Embodied Intimacy, Transformative Inquiry, Creative Emergence

Posts by Shayla

Drinking the Tears of the World ~ Start Close In

Posted by on Oct 1, 2019 in Featured Writing, Lifeletters & Articles | 7 comments

Drinking the Tears of the World ~ Start Close In

One morning a few weeks ago something became clear to me: I needed to work closer to home. I live on Vancouver Island, on the west coast of Canada—we don’t have many black people here. What we do have is our indigenous people, who have been living here, in this ecosystem, for over four thousand years.

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Calling All Humans

Posted by on Aug 21, 2019 in Featured Writing, Lifeletters & Articles | 3 comments

Calling All Humans

Dear friends: Last week I did something I have never done before. I sent out an email to 500 carefully selected people on my list. Here is what I said to them: “You don’t fall into any particular category–some of you I have not connected with in a long time. I am reaching out to you simply as human beings, who like me, are facing an immense global crisis right now. This crisis has many interweaving dimensions. I am focusing here on what we are calling ‘the climate...

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Well & Truly Grounded ~ Finding our roots in a time of collapse

Posted by on Mar 20, 2019 in Featured Writing, Lifeletters & Articles | 3 comments

Well & Truly Grounded ~ Finding our roots in a time of collapse

Today is the Equinox, the Spring Equinox for those of us in the North, the Fall Equinox for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere. Human beings have long regarded this as one of the four most powerful solar points of the year. The fact that it is happening on a super full moon makes this a time of power, possibility and transition. It seems there are more and more of these liminal moments emerging in our cosmic landscape, as we move more deeply into this collective experience of global...

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Becoming Fully Human ~ Responding to the Call of the Earth

Posted by on Feb 26, 2019 in Featured Writing, Lifeletters & Articles | 4 comments

Becoming Fully Human ~ Responding to the Call of the Earth

“We are coming down to earth, we will not arrive intact.” Bayo Akomolafe I meditate on this phrase of Bayo’s a lot. I have found so many echoes of its truth living in my body, in my heart and in my soul. Coming down to earth is not easy. We have been living in our heads, in the air, for a long time. And the price we are paying now, for this disconnection, this dissociation, is very high. We are being called now, from every direction, to re-inhabit the bodies we have left behind: the...

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Our Primary Satisfactions ~ Authentic Community & The Culture of Deprivation

Posted by on Feb 12, 2019 in Featured Writing, Lifeletters & Articles | 3 comments

Our Primary Satisfactions ~ Authentic Community & The Culture of Deprivation

I heard Francis Weller talk a while ago about ‘our primary satisfactions.’ The mere sound of those words aroused something: a tender feeling, in my body and heart, of how it would be to live inside the flow of those primary satisfactions. These nourishments are a response to our core needs, the fundamental needs we all share as human beings. The need for connection, for intimacy, for touch. The need to be held, the need to trust, and the need for respect, for autonomy, for...

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