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Climate change

By Kristy Johnsson.  

They march the articles out across our newsfeeds: pictures of the Statue of Liberty submerged in water up to her chest, horrifying headlines reading “Are humans going extinct?”, images of forests on fire.

When I’m in a certain emotional space around this topic, I’ll sometimes walk outside and sit in the tall seeding grass, beside the conifers, willows, and aspen. I just sit there, feeling my body pulsing under me, the subtle river of sensations cascading through me, my attention hanging close to my breath, and to the movement of the brush around me. I feel suspended in time, this precious moment.

The teeming world around me feels alive, mysterious, other-worldly. It hits me that we used to see trees as people, that some cultures still do, and I feel why. I sense a subtle beingness in those trees, and then think about how old colleagues in the sciences would have had a coronary over that statement. I used to not be able to stay this still; the pain inside me was like a never-ending torrent overwhelming and drowning me. These days it’s different. I settle more easily, these barely perceptible undercurrents of life around me more noticeable as I do.

I feel a quiet begging inside, too.

‘Please. Where do I belong in this? Is this what it will come to? After everything, is this how it unfolds? I’m scared, but I’ll do it. What do you want me to do?’

I start to cry, my core heaving, noticing the sensations in my body as I feel a gentle insight (or a response?) that I don’t need to do anything. I’m okay, sitting here, right now.

Ah, the sweet spot.

Every time I meet these feelings of desperation and fear, and yet still honor and witness the protest in me, the thrashing and chaotic thoughts, without losing contact with where I am, something magical happens:

My embodiment of the dying culture that got us here becomes palpable. Those thoughts and beliefs, and the pain that tends to be associated with them, pop out in my awareness and I can see our culture manifest in my body-mind. I don’t fight any of it. I don’t berate it for killing our world, countless people, our bodies and souls. I see it play out, and in the space of seeing it, there’s room for new life: I realize that I don’t have to do anything to save this planet, or other people, or even myself. Nor do I have to do anything to be good or enough.

And then something even more beautiful happens, effortlessly and naturally: I find that feeling my good enoughness – including my pain and struggling – transmutes into motivation to step out into this holy mess anyway. Because I’m grateful to be alive. Because I’m in love with this wild planet.

To read more about Kristy Johnsson, click here.

Being in the world and being of Love

By Lisa Meuser.  

“Deepen, that is where your reality lies. That is how you will find your place, and how you will find your true center.  You are created matter… You are part of the great plan, an indispensable part. You are needed; you have your own unique share in the freedom of creation.”
Madeleine L’Engle, “A wind in the door”

I have been quiet lately. By quiet, I mean I’ve not written much on FB, or much in general. This has been a time of deep listening, learning, and engaging from that place of learning.

This has been a very rich time. I’ve been saturated. More than normal.

In addition to my already full life of clients, students, family and inner work, I’ve been participating in a diversity intensive[1], engaging in more social justice in my community, and furthering my experiential learning of Relational Cultural Theory/Therapy with people in my community.

 

From Quiet, to Engaged.

After spending years quietly focusing on family, clients and students, and self-study, my scope for 2019 widened. I didn’t know what I was moving towards; I only knew that I had been separate from engaging with life, and that my nervous system was ready to be more of a participant with life.  It’s not that my life had become easy or even boring, but there was certainly complacency on some level that was keeping me from fully partaking as a human being on this planet, and something in me could feel this. It was time to grow up, and out. Easy to say, but no small step for me! Moving out of the nest of familiarity can often be challenging, as it requires a willingness to be in new terrain and in beginner’s mind. Hello uncertainty! Hello discomfort!

I tend to gravitate towards the familiar – to what is known. A friend from my ashram days – where I spent some of my 20s and 30s – recently reminded me how insular we were. We lived in a tiny town, focused on our own internal growth, and were disconnected from the well-being of the world. Disconnected indeed.

As I look back from what I see now, I recognize the dysfunction and the privilege – and I also see how we were rooted in the dominant narrative. In our chosen deniability and separation, we did not consider intersectionality, inter-dependence, inclusivity, collaboration, or a global sense of community. As my friend reminded me, “we were rather self-interested.”  Moreover, the practices were rooted in hierarchy, competitiveness, secrecy, and us/them thinking.

Of course, I didn’t know anything about that then. It has been over the last few years – the last one particularly – that I’ve awoken from a deep slumber of cultural denial. As shared in my blog post “Loosening the Grip of Oppression,” it is so easy for us to cling to these dominant narratives when we’ve been born and bred to accept them as truth. My various teachers always moved from this paradigm, collecting many followers along the way who were eager to fix themselves and be told how to do it using various linear approaches.  Yup, that was me.

