Emotion connects us, and emotion grows us.  Friday night I completed the third of three seminars on personal growth and I have been filled with emotion.  I have felt so connected to all of you who attended the talks.  And I have grown.

In doing the talks I have been stirred with all kinds of emotions. I have been surprised at myself.  I have been in turn crunched with uncertainty, shy about sharing, hopeful about the message getting out, shrunken with self-doubt, frustrated with my resistance, and gleeful when I have made a link or expressed an idea in a powerful way.

I have made myself vulnerable.  I have shared my real self as much as I have been able.  I have been touched and moved by your willingness to experience yourselves in the moment in your body, and I have felt blessed to have the opportunity to share the insights and truth that I have been practicing for the past twenty years with clients and in my own life. 

The larger our capacity for emotion, the larger our experience of ourselves.  The more we are able to feel the river of emotion as it flows through our bodies, the more Self we have.  More authenticity, more meaning, more motivation, and more intimacy - in essence, more You. 

Being in the bodily experience of emotion is not easy.  Even with the huge prize of a larger life, coming home to the body is so brave.  When we are vulnerable the choice to come home does not come naturally.  The urge to escape is profound.  The discomfort of what it actually feels like to be affected by forces outside ourselves - the world, other people, time, the body, forces of nature, and emotion itself...  We are tempted to move into our heads, into stories and defenses, and distract away from the truth that in the moment, we are acted upon.  We are affected.  We are touched.  We are moved. 

Yet in embracing that truth we become more than we thought we were.  As we hold ourselves in the experience we change it.  We become co-creators of our experience and of our lives.  We bring consciousness into the body and we enter into our power.

Such a small and simple act that is so utterly transformational. 

And I feel that transformation now as I write... having allowed myself to feel all of the mixture of things that arose as I risked stretching into a new way of working.  A few days have passed in which I have spent some time alone, some time with loved ones, time in nature,  time in the city, time in the busy-ness of a full life, and also time in the stillness of my own loving awareness.  And I can feel myself connecting at a deeper level, with deepened love.  I am so grateful for this life and for all its complexity and challenge.  And for the opportunity to connect with you.

May you also keep coming home to your loving body, listening to its wisdom, gifting it with your consciousness, assuring it of safety with the medicine of your presence.  So you can matter.  So you can grow.

 Photo Credit:  D. Beder Photography