Mr. Deer and Me

Mr Deer

I offer a moment-to-moment description of a grounded presence experience that I had with a deer as we both walked through the woods. This example highlights an important Wholebody Focusing practice–holding a “we” space for partners.  It also shows how we can have a “we” space with any other sentient being and how both of us are impacted by the relational space they create together.

There he was, Mr. Deer, quietly but unexpectedly just over there. In fact, he was just beyond the clearing of the forest as I began my own walk. I was taking a break from a training that wasn’t going well for me. I wanted to enjoy a walk in the forest to find a grounded sense of myself again.

That is when it happened, that encounter with Mr. Deer. It seemed to startle both of us so unexpectedly. It was a surprise, yes, and startling? Maybe for a split second we both knew that something felt different here and so we seemed to pause and take in the moment with curiosity. It was that pause that seemed to change everything because we both took some space to take in what might be happening that felt so different from what we were used to. What was that? What made us stop and take a moment to become aware of the something that felt new here?

I can’t speak for Mr. Deer. He has his own sense of what was happening in him. For me, as a reflective human creature that I am, I realized I was in a good place. Usually I walk through a forest without really taking much in. But this time I felt differently. I was enjoying this moment of peace and enjoying myself in this wooded environment.

Continue reading “Mr. Deer and Me”

Letting life happen in me…

Can I even risk being seen that deeply, seeing that deeply. The thought of that scares and excites me.

Photo Credit: Gabrielle Clark

Who am I?

I ask and ask many times and I step back, but nothing comes.

I stay and say it is okay.

I drift off and remember something I have read yesterday – ‘we must defend your dwelling place in us to the last’, so I come back. I ask again.

Then I remember a lovely note from a friend – ‘its okay and enjoy life’ he says – This makes me smile. Enjoy life – yes! The smile keeps growing. I think this is enough and I finish.

I come across a poem and I am moved by the line – “Close your eyes and follow your breath to the still place that leads to the invisible path that leads you home.”

I pause again and follow my breath – a feeling is coming in my body. It’s big! It is like a feeling of ecstasy, it is scary and nice and I am allowing it.

I remember the support of the chair.

It feels like I am allowing life to flow in me and it is so beautiful and light and uplifting. I can still feel it now, it is tingling and buzzing with life. “Let life happen to you” says Rilke.

Perhaps I am the vehicle for the life that is longing to live in me. Or am I the life I felt moving in me.

I don’t know.

Who am I beyond the conditioning that has been imposed on me?

Who is the one that looks out from behind my eyes?

Who is the one that looks out from behind your eyes?

Can I even risk being seen that deeply, seeing that deeply. The thought of that scares and excites me.

I hold both, as a hopeful possibility.

 

Note Authors of my inspiration in order: Etty Hillesum, Rainer Maria Rilke and Teresa of Avila

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Heartfelt Loving Beyond Expectation

The first law of spiritual energy: energy follows attention! In other words, wherever I focus my attention, the energy in my body, mind, and spirit follows. It is as simple as that!

The power of heartfelt loving is beyond any expectation we can imagine. It is the essence of the practice of Heartfelt Connection in Wholebody Focusing as we know it.

HeartFelt Loving

I start by inviting a connection between me, a part of me, a part of something outside myself, and especially a sense of you over there as I hold the whole of that in my consciousness. I pause, to just notice what is there, and accept what comes beyond what I might expect.

This feels proactive in some way—like an opportunity to notice that seems to want my attention, and to do so. Often something totally unexpected or even uninvited appears out of the blue! It is an opportunity to turn my attention towards something there with an open heart and wait there. I just notice…that is all…and allow a felt sense to emerge…as though it seems to notice itself and notice me too…with mutual affection.

Beyond Expectation

Something very powerful seems to be present at the same time; something not of my own making. I can feel it there and it feels powerful. If I am able to hold a space for such an experience, something more begins to happen. Something happening that couldn’t happen without this kind of heartfelt participation!

We could call this the first law of spiritual energy: energy follows attention! In other words, wherever I focus my attention, the energy in my body, mind, and spirit follows. It is as simple as that!