Although things are different for me now, I still am discovering how to embody a different way. Luckily I am surrounded by people who are interested in similar evolutionary trajectories. We stumble and learn in practical ways together – returning again and again to beginner’s mind, collaboration, transparency, inclusion of all people, and focus on connection and relationship.

 

Waking Up out of the Dominant Narrative

Life brings us just what we need, and for me Brig Feltus, my Heal Thyself teacher, was just that. I had been eyeing the Heal Thyself Diversity Training for months, but was too immersed in teaching my own courses. When summer came and I found myself in between training groups, something in me knew that although I was still busy, it would be the perfect time to do this course.

I was only days into the course when I started to realize how the dominant narrative had a hold on me in very subtle yet impactful ways. I saw my insecurities, I saw my fears, and I saw my strategies. I watched myself trying to “do it right” (a binary approach), rather than embrace the vulnerability and curiosity of beginner’s mind. I found myself ignoring my own truths and adapting to others so as to decrease conflict and make things “easier” for the group, forgetting that with integrity, conflict can be growth-fostering. A few times I noticed I was being competitive with myself, trying push myself to meet deadlines, rather than admit that I was struggling and needed to engage in self-care.

I was able to notice all these things rather quickly because I already have a practice rooted in self-awareness, but also because Brig had lovingly created a beautiful container for us to explore and grow in.

As tends to happen, what I was learning in her course immediately became applicable all areas of my life, allowing me to participate from a deeper level of honesty, and from a deeper place of connection and Love. I was able to get more real with all of the engagements of my life, as well as be more in integrity with how I was participating.

 

Deeping Into My True Center

Patterns get in the way of us being in true integrity with ourselves, and keep us from being connection with Love. Connecting to these patterns in myself was exactly what I needed, to deepen even more into what Madeleine L’engle names as my “true center.”

The dominant narrative of our culture, in which we’ve all been raised, keeps us separate from life, and separate from ourselves. It does not teach us how to participate with our whole beings; it does not want us to find our true center. When we embark upon a journey to wake up, to transform, we discover a life of learning (1) what we’ve been taught, (2) what possibilities exist, and, (3) if we’re lucky and have good teachers and guides, how to get from what we’ve known, to what we want to know, live, and Be.

I am lucky.

I no longer gravitate towards modalities, teachers or people who move from the dominant narrative of self-improvement and self-bettering in an individualistic or capitalistic way, and I am no longer that kind of teacher or therapist. Instead I am surrounded by people who value and acknowledge that humans are genetically designed to be in relationship with life, and in relationship with Love. We live and learn together.

 

Being in the world and being of Love

My intention for this year – “Being in the world and being of Love”- continues to invite me to deepen, deepen, and deepen some more. Relationships with people are deepening, my level of participating with my community is deepening, the way in which I connect with my clients and students is deepening, the way that I’m being in integrity with myself is deepening, and the way that I’m being “of Love” continues to constantly deepen.

I am always learning. It is humbling to be a forever student, and in my experience, we must constantly assume beginners mind if we are to truly deepen. This can feel counterintuitive and challenging, but when we have support, our nervous systems become more resourced, and we can learn with more ease.

Many of you reading are my clients and students, and I am deeply appreciative that we journey and learn together. What an amazing life this is!  I am profoundly grateful for all those I connect with: I know how privileged I am to have this life.

May we all have the support to deepen, to find our true center, for we are all a “part of the great plan, an indispensable part. You are needed; you have your own unique share in the freedom of creation.” Blessed be.

[1] https://www.intersectionformankind.com/stories/2018/11/28/heal-thyself-a-diversity-intensive-for-healers-and-life-coaches

To read more about Lisa Meuser, click here.

Fear, Hope and Dreams… and Connection

By Lisa Meuser.  

These words plopped into my system one afternoon when I was in “way deep”. By way deep, I mean in communion with the raw essentials of life – that place where the universe whispers wisdom.

I could feel the universality of these words as they dropped in my lap, so to speak. Amidst all the differences that humans possess, it seems to me that we all have these three flavors running around in our being to varying degrees.

More than that, they are often co-existing and happening at the very same time.

That felt profound because we often try to have, or create homogenous experiences. In other words, we have beliefs or ideas that X is bad, and Z is good. And so we strive. We fight. We push and struggle to try to have a certain kind of experience whilst trying not to have another kind of experience. So, we may try to be “all happy”, for example, with no sadness. Or, we may try to feel “all good (comfortable).” A hidden assumption is the idea that if we have some sadness, all we are is sad, or if we have some discomfort, we have no comfort.

The reality is that humans are vast, and varied. We have the capacity to hold many resonances at once – even conflicting ones. We can be both hot AND cold. We can have some pain, and some experiences of comfort. We can be sad, and ok. All at the same time.

