Full Body Presence is like the glue that holds the pieces together for both client and practitioner or caregiver, when layers of trauma begin to unwrap or when strength and stamina are challenged in situations of sudden injury or loss. In reality we need this glue, that I call mother duck grease to handle the grind of ordinary daily stressors, and to open our eyes to our emergent truth: that we each have the capacity to live enormously compassionate, expressive, satisfying, creative lives.

Seven women from across Canada met in the Victorian parlor of the Fresh Start, with huge bay windows looking over naval academy property and supervised by an enormous yellow cat named Tigger. Much to the chagrin of our hosts, Tigger greeted us, midmorning, proudly with a yowl that announced his present, a live mouse, who promptly ran for cover under the drapes of our center table. The mouse was rescued and escorted to his or her fate outside, while Tigger sniffed and smelled under the table and between our chairs, searching for his lost treasure. Reassured that this was extremely rare, I thanked the big amber fellow for his efforts on behalf of the physiotherapists, nurse, day care owner, and skilled Craniosacral practitioners gathered in his domain.

Some people have a natural gift for settling into Full Body Presence, but lose it when another’s trauma is activated. Others can hold a steady presence for others, but are not so skilled in being home for themselves. We are all different. I love sharing this four day class with groups, especially the mother duck grease story. Feathery goslings pass under the mother duck’s wings to be coated with oil, waterproofed by the mother, until their own waterproof feathers grow in.

In our group, we settled into listening to the internal parts of ourselves that have a healthy dose of mother duck grease: where we rest easy, and feel spacious and open. And we listened and observed where the grease was missing or incomplete: the empty, knotted, painful swirls inside our skin. Most importantly, we sunk our awareness into the connection that is always present between ourselves and the Earth beneath us, choosing to recognize ourselves as subjects in communion with our environment, not objects apart from it or each other.

This is the tenth year that I’ve led these groups, and the men and women, mostly women, who come aren’t satisfied with status quo lives. They, like Leo in the Matrix trilogy, choose the red pill, taking courage in hand to brave the hazards and obstacles that block truthful living and to reveal unknown talents.

In following the principles of Full Body Presence we set our feet firmly rooted on the path so aptly described by Thomas Berry in his poem, It Takes a Universe:

We awaken to the Universe,
Our minds to a world of wonder,
Our imaginations to a world of beauty,
Our emotions to a world of intimacy.

I’m finishing this up in the aircraft somewhere between Halifax and my US connection to the warmer weather in North Carolina. I heard the daffodils have bloomed. I can hardly wait to see them, my family, including Bettie, the dog, and Star Button, the kitten.

-Full Body Presence information at http://www.healingfromthecore.com

-Thomas Berry: http://thomasberry.org

-Highly recommended-a new memoir by Carolyn Toben: Recovering A Sense of the Sacred: Conversations with Thomas Berry at http://timberlakeearthsanctuary.com

The Wisdom of Women, a popular volume of The Ecozoic Reader, with articles by Joanna and Suzanne Scurlock Durana, developer of Full Body Presence can be found at: www.ecozoicstudies.org/the-ecozoic-reader/vol-5-no-1

*My source for the poem was from a collection of his poetry given to me by Thomas. It has been often quoted and can be found, I just can’t tell you where at this moment.

As you learn to consciously understand and embody your own internal landscape and acknowledge the resources that nurture you, you more easily maintain a strong and steady presence, even in the face of crisis or daily challenges.

This is a vital tool for anyone involved in healthcare or caregiving, and personal growth that allay the all too frequent symptoms from stress and caregiver burnout. Quality of care is enhanced as you learn how your own grounded energetic signature is the foundation of your presence and touch.

In summary, being grounded and nurtured, aware of your own presence in three-dimensional space boosts your ability to:

• Feel or sense what is going on with another person with greater clarity and insight.
• Gain emotional, physical, and mental, and spiritual connection to that which matters most to you, moment to moment.
• Recognize, deflect, or discharge unhealthy input from another person or situation to avoid feeling drained.
• Listen more effectively to subtle signals from the body and to clients’ words without imposing agendas.
• Engage with clients from a fresh perspective each day.
• Create with restored, renewed energy.

