Finding a Safe Structure to Experience Life Fully Inside Me as Me!

Kevin begins by asking us to “find ourselves once again together.”  It is a most luxurious invitation to take the time to explore who I am separate from all the normal static that is part of my life.  To be with Me,  I make room for the life in “what wants to be heard” and to help this part become aware of itself.  This part is always functioning within me, however, it needs my consciousness to become aware of its own existence.  I take all the  time I need to find and spend time with Me as Me.

Diana Scalera

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Deep Hunger and Wholebody Focusing

 

How is a sense of deep hunger helped by Wholebody Focusing ? A few years ago, I was experiencing chronic anxiety due to a stressful situation at work. My body was deeply affected. My blood pressure, heart rate, and diabetes markers were all higher than usual. I relied on my focusing practice to help me. In a Wholebody focusing session, a wordless felt sense of anxiety transformed into a sensation of me experiencing my birth. As I exited the birth canal, I felt free from the stress that I had been experiencing. A new understanding emerged about how my body experienced anxiety.

My History with Hunger

I was my mother’s second child. Her first pregnancy with my older brother was traumatic, and she came close to dying. A few months before my brother was born, my mother’s friend, Mrs. C, a parishioner at our Catholic church, was pregnant with twins. C-Sections were out of favor during more than half of the twentieth century because the medical outcomes were unacceptable due to inadequate surgical procedures and lack of antibiotics.

As a result, there was a heightened possibility that a crisis might happen in the delivery room. The mother or the fetus might be in danger of dying. Because the Catholic Church saw the mother and fetus as two human entities, Catholic hospitals had a policy that prioritized saving the fetus’s life in circumstances in which the doctors could save either the mother or fetus. Mrs.C died in childbirth along with one of her twins. The other twin, a baby girl, was born with severe cerebral palsy. She could not walk, talk, or feed herself.

My mother, having witnessed how this policy impacted her friend’s life and family, felt great anxiety about her fate. Then she also had her crisis in the delivery room. My brother was a large baby in the breech position. The doctor told my mother that she might not survive the birth. Fortunately, both survived; however, my mother was deeply traumatized by the experience. My brother also suffered from this experience. His trauma showed up as severe learning disabilities and emotional difficulties.

Three years later, my mother became pregnant with me. She decided to lose weight during her pregnancy so that the birth would be less complicated. Throughout her pregnancy, the danger she experienced with her first birth and the memory of her friend’s death caused her great anxiety. As a result, my mother starved herself and me during her pregnancy as a strategy to circumvent a possibly fatal outcome.

At the end of a full-term pregnancy, I was born weighing only five pounds. It took me four years to achieve an average weight Moreover, I have had a lifelong struggle with anxiety and panic disorder.

Wholebody Focusing and Anxiety

I always had a felt sense that the level of anxiety I experienced was not all mine– that it was stronger than my constitution created on its own. From this early morning WBF session, I became aware that her anxiety bathed me in my mother’s high cortisol levels for nine months. I carried my mother’s experience of body tension in my body along with my tendency to be anxious. Since that session, my level of chronic anxiety has dramatically subsided. My anxiety connection with my mother had ended. My fear is at a much lower level.

Now, I can be with whatever anxiety emerges in grounded presence. Being grounded gives my body space to carry itself forward in its own way and at its own pace. Under these circumstances, the anxiety sometimes transforms into something else. Before, my stress level was often too overwhelming to be with it in grounded presence. Wholebody focusing helped me experience the release of my mother’s panic from my body and allowed me to understand how it had impacted her and me.

A new awareness about my birth experience happened years later when I attended a week-long workshop at a Catholic retreat center. I often felt hungry because the portions and total amount of food served were inadequate. This experience triggered a bodily sense of hunger, agitation, and anger.

The Intelligence of our Bodies

It wasn’t until early morning on the last day of the conference, during a focusing session, that I sensed what was triggering me. This session started with a felt sense of guilt for my surliness toward the staff in response to the lack of food. An image came to me of working as a young girl in the convent, stirring a pot of soup. I was feeling hunger in the pit of my stomach. I did chores after school in the convent. None of the Sisters ever offered a snack. Finally, one day, I was so hungry that I found the courage to ask for a snack. The sister told me she was not allowed to give students a snack.

It occurred to me in that focusing session that my anger at the staff was due to hunger, a deep historical hunger linked to Catholicism. First, my mother starved us when I was in the womb because of her fear for her life while giving birth in a Catholic hospital. Then there was a longing for food while I worked for almost a year in the convent. Then, 50 years later, I returned to a Catholic environment for the first time in many decades and experienced hunger again. This experience allowed me to be with this deep hunger hidden in my body.

Social conditions, pre-birth experiences, laws or rules that influence medical or educational practices, and other people’s personal decisions can cause trauma. Yet, unfortunately, we sometimes live our whole lives never learning these stories.

Freeing Ourselves from “Not Knowing”

Wholebody focusing gives practitioners a path to be with those hidden parts. One gives their body permission to be with what is there and to move in any way it needs. One’s awareness of something outside yourself and neutrality toward what comes are the only requirements. Often, internal or external movements emerge, and they carry forward without words or images.