Being conscious of this frees us from having to resist or constrain our experiences. When we leave the restrictive and limited territory of either/or, and enter the vast territory of AND, we find a very different relationship with life. And, in the process, we discover allowance and kindness.

So… when it became clear to me – from the depths of my being  – that we can have fear, AND have hope, AND have dreams all at the same time, something big popped open and my system felt safer than it ever had.

There was a time when life was different for me – when fear wasn’t allowed, and when safety was not a lived reality.

 

FEAR. Hope? Dreams? 

For most of my life, I lacked a conscious relationship with fear. Instead my system had built up a habit of denying fear. Rather than acknowledge fear, I got lost in hope and dreams, and stayed disconnected from the reality of my experience.

This may not sound like such a bad way to live, except that to live in denial is to live in separation. Because I wasn’t able to connect to fear, I had to stay disconnected from my body, and I had to live in my head. My fear of fear kept me out of my body, and as such, kept me out of full participation with life. The hopes and dreams that I had weren’t embodied – they were rather superficial, lacking substance of being, and were mental replacements for being fully engaged with life.

It is not possible to fully participate with life when one is in one’s head, when one is trying to discount the human experience, and when one is pretending one’s way through life.

In trying to avoid fear, I fawned, faked and fucked my way through life in a way that helped me survive, but didn’t help me thrive. From the outside I seemed fearless. On the inside, I didn’t really acknowledge that fear existed. I was disconnected from my body to such an extent that I had very little self-awareness or conscious relationship with my experiences. I was involved in a façade that even I was unaware of.

 

Fear. Fear. Fear. Hope? … Dreams?

A series of things happened in my life that woke me up and brought my ability and desire to pretend to a screeching halt. As my psyche fell apart, so did my strategies. I went from being disconnected from fear, to being consumed by fear. All the ways I had maneuvered through life were gone. It is devastating when a personality loses its way – when all the pretending and strategies don’t work anymore.

I think back to those days, which I think of as my own personal hell, but which others have named “the dark night of the soul.” The hardest part of that time period was the over-abundance of fear, and minimal sense of hope or dreams. During that time, I could not see through my fear. Hence, the dark night reference.

When we’re in a dark room, we can’t see what is coming, or where we’re going. And it can be terrifying. As my psyche crumbed, my lack of knowing if things would ever get better, and the fear that they would not, led to constant suicide ideation.

It was a compassionate friend and loving somatic therapists who allowed me to keep going, to see what might happen…  to have a sliver of hope. The love and support they provided was a balm to my nervous system, keeping the flame of hope and shadows of dreams a possibility. The gift of heart connection was powerful in ways I didn’t fully understand then. It allowed me to keep on keeping on, whilst wanting to be done (i.e. dead) every day.

 

Fear. Hope, Dreams, too.

It took me a while to get real with fear. It was uncomfortable, humiliating, terrorizing, destabilizing. It was a scary time. Until it wasn’t.

Slowly, over time, I started to have spontaneous moments where small resonances of hope started to pop through as things started to feel different. It was as if, even in the darkness, some light had made its way through. The darkness became less threatening and less suffocating. I started to experience space.

This makes me wonder if it’s programmed into our DNA coding to hope, and to dream, amidst fear and darkness. Maybe it is our ability to imagine – to dream – that allows the chemicals needed to boost hope, even when the reality of our lives is dismal. Maybe it is in honoring fear, that these others once again find life. And maybe it is through connection that these sparks of hopes and dreams stay lit.

 

Fear, Hope, Dreams

One day the fear of fear switched into a sincere and safe relationship with fear. The over-abundance of fear softened, the resonances of hopes and dreams increased, and a trust in life revealed itself. No longer were hopes and dreams a way to evade the present moment, or to fake my way through life. Instead hopes and dreams were the resonances of life and creation in motion.

As my system is now safe to acknowledge fear’s existence, my system feels so much stronger, so much more empowered and has a deepened sense of trust. It is strange to think that getting honest about fear can lead to empowerment. After all, wouldn’t it just yield more fear? In my experience, no.

Waking up can be an unbelievably counterintuitive process. When I fully acknowledge fear, instead of turning from it, hope springs forth with ease and playfulness and curiosity. It doesn’t come as an escape, or as a bypass, or as a strategy to feel ok. Hope comes as a form of creation, birthed from creation.

From creation comes something deeper – dreams. Perhaps it takes some safety to dream, to have vision. We’ve all likely either been in difficult spots ourselves, or known someone, or seen movies with characters, who have had their dreams beaten out of them. Trauma can do that to a person.  However, I have a hunch that it is in our human coding to dream, and I think, even in those darkest times, something lies dormant, in-waiting, that sustains the existence of dream energy.