In this blog, I offer two concrete examples of situations where Heartfelt Presence is activated; first, my own experience happening now, and next an event that happened 25 years ago to a man who suffered a very debilitating crisis called carpal syndrome. (See a previous blog entitled: When Love Pays Attention to a Deep Wound.) Today I fill in the empty pieces that unfolded over all these many years and updated that event with some very surprising results.

These two ‘happenings’ speak for themselves. What more can I say except to appreciate the power explored in Participatory Spirituality in this series.

 

Raw Desire Awakens to the Power of Choice

You can connect to one’s raw desire which awakens your power to hold space with equal positive regard to the wanting and not wanting to acknowledge the desire.

I can feel it in my body that I want to say something; it is like an energy—the energy of desire wanting to say something. At the same time, I am aware I don’t know the nature of that desire; it feels like a raw energy. That immediately brings an almost equal response of resistance that seems to say, “I can’t” or maybe, “I won’t!”

Power

It also feels like I have been here before, possibly in the Intunement Series describing the steps of Wholebody Focusing. I can hear myself saying “I know this place; I know that step.” Thinking—as I pause—it is about holding both with equal positive regard, all about wanting and not wanting.

But this is a different experience; similar—but not the same. What is familiar is the ability to describe this step as a WholeBody focusing experience. What is different is that I am fully immersed in this activity. A desire standing alone on its own power without specific content. I am also aware of the resistance—the mustn’t!—but without the familiar intensity. I am full of desire and at the same time I don’t know! They seem to come from very different places in me.

Raw Desire Awakens Power

Here I choose to pause and stay with the desire. I make room for whatever comes directly out of that power: desire! I wait for more to come from that core sense of wanting and desiring. Raw desire feels neutral at first, but as my awareness connects with the desire, something more happens between us that is rich and surprising.

They feel almost independent of one another, enough to be able to say “hi!” The whole bodily experience seems to expand the whole of me that actually feels palpable! Yes, there is an engagement happening that is remarkably palpable! A feeling of mutual connection with one another that feels not only mutual, but also fulfilling—with appreciation and respect. It is happening and it is good and we know it.

These are movements of active participation with one another, powerful forces activated by this connection. It is for me to just hold the space!

I invite you to share with me what comes; starting with desire, the resistance and the not-knowing. Notice how more seems to be activated and stimulated by this raw energy as we pause and wait with an attitude of curious wondering!

Other writings by Kevin McEvenue

Carnac Stones, Brittany, France.  Photo Credit: Kevin McEvenue

A Pearl of Wisdom

“Every bad feeling is potential energy toward a more right way of being if you give it space to move toward its rightness…”.

Addie Van Der KooyHave you ever wondered how something as precious as a pearl is created? It starts with something gritty, like a grain of sand or a parasite, entering the soft, sensitive tissues of the oyster. To deal with the discomfort of this ‘irritant’, the oyster generates a natural substance (aragonite) which it normally uses to produce and maintain its hard and shiny shell. It is this substance that the oyster then coats over the irritant to protect itself from the discomfort. And thus a pearl is formed…

To me there is such a profound analogy here. Sometimes life can get a bit gritty and I may get “triggered” by an “irritant”, i.e. someone or a situation that is getting under my sensitive skin. What I hear the oyster is saying here to me, is that instead of reacting adversely to the irritation and upset that it has triggered inside me, I can bring my own “aragonite” into the equation – an embodied sense of the ground and aliveness of “Me Here”, which then can be felt beside or around the inner disturbance.

Of course, every analogy breaks down somewhere and the oyster analogy cracks its shell here: unlike the oyster coating over the irritant with its aragonite, so it doesn’t have to feel the gritty discomfort anymore, there is no smoothing over of what has been triggered in me, as that wouldn’t be Focusing. Instead, I can let both the physically felt sense of “all that about being triggered” and the embodied sense of ‘Me Here’ be there “with equal positive regard” and kindly and curiously listen to what wants to happen.

That may initially feel strange and somewhat counter intuitive, but it does make inner space for the energy of the triggered turbulence to move forward towards “its rightness”, as Gendlin would describe it in his well-known quote: “Every bad feeling is potential energy toward a more right way of being if you give it space to move toward its rightness…”.

