What are you FEELING? A 6 part series on building self awareness.

Life can sometimes feel like a walk through the forest. Some days are perfect—the air, the canopy of leaves breaking apart the golden glow above, the soft breeze, the birds chirping. Other days, are just not fun—stuck in a bramble bush, it’s getting dark, you’ve lost your trail marker and can’t remember the path back home. I’ve been here many times. And I’ve learned that we don’t stop there.

Are you feeling confused, lost, anxious, depressed, stuck or tired? Are you standing in the forest, asking for help? Well, I don’t know your exact path home, but I know the forest well. I have a steady arm to lean on, and a nice bright lantern. I have a faithful dog to go up ahead of us, and together we can safely find your way home.

BUILDING SELF AWARENESS // WHAT AM I THINKING, FEELING, AND DOING?

Identifying our thoughts and feelings—physically and emotionally—helps us bring awareness into the beliefs that are locked away in our subconscious. These three questions are simply a map to getting to know ourselves more deeply. The more we know ourselves, the clearer we become. Self-knowledge is a lifelong journey—it has no endpoint. It’s like an endless river.

THINKING // Every thought we have is providing us a clue to an underlying belief. With these questions as a daily practice, we can identify these beliefs, and find a way to rewrite them in a way that feels more alinged to who we are now. Part of the work is replacing the negative thought patterns we’ve formed, with an inner dialogue of clarity and intention. What is your inner dialogue telling you? Are you thinking about the past, or the future? Are you speaking to yourself with kindness?

FEELING // How deeply can we tune into the subtlest sensations and emotions as they arise, constantly shifting? And also how can we listen to the more blaringly obvious physical sensations in our body? Understanding the impact of our emotions and our senses, and the power they hold over our experience, is central to this work. Pain is one of the ways our body has to communicate with our minds. What is this pain in my back showing us? What are these headaches leading us to? What does your body need? What do you need?

DOING // Presence in practice. With this question, we are invited into seeing what is right there in front of us. Our minds often wander to the past and future, neither of which are truly here, right now. So with our minds a little clearer, what abundance can we notice right here with us, when we open our eyes. How can we fully embody our life on Earth? How can we find tools to help us feel grounded and prepared for whatever comes, and perhaps even learn to enjoy the journey?

What to expect…

We all need support in navigating these forest paths. My role is simply to help shine a light on what is most alive within you. Our sessions will begin with a focus on safety. I’ll guide you to recall a memory, or imagine a place where you feel completely safe—often a natural setting or in the presence of a pet or wild animal. You’ll be invited to breathe deeply and anchor into that safe space, which will serve as a grounding source throughout our time together, knowing that this safe place is where we will return to again, once our time together is ending.

I will invite you to share what feels most alive for you, and what you want to work on together this day. As you speak, I will listen. I will listen for a particular weight or truth in something you’ve said, I will encourage you to pause and to go slowly back into that sentence, and we can see what else is there to unpack. Together, we will explore what needs to be seen, identified, cleared, held, or nurtured. We’ll journey into the parts of your story that feel prickly or difficult, and we will walk through them together.

Once something has been identified as ‘the thing to work with’ that day, I may lead you in a few directions. We could sense that what is needed is a calming meditation, or I may encourage you to exaggerate into an emotion, and really feel what you haven’t for so long, and let it move. We may sing a song, or find some helpful movement or *touch to aid you. Whatever is needed will come.

***physical touch, in anyway, will always be discussed and consented to before hand.

After exploring the challenging parts of your story, knowing, that like all human emotions, this is temporary, we will return again to the ‘safe place’ we found at the start of our time. Slowly bringing you back in to the present moment, and leaving you with some tea to sip, some final debriefing if needed, and maybe a hug or a high five.

Through this six-part series, we will explore these three questions, with a different emphasis on each session, some on your thoughts, some on your feelings, and some on what you are doing. We will create an at-home daily practice for you that feels both obtainable and sustainable. And by the end of this series, my dream is that you will feel more equipped to handle whatever brambles the forest may place in your path, and that you will find a deep sense of inner peace through knowing yourself more fully.

“You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.” ― Jiddu Krishnamurti