I’m thinking of a time in my life when vision melded with dream energy, hope, and fear. It was after the experience of a miscarriage, a time that was filled with much confusion and devastation. On the heels of that experience, a life-altering vision came my way. I was gifted an understanding of how trauma works as a part of the human matrix, and it became my dream to connect with people using this new approach. It was this vision that birthed my private practice, which I named Integrative Healing.

There was also fear during this time: I was beginning a new business, utilizing an approach that didn’t have reputation or proof, and moving from mothering full time back into a potential career for myself. It felt as if hope and fear held a tension that catapulted me into a great adventure. I didn’t let fear hold me back, but met it full on, as I stayed true to the hopes and dreams that were birthing. Honoring the fear, as well as the hopes and dreams, allowed me to move deeper into my passion of building connection with people and with life.

 

Fear, Hope, and Dreams… and Connection

I wonder if science will one day find a way to measure the accuracy of this. I can only go off of my own lived experience, and the experiences I have as a somatic therapist. I’ve been in dark places. I have had clients in dark places. Did we have hopes, and dreams, amidst our fears? While sometimes experienced as dormant, it seems to me that yes, we did. In the darkest of times, the power of love and connection brought me back to possibility over, and over, and over again.

The more conscious we become of that which holds us back – fear – the more hopes and dreams are free to birth themselves into creation. We are at a pivotal time in history – it is the perfect time to learn how to develop a healthy relationship with fear, rather than be immobilized by it.

May we all move towards accessing the creative energies necessary to birth a better tomorrow. May we all learn how to tap into the resonances of embodiment. May we all feel safe to be with the magnitude of being human, and learn how to connect with each other – to support and love each other together – in our dance of fear, hopes and dreams.

To read more about Lisa Meuser, click here.

The Dance of Life

By Lisa Meuser.  

I went to a 5 Rhythms[1] (5R) retreat over the weekend.  If you’re unfamiliar with 5R, it is an organization devoted to freedom, utilizing dance. As with all sacred work, the 5R container is carefully crafted to invite, invoke, ignite and inspire… mind, body and spirit.

5R uses music to tap into resonances that live through all human beings, but often get blocked, denied, ignored, numbed, or stuck. Different words can be used to explain the resonances but in the 5R world they are named as “Flow, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical and Stillness.”

Just as all emotions are crucial to know the expression of wholeness, all rhythms are important in the human journey of embodiment. They all have their time and place, depending on the contextual moment of an individual. There is no “wrong” rhythm or “bad” rhythm. Phew!

If you’ve read my posts before, you might be seeing how this practice aligns so much with what is already woven throughout my life.

  • Deeply inherent in this practice (and my life) is the movement away from the dominant narrative that is rule-bound, controlling and linear, to the transformative narrative which values inclusion of expression, both/and perspectives, and connection.[2]
  • There is a focus on embodiment – of allowing what is, to be felt, expressed, and honored. Another way of saying this – it is deeply enlivening.
  • There is an honoring of the human experience in all its flavors: hard, soft, spacious, rigid, flowing, contracted and divine – and so much more.
  • 5R is a kinesthetic practice – I love involving my body in conscious engagement!
  • Sacred space is important in this practice. We are waking up in the collective, uniquely. Safety, trust and love are inherent.
  • The practice is rooted in simplifying, connecting with the ordinary and practical (which, in my experience is often profound), and being in direct experience. Too often we are distracted by the conceptual mind, and what is literally right . here . and . now is disguised.
  • Empowering the participants is a primary focus. Participants follow what feels right for them and are not forced or required to participate in any particular kind of way. No agenda. No fixing. In that space of no agenda, worlds open up, and what hadn’t been seen, comes into view… what hadn’t taken form, finds wholeness in being.


Gifts of the Rhythms

My life is set up to support me in connecting with my un/subconscious – habits, conditioning, patterning, strategies, and so on, that may exist outside of my attention. This practice is similar, in that by exploring the different rhythms I was invited to connect below the surface level into those subtle layers of uncharted territories.


Flow

Take Flow, for example, the first of the 5 rhythms. Flow energy is that kind of adaptable fluidity that can be considered a feminine energy. Think of how a woman’s hips can move with a certain kind of expression that may not be as innate in a man. In the dance it is distinguished as flowing, continuous movements.  In my life, I’ve often had too much of an ability to flow – or adapt. As a survivor, it became a strategy to adapt to those around me – to become who they wanted me to be, or to try to be a certain kind of someone – so as to avoid rejection or abandonment. As a young person, I learned to adapt to stay safe, but then later in life that adapting no longer kept me safe. Too much fluidity made me ripe for abusive dynamics when I was an adult. To help shift that conditioning, I’ve needed to learn about and to employ staccato energy in my life.


