Embodied Intimacy, Transformative Inquiry, Creative Emergence

Featured Writing

The Need to Worry ~ India & the uncontrollable nature of life

Posted by on May 1, 2018 in Featured Writing, Lifeletters & Articles | 3 comments

The Need to Worry ~ India & the uncontrollable nature of life

Many years ago, when my daughter was about ten, we left our home in the Himalayas of northern India, and went back to Canada for the summer. Trips back to the west were an ordeal for most of us, with some improbable delights thrown in. We took a taxi down treacherous mountain roads just to reach New Delhi, riding for hour after hour through hazards such as floods, car wrecks, illness, landslides and intense heat. After eighteen hours in flight, we would land like disoriented migrant birds,...

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A Safe Place To Fall ~ Taking Refuge in the Soft Spot

Posted by on Apr 24, 2018 in Articles by Shayla, Featured Writing | 2 comments

A Safe Place To Fall ~ Taking Refuge in the Soft Spot

“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness” ~Peter Levine~ Recently, during a training that I am part of, I had the privilege of holding a beautiful and brilliant young woman I admire, while she wept her heart out. Two other women also held her, softly, tenderly and with reverence. I could feel the medicine of her deep grief informing me, inviting me, softening me. I was so honoured to offer her a safe place to fall, into this river of...

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Your Come to Jesus Moment ~ The Alchemy of True Humility

Posted by on Apr 17, 2018 in Featured Writing, Lifeletters & Articles | 5 comments

Your Come to Jesus Moment ~ The Alchemy of True Humility

Lately, my ears seem to perk right up whenever someone speaks to me about being humbled. It’s really more than my ears—my heart gets stirred as well. There is something radically different in the whole feeling of such a conversation, whenever someone is able to speak directly from the experience of being humbled. I’ve learned that things happen when we are truly humbled. We cannot carry on in the same way. Sometimes I call these ‘our come to Jesus’ moments. I think...

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A Global Initiation ~ Coming of Age in the Great Unravelling

Posted by on Apr 10, 2018 in Featured Writing, Lifeletters & Articles | 2 comments

A Global Initiation ~ Coming of Age in the Great Unravelling

In 2010 a friend of ours, whom I’ll call Jed, went to Haiti with a group of high school students. The earthquake struck shortly after they arrived. Jed described what happened to those young people as a rapid coming of age, a growing up process that was visceral and immediate. It was so powerful that when they returned home their parents found it difficult to relate to them. They were not the same children who had left home a few weeks ago, and did not want to be treated as such. I asked...

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The Fire of Your Longing ~ what your darkness needs

Posted by on Apr 3, 2018 in Featured Writing, Lifeletters & Articles | 2 comments

The Fire of Your Longing ~ what your darkness needs

A friend spoke to me yesterday about how the feeling of the spring sunlight on her body feels like a healing force. She has been moved to open and deeply receive the blessing of the light and warmth, deep into her cells. We are drawn to fire as a physical and a spiritual energy: it penetrates us and gives us life. It nourishes our cells, our hearts, and our minds. It awakens certain capacities and gifts in us that are essential to our human existence. The warmth and light of the sun bring joy,...

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The Sacred Wound, and the freefall of the heart

Posted by on Mar 27, 2018 in Featured Writing, Lifeletters & Articles | 2 comments

The Sacred Wound, and the freefall of the heart

At the heart of this story I feel the energy of the sacred wound. Resurrection is about the possibility of something radically new arising through the healing of our core wound.

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