Tag: #transformation

A Young Girl’s Sexual Grace

A Wholebody session with a male partner started by discussing sex in general and then the differences between how boys and girls had different experiences. What emerged was a sense of Female Grace in the sexual awaking of young girls.

A Young  Girl’s Sexual Grace?

A WholeBody session created the phrase Sex and Female Grace during a discussion with a male focusing partner of sex in general and the differences between how children may  have different initial experiences of sexual sensations based on their sex. What emerged was a sense of Sex  and Female Grace. We focused on the early recognition of sexual feelings. For people, especially for those of us born in the 1940s and 1950s and earlier, we experienced our early sexual sensations differently.  After listening to my partner’s experience, I came to understand girls’ sexual awakenings were ignored in comparison to what boys experienced.  The phrase that came to me was Sexual Grace because no one worried that girls would masturbate and did nothing to prevent it. Boys often suffered from a form of monitoring.

How Can Sexual Grace help You?

While girls at that time were frequently underserved, we often didn’t have a chance to play sports or ride bicycles for fear we would injure ourselves and inadvertently lose our virginity.  Boys were usually provided with many more opportunities to be active, but they were also under scrutiny by family and Church to prevent them from “self-abuse.” No one ever mentioned masturbating to me or my female classmates.  As part of the Wholebody session, the words Female Grace emerged to separate the differences.  While girls tended to be ignored compared to boys, neither family nor Church seemed to be concerned about preventing girls from having experiences of sexual sensations.  It was the opposite for boys.

When attention interferes with natual experimentation?

My Wholeboby partner described how his Irish Catholic family and his Church were very strict about preventing boys from masturbating. They tried to make sure their boys did not masturbate.  This control was often very suble and communicated via a non-specific verbal code.  My partner shared the impact of this prohibition on himself and other boys.  They would continue to masturbate but go to confession every morning to ask forgiveness for their sin before taking communion. This information wasn’t the first time I heard this story. My experience was that  I never experienced any guilt of fear from the Church or my family.  Instead the lack of attention allowed me to feel  sexual sensations with pleasure. This was my  Female Grace.

My husband, also raised as an Irish Catholic, was taught to remember that he shouldn’t take Holy Communion unless he asked God’s forgiveness for “self-abuse.”  This phrase was whispered to him by one of his Churche’s priests.  My Husband also had difficulty meeting this high level of ignoring his body’s natural, pleasant feelings. He participated in the ritual: masturbate at night, go to 6:00 am confession with the sleepiest priest, and take communion at early Mass each day before school. The Catholic Church and families were highly engaged in this endeavor. The boys, however,  were highly involved in finding an acceptable compromise between the power of the Church and the power of their biological sensations.

How diferent times in our lives are seen as Graceful or dangerous?

In those years, girls didn’t exist the way boys did. Holding space for this disparity brought something new.  Instead of my normal anger at what I missed out on, Wholebody helped me see this lack of attention was a sense of Female Grace. No one was paying attention to how girls reacted to the natural feelings that emerged from our bodies until we were older. We had the opportunity to have this personal experience without all the condemnation. However, the prohibition would become to stay away from boys for fear of out-of-wedlock pregnancy. This prohibition came full force as we entered our teen years. We did, however, have this period in which we were free to invent our reality in regard to the sexual sensations and stimulation.

Children start to feel sexual bodily stimulation from the age of three. Many learn independently to find the pleasure areas through exploring their bodies. Families and religious entities in the mid-1900s were adamant about how boys  responded to these natural sensations our bodies create. Adult attention started earlier in boys’ lives than girls.  For boys, it started early in their lives and was about the prohibition of masturbation. For girls, it started after a girl started to menstruate and boys began to be attracted to girls in their teenage years. While Boys must not masturbate,  Girls had a different set of rules that made them responsible for their “virginity.” These practices had a life-long impact on our relationship to our sexual selves. 

First Memories

My first memories of sexual sensations started with television. I was in early grammar school.  One night, I was lying on the floor, watching TV with my family. A Peter Sellers movie, A Shot in the Dark,  was on TV, and the storyline was that the Sellers’ character happened upon a nudist colony.  Most of the bodies in the scene were covered by bushes and trees.  However, the concept that one would want to be naked in front of other people was  exciting to me.  As I watched the movie, I felt a familar stimulation in my pelvis. Then, I found that if I pressed my pelvis into the floor, the stimulation became stronger.  I was lucky that the rest of the family also was intently  watching the TV.  

