Sustaining Circumstances
Recently, I recognized another circumstance in resolving karma. For various reasons, when some karma completes, we may not let it go. Put another way, even though the consequences have completed, there is some aspect that …
Category: Mind
Story Follows State
“Story follows State.” This is a term from polyvagal theory. What it means is the state of our nervous system drives our perception and that drives our narratives. In the most obvious example, when we …
The Quality of What We Believe
Being able to distinguish truth from distortion is a key ability that can develop in our teen years when the prefrontal cortex (forebrain) comes online. However, we may lean more on peers or those we …
Working with Emotional Resistance
In this video, Ben Tannahill of Drunken Buddha discusses how and why we learn to resist experiencing emotions and how to adjust for that so we can resolve them. Ben is a somatic therapy practitioner …
Hidden Structures
Fundamentally, consciousness structures who we are and everything we experience. The physical world has been built up in layers. There are 7 primary layers (koshas) in this process. And there are 7 primary chakras (energy …
Parenting from a Trauma-informed Lens
Two of my teachers I’m studying with at The Centre For Healing did a class on trauma-informed parenting. (They talk for about an hour.) The 5 key steps: 1) Understanding trauma, emotional imprints, and the …
The Levels of Thinking
Back in the 1950s, Bloom developed a taxonomy of thinking ability for educators and exam writers. They revised it in 2001. It has 6 levels, with a style of thinking (of using the mind and …
Qualities of the Self
Recently, I listened to a workshop discussing Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Polyvagal Theory. IFS is a psychological model. “Internal Family” is a reference to our system of sub-personalities, what I call the roles we …
The Fall of Self-Esteem
During the 1980s, popular psychology promoted the importance of self-esteem. This was both widely promoted and widely mocked as self-absorption. The issue with self-esteem is when it’s measured by our achievements, expectations, and social norms. …
On Anxiety, Again
Anxiety is considered normal in modern western culture. And yet, it’s your body telling you that something is wrong. What is anxiety? Anxiety is an activated state of the nervous system created by a feeling …
The Stages of Trauma Recovery
When I say trauma, you may think of a car accident or something like that. However, trauma is a very common adaption to overwhelming experiences we’ve had throughout our life. For example, when my illness …
What is the Subconscious Mind?
In a recent Embodied Processing class, the instructors described our body as the subconscious mind. While I find this a little imprecise, they went on to explain that this is because our body is an …