See you soon, I hope, for this amazing journey of discovery.
Joanna

Trout lilies leaves and the first spring beauties are out! From our yard we listen to the insistent calling of chorus frogs from the wetlands behind our house.

On evening walks in the Eno forest, I’ve heard monkey calls from the barred owls and the pileated drumming in the forest. Outside my window as I work, I’ve spotted retail hawks soaring in pairs.

I’m hearing and seeing the signs of Love, renewing her vibrations in the cosmos once again.

There is something different in the smells of the Earth as well. Last night, walking across a parking lot to go see our friend in a play, the moisture announcing today’s rain was vibrant notice to my nose that even though temperature were about to drop, maybe even bringing snow, that Spring in all her delight is preparing to open a new, ever renewing cycle beneath my feet.

From where I walked on the trail, the sound of the monkey calls of the two barred owls along Nancy Rhodes Creek connected to that in me that recognizes connection. Their hoo-hooh-hahw-hah-hagh-hahgh’s, rising in intensity, more elaborate and complex that I can describe, filled the space between us, leaping from my ears to my body’s cells to my heart, which expanded with wonder.

Later my husband told me that he had observed that we became very still as we listened, that we each sighed, a deep involuntary, sound of satisfaction—our participation in the Love.

Something in me sinks in a good way as I settle into the microcosm of a leaf poking its stem above an icy barrier seen through Don’s camera, or breathes deeply, recognizing intimacy with the intricacies of winter cabbage in Michelle’s Images. Their artistry reveals unity with the sacred arising in plants, rocks, and water, in sky and local color.

Appreciating such moments is the gift of slowing down. On Sundays, my husband and I take long walks with our dogs, usually along the trails of the Eno River. In this slowed down time, I see what I might otherwise miss completely, the microcosm of life around me.

Last week, Dave pointed out a couple of Canadian geese in midstream nearly blended into the rocks in the morning light, as he climbed the hill away from the river. Something held me still as I watched the closer of the two geese, beginning a bath.

In several fluid motions, the goose efficiently dipped his head into the silvery water and scooped water over his breast and back. Head up, his wings spread like fingertips in the morning sun to fling water outwards, refreshing his damp feathers. His whole body shook, and then he expunged the last bits of excess river water with a delightful tail shiver.

This simple moment gave me a smile. I felt held by the Earth, partnered with the life of the river.

It was a pleasure, a moment of freedom from the extraneous, landing in stillness witnessing the intrinsically sacred ritual of a goose bathing in the river.

Leaf in Water, by Don Underhill at Underhill Designs.com
Winter Cabbage, by Michele Cooke at Michelle’s Images

I sat in the audience, the autumn night cool, during Piedmont Bioregional Institute’s conference at Camp New Hope, listening and scribbling. The cadence of Thomas’s words, his resonant voice, even in his elder years always mesmerized me. I can’t hope to convey all of that, but this is what I wrote as I absorbed his Ecozoic thoughts in November 2002.

Every atom is in constant connection, influencing every other atom without passing through the intervening space. We don’t know how to explain this deep connection. We wouldn’t be who we are unless the Universe is as it is.

We need to ground ourselves in the recognition that EVERYTHING has rights of being. The US Constitution is wonderful for humans, but devastating for everything else. Everything has these rights:

TO BE, FOR HABITAT, and TO FULFILL ITS ROLE IN ITS OWN COMMUNITY.

Everything needs to be represented, or humans will destroy themselves and everything else.

At this point, Thomas led our group of fifty or so, into our Joanna Macy refers to as the “moral imagination”, a moment of birthing for Ecozoic awareness.

Thomas said: Let us settle into an evening ritual together.

I invite you, from the Silence inside yourself to imagine you can let go of your unique human perspective and allow your deep connection to all other beings of Nature to call you.