Staccato

Staccato energy is another of the rhythms. It is more of a masculine energy by nature, and can be distinguished by more rigid movements in the dance. Staccato energy teaches us how to have healthy boundaries, to stay true to our own wisdom even when it feels risky, and to stay in the simple clarity of Love. This is a resonance that I lived most of my life without. It has been extremely empowering to discover this energy – and to know that I can be fully open in my heart, connected with Love, while having boundaries.

There was one paired exercise where we were invited to be in staccato energy while staying in our open hearts. I so appreciated being able to engage in this in such a kinesthetic, full-bodied way.  Too often, the mind is trying to manage us into a homogenous experience. “I need to say YES to everything to be a loving individual!” As such we get caught in a trap. The mind says that if we have boundaries, or say no, it must mean we’re not being loving. Although that may be the belief, it is simply not true. With practice, we can discover that we can say no, set a clear boundary, AND be open hearted. Embodying paradoxes is powerful!


Chaos

Another powerful experience was being in the rhythm of Chaos. As the name might give away, chaos can be rather whirlwindish. For survivors, we often detest this energy because it was the energy of our childhood. And yet, because we dislike it so much, we wind up creating or being involved with dramatic (and traumatic) lives and people because of our inability to have boundaries. In the chaotic rhythm we learn that we can have both flow AND boundaries. We learn that it is safe to be in chaos, out of strategy, and in the disruption of old patterning. We learn that in life there is a creative flow that awaits our participation – if we can open to it, it is ours!!!

Many times the chaos rhythm took me towards immense states of freedom – old ideas of myself falling away effortlessly as more of me was available to the expansive energy of the creative field.


Lyrical and Stillness

Dancing through chaos, I fell into the rhythm of Lyrical, where a sense of space opens up for integration, and a sense of lightness emerges. And then finally, into the rhythm of Stillness, where completion reveals itself in slow, if not motionless, expression.

Many times, on the other side of Chaos, I found myself in an awe-inspired ecstasy with God – in a union with the utter vastness of grand design. Tears falling down my face, in the holiest of the holy – in the Magnificence itself.

Another paradox revealed itself to me through the weekend. While Stillness does have its own rhythm in the practice of 5R, stillness also can be maintained throughout all of the other rhythms. I remember one time, in the energy of Staccato, where I was connecting to anger and rage, there was a sense of stillness running through me at the very same time. Said another way, it became clear to me that Love/God co-exists with everything. EV.ER.Y.TH.ING. The embodiment of paradoxes is profoundly transformative.


Embrace your Dance, Embrace your Life

Over the course of the weekend we were summoned to engage with the energetic resonances that live deep within our being. This is no small task, but it is a task that we choose to fall into, with guidance, support and love[3].

Although it may seem like it, this isn’t an advertisement for 5R. This blog post is about the celebration of life as a human being – and the dances we engage in. I invite you to engage in your humanity in whatever way allows you to dance, metaphorically or literally, with your humanity.

I invite you to know the expressions, or rhythms, of your human self, and to experiment in and with them, with conscious curiosity. Many of you do this with me in 1:1 sessions, in trainings, in gatherings, and/or in deepening courses. I look forward to our continued dance, in deep courage, compassion, and love.

To read more about Lisa Meuser, click here.

[1] https://www.5rhythms.com

[2] I wrote about the dominant/transformative narratives here.

[3] Thanks to Visudha de Los Santos (and David Watters for bringing 5R to Bloomington).

What Elephant? Naming Systemic Oppression

By Lisa Meuser.  
Artist Alexis Morgan.

Oh, the elephant in the room! You know the one, the topic that people don’t talk about. In my most recent blog post about embodiment and waking up, there was an elephant in the room that I didn’t mention. I know in my heart that if we’re going to talk about embodiment and waking up, we have to talk about oppression. It’s the elephant in the room, and it’s an elephant we have to purposefully wake up to.

Why oppression? Why me? I’m not oppressing anyone! I’m not being oppressed[1]!

Why does it even matter? I wrote about waking up to my own internalized racism and how it counter-intuitively brought me closer to Love. Here’s a summary: waking up to and connecting with oppression in the world allowed me to connect with, and to, the oppression in myself. Waking up and connecting further to the oppression within myself then allowed me to wake up even more to the oppression in the world. My heart broke open, wider, and deeper. My fragility shifted and, quite surprisingly, my sense of being safe in the world increased. It was all rather unexpected. Then I started seeing this happen with my clients.

We do not exist in isolation; rather, we exist in relationship. A deeper sense of embodiment and safety with life develops, as a healthier and more honest relationship with the world within and outside of oneself is cultivated.

