Navigating Power
Go West..
Each emotion carries its own medicine. Here's a little journey with my own experience of fear.
I recently found myself presented with a ripe opportunity to listen-to, respond-to, understand, and engage more inclusively with the medicine offered through my experience of feeling the emotion of fear; something I am learning is a medicine made by my body, for my body/life; a generous gift offered from what I have come to understand as soul.
My relationship with this emotion has long been a confusing one for me as, like many, I have developed conditioned habits of ignoring, repressing, and pushing past it and its wild, potent teachings. These habits are so deeply ingrained that often, I have no idea that I'm actually feeling fear. In fact, it can sometimes show up more easily as a form of numbness, distraction, or at other times, frustration - added layers of complexity.
But in my earnest yearning to live more fully in harmony with earth's life force energies and patterns, trued to something beyond only human-centricity, especially offered through my body/life/soul, I am leaning in. I am re-patterning. I am listening more deeply
Enter the mysterious..
It might at first seem unlikely, but I have discovered that these questions, engaged through an honest inquiry (from self or other), can initiate a dramatic shift in power:
If the emotion is fear, what is the danger? (physical, social, psycho-spiritual, etc.)
What does the fact that fear occurred under these circumstances tell me about me? (my values, needs, yearnings, beliefs, inner conflicts, etc.)
What do I most deeply want? If I could get what I really want, what would it be? (what deep unmet need(s) are revealed)
And here, as if in a marvelous sleight-of-hand, something surprising and magnificent begins to emerge from the cover of darkness..
A long-buried need. Or two.
And usually along with it, a new understanding of the associated stories.
As my deepest unmet need comes into focus through this inquiry, now no longer shrouded in unconscious layers of habit, something becomes clear. Unstuck. I experience an enormous shift in energy. And as I begin to consider how I might meet this need of mine or get it met via invitation to another, a new creative path forward opens.
Energy has been re-patterned/reorganized, and power shifts throughout my own system but it then begins to shift within my relational systems too; power dynamics engage in deeper alignment with Soul.
When instead of collapsing into unconscious relational habits.. I can become present to my experience (East) and allow the emotion to reveal itself (South), I can enter the West more fully and be transformed by its alchemy.. before engaging (North).
Game-changer.
But this gives me much deeper insight into the relational patterns of others too, and helps me navigate power in new, more life-affirming ways.
If you might be interested in exploring the magic of the West, please join us for the next workshop in July: Navigating Power.
*Questions and process invited by Bill Plotkin & Animas Valley Institute. From the book, Nature and the Human Soul, Bill Plotkin, 2008 ("Emotional Skills Wheel) pgs.188-190
**If the emotion is joy, what are you celebrating?
***If the emotion is sadness, what have you lost?
****If the emotion is guilt, what do you believe you have done wrong?
*****If the emotion is anger or hurt, in what way do you feel you've been mistreated?
Understanding.. Navigating Power
Informed by an earth-based, 4-directions perspective, this afternoon workshop invites a gentle exploration of fundamental energetic patterns and interactive dynamics in human relating.
This workshop offers gentle embodied practices that hone your understanding skills. But it also invites new ways of being understood. Please join us.
WHERE: In-person, at Innerlife Health Services. This workshop has capacity for 8 people.
DATE: Saturday July 13
TIME: 1 - 4:30 pm
COST: Sliding scale $55-125 (plus GST) per person