It might be a plant, a creature of air, water, or land . . . big or small . . . lichen or an eagle . . . a whale or a beetle.

Then imagine that you are in your own unique world. You have beetle or wolf eyes, hawk senses. Or, if you are a rock, you have rock senses. As a rock, an eagle, a beetle, you have rock, eagle, beetle rights to:

Be

To Habitation

To Fulfill Your Role in Community

Imagine that you could begin to speak, and as you speak from your center – your soul – that every other being could hear you and respond to you. If only, you could find your VOICE.

And you look inside and it just opens up, without any effort.

Suddenly there is a new wave of UNDERSTANDING arising in the Universe, and you are at its birth -when all Beings’ rights are recognized.

So let us move together with our voices, our bodies: touching each other with who we are- even as the wolf pack does, creating a weaving together of sound and movement.

Thomas passed this life peacefully on June 1, 2009, yet his voice co-rises with each new Ecozoic voice, as we grapple with how to each create the work that heals, that makes for a sustainable future for all of Earth’s inhabitants.

Not since last hearing Thomas Berry speak, have I experienced feeling simultaneously inspired, grounded and centered by one person’s vision. Vast reservoirs of her own experience are a legacy she imparts from her trip riding with lamas returning to devastated monasteries in Tibet, learning the Shambhala Prophecy for healing our world, and developing community work for healing the suffering of people in environmentally damaged areas, such as those surrounding Chernobyl.

Joanna, in sharing her passion for “The Great Turning: The Work that Reconnects”, led over a hundred participants in group activities and sharing of personal reflections, based on our experiences of four basic activities that she considers essential in moving forward a thriving, cooperative Earth community.

Coming from Gratitude, “It’s a Grand Time to Be Alive”
Owning and Honoring our Pain and Despair for the World, “Open Hearts Heal”
Deep Time: Reconnecting with Past and Future Generations, “Awakening to the Big Picture”
Going Forth: Commitment and Action, “Choosing Love, Acting in Love, Caring for What You Love”

Her prophetic vision for reconnecting strikes me as a means to approach the fulfillment of Thomas Berry’s call for healing in the 21st Century. His sage observation was that the 20th century had been a time of mass destruction for Earth processes, and that the upcoming century would need to be one whose focus was on healing.

As you can tell, by now, I’m happy to have met Joanna Macy and I will do a few posts in the coming weeks to share more thoughts.

Old Man of the Mountain always faces East, from Lake Erwin, Colorado

On a recent visit to the beautiful mountain town of Asheville, a friend loaned me a book by Cynthia Bourgeault that she said “changed her life”. She and I share similar rural hometowns with roots in the Southern Baptist tradition, and we each have continued our lives with a quest to understand and appreciate the inner nature of things, so I took an immediate interest in her statement.

Off I went, with her book, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, in hand: but you know how it is with good intentions, so it wasn’t until a few weeks later, during a workshop that I was teaching called Full Body Presence, that I opened the book to an appealing title in the epilogue, The Way of the Heart.

Reading it opened into a moment of discovering a missing link between my childhood spiritual roots and my work as a Somatic Movement therapist in trusting the wisdom inherent in our bodies. It’s focus was allowing our will and breath to relax into trust by connecting, that is surrendering, to a felt sense of the Divine. Sounds simple, but have you tried it?

As I got excited and ordered another text by another Christian writer on the subject, I learned that centering prayer can get cumbersome when it moves from present moment awareness to a theology based discussion. But skimming the second book, I became strangely aware of interesting phenomena in my imagination.

It was an image of two parabolas intersecting in the middle. One parabola held this notion of Centering Prayer and the other contained the essence of a meditation from Eastern spirituality teacher, Ram Das, “I am loving awareness”. In the center, at the overlap of the parabolas, the intention was the same: to release our thoughts of self into a heartfelt awareness of the mystery of the Divine. My husband remarked that the image was similar to a Venn diagram, and if you are into education, you’d get it.