And as it moves forward, I often feel the energy pent up in the inner disturbance begin to unwind, release and re-align with the aliveness of “Being Here” in this moment. I feel more alive and present, more Here and Now. And in this alchemical way, Presence deepens and grows in me. What was stirred up in me by the grit of Life, has now been transformed into a pearl of Presence.

It feels freeing to realise that each time I am “triggered”, there is an opportunity here to let the pearl of the Presence that I am grow stronger. Life is becoming a win-win experience!

From this perspective, every gritty moment in my life is grist to the mill for everdeepening Presence. Those people or situations, those “irritants” that trigger me, do not need to be my enemies or antagonists; instead, I can allow them to be my teachers of Presence!

Addie Van Der Kooy, 30th August 2025

Active Meditation with the Breathing Self as “Me Here!”

Today’s intunement helps us connect to another way of finding grounded presence through using our attention to our breath.  Kevin guides us to being with this simple practice used for ages in so many healing modalities in a way that the experience of grounding itself becomes self-aware.

What is the quality of your breath?  What comes for you as you are holding space for your breath?  How does that help you be with what is there for you today?

Start your day with this short exploration and see what comes.

Diana Scalera

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Holding Our Strengths and “Little Monsters” with Equal Regard

Diana and Ellen discuss how both spirituality and focusing live in their bodies and how they support their struggles with the “Little Monsters” with a sense of befriending what’s there by holding both with equal regard.

.
Illustration of a Neanderthal Woman:  John Sibbick (with permission from the artist)

Ellen Korman Mains came up with “Holding Our Strengths and “Little Monsters”  as she reflected on her week. It included how she’d been relating with a disturbing part of herself. Diana Scalera and Ellen talked about being with difficult experiences of ourselves. We focused on how we were   helped by our spiritual and focusing practices.

Holding our Strengths

Diana Scalera went to Catholic school until the 8th grade. She   gave up on Catholicism and religion in general. Her experiences were  mosty  demeaning retoric,  punishments. Not until she began focusing did she find a onnection to  spirit. In one of her first sessions with Kevin McEvenue, a Neanderthal woman became present in her body. She was there to support Diana in a situation in which she felt weak and powerless. She experienced the strength in these bones and how the Neanderthal woman was offering them  to guide her and make her strong. From then on, From that point on, Diana let go of a traditional idea of spirituality and became open to her innate connection to helpful spirits. Neanderthals

Ellen Korman Mains grew up in a hom with Holocaust survivors where ties to previous generations seemed cut entirely. At 19, she met a Tibetan Buddhist teacher who emphasized trusting direct experience over dogma or wishful thinking, and this began her spiritual journey.

Holding our “Little Monsters…”

Twenty years later, illness and energy work broadened her sense of connection to the invisible world and to the “larger system” that Gene Gendlin refers. Later, traveling to Poland to embrace her family’s past led to extraordinary openings described in her book Buried Rivers: A Spiritual Journey into the Holocaust, as ancestors began showing up to support her. Since 2011, Focusing and meditation have been important venues for trusting her direction and spiritual connection and helping others trust theirs.

How does WBF Help?

In the video below, Diana and Ellen discuss how spirituality and Focusing live in their bodies. Through the years, spiritual experiences show up to support their struggles with the “Little Monsters” by offering their strength and a sense of a sense of being  befriended to   hold both the “monsters” and our strength equally.

Thank you to John Sibbick for allowing us to use his wonderful drawing of a Neanderthal woman. https://www.amusingplanet.com/2016/05/the-altamura-man.html

Finding our way

To leave or read a comment, click here and go past the end of the post.

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Coming Home to Me Again

Kevin shares a deep—and I want to say ‘unfolding’—insight into something unusual that his long-time focusing partner said to him, and how this statement opened up to him over a period of sitting-with-it. He’d fallen into the details, the talking-about. He’d lost the being-with.

Here’s what his partner said: Kevin, I need you to come back to me.

Over time, Kevin realized: This isn’t about my partner! And he explores, in his here-right-now-way, what was revealed to him. Yes, you guessed it: it’s about coming home to me again.

And then, he gently invites us to contemplate these words too—these words that, he tells us: have their own life, their own physical presence in me.

Continue reading “Coming Home to Me Again”