In our home, there was a severe prohibition to expose part of one’s  body to another family member, so the thought that people might want to be naked in front of others was highly stimulating. That experience led to masturbating most nights before I fell asleep using the idea of wanting to be nude. I This was a private experience that connected me to my body though Female Grace.  I sometimses feared that these sensations might not be what “good girls” do, but, like my male counterparts, the sensations were too pleasurable to stop. Also, no one ever told me to confess this practice.  Raw Desire Awakens to It’s Own Power

The Impact of Church and Family

Neither Church nor family imagined that young girls experienced these feelings.  It wasn’t until I entered high school that my mother gave me a book written by the Catholic Church about the dangers of sexual feelings.  She spiced up her attempts to dissuade me from considering any interaction with boys.  One of my favorites was to tell me that “kissing a boy was like kissing a wall”. Girls don’t experience any sensations from kissing.” I felt sorry for my mother and father if they believed that. National Center on Sexual behavior of Youth

Many years later, I started to watch Italian films and heard one of the characters say those exact words in Italian.  It was a cultural practice to keep young girls away from boys.  I wasn’t particularly attracted to boys nor they to me until I was a sophomore in high school.A popular boy started to pay attention to me.  It was the first time that I experienced that kind of attention.  He invited me to be his date for the school play.  My parents were not particularly happy about that.

My father told me I couldn’t date boys until I was eighteen years old.  We argued, and I won. I went to the school to play with this new friend.  We sat down in the auditorium and waited for the play to start. The young man reached for my hand and held it.  That immediately instigated a recognizable sensation in my pelvis.  It was the first time another person sexually stimulated me.  I couldn’t believe that having someone’s hand in mine could produce that sensation.  I was delighted that it was so easy!

The lack of Abortion Rights is the Loss of Female Sexual Grace

When New York State legalized abortions 1970, I remember sitting in the bleachers in the school’s gymnasium with other girls, talking about how that law changed our lives. Up until then, I was so terrified of any sexual contact. The life-changing possibility of pregnancy terrified me.  Now, there was a safety net.  It was a momentous change.  I had agency and was no longer ruled by the fear of an unwanted pregnancy.  I had already seen the impact of an unwanted pregnancy on a classmate. While I wouldn’t have unprotected sex, I felt like the threat of a pregnancy was gone.  

The removal of abortion rights in the USA is a profound loss for women and girls. It changes their relationship to their sexuality and right to control their bodies.  There is no justification of this loss other than  the STATE’s need to  control female bodies.

 

 

Recovery Self-Awareness

Each time I treated my suffering part as an entity unto itself, I had room to manage my medical experience better because I wasn’t occupied by worry and fear. 

Part II Recovery

Self-Awareness comes in different ways.  As a young woman, I knew I wanted to work in  education.  I also had a great desire to become a filmmaker. Inspired by my work with students in my school’s TV studio, I realized that I needed more training.  I began studying Method acting with a teacher trained by the “father of Method Acting”, Lee Strasberg.  This is one of the benefits of living in NYC. The basis of Method acting teaches the practioner to develop a very deep level of self-awareness.   We were taught to use our imagination to invoke the emotional state of the characterwe would become. For example, one connects to  a particular emotional state in one’s life that resembles the character’s emotional state and uses it to become the character. It is a different and potent pathway to the felt sense.

Self-Awareness

Method Acting  helped me  learn how to  access emotions, and their physical manifestations (change in heart rate, sweating, etc) and. For a focuser one can access the emotional state of a part of the body. The Method practice can  help a focuser to become aware of one’s capacity to connect to any part of one’s body that needs your attention. When I began studying Focusing, these method skills were very valuable.  Only this time I was connecting to my body parts’ experienceto learn more about them instead of using them to become somone else.

Recovery Self-Awareness

Kevin and I continued to work together helping me to hold space for the suffering of the parts of my body that would need to be removed.  As we continued our investigation into my body’s experience of itself I learned to be more compassionate of the effected parts of my body and less anxious about “future scenarios” that had been occupying my thoughts since the decision to go forward with the surgery to remove the right salivary gland.   

Time  to create a plan of action to get me through this experience began to take form.  Living in NYC gives you access to high quality medical care but, it makes getting family and friends together to coordinate care needs from their vastly differing locations.  I created a system on my cell phone that would support everyone wanting information about the progress of the surgery and the  recovery.  I taught a friend who would be at the hospital with me to be in charge of the cell phone. It was a simple system to able to communicate with me and family and friends on the day of the surgery and notify various groups who wanted to be part of my support community support.  

