You're an Animal!

"You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves." ~ Mary Oliver

Photograph by Edward Weston

..."let the soft animal of your body love what it loves"... and it loves you! Why else would it fight infection, circulate blood, process nutrients, hold you up, and help you move. I wish that you could sense what I sense; maybe you can -- that our bodies love us like our animal friends do. Some of us are more able to feel love from and towards our pets than from our people! What if our bodies were loving us the same way our pets are? We ARE animals after all. We are made of the same stuff as our pets.

I See You

"The history of each person is contained within and expressed by their tissue, fluids, energetic qualities, and motion." ~ Dr. John Upledger, Art by Kathe Kollwitz

Dr. Upledger is my hero. He was an osteopathic physician with his feet grounded in science and his mind in the stars. He was smart enough to be a physician, open-minded enough to explore phenomenon not explored in medical school, and wise enough to know his limits. He was a visionary who understood that the mind and the body are indistinguishable, and that he was not the healer of this body/mind. It's our "Inner Physician," as he called it, or a higher power that heals. CranioSacral therapists just facilitate.

Like Dr. Upledger, I read your "history" in your tissues, fluids, and heart, gut, and mind! I listen deeply to your words and to your body and to your Inner Physician, AKA You! I hope you sense, and benefit from, the respect and caring that that deep listening entails.

Be a Tree

Trees do not preach learning and precepts. They preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. ~ Herman Hesse, Photograph by Eliot Porter

I aim to be like a tree. I don't preach; I stand-in as a rooted, Spirit-channeling accept-er and present presence. It's a kind of loving, calming neutrality that heals.

Your Body

"The body is the mirror where the secret world of the soul comes to expression." ~ John O'Donohue, from Anam Cara

In another part of the book Anam Cara, John O'Donohue writes "The body is in the soul." Not the soul is in the body. I agree. I don't  distinguish between the spiritual and material, myself. It's all One. What does that mean other than that I'm a pantheist? ;) It means that your heart is God, as is your kidney (both of them ;) and your aorta, and your tense shoulders. I honor each part of you as sacred and as ways of knowing you. 

"The important thing to remember about dragons is that they guard our treasure. When a dragon appears, it means gold is right behind it -- if we have the courage to stand our ground and fully meet it.

Sera Beck, from Red, Hot, and Holy

Art by William Blake

What is the gold behind the dragon that is Covid-19?

And what do we gain by having the courage to fully meet our own inner dragon(s)? We come to realize that the dragon is not all that scary...that facing it tames it. And the gold is knowing that we can tame it.

By facing traumatic or scary memories, by feeling our own pain, we come to know that "behind" those dragons is our magnificent, victorious, true self.

Listening

"...the traumatized body can be reawakened thanks to the attention, sensitivity, and capacity of the other/analyst to really believe in the painful story that the patient brings to therapy; it is the emotional participation of the analyst that makes the body a sentient body and restores unity where there was fragmentation."

Sandor Ferenczi (from https://doi.org/10.1080/0803706X.2017.1362502)

     Photograph by W. Eugene Smith

Listening with hands and heart heals.

That's Lyrical Healing in a nutshell.

Creation and Destruction

"Every act of creation is first an act of destruction."
Pablo Picasso

Artwork by Jackson Pollack

No mortal, or fairy either, can tell where Fairyland begins and where it ends."

George McDonald, in Phantastes

Art by William Blake

...and who can tell where the Sacred begins and where it ends?.... Can we see the Transcendent? Is it "in" our souls? In our hearts? If it's in our hearts is the Transcendent pumped through our veins? If so, is it in our muscles, skin, and organs?

Lyrical Healing sessions are based on the understanding that WE (including our bodies and our emotions) are of The Transcendent.

May your life be free from suffering

May your heart be open

May you know ease and joy in your body

May you share your gifts with the world

May you know your true self in this lifetime

Thai Buddhist blessing

Art by Henri Matisse