My relationship with Love, compassion, and safety has never been the same and only continues to grow and expand, as I keep being honest with the ways I oppress others as well as myself. I continue to learn, and hope what I share will be helpful for you on your journey. May we learn together.

 

Oppression traumatizes

Oppression is in the air we breathe, proliferating unrecognized by most in our family structures, our religious and spiritual modalities, and our political, health care, judicial, and educational institutions. Oppression is traumatizing to the oppressed as well as the oppressor. As a client shared with me about his lineage of slave owners, “You can’t oppress people and not have your soul ripped out of you.”

Here is the biggest elephant in the room: oppression has bled into the very structure of our beings. We have systematically been taught beliefs, ideas, and ways to cope (by an oppressive culture) that lead us to oppress ourselves (and each other).

Oppression has been internalized into the composition of our minds, psyches, and somatic systems.

Is it any wonder that we often feel like our own worst enemy?

Is it any wonder that we wind up hating ourselves and others, as we unknowingly oppress and traumatize through our words, thoughts, and deeds?

Is it any wonder why embodiment and healing are so darn hard or why those in the social justice arena get burned out so fast or become bogged down in darkness? When we can’t see oppression in the existence of our lives or within our psychological makeup, we are unable to function as sustainable change agents – even when we have the best intentions.

 

Opening our eyes to what we value

None of us have escaped from the tendrils from oppression[2], and we suffer immensely (and inflict suffering on others) when we do not look at what these tendrils are connected to. It might help to see these webs by exploring the values of our dominant modern-day culture alongside transformative[3] or alternative values.

When we study the tenets of prevalent modern-day culture, we find the following dominant attributes:

  • Power-over dynamics.
  • Authoritarianism.
  • Competitiveness.
  • Focus on the individual.
  • Overemphasis on the mental/linearity.
  • Secrecy.
  • Struggle for/consolidation of power via hierarchy.
  • Scarcity.
  • Either/or thinking.
  • Us/them thinking.
  • Blame
  • Focus on achievement and outcome.
  • Exclusion of the past
  • Exclusion of people of certain demographics.

When we study the tenets of what we might call transformative or “life-valuing” culture, we find attributes such as:

  • Power-with dynamics.
  • Accountability/responsibility.
  • Shared power.
  • Inclusion of heart and spirit.
  • Focus on the collective/on “we.”
  • Collaboration and cooperation.
  • Transparency.
  • Recognition of past.
  • Abundance.
  • Both-and thinking.
  • “Us” thinking.
  • Transformation and integration.
  • Focus on the process/the journey.
  • Inclusion of all people.
  • Focus on connection and relationship.

Twenty-five years ago, in my early days as a social worker, it became undeniable that the dominant values in our culture were not for the good of all people. Having recognized this, I wanted to explore other ways of being in the world. I soon found that this was easier said than done.

As I started to experiment with these paradigm shifts, although my heart and intent were often in the right place, I often found myself utilizing the tenets of oppressive culture in my attempts to change it. I also noticed that I was not the only one who wanted to do good but kept getting bound up in oppressive ways. [4]

I hadn’t realized that oppression was not just around me¾oppression was in me.

 

The macro and the micro reflect each other

Changing our narratives is a process, and it requires conscious exploration to discover that oppression lives deep within our very psyches and somatic systems.

When we study the psyche within many of us, we will find a profusion of tenets that tend to exist within our oppressive culture:

  • Competitiveness.
  • Self-loathing and lack of abundance.
  • Reliance on over-thinking.
  • Disconnection from and fear of others.
  • Striving to feel safe through a sense of power and control.
  • Bypassing the past or acknowledging cultural impact.
  • Hiding behavior (the inability to be honest with one’s self).
  • Restrictive thought patterns.
  • Right-wrong/good-bad (either-or) thinking[5].
  • Pathology of our humanity.

These tenets also promote a sense of fear in the body or disconnect from the body altogether. Even though there are usually life-affirming traits as well, these are often overshadowed by the dominant values of our culture.

The narratives most of us carry are rooted in the very same things that our cultures prize, encourage, and teach. Could it be that culture is teaching us to suffer? Could it be that culture doesn’t want us to be free?

When we study the psyche of a “healthy” or life-valuing person, we will find the tenets of transformational culture:

  • A sense of abundance that allows for open and curious connections.
  • A sense of well-being.
  • Honesty (including “the dark side”).
  • Inclusion of heart and body.
  • Accountability and responsibility.
  • Allowance and acceptance of the vast terrain of being human.
  • Acknowledgment of the past and the culture we are a part of.