Missing Parts Self-Awareness

When I returned home, had nerve damage that limited the functioning of my mouth, I was in the state of shock. I had very little control food in my mouth and I kept biting my numb lip. There also was massive swelling.  It felt like I had been beaten up..  My first salivary gland extraction had none of the symptoms.  Rage was my main emotion.  I wondered if I had had an incompetent surgeon. With the help of Chinese herbs, Acupuncture and homeopathis remedies for pain and nerve damage, the new changes in my body started to more closely function in ways that helped me function.  

Making space for the missing parts helped me to have room to remember that I am not alone and that I have access to an a vast network of alternative options to help my recover. I began to take advantage of those resources. This put the control of my outcomes back in my hands

Recovery

Each time I treated my suffering part as an entity unto itself, I created room to manage my medical experience. It helped reduce my worry and fear.  Recovery Self-Awareness helped me remember that even I had no viable alternative to the surgery. I did have the resources to manage the effects of the surgery.  In addition, I had to wait more than three weeks to get the final “no cancer” results.  The lesion I had was rare, which made the process longer than usual. I asked the affected area if there was any cancer.  It told me, “No!” It helped me let go of the importance of the biopsy report. I eventually received the report ‘no further treatment was needed.’  It was essential to get the medical results, but my connection with the surgical site helped me to get through the waiting.

WFB allows us to short circut the negative throughts that can overwhelm us as we go through necessary medical procedures.  We can fill that space with a connection to the part of us that needs treatment, will be removed, or will take curative medications that can have strong side effects.  By becoming aware of its suffering, acknowledge the ill part’s  existance, show it compassion and kindness, we can have a direct experience of healing.

Method Acting

Loving Kindness Changes the World

 

Disclaimer:  This article is a guide to using Wholebody Focusing as a guide to emotional, and spiritual support when one is experiencing a medical condition.  It does not claim to have curative powers.

WBF for Body Self-Awareness

This post is Part I of a journey of self-awaress using Wholebody Focusing to suport oneself through a medical challenge. This experience helped the writer to approach the illness in a new way that included an awareness of the illness itslef.

Part I

Self-Awareness was lacking one morning when I woke up  in February noticing that the area under my right ear felt different.  As sleep slipped away, I put my hand over the area and I seemed to find a lump. I immediately moved my hand away thinking it was part of a dream. I didn’t touch that area again until later in the day and found, in fact, there was a lump there that wasn’t there the night before. Something had grown in this area over night. Once again, I decided to leave it alone. Seven years ago I had stage three Salivary Gland Cancer on the left side. I wasn’t able to process something like this happening to me again.

Avoidance Self-Awareness

I had had many MRIs in this area as part of the follow-up to successful cancer treatmenton the left side. The MRIs would show that I had a something on the right side that was of no significance. Now it decided to grow into a noticeable size for no particular reason. I decided to wait to see if it would reduce in size for no particular reason.   

After six weeks, I called my surgeon and scheduled a MRI. This time, the MRI indicated this growth was a lesion attached to my right salivary gland. Now it seemed  to be a possible repeat that could be cancer. Biopsies were done that showed no cancer. These biopsies, however, were such that they showed that the small area of the samples taken did not have cancer, not that I was certifiably cancer free. I waited another three months. The Doctor said the only way to ensure the lesion was not cancer would be to remove it and I agreed.

Denial Self-Awareness

I realized that I responded  to this very scary situation with avoidance. For example, I assumed that it was not cancer and didn’t tell anyone about the lump. That gave me the ability to deny its existence. The second MRI showed a small amount of growth and I could no longer deny its existence.

Magical Thinking Self-Awareness

Finally, I tried Magical Thinking. My closest friends and I tried Reiki to make the lesion go away but this lesion was not having it. When I asked the lesion if Reiki could help, I learned it couldn’t. In my Reiki group of practicioners, we had had some possitive healing experiences.  At this point I was hoping to help myself make space for this new event and open pathways to draw to me the resources I would need.  Realizing that I wasn’t addressing the situation emotionally or spiritually, I asked Kevin McEvenue, my WBF mentor, to help me connect to this lesion. 

In our first session, what came to me in grounded presence was a need to fully acknowledge that lesion existed separate and apart from me. Ithad its own story. I allowed automatic movements to guide my interaction with the lesion. As my hands and arms moved in their own way, I learned that lesion did not want to be touched.  However, the lesion did want to be fully acknowledged and left alone.  As my body moved, I held space for the lesion just the way it was, without judgement of its purpose, or the direction to not touch it.  

