OAK PARK and Evanston, ILlinois | 708-289-3899 | nancy@lyricalhealing.com
I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. ~Psalm 139:14. Photo by Annie Leibovitz
"A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly." ~ Benjamin Hoff from the Tao of Pooh.
Why try? To fly, or not to cry. To succeed or secede. To change or rearrange.
Be yourself! For you are fearfully and wonderfully made. Already. As you are.
My aim is to help you feel that.
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.
"Watch a flower opening in the morning. Just go on watching -- this is grace. There is no effort at all, the flower just moves according to nature." ~ Osho , Art by Vincent Van Gogh
It's May. Notice how flowers, grass, leaves are appearing, growing, blooming,.... no matter what we are thinking, doing or wishing! Feels good to just allow. You might call this Wu Wei; a Taoist term that means non-doing, no-effort, a state of serenity or trusting passivity. And you might call Craniosacral therapy Wu Wei -- therapists don't force, we trust and allow. We trust the body /psyche to heal itself. We watch you bloom.
“I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.” ~ Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, Art by Vincent Van Gogh
...that is, I want to bring you to life! Help you access your inner sap-surger. Your inner Spring. The thing that enlivens you. The thing that charges your Chi, piques your Prana, refreshes your CSF (cerebral spinal fluid), sets your sap to rise. The sap is there to flow. The impulse to live is there. So is the bark (our protectors/armor).
"Peace comes from accepting even the part of you that can never be at peace." ~ Paraphrased from Joss Whedon quote, Photograph by Paul Himmel
What if accepting ourselves as we are is the only change we need to make? Sounds relaxing to me.
I can help.
“I remember that in my boyhood, the bin in which we stored our winter’s supply of potatoes was in the basement, several feet below a small window. The conditions were unfavourable, but the potatoes would begin to sprout — pale, white sprouts, so unlike the healthy green shoots, they sent up when planted in the soil in the spring. But these sad, spindly sprouts would grow 2 or 3 feet in length as they reached toward the distant light of the window. The sprouts were, in their bizarre, futile growth, a sort of desperate expression of the directional tendency I have been describing. They would never become plants, never mature, never fulfill their real potential. But under the most adverse circumstances, they were striving to become. Life would not give up, even if it could not flourish. In dealing with clients whose lives have been terribly warped, in working with men and women on the backwards of state hospitals, I often think of those potato sprouts. So unfavourable have been the conditions in which these people have developed that their lives often seem abnormal, twisted, scarcely human. Yet, the directional tendency in them can be trusted. The clue to understanding their behaviour is that they are striving, in the only ways that they perceive as available to them, to move toward growth, toward becoming. To healthy persons, the results may seem bizarre and futile, but they are life’s desperate attempt to become itself.”
Carl Rogers (1980)
https://www.drmitchkeil.com/post/carl-rogers-and-potatoes/
We all are a little "warped." Our potato selves have strange sprouts. From my perspective, those sprouts are actually magnificent. They are a manifestation of the sacred Life-drive.
Carl Rogers wrote about giving clients the right conditions for optimal growth; specifically unconditional positive regard. I try to give that to clients; honoring them and their "sprouts," not judging, clipping or re-arranging. I trust that sacred Life-drive.
"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.
"Both light and shadow are the dance of Love." ~ Rumi
I've highlighted my logo photograph to illustrate the value of darkness. Aren't the shadows lovely? They draw me in. I want to dwell in them! They dance with the shell. They seem to caress the curves and lines. They define the curves and lines. Imagine this shell with no shadows.....
This is how I see people. Your shadows draw me in! I confess I want to dwell in them ;) And they are rich in potential. A person with no Shadow ....who would that be?
Enjoy the dark (and lights) of this season. And come show me your Shadow :)
"Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already." ~ Pema Chodron ~ Photograph by Edward Steichen
Most of us want to feel less stressed and more at peace. We've been told that meditation can help with that. I notice that "befriending who we are already" as a meditator and as a somatic therapist does bring peace and healing.
A founding father of CranioSacral therapy, Rollin Becker, said that that when he stopped doing anything....and just put his hands on clients and listened, treatments were more effective. I agree. Listening is powerful and transformative. It's a kind of befriending.
Photograph by Edward Weston
...I understand your struggles because I have them too.
I'm hoping you can sense empathy in my touch and in my words. And you, of course, are more than your thorns. We can heal when we accept our thorns and celebrate our own flower-ness :-) Caring and empathy help.
