m with is accelerated, I feel compelled to share what I have to say quickly.  I am somewhat skilled at meeting other people where they are vibrationally, and have built my identity around matching and attuning, and blending in.  Unknowingly, I have postponed developing the ability to claim my own vibrational frequency and maintain it in the presence of another.  As a result I have often settled for the superficial (shiny, exciting) interaction that happens between two people, when what I am yearning for is so much more.  The pleasure of a particular kind of connecting that I yearn for is one in which I am unguarded, grounded, and connected with exactly who I am.  Grounded, in this moment, is nothing more than being attuned to my senses in this moment, being willing to slow down and take those two breaths before responding, and speaking only those words that I need to speak to express my experience in the moment.

It’s not possible to be truly compassionate with ourselves or others when we are running on adrenaline and cortosol, on guard, defended and triggered.  That is why I recommend learning how to slow down, calm the body, connect with yourself and then communicate with those around you from a grounded, mindful place.  It takes more than a sound bite to express oneself.  And it takes more than sitting in front of the television to relax after a stressful day at work.  Changing gears after living a high-vibration lifestyle for years and years is something that has to be done on purpose; it doesn’t just happen on its own.  That is what I have put my mind to doing, and let me tell you, I will never turn back.

 

The birds this morning, in their flying and being who they are reminded me that we all know who we are, though we might have temporarily forgotten.  We have worked so hard to cover up what makes us uniquely us, to mask it, or to make it different so that it is acceptable to someone else.  The birds’ message to me this morning was: Don’t try; just be.  Right now, do what is necessary to reconnect with the God-given greatness of all that you are.  Be right here in this moment, now, and play as if right now were all that there was.  You have a way to express yourself, and you have your own, inherent vibrational frequency.  Re-member that it is right to want to do what you do effortlessly, naturally, and with great playfulness and joy.  And then give yourself permission to go out and do it.