Awareness of the Lump as it’s own Entity

After that session, I lost my fear of telling people I had this problem and the implications of the situation i.e a possibility of a recurrence of cancer, surgery, including the increased loss of functionality of my mouth. 

The gift, after this session was that my friends and family let me know they would be with me though this experience and would provide whatever help I needed. They helped me face this new reality. I had the help I needed without rejection or shame. When I stopped lying to my body about the significance of my lesion, the help I needed showed up without asking.  

Appreciation Awareness

In a second session with Kevin, what came to me was appreciation. When I was holding grounded presence, I began to understand how difficult this salivary gland’s experience was since the demise of the left salivary gland.  Part of the MRI report said the gland had begun to undergo atrophy. This salivary gland was working double time to provide my mouth with the saliva it needed. I felt appreciation for its valor to take on this task. It also made me aware of its inability to continue this task. I held space for the seven years it had played this role and how that helped me recover from my previous surgery.  It also occurred to me that this gland needed compassion for its struggle, something that felt quite natural to the healing process. This session helped me connect to these parts of my body in a way I have never felt before. Rather than being frighten by the coming events, I began to hold space for all the unknown changes that were coming our way.  

Ponte Madonna della Stella, Gravina, Puglia, Italy

Continue reading “WBF for Body Self-Awareness”

We AreBeing Ourselves

Bruna Blandino and Rosa Catoio Are Being Themselves. These  Italian Wholebody focusers, met to discuss how Wholebody focusing and Heartfelt Conversation has changed their lives.  Rather than being who society and their families want them to be, Wholebody Focusing and Heartfelt Conversation has given them a mechanism to live more fully in their own truth.  Watch their video to hear how this has come about.

If you are having difficulty seeing this video in full screen, please click on the You Tube link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKpB86qG-PI

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

The Pine and I

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Photo Credit: Ana Simeon

Maybe it has happened to you, too, that small secret moment of intimacy with a non-human creature. It’s a powerful experience yet easily dismissed by the mind. The one I want to tell you about happened on a trail in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in northern California. It is a rocky, spare place, steep and windswept and intensely alive. High on a ridge above a mountain lake, the trail weaves among pines and Douglas Fir growing singly or in small groups, huddled around granite boulders. On a hot late September afternoon, their combined scent rose like incense; the air was charged with it. I walked briskly, enjoying the vigorous motion and the give of the trail surface, changing from rock to needles to bare earth to patches of coarse grasses. I became keenly aware of an added dimension, the arrangement of bodies in the middle distance, so often lost in our habitual focus on panoramic views. I mean by that the sense of my body mass relative to trees and boulders, the way trees stood in twos or threes or alone; a pine and boulder together; or the way the boughs formed a screen so that only slivers of blue were visible, and then suddenly parted to allow a full view of distant peaks. My steps slowed to a walk as I absorbed this new pleasure. My hand reached to touch the furry patch of lichen on a granite boulder, the deep furrow of Douglas Fir bark. I put my arms around a Jeffrey Pine, maybe my age in pine years, glowing deep red in the late afternoon light. I laid my cheek against the bark and was enveloped in a light, sweet aroma, like vanilla, very different from the more pungent “conifer” fragrance that rose from the forest as a whole. (I read later that pines, and especially Jeffrey Pines, are unique among North American conifers in distilling this vanilla-like scent.) There we stood for a long while, the pine and I, in a timeless embrace of arms and branches, skin and bark, one breath.

In her book, “The Legacy of Luna”, activist Julia Butterfly Hill describes her relationship with the giant redwood in whose canopy she lived for more than two years in order to save it from being logged. Hill is positive that Luna knew Hill was there to save it, and gave her support in its tree-ish way. Similarly, with my arms around the pine, I felt very strongly, from the tree, a wave of –  encouragement? Support? Was the pine hugging me back? These are human terms and they don’t quite fit. I felt that the pine and the land it sprang from were holding me up, wanted me to continue my work to save the Peace Valley in my home province of British Columbia from being dammed. I was being offered a gift – an experience of joy and unity, and something more: confirmation, confidence and strength to persevere in my work. Joy and gratitude buoyed me as I walked back to the cabin.

Looking back, a year and a half later, I see how this moment marked a turn in my work on the Peace River campaign. I felt invigorated, emboldened and supported. My health and energy improved and I was able to take on tasks that would have daunted me before. At the same time, I remained very much aware that the ultimate outcome is beyond my control. I was not “saving” the Peace – not by myself, not even all of us together. We cannot save anyone or anything. The Peace river has its own path. That path, like the path of other beings, may include wounding and suffering. All any of us can do is allow the land to become alive in us, and then act from that place.