The practitioner stays with the movement until a shift happens. In the process, a felt sense, a phrase, or a picture might emerge that gives more information. Other times an agitated movement, for example, might shift to a comforting one without any additional information. When I experienced my birth, I observed the felt sense of my rapid heartbeat during a panic attack. Suddenly, I felt myself moving through the birth canal. I remember what it felt like on my arms and the release of anxiety when I exited the birth canal.

Wholebody focusing trains the practitioner to rely on body wisdom for its information. Body wisdom does not need the right word or image to carry forward. Deeply hidden truths may not have words. Their foundation may not be related to your particular life story. Those places where the unknown parts live also have the ability, with our attention, to tap into the abundant benevolent energy that surrounds us as a support to carry forward our healing. Whenever we rely on only words and images from our narratives, There is a possibility that we may miss the vast resources and stories the universe offers to help our recovery. Wholebody focusing gives us this kind of range of opportunity.

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Something in Me Hurts!

In the first 12 intunements, Kevin helps us strengthen our sense of Me Here.  Something in Me Hurts is the beginning of a new phase of this this work–a phase that guides us to being with the parts of ourselves that need our attention and love.  This new group of intunements helps us hold both Me Here and something else. The first intunement of this group works with a painful part.

Something in Me Hurts!  is an intunement that supports us when we need loving kindness for a part of us that has pain or is suffering.  Kevin walks us through, in real time, what happens to him when he awakes to a painful shoulder.  He connects to himself and to the part that hurts which allows both to become more aware of themselves and each other. Through this process something new emerges.

Feel what happens when you share this experience with Kevin.

Something in Me Hurts! Intunement

For more intunements please visit Find your Favorite Intunements 
Or visit Kevin Speaks  for more of Kevin's work.

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A Life Changing Walk

I also feel that it was not actually a mistake to take a life changing walk along the Mountain Lake Road. It was meant to happen. Someone from heaven knew my adventurous mind, and wanted to give me a life long gift.

I had a life changing walk during the fall 2021, at a time when I felt a strong fear of making mistakes. On Saturday, 18th of September, I made two huge mistakes, which surprisingly changed my relationship with making mistakes.

From Friday to Sunday, I was in a silent and writing retreat at a lovely old village school in the middle of Finnish countryside, or wilderness, you may say. When arriving on Friday, I was allowed to choose a room from three options. Two of them were on a shadow side and I could feel how my body shrank when checking if one of them was right for me. Third one was on a bright side, and the view out the window was uplifting. Light was calling me in. I made it my home.

On Saturday morning, for a writing assignment we went outside to find something in nature that spoke to us. A plant, a stone, a tree, whatever. I had heard that if I took the road to the left, on the highest point of the road there would be a beautiful, open field on both sides of the road. I went there and had a meaningful discussion with a flower on the side of the road.

When turning back, I decided to still walk a little in the other direction, instead of going back to the retreat site. I saw a crossroads and a sign of Mountain Lake Road. The name of the road was fascinating. There was a barrier at the beginning of the road. The forest on both sides of the road looked dark and menacing. I could sense a threat in my body. However, I decided to get around the barrier. I wanted to see the mountain lake.

A Life Changing Walk

While walking down the road, I still wondered if it made sense to move on towards something that felt menacing. When I saw a gorgeous carpet of moss under tall, dark spruce trees, I thought you can find something beautiful out of something threatening. I took some pictures, and continued walking. When I then checked from Google Maps how far the lake was, I realised it was too far, and I would miss the prayer time if I went there and back.

Suddenly I heard a voice. “Tumps”. A moose, I thought. I peeked to see if I could see it. I didn’t. I took my notebook and wrote down a thought that popped into my mind about the flower I saw before. “Tumps” again. I wondered how big the moose might be. I felt fascinated to see it and considered stepping out to the forest and walking to see it from the place where I thought the voice came from. It felt too challenging, so I decided to walk back up the road.

Then I saw it, or her, I feel, on the left side of the road. She had a round, brown back and butt, and a coat of fur that looked so thick, soft, and slightly lumpy. Only two meters from me, having her back to me there was a bear rumbling something. She turned her head to look at me.

I Survived

I started running as fast as I could and hoped that she would not run after me and catch me as prey. One of the first thoughts I had was that I need to take a picture, otherwise nobody would believe me. I did not do it. Then I remembered that if you encounter a bear, you should be as immobile as dead (later I read that one should peacefully walk back, not turn ones back on it and in no case run.) No way, I ran!

She didn’t come after me.

I Survived!

At night, it was hard for me to fall asleep. The thought that was constantly going around my mind was: What if I never recover from this encounter?

What if this fear stays in my body forever?
I tried to read, I tried to write, I tried to listen to music. After trying all this and still feeling exhausted, I said to myself: “Okay, I will go into my body to see how all of this feels in my body.