There is often an accepting relationship with the body, where a willingness to experience its vast landscape replaces past habits of trying to control or limit. Sure, there will likely still be some oppressive tenets found within “healthy people,” but even those will be met with more inclusion and less self-judgment.

Could it be that, by learning new ways of being, we create new narratives within ourselves? Based on my experience, yes. Is it any surprise that these values are a natural part of the embodiment process? I find it an exciting “coincidence”!

In my study of waking up, and in working with hundreds of people who have been on the waking up and healing journey, I have seen radical narrative and experiential transformations. In each case, there had been a fierce sense of oppression within their psyche, a base they worked from and were fiercely bound to until they consciously started to learn another way. Over time, the dominant values slowly changed into transformative, life-affirming values. Along the way, their suffering started to turn into a healthy relationship with life, allowing them to be more effective change agents in the world.

When we fail to connect with our internalized oppressive existence, we continue to harm others as well as ourselves. Being change agents for the well-being of all embraces inclusion, “we-ness,” connectivity, intimacy, love, openness, abundance, and possibility. In the denial of nothing, we stop oppressing ourselves and those around us.

 

So, Now What?

In my blog post about embodiment, I left out the elephant in the room. I didn’t specifically write about how important it is for us to inquire into our relationship with the oppression found in racism, sexism, nationalism, capitalism, classism, gender/sexual orientation, fatism, ableism, and others. When we don’t address these topics, we deny, ignore, and exclude reality. We cannot live as embodied people when we are ignoring the reality of humanity. When we live apart from the hearts of those who are oppressed, we have to live in separation. In this state of separation, we suffer and experience oppression within, and in the process often cause harm to others.

I readily admit, for most of my life, I have tried to stay removed from the hearts of those who experience the horror of systemic pain. I thought I had to figure out my suffering and pain first, as I felt too fragile to “get real” with the pain of systemic oppression. But then a strange thing happened:

One day, with the support of my somatic therapist, I was feeling despair and defeat with regards to the imprisonment of immigrant children coming in from Mexico. I wanted to turn away from it, as it reminded me of my own despair and defeat with regards to past experiences of being trapped and violated. The pain in my body was too much. I just wanted to be mad about it¾and I was. I was enraged at our government and felt that heat move through my body.

“It was all too much,” I said out loud, grabbing my heart as if to protect it.

As I named this experience, something that was already shifting started to shift some more. With the compassionate presence of my therapist, I started to fall into a pain that was deep in my heart. This pain took me in, all the way in. It felt excruciating, like it would never end, as I kept turning towards those children separated from their families as well as my own lived pains.

The heart I came out of was wider and deeper than I had ever known. I felt a Love that included both myself and those children in a way that had never felt safe to feel. It was then that my sense of fragility started to fade, and I was able to be more real with life.

My depth of empathy and compassion with others experiencing horrid pain and suffering was different from that moment going forward. My ability to look directly at the oppressive matrix of our culture became clearer, and as a result my training to pathologize human pain and suffering further diminished.

 

Curiosity Changes Everything

I understand that not everyone is going to have the privilege of having the resources, resourcing, time, and most importantly, support of others. However, I hope those who are reading this post can at least ask themselves some big questions, which may create some space for deeper connections with the world we live in.

The relationship we have with reality reveals the quality of our relationship with God[6], with life, with creation, and with existence itself. Are we open to God? Are we open to life? Are we open to seeing the flavors of reality? Are we open to learning? Are we open to including more?

We often filter out oppression because we feel conflicted and uncomfortable, and many of us were never taught how to be with discomfort. When we don’t know how to be with discomfort, we suffer more because we have to increasingly limit our experiences to keep out what we don’t like. Ultimately, we wind up controlled by our fears, but will often try to control and oppress others as an attempt to escape that sense of debilitation. The cycle ensues.

Everything is connected¾when one of us is oppressed, we are all impacted. When one of us authentically frees ourselves from the web of oppression, a light shines for others to follow. As Rumi once said, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” Can we find the willingness to move towards that light?

 

A New Way Forward

Some reading this blog post are in full acceptance that oppression is systemically woven into our culture. Thank you for all that you are doing to address the toxicity in our world. I hope that this has been helpful as a reminder that, to be change agents in the world, we must look inward at our oppressive makeup. As we work to change the system, we have to address our internal levels of psychic and somatic oppression; otherwise, we will stay in the same oppressive loop. We cannot employ the toxicity of the dominant paradigm to get to well-being; rather, we must embody life-affirming values to make effective, sustainable change.

Many who want or have access to opportunity and privilege are disconnected from the reality of oppression. Some of these individuals are also interested in healing and well-being. If this describes you, I hope you will be willing to become more aware of the systemic and systematic practices that our culture is rooted in, as there is no other way to break the oppressive loop.