In a culture less rigidly dualistic than the one that dominates our time, I believe experiences like this would be accepted by the society at large as valid and true. I feel gratitude that moments like these are still able to shine through the cultural conditioning that has been instilled in western peoples over generations, dividing nature from spirit and denying spirit to other creatures. What an impoverishment! Experiences like these bring incredible abundance and depth to our lives. They are our true birthright.

@Ana Simeon

To read or leave a comment please click on the word Comments next to or under the photo at top left-hand-side of this page.

My Prayer Hears Your Prayer

That was the awakening:  My prayer hears your prayer. Perhaps for you, too. And then something in me said that’s enough! That’s all I need to do—holding a sense of me and being aware of a sense of you. And you’re different!

Painting; Riverdale Park in Cabbagetown by Kevin McEvenue

This is in response to Elizabeth’s  “It Is for This.” It is the power of her voice, the tone of the sound that is so healing to my soul.  My body instantly awakens to her tone of voice even before the words are felt.

I am just allowing Elizabeth’s prayer to be heard and to be felt inside of me. And the words that seem to awaken something deeper in me is this expression that she keeps repeating:  it is for this. It is for this. It is for this.
And each time I hear that repetition, it touches me even more deeply because I know that sound.  I can feel that sound and I can feel me.
That is what Elizabeth has awakened in me too—that sense of me that knows who I am.  What I am.
And I love the feel of it.  I love being awakened when I hear someone else is there too. It gives me a sense of myself that feels totally satisfying.  It is a feeling of love.
I am Love.
I live love in my body as a whole.
It is me.
This is who I am.
Amen.

Something more came for me listening to Elizabeth saying what was there for her and how deeply that awakened something in myself about me. It is as though her sound, her voice, her expression, awakened a sense of myself from inside–like awakening a tuning fork of who I am.

My Prayer Hears your Prayer

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Me and Planet Earth

A critical block can be the emotional pain of the fear of not being loved or wanted. This type of despair might be a compelling presence in our lives.

Me & planet Earth sustain me. Out of nothing, something new emerges. Kevin connects us to one of his influences, Pierre de Chardin, who believed that we have a role to play in the expanding universe. We are a part of planet Earth, and it sustains life–even our lives. For example, we can sense the laws of gravity that help us function at every moment of our lives. This intunement is about the experience of our sense of self-connected to the Earth in grounded presence. More importantly, we need to know what might get in the way.

Not Planet Earth

A critical block can be the emotional pain of the fear of not being loved or wanted. This type of despair might be a compelling presence in our lives. If we make room for fear of nothingness, more comes. We need to endure the sense of nothing to allow something not of our own making to emerge.

Me and Plant Earth

In this intunement, Kevin takes us through how these ideas have an inherent connection to our Wholebody Focusing practice and how Kevin uses them to take what he learns about these connections to a new level. These nuances can enrich your practice of Wholebody Focusing.

Enjoy what emerges today listening to Kevin’s journey in connecting to planet Earth.

Photo Credit: Mohonk Mountain, NY at sunset Diana Scalera

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To Become Alive / Att bli levande

Photo Credit: Ulla-Stina Johansson

Your experience Kevin resonated profoundly in me. When you listened deeply, in searching for a sense of self, an uninvited Trappist monk connected with you – and you came alive. As if listening deeply for life could be as a calling to the universe and something from beyond answered you. Could this be possible?

In the beginning of the nineties I was on a similar journey, in my longing to become alive and be myself. My travel led me to an Orthodox Monastery, named New Valamo, in Finland. During the winter war 1939, some 190 monks fled from Valamo Monastery in Russia. They founded a refuge and a new home in a mansion in the east of Finland. To have somewhere to live they had to rebuild the old barn into monk’s cells. The monks lived and prayed in the barn for years. It was possible for me, as a visitor, to stay in one of the old monk´s cells in the barn. And of course, it was an offer I could not refuse.

The whole night I had deep dreams which felt as some sort of inner rebuilding of my whole life. For the next few days, I walked around the monastery without any thoughts, feelings or words. But with tears constantly pouring down, gently melting, cleansing and making me soft and receiving. I was filled with awe that made me feel fresh and alive.

Ulla-Stina Johansson

Continue reading “To Become Alive / Att bli levande”