But as soon as I moved out from the center to where the parabolas expanded outwards, the streams of thought about who we really are as human beings seemed disparate. The Christian version was that we are essentially flawed and can only be restored to unity by the grace of God. The Eastern version from Ram Das’ s perspective was that we are essentially divine love, our unity flawed as we mostly operate from a confused, limited perspective resulting from a busy mind unconnected to the quiet center of our heart.

My internal images reverted to a teaching from Nishant Matthews, who spent several years coming to Chapel Hill offering his expertise in the field of light therapy. He taught: when you have polarities, like opposites in your thought or emotions, try holding them in the light of two colors that are opposites on the color wheel, orange and blue, red and green, purple and yellow, then look for the third thing that emerges.

When the old becomes the new . . . I’m entertaining those colors . . . watching for the third thing to emerge.

Identifying myself with those bare roots, something clicked, an “aha” moment: yielding a cascading wave of new insight.

Changes in our inner ecology that take us to our bare roots happen as we are exposed to losses of our beloved ones, to chronic illness or injury, to long-term job loss, or to a slow, steady decline of physical or mental abilities into old age.

Maybe it’s my age that I’m noticing these things in myself and in friends and family, but it seems so many of us have entered a new era when our familiar surroundings have uncomfortably shifted. Even our country as a whole feels like its experiencing distinct erosion in the trust that we will be alright given all our economic and environmental challenges.

With instant media access we are all acutely aware when a tree suddenly crashes into a bedroom, or a natural or man-made disaster shakes a community. Fear of terrorism haunts us openly or just below the surface of our awareness. Each change has the potential to wash away the landscape of the ground that sustains us.

But looking to nature for inspiration, erosion isn’t only about loss, it’s also integral to creation . . . the mountain we love, the depths of the Grand Canyon, the contours of our rivers, the great deltas, so many natural and beautiful resources happen in relationship to a wearing away of all that comes loose in the wind, water, and temperatures of the elements.

For us, it’s not only loss, but also change by way of new births or new careers, even new insights that act as catalysts to give us opportunities for the essence of our souls to come into clear light.

Friendships and partnerships can either sustain or wash away in the stress of living- taking us all the way to the bedrock of our psyches, where lies the potential to discover the discriminating awareness that only love matters.

I am grateful to those roots on the trail and to the little girl and her father who gave me an “aha moment” to remember that erosion is not just a damaging force, but is also a gift of nature for changing one form to another.

As I stood before each of her bold abstracts, suggestive of intimacy in landscapes, I wondered how her artwork, with myriad layers of color and shape, and minimal details, created such a pleasurable sense of wholeness. I’m sure there’s a technical answer, but my mind didn’t land on that square.

Driving home, an inner bell resonated with my real question: how do ” I” experience wholeness? My husband, always game for my queries, said that for him, it was a sense of belonging.

. . . Mmmm , I mused. Seems right.

Still curious about how others experience wholeness, I delved into a couple of recently purchased books. One from Ram Das, Being Love Now, described it in metaphors: succumbing to the softness of the ultimate romance with the Divine, being submerged in a tidal wave of love, or being pulled into the gravitational field of a star.

. . . Aha, sensing the Divine through direct awareness as wholeness.

I have recently reacquainted myself with Ram Das, who, forty years after publication of his iconic book, Be Here Now, shares the essence of his lifetime on a spiritual journey from his home by internet. He makes it simple. By skype from Maui, he said that being present , is to realize that we, as souls, are “loving awareness”, and then, to love everything we can be aware of. As he spoke he pointed from his head (identification with roles in life) to his heart (identification with soul).

It wasn’t just his words that held me, it was the expression in his eyes, and a palpable feeling, similar to the one I had standing before the paintings, that something here was whole.

. . . .I play the hopscotch game of my mind here. . . and skip to a different square.

The other book offers scientific and philosophical updates to the understanding of our place among the stars and galaxies by Nancy Ellen Abrams, a cultural philosopher, and Joel R. Primack, an astrophysicist. The New Universe and the Human Future discusses what new discoveries in science bring to this timeless fascination we have to make meaning through our cosmologies.