With the felt sense in my torso area I found out that yeah, fear of making mistakes, this time I didn’t have it. I made two major mistakes: 1) I didn’t stop and turn back when feeling the threat in my body, and 2) after seeing the bear I did exactly the opposite of what you should do in this situation. So the truth was that I made two major mistakes. And I survived! For an odd reason I could sense a huge release in my body. And fell asleep.

A Life Changing Walk Was Not a Mistake

The following day, when eating lunch, I suddenly heard the music (there was always peaceful background music during eating times) calling me to dance and move. I let my body move the way it wanted. My head started to turn over my shoulder to look back, turning my upper body, as well.

I did it again
for both sides
and I realized I was the bear
in her own space watching a passer-by
not getting nervous, as I sometimes do
“Aah, a human,”
and continued eating.

The first lessons from her were:
Take the space that belongs to you.
Don’t push yourself back to the darkness when you are called to come into light.

Appreciate your body wisdom much more than you currently do.

This embodied bear has continued to talk to me by encouraging me to find clear boundaries and keep them, and to concentrate on my own task, not letting others disturb me. I can feel her strength in me, and am really grateful for her coming into my life, not necessarily wanting to meet her or any of her classmates again.

I also feel that it was not actually a mistake to take that road. It was meant to happen. Someone from heaven knew my adventurous mind, and wanted to give me a life long gift.

Artwork by Maria Hakasalo

The “Me Here” Series of Training Conversations

Trainer logo2mergeIn August of 2018, Addie van der Kooy, Kevin McEvenue and I met to discuss what is new in Wholebody Focusing.  Addie and Kevin collaborated on FOCUSING WITH THE WHOLE BODY: A CD-integrated Focusing Learning Program that was published in October 2006.  We wanted to bring together the two people responsible for this extraordinary learning program and to look toward the future of Wholebody Focusing.

That day we filmed until what needed to be said was complete.  The result was the six videos listed below.  The first four are already on the blog.  You may have seen them already.  The last two complete the series and set the stage for what comes next.

My experience as the producer/editor of these videos is that new ground is broken in these intimate dialogues and they may need several views to fully take in what is being shared.  This blog is proud to have the opportunity to make these conversations possible and to be the mechanism to share them with those who would benefit.

These six videos are each part of a flow of exploration so you may want play them in the order they are listed. Once you become familiar with them, you may want to pick and choose which one suits you most on any given day.

Please comment and share how these conversations have impacted you.  This is an exciting way to keep WBF as a vibrant life experience.

The Inner Core Muscle of “Me Here” This Interview discusses training someone to find grounded presence.

The Inner Core Muscle of “Holding Both”   This interview discusses training someone to “hold both with equal positive regard.”

Let Your Experience Be This interview discusses how to be with whatever comes even if it is not what you expected.

Me Here and My Thoughts This interview discusses how to be with racing thoughts that may or may not be true or helpful.

What Is Needed to Start the WBF Process?

Why is establishing an inner structure so important to learning Wholebody Focusing?

 

The End Note: Why Talk About Muscles?

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Habitare Secum

It was like a revelation and a healing bath of presence, warmth, compassion, gentle interest in the connection with the focusers. And an answer to my question of Habitare Secum began to get contours.

Many years ago I met a wise elderly woman. In her youth, she told me, she learned from a Jesuit priest that the most import thing in life is to be at home with oneself. There you will find that you never are lonely. The expression in Latin is “Habitare Secum”. It resonated deeply with me! It seized me! How can I be home with myself?

After the woman and I separated, I named my psychotherapy practice to Habitare Secum. What could be a better name? But still, the longing and the question was there.

Then in summer 2012, I got to know Focusing and Whole Body Focusing for the first time. It was like a revelation and a healing bath of presence, warmth, compassion, gentle interest in the connection with the focusers. And an answer to my question of Habitare Secum began to get contours.

And on that road I’m walking ….

With great affection to you all focusers!

Ulla-Stina

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Haiku, Reiki and WBF

I have been writing Haiku about the energetic patterns of my days. I write them fast with very little editing to capture the moment and post them to Twitter.

I love the format of Haiku and have always used it to describe my urban experiences even though it is traditionally known as a form of poetry honoring nature. Since I love urban life so much, I include the urban built environment as part of “nature.” It is a product of humanity, therefore, for me, a part of nature. Almost everything we touch in cities is part of nature in some way. My very large apartment complex, for example, is constructed from bricks made from the clay residue of the glacier that became the Hudson River. I take great comfort in this as someone might living in a log cabin.

Continue reading “Haiku, Reiki and WBF”

To Feel Good about Myself is Desirable

It is very warm this morning.  I have the overhead fan on to keep me cool.  As I hear Kevin suggest that I connect to something outside myself I notice the sensation of the cool air on my skin.  And then Kevin suggests that the sensation of something outside myself can be how my skin feels.  He asks me to wait for something to come and I realize that my feet are already moving and my arms are wrapped around each other. My body is here with me today. Is there any goodness in me today?  I wait for the answer.  My thoracic spine releases the tension it was holding.

Diana Scalera

 

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