Death Was Scary Then

I don’t want to be put into a box and embalmed with chemicals that won’t let me become the earth. I hope someone who is not scared of death – someone who can feel their own ground and aliveness – will be brave and stay with me for a while, just until I am cold and gone. Then they can put me in the earth until my bones become dust.

When I was young my Mother died.

Recently I had an experience with a little bird that made me think about it. I wish I had known how to be grounded and present then.

Today I held a dead bird in the palm of my hand. The cat bought it in to me. I picked it up and gently held it.

At first I hoped it would come to life, maybe it was feigning death to protect itself. I moved my hand so it could feel the sun -maybe that would help. I tried to will it back to life.

It felt very sacred. I could feel the life in my hand and hoped the bird could feel it too.

I remembered my Mother dying when I was young and wished I would have touched her body – like I was with the bird – while it was still warm. I wished I hadn’t wanted to get away quickly. I wished I had put my head on her heart and my hand on her face. I wish I had of loved her more. Death was scarier then.

I stayed with the bird and all that was happening in this moment – my memory of my Mother’s death, the birds death, my aliveness and the aliveness I could hear and feel all around me.

I remembered them coming and putting coins on her eyes. That was weird. I didn’t like that. Why couldn’t we look at her eyes. The birds eyes were beautiful to look at. But death was scary then.

The cat walked past. I wanted to be mad at it. Then I thought, well, it just did what it naturally does. Just like the cancer did in my Mum. I gently put the bird in the garden and remembered its bones will turn into dust and then it will be the earth.

I don’t want to be put into a box and embalmed with chemicals that won’t let me become the earth. I hope someone who is not scared of death – someone who can feel their own ground and aliveness – will be brave and stay with me for a while, just until I am cold and gone. Then they can put me in the earth until my bones become dust.

Then I will be the earth too.

I am sorry Mum x.

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Connections can be so powerful and so rewarding when we can stop and take in!

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

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The Unbearable Wound

Whatever remedies we put in place to prevent sexual abuse have to be an unambiguous actions with real consequences that leave no room for interpretation or advantage for perpetrators to continue their destructive behavior. We must also pair new laws with programs to heal those who have been wounded. Wholebody Focusing stands in the forefront of practices that can support that healing.

 

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.

Wholebody Focusing as a Way to Heal Sexual Abuse Trauma

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.

Continue reading “The Unbearable Wound”

My Background Feeling: Unprepared for Life

Video Credit: Horseshoe Falls by Elizabeth Morana

Water sometimes has to go
over a ledge and
drop
without knowing
what comes next

you panic
there is nothing to
hold onto
no email with information
you needed
to orient you

The drops of water
too are disoriented
they rely
without forethought
on gravity

They don’t know
which way is up
either

Oh, Angels!
Teach me to be like
Water

Elizabeth Morana

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A Moment of Kindness that felt so Satisfying!

I had just gotten on a bus and a lady offered me her seat. The normal reaction would be simply, “Oh! she is being so nice.” But something more unfolded between us.

A moment of kindness that felt so satisfying.

We have been practicing moments of Wholebody Focusing and Heartfelt Connection with one another in enjoying these blogs, awakening something very special in each of us. I know I have.  And some of those moments stay with me and enrich and expand my own life experience in me and around me–often in very unexpected ways. Here is a moment like this when I was able to Pause and enjoy the moment–as several of you have suggested.

In this recording, I want to share an unexpected  kindness that happened in a situation that felt so deeply touching and satisfying and so uninvited. The situation was really quite ordinary. I had just gotten on a bus and a lady offered me her seat. The normal reaction would be simply, “Oh! she is being so nice.”  But something more happened because I was open to actually feel the body connection unfolding between us, and I was able to step back and become aware of what was happening–happening without a single word being spoken, but deeply felt.

I would like to invite you to stay with me and join me in this kind of event which may have happened to you too, and maybe awakened a similar bodily felt connection that seemed heartfelt and so satisfying. Kevin.

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Meditation is Continuous Transformation / Meditaatio on jatkuvaa muodonmuutosta

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”

Breaking the Spell of Suffering

Before I know it I have lost myself, I am not solid.

I am hard on myself and I need to break the spell of that.

When the overwhelm sets in, it takes over my body.

Before I know it I have lost myself, I am not solid.

I am like a leaf being blown around in a storm.

I am lost. I have no home base.

When I can break the spell of the panic, the overwhelm, the negative thoughts – I feel wider, softer.  I have freedom to move.

The reward from doing that is that I can hear the birdsong and the wind in the trees.

I am available to experiencing life in the here and now.

How I break it is to pause, to slow down, to remember to come back to myself, my surroundings, my breath, the beauty that is there for me as a solid support – 24 hours a day 7 days a week 52 weeks of every year.

Not as a technique that I have learned and must get right, must do a certain way. If I do that, I am going against the unique way my body knows and desires to be.

If I do that, then the trying hard sets in, the sense of failure, I don’t get it, can’t do it.

The words come in and beat me up.

I must pause and find some sense of solidity that is outside me.

I simply pause and wait for the right way for me that is coming from my own unique bodily knowing of how to be in this world.

Finally – I can trust me.

I can break the spell like that and then the magic of the birdsong will appear for me, and I can breathe out.

Because I can trust me and my body knowing of what it needs,

I can trust you and your body knowing.

I know you will find your own unique way that is just right for you.

Thank you Kevin.

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Unsatisfied Can Feel so Heard!

A situation happened recently that felt so uncomfortable that I couldn’t leave it alone. I just had to address it and so I did. It was a very familiar event—having dinner with somebody or a group of people and walking away feeling so unsatisfied, hating every moment of it.

In fact, I realized I could kvetch for days and I would still remain unsatisfied. This time, I did something quite different. I paused and found a safe place to ask my body what was so unsatisfying here? And when I could pause like that, I could feel my body appreciating the question and it felt very present in a different way than the usual chatter of thinking about something I don’t like, and why!

This is what came, being with that kind of ‘background feeling’ at a dinner gathering where I came away feeling so very unsatisfied wondering why, again! What came was a real surprise and left me feeling in a very different place!

Join me here and see what comes for you in this kind of situation where you’re feeling either uncomfortable or more—unsatisfied.

Actually, they might feel slightly different. Feeling unsatisfied often points to the possibility of what it would feel like to feel fully satisfied. Feeling uncomfortable seems more like doing something, like making a list about what to do about it, but not necessarily point to something that could change the body experience, more like a quick fix to get rid of that feeling.

In this recording, I discover something very different as a possibility I never dreamed of.

Enjoy! Kevin

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