Listening and Responding
...There's only one question:
how to love this world... ~Mary Oliver
When I'm asked what I do for work, depending on who is asking and the larger context the question is being asked in, I sometimes respond that I'm an intuitive health practitioner, an educator, a human-nature guide, or an energy worker. So this offers a description of the fields one might try to locate my work in, but of course doesn't actually describe what I do very easily. My answer often just creates more questions. And despite this usually pushing old tender buttons of mine around feeling invisible, I also like the deeper invitation here.
This is the nature of being in work that is emerging in response to the needs of worlds in crisis: mental health crisis, health crisis, energy crisis, financial crisis, climate crisis, etc. It's not that the world doesn't also need some of the previously established, more familiar and understood lines of work, it absolutely does. But it clearly could do with more reimagining of some of them. And it needs some new ones too, especially ones that relate in much more inclusive and wise ways to what has been reduced on this planet to just 'capital'.
In a world fighting and so focused on how to squeeze more from people, superficial social constructions, and physical natural resources, doing work with 'inner natural resources' may seem completely irrelevant. But it is not. These are underestimated and under-cultivated sources of clean, renewable energy and creative power. This work is essential - no problem can be solved by the same level of consciousness that created it, apparently claimed Einstein. But more importantly than this, it's fundamental to loving this world.
Working, in part, with 'inner natural resources' seems to be where my soul has led me: the intersections of body, mind, soul, health, power, community, culture and earth... as related to people's lives, relationships, wellbeing and purpose in this part of the world.
And despite our traumatized, dissociated, compulsively quantitatively-obsessed systems, you are so clearly not 'just capital’. You matter deeply to this world, and in ways you are not likely aware of. You certainly matter deeply to me.
So if I were asked what I do in my work within a culture that already understood and held 'mattering' (among other values like it) as central, I might say something like, "I listen deeply and respond in-kind, thereby gently collaborating in the process of midwifing clients through the psycho-spiritual life passages between the beginning and end of life".
But as 'Soul Midwife, Guide, and Educator' doesn't yet appear on the handy drop-down menu on the census, I've written a little about the beautiful and mysterious process of a Soul Work Session, and this ecological niche I get to occupy, below.
I hope you can see yourself in what I've written, because of course you are in this work too. 'Loving this world' is definitely a group project.
Listening and Responding
...There's only one question:
how to love this world... ~Mary Oliver
I'm sitting across the room from the client in my clinic. The afternoon sun is filtering in through the windows, offering its own gentle light to places working themselves out of the shadowy but potent little corners of life's doubt, confusion, and conflict.
As it is with every client, I am feeling deep admiration and respect for the courageous being before me who is exploring this creative space in search of clarity, healing, direction, and resolve. I cannot imagine anywhere else on earth I would rather be than here.
The client is beginning to tune into what is most compelling for them to share/explore/understand in a deeper way. In worlds primarily preoccupied with the more surface things of everyday life, this may be the most deeply they have listened to themselves or been listened-to in some time. The mystery begins to reveal herself here in the wise, emergent quality invited through this healing, reflective and responsive practice.
I am listening through my own body's language of sensation and emotion, noticing pressure shifts and climate changes. I am listening by tracking thematic patterns and impressions, over time. I am listening through an understanding of what this client is navigating in their life, informed by years of learning and apprenticing to earth, body, energy, psycho-spiritual growth, and human-nature - cultivating an intimacy even with its deepest and wildest recesses.
The client is gently beginning to shift as the previously compressed, rich, dark soil of interior and underground makes its way upward into words, shaped into life story, animated, and actualized by the light of this sacred practice. New insights reveal themselves. And despite how far our society has yet to go in terms of reclaiming the interrelationship between earth and body and mind and language and culture, the body has never forgotten; it is alive and brimming with eons of inherited wisdom. This innate intelligence is already at work, generating heat and light as tectonic shifts between DNA and mitochondria take place. The client is physiologically transforming, right there across the room from me, moving this energy in life-affirming ways. Their cheeks are flushing and their eyes have become bright with it.
I offer the responses, reflections, connections, and framing that I intuit will serve this client's health, relationships, and journey - in healing but also practical ways - and then attune to the feedback I receive and adjust accordingly. I am listening for even the most subtle energetic and bodily responses of 'yes' and 'no' in both myself and them. I am listening to the deeper, mythic structure I sense they are working with.
But this process also deepens their capacities to read, understand, and attune to the subtle languages of body and soul in themselves and in others. It simultaneously increases their own intuitive and healing faculties. And their ability to identify and language their needs, feelings, and experiences, and connect with place, history, and others in more attuned, meaningful, enjoyable, and healthy, boundaried ways. It amplifies their creative force, self-expression, and unique gifts to this world...the ones only they, specifically, can offer.
I am aware that I am in conversation not only with the ego or seat of self-awareness and personality of this client, but also the transpersonal fields of their spirit and soul: the universal dimensions of them, as well as their unique and deeper ways of belonging to this world.
I know from having been in this practice now for 18 years, that this client's soul will take only what serves their life and leave the rest. I trust this deeply, but am committed to continuing to refine my own intuition and practice, and, hopefully, over time, offer greater precision, depth, and value. I am aware of my own humanness and capacity for mis-attunement too, and work to structure my practice to centre clients' experiences, dignity, and agency. I am continually shaped by this work.
In his book, The Journey of Soul Initiation, Bill Plotkins writes, "Mary Oliver's question ('how to love this world') cannot be answered well by a cognitive process of deduction. The ultimate answer is born with us. We are born as that answer".
I hold this question: 'how to love this world'..as you, at the heart of every session.
I am listening.
To love the world most fully is to actualize the relationships with the world that only you can actualize. ~Bill Plotkin
How to prepare for your next Soul Work Session?
Absolutely no preparation is necessary.
If you sense that another session could be helpful, that things in life are feeling a bit stuck, confusing, painful, or lacking in depth, direction or creative fire, then the mystery's healing energies might be stirred additionally by considering these kinds of things as your next session approaches:
What are you currently finding challenging in your relationships, career, health?
What are you becoming more aware of in terms of the particular places you have been wounded in this life and are healing/learning from?
Are you noticing any strong feelings, hunches, dreams (day or night), or intuitions?
What patterns, thoughts, habits have you been tracking, perhaps since your last session (with me or through another practice)?
What longs to be listened-to and heard and understood more deeply?
Click here to learn more about Soul Work Sessions.