Love and compassion. Betrayal and rage. Grief and loss. Our heart has the capacity for extremes of emotion. We feel so deeply.

Our heart has its own knowing. Like our gut instinct, what the heart knows is somatic or body wisdom. Thoughts and how we interpret our experiences influence feelings. Whether we are open hearted and trusting, or protecting ourselves from being hurt, our history impacts how we feel in the present.

There are so many experts and they each have their own program and advice. How do I know which is the right method for me?

I’m getting older. How long is this going to take?

Stirring up the past hurts! Is it worth it?

The answers are as varied and complex as the problem.

One: Knowledge of How Trauma Works

Two: Regulating Our Nervous System

Three: Becoming Friends With Our Mind

The experiences of life in our body. The trauma we store in our body. The cultural conditioning and pressure to look a certain way and be a certain size. Whew! It’s a mine field.

We may have been at war with our body our whole life. It’s not too late to bring empathy and connection to one of the most important relationships we will ever have - that with our own body.

Through this work, we come to know ourselves and our experience through a lens of compassion. We become interested in connecting with all of ourselves, especially the scared hurt parts. We connect with attuned empathy. What a relief to come home to ourselves.

Where do you feel solid? Where do you need to heal, expand, or love yourself more? What would have to change for these to feel more true?

I know myself. I love myself. I feel free to be authentic. I am kind and on my own side. I feel at home in myself.

What is your heartfelt wish for yourself in 2023?

What would have to shift for your life to align with your deepest values?

How can you bring more compassion, kindness and empathy into your life this year?

Compassion is the daily practice of recognizing and accepting our shared humanity, so that we treat others and ourselves with loving-kindness, and we take action in the face of suffering. It is fueled by understanding and accepting that no one is immune to pain or suffering. Compassion is not a practice of “better than” or “I can fix you”.

Our heart’s natural state is open and loving, so that is what we experience when it is clear of blockages. How do we remove the obstacles? Love everything you do and everyone you see. Choose to focus your awareness on the love instead of your lower self. Love is a natural force in the universe feeding us from the inside. Michael Singer, Living Untethered

It’s easy to bring “them” to mind. They are the ones who activate us into a survival response, like the fury we direct at someone who won’t respect our boundaries. Other times we might encase our heart in ice and refuse to care about them. Being in relationship with people pushes our buttons. We need each other, and we are so deeply hurt by each other.

“The goal of this journey is not to change our thoughts or emotions. It is to stay in the seat of Self while accepting the shifts that are taking place.” Michael Singer, Living Untethered

The heart is more sensitive than the mind, and we have much less control over feelings than thoughts. Some emotions feel like the sensation of wind flowing over you like a gentle breeze. Others are more like being out in a fierce storm.

We relax and release back into our seat of consciousness, and witness the part of us who is complaining about life not being the way we want it to be. We practice letting go of smaller daily irritations to build the resilience and strength we need to handle tougher situations in life. How do we do that? This is where the objective witness comes in.

“How can we touch and live in expanded consciousness? What are the obstacles inherent in the human predicament, and how can we let them go?” Michael Singer is practical. This is how it is. Do you see what happens when you don’t accept reality? How can I help you see? To be free?

We’ve all been there. We try to meditate, but our mind gets in the way. We have a predictive brain with a negativity bias that remembers everything bad that ever happened to us. The worry, anxiety and catastrophic thinking that disturb our peace are essentially our nervous system “helpfully” trying to keep us safe.

In my life’s important areas: what am I not saying no to?

Where did I sense a no that I stifled, conveying a “yes” (or a silence) instead?

How does my inability to say no impact my life?

What bodily signals have I been overlooking?

“Ancient cultures have long understood that we exist in relationship to all, are affected by all, and affect all. Our brains and minds are not independent operators. Nothing about us, mental or physical, can be comprehended apart from the many-faceted milieu in which we exist. It is a reality of our interconnected nature.” Gabor Maté, MD

I’ve been meditating for 29 years. I remember reading that about people and thinking wow! What would that be like? I was sure that after meditating so long, people would be peaceful all the time. It turns out that’s mostly true! Meditation changes our mind.

“I have come to believe that behind the entire epidemic of chronic afflictions, mental and physical, that beset our current moment, something is amiss in our culture itself, generating both the rash of ailments we are suffering and crucially, the ideological blind spots that keep us ignorant of the connections that bind our health to our social-emotional lives. Chronic illness is not a glitch, it is a consequence of how we live.” Gabor Maté, MD

If we want a just world, we have to fight for it. We are not personally responsible for systemic racism, colonialism, the patriarchy, and oppression. No one person is responsible for this system. We are each responsible for understanding, grappling with the complexity, and taking action now. Seeing and speaking truth in community changes us. When we do, it changes the world.

I was raised to be racist. I was eleven and had just purchased We Shall Overcome, a songbook from the US Civil Rights movement. I brought it with me on a visit to my mom’s parents farm. I vaguely remember her discouraging me from bringing it. It would have been better if she had outright told me no, but then she would have had to tell me why.

“We step up and face the situation (clean pain), or we fold and shrink away. We either grow up or flee. We make an internal commitment to growing up.” Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands.

When people are in fight/ flight/ freeze, they don’t have reliable access to higher level brain development. Driven by competition, fear and survival, it’s “us against them”. We can know these are trauma responses, yet still have a hard time staying connected and not shutting down. We need clarity and to be strategic.