“The best way out is always through.”  Robert Frost Ever wondered if there is anything you can do to grow out of the psychological conditions labelled ‘addict’ and ‘trauma survivor’?  Well, there are.  Eventhough each carry the burden of feeling trapped in a world of unending pain and suffering, each also hold the potential for [...]

We are designed to separate things into dualities:  this and that, black and white, up and down, good and bad, pain and pleasure, etc.  This is the dualistic mind’s way of seeing.  It sees in opposites as it gazes within to the interior relm, and as it gazes outward to the physical world around us.  This is the perceptual place [...]

What is recovery all about anyway?  What does it mean to recover?  What was lost in the first place that needs recovering?  Webster’s online dictionary defines the word recover as to regain, as in, ‘to bring back to a normal position or condition’.   This implies a movement back to a place of origin.  What would this place [...]

What is trauma?  We hear the word bandied about in the mental health community or at 12 step meetings, but what is trauma anyway?  Simply put, it’s someone’s subjective experience of a disturbing life event.  It overwhelms a person’s ability to cope and leaves them feeling as if they’ll be harmed by someone, or that they’ll loose their mind.  You [...]

Have you ever experienced resistance to what it is you really want?  What you know will be good for you and the forward movement of your life?  I have, and hope I’m coming out of it now . . . that is the resistance to the development of this site.  For months I’ve been able to do nothing more than [...]

While I love my blog, its progress has been slow. It’s been slow for a variety of reasons including having sufficient time outside of my full-time day job to make quality posts. Its been slow too because I’ve been learning the hard way through trial and error that my technical knowledge of how to make a blog [...]

Dr. Christine Caldwell, a somatic therapist, writes in her insightful book “Getting Our Bodies Back” that ‘Our mind is analogous to a storehouse full of seeds.’ The seeds hold the potential for all of the feelings, opinions and beliefs that the human being might experience. While we carry the seed of hatred for example, we [...]

At the heart of healing is an experience. It is the experience of being willing and able to be in the moment with your feelings. No matter how awful or repulsive or spectacular they may be, to allow yourself to stay there and feel what is there to be felt. Of course you know as [...]

Did you know that truth is always the same?   That it is what it is . . .  period . . .  and that it remains the same throughout time?  The only thing that really matters is that you allow yourself to bump hip to the truth within your own being, and let it lead you into [...]

Some yogis call it ‘bare attention’, the practice of being present to experience. Some Buddhists call it ‘mindfulness’, paying attention to the moment on purpose, and without judgement.  Some trauma experts refer to it as the path of awareness, that brings the survivor to the painful truth of their experience. And then there are those in the [...]