. . . Are they’re talking about . . . on a really big societal scale. . . how the human community approaches wholeness?

Abrams and Primack explain that after a four-century rupture between science and the questions of meaning and value, science is trending towards a reunion. Their book, originating from a series of lectures at Yale University, includes gorgeous pictures of galaxies and intriguing theories that size and scale respond to varying laws of physics, some of which are not known.

Thomas Berry, father of Ecozoic thought, once told me, the wisdom of science alone will never suffice to create wholeness . . . that science is an important and expanding window, but that it cannot ultimately stand alone as a singular meaning-making vehicle through which we perceive our place in the cosmos.

. . . . its back to you and me. . to use our senses. . to anchor our souls in that feeling of wholeness. . .to discover what makes meaning and value. . . to be informed or inspired with some help from travelers, like Ram Das, Nancy Tuttle May, Thomas Berry or Abrams and Primack.

I went to an art opening recently in historic downtown Hillsborough to see a series of vibrant paintings, by my friend, Melissa Miller, entitled Places We Come From.

Her portrayal of old and abandoned barns and houses in the midst of plowed earth, often shielded by tall trees, along small country roads, evoked for me a reverent remembrance of life that surely once inhabited those old houses. Her paintings reminded me to connect to the beauty of the Earth that houses each of us. They evoked the passage of time and change, as old houses uncared for, return to the Earth.

Through her artwork, Melissa is creating what my dear friend, Thomas Berry, called the ‘great work’ of making meaningful connections though our activities in ways that sustain a sense of wholeness, aliveness, and beauty.

Thomas said, the ‘great work’ as a way of living could be the legacy of our generation: he named it the Ecozoic Era, meaning “’house of life’. The key rests in the hands, hearts, and minds of each one of us.

During the last twenty years of his life, it was my pleasure to listen and share conversation with Thomas Berry when he spoke at Camp New Hope conferences, at the University of North Carolina, and in his quaint upstairs apartment, the Hermitage, as it was affectionately called.

He inspired me with his vision of hopefulness that my ability, and every human’s capacity to reflect upon and celebrate our connectivity with Earth and each other, through dreams, stories, rituals, and our daily activities, might enable all life: the two footed, the four, the winged, the swimming, and the microscopic to live into the future, with the abundance that got us where we are today more or less intact.

Thomas urged anyone who came to his talks, or read his books, to find their own “great work” that would sustain this sacred vision.

As this blog unfolds, my hope is that it is one of those ways.

I want to share a story from my Full Body Presence clinical practice, with names and particulars changed, of one person finding such a connection.

A client, a young mother, Valerie, came to me, concerned about her ability to parent her daughter with the tenderness, aliveness, and sense of nurturing that she sensed was possible.

As we explored her concerns, through her body’s awareness of tensions and stresses, it became clear that in her inner “house of life”, where her own youthful hopes and dreams once lived, there resided a sense of distress and unease that she was passing on to her daughter. She could see in herself, the parenting model of her WWII aged parents, who had not able to make room for the inspirational aspects of her young self.

So, in becoming busy with daily tasks of running a household, getting her daugher to school on time, work, and so on, this inner connection to a sense of nurturing was still lacking. Like Melissa Miller’s old and abandoned houses, the inner house of her being, with its passions, hopes, and dreams was waiting for someone to come home and revive them.

With the presence of our shared attention on this inner house, Valerie experienced relief and ease in her body, tears of joy and sadness. The full range of feelings returned, as she imagined embracing herself with the same love and attention she longed to give her daughter.

Valerie remembered that although her parents had not been receptive to her naturally joyful presence, that she could accept and forgive them as having done their best, and make her own choices as to how to nurture and connect to life and move into the future, in ways that nurture both herself and her daughter.

This for Valerie was her “great work”.

Confluence on the Eno II by Melissa Miller, http://www.melissalmiller.com
Thomas Berry-http://www.thomasberry.org