From as far back as I can remember I have been on a quest of trying to make sense of my “self” and this funny dance we are in called life. I remember very early on feeling confused and overwhelmed by what other people took for granted. I could not, for example, just readily immerse myself in crowds or easily glide right into a classroom. I needed to feel myself out in the space, notice the edges and openings of things, figure out the emotions everyone around me was feeling.
Yes, my parents were divorced when I was very young. Yes, I experienced a fair measure of trauma throughout my life. But it was more than that. I was an empath. I felt the entire world inside my own body and could project energy outward into a space that could change the entire atmosphere around me without me fully understanding why or how that happened.
I remember being five years old asking people why we are here and what this whole thing called life is all about and feeling very dissatisfied with the answers I got. I don’t really think any of the adults I asked knew the answer to these questions.
The quest to answer these questions, including what is the purpose of my human life, led me into the darkest corners of experience during my addiction years to the most indescribable spiritual experiences beginning in 2007 and continuing today. It led me to mountain tops, oceans, rivers, pilgrimages, poetry books ad conferences, yoga studios, psychotherapy intensives, decades on a psychoanalyst's couch, psychoanalytic psychotherapy training, yoga and meditation trainings, retreats, workshops, symposiums, classes and courses on body-centered awareness and connection, trauma trainings ,more trainings, more books, more meditations, more teachers, more therapists, more experiences…...
but most importantly to my meditation practice—the space beyond thoughts and ideas in which the Self that cannot be studied or put in words exists.
Along the way I came to realize that I was yearning for an integration and synthesis of the psychological, spiritual and somatic that didn’t seem to exist in one place. I knew at one level everything is always integrated—there truly is no separation. But at another level, I felt like too much splitting was occurring between the ways in which we come to understand ourselves as embodied beings. My spiritual teachers were amazing and adept at invoking incredible power through their practices, but typically had what appeared to me to be very deep psychological issues that probably would have been best resolved in some sort of intensive psychotherapy before becoming a spiritual teacher. My psychoanalysists were highly intellectual and compelled me to explore the farthest reaches of my unconscious, but never seemed to catch on to the fact that while offering me deep comfort and a space to grieve what I never got, they were simultaneously providing me with a more sophisticated narrative that was not anymore true or untrue than the ones I arrived with. As to my body, that I had to take elsewhere to yoga studios, ecstatic dances, and later to my own discoveries of trauma and energy releasing movement practices.
It has been one of my life’s purpose to synthesize these aspects of understanding the self and the Self into different platforms, such as our Women’s Healing and Transformation program and this Soma Psyche Spirit course. I find great delight in being able to offer a window into negotiating the paradox of becoming a somebody and a nobody at the same time—of understanding the self as an ego that must negotiate this 3d world and the Self beyond 3 dimensional reality and the identification with the ego. It is in embracing this paradox that we can glide more easily through life, rather than banging our head trying to make sense of it all.
This course takes you on a journey of deep self-discovery presenting ideas that help shift narratives for the personal self and presenting meditations that help touch into the transpersonal Self. We traverse the somatic, psychological and spiritual landscapes of our self-ness in attempt to provide deeper understandings into the bigger questions of our existence.
At the level of the psychological we study concepts such as the psyche as parts comprised of internal introjects, inner children, and societal voices; the ways in which families repeat cycles and we take these cycles and patterns into our workplace, friendships and relationships; and an exploration of how we protect ourselves from anxiety using a host of unconscious primitive and highly sophisticated defense mechanisms. At the level of the somatic, we study somatic release and awareness practices to let go of stuck emotions in our body and we explore the relationship between our emotions and our body as they manifest in body posture, sickness, and sensation. At the level of the energetic, we study manifestation, the power of intention, and the chakras. At the level of spirit and higher dimensional experience (which really is all of it), participants are led through guided visualizations and energy healings, spirit guide recognition, meditation practice from the heart rhythm meditation tradition and exploration of topics such as the planes of existence and the hermetic principles.
Every class begins with a check in. We then progress into a guided meditation, followed by discussion of our theme of the day, and then our closing. There is room to ask questions in and out of class.
This course is for those of you who want to better know yourself on all levels. This is for the spiritual seeker who doesn’t want to take the spiritual bypass (everything is just sunshine and roses and all I have to do is think positive thoughts) and this is for the person engaged in their own psychological, emotional inquiry process who knows there is way more to all of this than the thoughts inside ones own mind.
Like previous groups, I trust you will find the community of people in this course are just what you have been looking for. This is a space to be real. It is a confidential, private, and privileged sacred space of awakening and exploring ourselves together. It’s a space to ask tough questions. It’s a space to experience and look at your“self” from multiple angles so that the composite of all the angles explored begins to feel like home.
If you’re interested in finding out more, I am offering free 15 minute consults now until May 15th.
Email info@homepym.com to request a consultation or get more info!
Sliding scale options are available upon request