somastudio.com.au

pedro — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 21:39:45 +0000

Every bad feeling is potential energy towards a more right way of being if you give it space to move towards its rightness.

The very existence of bad feelings within you is evidence that your body knows what is wrong and what is right. It must know what it would be like to feel perfect, or it could not evoke a sense of wrong.

Eugene Gendlin: Focusing.

pedro — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 21:34:24 +0000

To meet the client in his or uniqueness, we must let go of rigidly held assumptions or risk reducing the client to a shadowy player in our theoretical system.

In so far as we leave room for a sincere encounter, we have interpersonal therapy. Our professional demeanor has value, but our basic humanity, honest questioning, our awareness of personal limitation and our grounded presence encourages the deepest change in our clients. Mental knowledge, so essential in the development of our work, must translate down to blood and muscle, to our capacity ‘to be embodied’.

John P. Conger: The Body in Recovery.

pedro — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:54:15 +0000

Our deepest fear is not that
we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are
powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most
frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous - talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you NOT to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.

There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that
other people wont feel insecure about you.

We were born to make manifest the glory that is
within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in
everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we
unconsciously giver other people permission to do
the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence
automatically liberates others.

1994 Inaugural Speech
Nelson Mandela

pedro — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 02:24:52 +0000

In the process of training to become a practitioner in the healing professions we aim to develop: an alert and sensitive eye, ear and touch; a confident intuition; a simple honesty; a thorough and useful knowledge and a personal freedom which we may offer to others.

We must train ourselves; to find, to become and to surrender to ourselves, to find our strength, place, peace.

Our realm is contradiction and the creative force between polarities; Mind as an aspect of Body; Body as an aspect of Mind; inspecting the currents of time, and moving into the boundless simplicity of presence.

The essence of therapy is meditation, stillness out of which life wells.

Key Speyer
Somatic Psychotherapist

pedro — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 02:17:38 +0000

Stressful situations and unresolved emotional conflicts develop chronic muscular tensions. Chronic tension and rigidity diminish our aliveness as each contracted muscle blocks movement and inhibits our self-expression. The mind and body are directly connected so that a depressed mental state will contract the body and a contracted body will depress the mind. A decrease in the vital functioning of the body will inhibit motility, feeling and responsiveness, leading to depression. The more alive one is, the more energy one has. A free flow of energy allows one to effectively cope as the energy translates freely into spontaneous movement and expression.

Chris Campbell

pedro — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:53:03 +0000

We humans are a vast system of systems and subsystems; to make conscious use ofthe complex wisdom of the body isto achieve a sublime orchestral experience of the self and its many ecologies.

Jean Houston

pedro — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:10:12 +0000

In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in a inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the inter-related structure of reality.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

pedro — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:06:29 +0000

Teach your children
what we have taught our children -
that the earth is our mother.
Whatever befalls the earth
befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.

This we know.
The earth does not belong to us;
we belong to the earth.
This we know.
All things are connected
like the blood which unites one family.
All things are connected.

Whatever befalls the earth
befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.
We did not weave the web of life;
we are merely a strand in it.
Whatever we do to the web,
we do to ourselves.

Chief Seattle

pedro — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 07:56:27 +0000

To be of the earth is to know
the restlessness of being a seed
the darkness of being planted
the struggle towards the light
the pain and growth into the light
the joy of bursting and bearing fruit
the love of being food for someone
the scattering of your seeds
the decay of the seasons
the mystery of death
and the miracle of birth

John Soos

pedro — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 04:00:25 +0000

All through the body, holding things together and holding things up, is connective tissue. Tissue that connects. You might think of it as the body’s built-in cling wrap. This tissue has tremendous strength and resilience. It also has bio-electric properties - that is, when it is tugged gently, it generates tiny electrical impulses which are experienced by the body as comforting, healing and regenerative. When you stretch you are gently tugging these tissues all over your body.

Every kind of tissue has a favourite kind of movement and a favourite way of being stretched. Connective tissue loves to stretch, to stretch and be stretched. If you stretch juuuuust enough, your connective tissue will respond by producing the neurochemicals of pleasure.

This is a gift you can give yourself, (as connective tissue and as awareness), whenever you choose.

Julie Henderson. Embodying Wellbeing: How to Feel as Good as You Can In Spite of Everything.