Kevin McEvenue's Wholebody Focusing Blog
“When a part of me is able to feel loved, it awakens to its own healing!”
What happens when we are in grounded presence with what makes us uncomfortable?
Photo Credit: Eddie Nunns
I don’t have to solve that problem.
………………………fix
I don’t have to solve that problem.
………………………fix
I don’t have to solve THAT problem.
………………………fix
I don’t have to RESOLVE that question.
I don’t have to.
and then…
Just because it’s sometimes fun for me to brain-storm with mySelf
doesn’t mean that I’m obligated to.
Something in my body is recognizing the ways I storm my brain.
I don’t have to do that.
Photo Credit: Pixaby
Sharing this Heartfelt blog together seems to bring more in each one of us. That is my experience—enjoying what you have added to us from your direct experience of life shared with us.
Recently I had a very powerful experience with another person, a person who I regularly meet when I come to get my medication filled. Usually I ignore such moments, but this time I did something different again. I allowed my body-self to take it in.
Later, in a private moment, I allowed this experience to return and to give it the time it needed to be fully appreciated for what it was for me. Suddenly the felt sense of the moment came so alive, so powerful that it overwhelmed me and seemed to scream; “A connection is happening here!” My body seemed filled with passion and a desire that felt so satisfying when I could find my ground. All because I stopped and allowed that simple connection to complete itself rather than walk away before it had a chance to become more fully present.
I invite you again to join me and Pause and notice an everyday connection that demands attention. Perhaps it will be someone you don’t know and yet this powerful connection feels so good and you wonder why! Maybe you could spend time with it and let it show you why!
Kevin McEvenue
Photo Credit: Pixabay
Kevin McEvenue asked if I can be in contact with Eero Voutilainen, the Finnish Wholebody Focusing pioneer, and ask what meditation means to him.
The life of Eero Voutilainen is currently mainly focused on home due to mobility and balance problems. With the inspiring programs on TV he remembers different stages and turning points in his life that can more deeply open to his consciousness through meditation. These memories, Eero says, are often part of subconscious, in which there are no words.
Eero has noticed that, at its best, meditation is an acceptance of a wordless space, the space beyond any words. According to Eero
“Meditation is airy, airy licking. It allows us to be free and liberated from our own self, own ego, that easily limits our own reality. In meditation our self is not anchored to anything, but it moves sparingly. It is in a continuous transformation process throughout our life, where the caterpillar re-emerges and becomes a butterfly, all over again. Our self, our ego, is in between the subconscious and superego, and in a continuous transformation process throughout our life. The subconscious is consciousness of something underneath that of which we cannot hold in consciousness. Meditation opens the world that we need to gently listen and receive. Superego is much clearer, each of us can recognize it.”
When I asked what kind of photo Eero would like to be attached to this blog, he answered: “A picture of autumn forest, of one leaf floating in air. All those leaves that are floating to the ground are like letters that, when falling find each others again, merging into words.” This was a memory of his visit at the meditation museum in Spain.
Kevin McEvenue kysyi, voisinko olla yhteydessä Eero Voutilaiseen, suomalaiseen Wholebody-fokusointipioneeriin, ja kysyä, mitä meditaatio on hänelle.
Continue reading “Meditation is Continuous Transformation / Meditaatio on jatkuvaa muodonmuutosta”
I follow the #MeToo movement closely because it addresses a reality that is central to my existence. Sexual abuse trauma dominates my emotional life. I was never sexually abused myself; however, my mother was. Her sexual abuse impacted her ability to be a loving mother to me. I recently became aware of the depth of this reality when I read a paragraph about what it is like to be in relationship with a narcissist.
A relationship with a narcissist is a desperate relationship where you are always feeling vulnerable, worthless, hated, constantly explaining yourself, silenced, punished, and traumatized. What is it that you are actually doing wrong? Nothing!1
This describes what it was like to be my mother’s daughter. Extreme abuse can engender a particular type of narcissism. My mother, a victim of sexual abuse, needed to throw her own negative feelings about herself onto me in order to live with the unbearable truth and pain of her experience. I experience my relationship with her as something in me that always feels a need to defend myself and is sure that there is no love or margin of error available to me.
The dominance of this felt sense in my life became clear to me one day as I was preparing for a medical test. Try as I might, I couldn’t clear my mind and relax. Thoughts of random moments in the past in which I felt traumatized by interactions with others kept surfacing. There were so many from such a wide variety of different points in my life that I became completely overwhelmed. I slowed down and connected to the energy of the Earth. I paused with this sense of overwhelm. A new realization eventually emerged—it was futile to try to hold space for any or all of the fast shifting narratives floating through me.
Photo Credit: Maria Hakasalo
MELTING POINT
A judging mind
who crush and shrink, burden and destroy
You come out from the nooks of my mind
seizing me with full of shame
Could I shake you off so that no one notices
how dark and ugly you are?
Welcome, judging mind
Welcome home
Welcome to my arms, welcome to be seen
Welcome to the warmth of my embrace
to the shine of the sun
there you soften
forget your job
begin to melt and love
Photo credit: Maria Hakasalo
BRAVE ENOUGH?
My hands
Stretched out far away from my body
sad and lonely
Overloaded
Asking, do I suffice, am I good enough
My feet
Marching
Every step hearing a drum cadence repeating
Lazybones Lazybones Lazybones
I will show you I am not a lazybones! I’ll do and do and do!!!
Even though I am too tired of doing anything
Something in me
Gently raises a question
Are you Brave
Are you Brave enough to think
I will lead you where you need to be?
Am I?
It is important to document events in which the distance between body wisdom and our conscious selves grows smaller.
My Wholebody Focusing practice is mostly silent. I move into grounded presence and give my body permission to lead in the ways it needs. Automatic or spontaneous movements emerge. Words or images might surface, but not necessarily. I eventually settled on this type of practice because it allows me to remain in grounded presence in a deeper and more sustained way. Without the need to search for words or images, I do not get triggered out of grounded presence as easily, and I don’t have to worry about whether I am doing something “right” or if I’m addressing what is needed. My body takes care of that. Whatever emerges from my body is what it needs. I just need to give what emerges in my awareness equal regard and my consent.
Two dominant movements have consistently emerged. The first one is how every session starts. If I stand, my legs shake from the hips to the ankles. This movement first came to me during an automatic movement Qigong session many years ago. If I am sitting, my feet lift off the floor and shake differently. I have a vague sense of what is behind these movements. The leg movements seem to have a cleansing quality. It feels like a release of built-up tension or static that might get in the way of what my body might need.
The second dominant movement usually emerges while my legs are still shaking. My arms shoot up over my head and stay there. My arms can be moving or still. This second movement emerged during a foundational session about an image that has been with me for a long time—an image of a small bird with damaged wings that stubbornly refused to change in any way. This movement emerged during a health crisis.
In a grounded state, I brought my awareness to how this crisis was affecting my body. My arms flew up at the same time, and a Kundalini-like sensation of a tornado arose from my feet and moved toward the top of my head. My understanding of this movement is that it was a moment when this little bird tested its wings and found they actually worked. This was a turning point in this health crisis. This movement emerges each time I am in grounded presence, reminding me that anything is possible and giving me courage. Both of these dominant movements ebb and flow through my sessions in relation to whatever else emerges.
