My foundations

My teachers have been the many thousands of people I've accompanied as they have met and explored themselves, their transitions, their relationships, their yearning, their traumas and their joys. My own journey has also been a profound teacher, particularly in showing me that not only is deep healing possible, but it is incredibly likely if we keep saying 'yes' to the body's knowing and intelligence.

There is so much information currently circulating about how we deeply compromise the integrity of Life on this planet when we fail to recognise the intelligence of Life's systems and ecosystems. We have done our best to eliminate the inconvenient things such as insects that sting and bite, predators that threaten us in some way or other, and forests and trees that are in the way. And in doing so we find we have threatened our own existence.

We treat our own internal ecosystems in the same way. In the interests of being civilised, likeable and acceptable, we do our best to eliminate the parts of human-ness that are not pretty nor convenient. A vast array of human feelings and normal human processes drop off the acceptable list, and we do our best to medicate, deny or get rid of them - things like extended periods of grief or sadness, deep depressions and disabling fears, resentment, jealousy and rage to name a few.

And as a consequence we compromise the incredible intelligence of our whole, fully alive and healthy human-ness. We lose our true selves. We become unbalanced and no longer remember how to navigate the wild and wooly inner world. Our internal guidance system becomes very difficult to access, and we become lost in not knowing who we are, what we need or how to find out.

I have been shown time and again that in every person, every presentation of distress, struggle and despair, something really good is trying to happen. Our deep intelligence is doing its best to set us right. It's talking to us, guiding us to what's needed and how to get there. It's not always comfortable or convenient, but we do have what it takes to recover the full depth of human being. We do it by 'forgetting' for a moment what the mind tells us about what's happening, and we listen deeply to the body and to the breath.