Oppressive values govern not only the oppressed but those who enjoy our culture’s privileges, as well. Our circumstances do not mean that our internal landscape is free from oppression. As we become willing to take a look at the external landscape that we are enmeshed in, we will become more aware of what is keeping us from rooting in well-being and fully participating in life.


Let’s Journey Together

Oppressing others is traumatic to the oppressor’s psyche. Oppression always breeds more oppression within both oneself and others. Unless consciously integrated, this trauma, oppression, and violence are passed on to future generations. We live in a culture that is paying the price for this repressed and unacknowledged trauma. Black or Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC), the poor, and other marginalized peoples continue to suffer the greatest and most overtly.

We cannot be embodied human beings while immersed in oppression, either from within our psyches or in how we interact with the world. If we are not aware of our oppression, the oppressive system of our culture, and the oppressive system within our psyche, we and our world are doomed to suffer. As we connect with oppression both inside and outside ourselves, transformation becomes inevitable.

Being able to name and then consciously explore the matrix of systemic oppression as it lives within my psyche and the fabric of our culture has been a necessary and fundamental part of my embodiment journey. It is impossible to convey the level of safety and well-being I have now compared to when I was bound by the values of our dominant culture.

It all started by asking curious questions of myself and being willing to look honestly at and feel deeply into who I was, who I wanted to be, and how much harm I was creating in my life. Change comes through honesty and vulnerability. It’s not always easy, but in my experience, it’s always worth it. A lot of us are waking up together¾there is much more support available than ever before! I look forward to continuing to learn with you.

 

Practical Explorative Options

  1. Unsure as to your level of internalized oppression? Take some of the Harvard Implicit bias tests free here: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html.
    When we don’t know our biases, we live in a choiceless world, bound by the bidding and the wiles of oppression.
  2. Questions you can ask yourself:
    • What resonance does the voice in your head speak with?
    • Does your internal voice tend to be kind and loving? If not, whose voice is that? Is that how a caregiver used to speak to you? A teacher?
    • What does that harsh narrative need or want? Does it want support? Safety? Love? Be curious!
    • When you listen to perspectives from marginalized peoples, such as BIPOC, women, and people with disabilities, what does that bring up in you?
    • Pay attention when you’re reading or listening. Which perspective are you hearing: the dominant narrative or the transformative narrative?
    • Do you feel defensive when you think about your privilege?
    • How do you employ dominant values while you are trying to do good in the world?
    • Do you become overtly or subtly violent as a change agent?
    • How are you unintentionally or intentionally oppressing others?
    • How are you oppressing yourself?
    • How can you support yourself, or be supported, as you journey into this vulnerable terrain?

Finding people and groups where I can have real conversations about these very real topics and challenges has been life-altering for me. You are not alone on this journey – there are people and groups to support you. We are growing and learning together. Please email me for more information or ideas.

  1. There are so many ways to learn about oppression. Journaling, combined with aspects of #2 above, can be a powerful practice. With that said, reading and listening to voices other than my own has probably been the most important part of my evolution.I’ve been compiling a list of resources to pass on, including books, Facebook pages, blogs, and podcasts. Feel free to email me for recommendations. Get clear on what you’d like to learn more about before you email me, and I’ll do my best to match you up to something that aligns with your request. Also, if you have a beloved source, please pass it on to me!

To read more about Lisa Meuser, click here.

[1] Some reading this blog post are in full acceptance that oppression is systemically woven into our culture. Are you aware that it is systemically woven into your psyche? This post is for you too!

[2] Oppression is in the very creation of western culture, and if you’re from the United States, it’s in the very fabric in which the United States came to be. There would be no United States of America if it had not been for the slave labor that quite literally manufactured and built up its existence, making the U.S. into a world power. Oppression is not unique to the U.S.¾world history is filled with it. This oppression is a systemic part of the world and has fused itself into our minds, our psyches, and our somatic existences.

[3] Some of this terminology comes from Crossroads, an amazing organization doing much good in the world.

[4] We commonly use violence or oppressive strategies while trying to eradicate violence: countries “bombing for peace,” spiritual teachers misusing their power, parents who spank their children for misbehaving, vegans who dogmatically judge those who eat animals, white feminists donning pussyhats, parents, friends or therapists who want to fix people, and trying to make people be accountable are a few examples that come to mind. I have participated in many of those just listed, creating harm in the process.

[5] Rigid right/wrong/good/bad thinking is the perfect breeding ground for what we can call “should energy.” It is very oppressive in that it is rooted in harsh judgments and often comes with shame. It also causes people to control and oppress others as a way to bypass the self-loathing that is often experienced in this oppressive thought structure.

[6] God- or whatever name we give to that existence that is wiser than our egoic sense of self.