“There is a dynamic reciprocity between the receptive and the active, each reflecting the other, and at the centre between them is our agency. Choice, and the lucidity to make choices, is where the real magic lies." - Toko-pa Turner, Belonging I've been reading the book Your Attention is Sacred - Except on Social Media by Amelia Hruby. I got the book a while ago to support Amelia's choice to self-publish outside of the Amazon monopolies and hadn't read it yet (mostly because

I am not a failure because my body has needs. Those are the words that brought tears to my eyes during a recent therapy session. I didn’t realize I needed to hear myself say them. It was tough to recognize that while I beautifully and gently hold that truth for the people whose healing journeys I support, I wasn’t holding it for myself. Bodies are not broken. We don’t need fixing. Our bodies want and deserve attention, they need to be tended to. They tell us about their needs

It has been quite a while since I have sent an email, and I am realizing that I was letting perfectionism get in the way. I received some lovely feedback and reflections on my more recent newsletters, which felt so affirming! Then, as I was thinking about what I wanted to share in upcoming newsletters I felt myself collapsing into the idea that they all had to be AWESOME in order to go out. As you can probably imagine, that didn’t feel good. For me, when I start to pull into

Your body loves you and is always taking care of you. Instead of just reading on, I’d like to invite you to take a moment to really BE with this message: Your body loves you, and is always taking care of you. If it feels available to do so, please sit with this for a moment. Close your eyes or soften your gaze, and notice if and how your body shifts as you connect with this truth: Your body loves you and is always taking care of you. Your body takes care of you in many ways.

When the leaves fall in my neighborhood, I am brought into my experience of grief more fully. This time of year the trees offer a reflection of the cyclic and natural process of death and loss that aligns with the deepest grief of my lifetime. My sister died, at age 21, 18 years ago on November 11th. It is really weird to realize that it has been so long. The time since feels both much shorter and forever ago. While the truth of this loss is always present, the grief shifts a

Muscles are fascinating! They tell us so much about our alignment - in body and in the world. I remain really deeply moved by the awesome conversations we’ve been having in the Your Body Is Yours to Know cohorts. At our last gathering of the Wednesday cohort, we explored our muscles and fascia, the concept or definition of strength, and the importance of bringing an awareness of strength into supporting our bodies in presence and alignment. Being in alignment allows our muscl

I am really excited to share that I have moved to a new healing space for my 1-on-1 healing work. It is so beautiful and really feels like coming home. I held a ritual for myself and the community of those I do 1-on-1 work with to say goodbye to Cedar, our old space, and say hello to our new space (the name of which is still being decided - Cedar 2.0, for now). It was such an honor to get to share that experience with the people who have been coming to that other space for he

I am enjoying a walk in this beautiful Portland weather that shifts from rain to sun to rain to sun to rain…and I find myself in a moment of sun. I appreciate all of the shifts that lead to the balance our Earth needs in this season, which is a great reminder of something we talked about in recent Your Body Is Yours to Know cohorts. Both cohorts discussed balance, actually, with one cohort focused on water and how it moves freely in our body to create balance. It is always in

I wanted to share a couple of takeaways from our last Thursday cohort session that felt really important to me. We were exploring bones and discussing how our bones are always changing. They are always being remodeled and rebuilt. This is a process done to create support in directions where our bodies need it most, where the most weight and pressure are being placed. I think it is such a beautiful metaphor, as our bodies continually assess and shift to hold and support us. So

We recently explored our esophagus and our stomach in my Your Body is Yours to Know cohort - especially looking at the benefit and importance of stomach acid and the ways that the world around us and our life experiences can decrease our stomach acid production. One of the key ways our body knows to tighten the muscle between our esophagus and stomach is in response to the acid levels in the stomach. So, when our stomach acid levels are inadequate, we are more likely to have

I’ve been reflecting on how we as a culture prioritize thinking over feeling. By “feeling,” I’m not only referring to our emotional experience but also our sensed experience - the ways our bodies communicate about our surroundings and experiences. This topic has come up several times in my 1:1 sessions and online cohorts over the last few weeks. Specifically, around trying to figure out why our body is communicating in a certain way. It can feel like a lot of pressure to be s

One cohort decided to spend two full classes on our immune system, really allowing us to go deep. We explored the ways our immune system cares for and supports us, and one thing that kept coming up was the language we commonly use around immunity—language of "armies," "battling," and "fighting." I don't think this feels very good in our bodies. What would it feel like if we shifted to thinking about our immune systems as a mediation team instead? A team that says, "We need to

In last night’s Your Body Is Yours to Know cohort session, we explored our mouth and jaw. One of the things I found really interesting both in my pre-exploration and during our class was really thinking about the mouth as a threshold, a space of processing. It’s a space where we take things in for nourishment, and it’s important to hold space for chewing,for processing. 95% of our carbohydrates - foods like grains and starchy vegetables - are processed in our mouth with saliv