Kim Hermanson's Blog, page 37

"When we are most vulnerable, we are most alive." - Transformative Teaching teleclass Dec 8th!

When we teach, train, coach, mentor, or share our gifts in the world it makes us vulnerable. Teaching requires us to show up and be present, putting ourselves at risk of being judged, condemned, or rejected. But in our vulnerability is our power. Motivated by the love I feel for my subject and students, teaching and sharing my gifts with others challenges me to walk through the fire and become my best Self. 

“When we are most vulnerable, we are most alive, most open to all dimensions of existence. In our vulnerability is our power.”  ~ Miriam Greenspan

If you want to explore the edge and depth of your own capacities as teacher, trainer, coach, please join me for my upcoming teleclass, in partnership with Depth Psychology Alliance.

TRANSFORMATIVE TEACHING, COACHING AND MENTORING: TELECLASS 

When groups of any size come together for a shared purpose, there is a "third space" of larger wisdom available to draw upon, a wisdom that lies within the center of the group itself. Third space is a place of intuitive knowing, a realm that lies just beyond our ordinary, everyday rational intellectual capacities. In this experiential workshop, we will go underneath the tools, mechanics and content of what you teach or facilitate, to uncover the realm of profound wisdom that lies below it.

Embrace and draw upon the sacred wisdom in a room, phone conversation or online group

Move through blocks and teaching challenges more quickly

Discover expanded possibilities for your teaching, facilitation, coaching, or mentoring

Access new vibrancy and potency in your training or coaching business

Eckhart Tolle wrote, “Most people confuse the Now with what happens in the Now, but that’s not what it is. The Now is deeper than what happens in it. It is the space in which it happens.”  In this experiential workshop, we will see, embrace and engage the space in which it happens.

I’ve always been fascinated by group spaces and how to make them magical…accessing a deeper wisdom and a deeper beauty. There's something that happens in group energy that couldn't happen any other way. Those magical moments give us a deep sense of meaning and connection, and are what we remember for the rest of our lives.

Join us for this introductory class and get a taste of what’s possible.

1.5 CEU credit for MFTs and LCSWs

$29 for Depth Alliance members BEFORE Tuesday November 24th.  ($34 after November 24th)

$35 for non-Alliance members BEFORE Tuesday November 24th. ($39 after November 24th)

REGISTER: http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=67r4iomab&oeidk=a07ebppwiqr6ef1ea9d

*  This tele-class WILL be recorded. If you can't make the actual event, you can still sign up to receive the recording.

Why I Write Books

I read a blog post the other day by a well-known writer of the creative process who said he doesn’t know why anyone would want to write books anymore, because writing a blog post reaches tons of people instantly and once it's posted, it’s done. It's out there in the world.

The reason I write books is because it gives me a container to wallow in what I love and explore the outer reaches of it. The book gives me my own world, a place to figure something out and put new thoughts together. And it’s my container--I can do anything I want with it. I can come up with my own rules; there’s no one to tell me how to do it. I can put it together any way I like.

I love that writing a book because it's a process of going deeper and deeper into something that fascinates me ...not a half-hour quickie at my desk. I love that after I’ve come up with a topic, I can wander down the street of some artsy or funky or interesting neighborhood somewhere, and new ideas for it coming pouring in. 

Writing a book gives me an opportunity to dive deeply into my creative musings, building my own world of whatever I choose to be inspired by.

I love not knowing how it’s going to turn out…only knowing that it will.

Metaphoric Wisdom Experiential Teleclass on October 27th!

Profound change happens when our perspective shifts.

In this experiential workshop, you will immerse yourself in your soul’s ancient metaphoric language, experience deep beauty and step into a profound shift of awareness. You will encounter resources, possibilities and answers that will likely surprise you. Even for those who don’t consider themselves to be “visual,” images usually arrive spontaneously.

Reconnect with your passion and source of embodied power.
Discover how abundantly creative, rich and empowered your life becomes when you are connected with the metaphoric realm.
Transform stress, overwhelm, pain and ordinary life issues into breakthroughs of new creative energy and resources.

Past teleclasses have been exceedingly transformative for participants. The energy we are working with is palpable, graceful and profoundly loving. Those attending will be supported in moving to the next level of their creative power.

“I’ve been involved in the Jungian movement for 40 years and worked with many world-famous Jungian teachers. None of them were ever able to bring my images to me. When I sat in your session, I immediately saw an image—it was the first time in all these years that I was able to do that. You are onto something.”   ~ Joan Green

"The information that comes through is life-altering and it shifts me into a place of peace. I'm truly without words to describe it."   ~ R.K., Consultant

"Kim's work is powerful. A single session with her gave me a breakthrough on an obstacle I'd been struggling with. I recommend it to everyone."   ~ Bonnie Bright, Ph.D., Founder of Depth Psychology Alliance

1.5 units of CEU credit for MFTs and LCSWs.

$35 BEFORE Tuesday, October 20th  ($40 after that)

(Members of Depth Psychology Alliance get a discounted rate of $25 before Tuesday October 20th, and $30 after that)

 To REGISTER:  http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=67r4iomab&oeidk=a07ebm34d660c211e82

Metamorphize... and See Below the Surface

A hundred years ago, Rudolph Steiner said that the greatest challenge of the coming age of humanity would be to allow the heart to teach us to think in a new way. Our minds naturally observe things from a safe, analytical distance, but our hearts yearn to have a much different relationship with the world. Our hearts learn through intimacy, compassionately “feeling into” whatever they are in conversation with.

I work with metaphor, and metaphoric knowing is an intimate way of knowing. Metaphor asks us to be in relation with whatever-it-is we are seeking to understand. As St. Augustine apparently said, “A thing is recognized only to the extent it is loved.” And Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote, “People cannot learn what they do not love.” We can’t really know something by analyzing it from a detached distance. Knowing something intimately requires our love. Through the feeling dimension of metaphor, our hearts teach us to think (and know) in new ways.

IIn my work with metaphor, I have come to learn that it is much more than a tool of language. Metaphor is a profound portal into another realm, another dimension, that is very real and very alive. We discover this dimension—lying under the surface of ordinary reality—when we allow ourselves to step into it.

In his book Dynamics of time and space, Tarthang Tulku writes:

Suppose we could take hold of something very small by the edges and gradually stretch it out so that it became larger. For instance, we might start with a cell from the body, gently pulling on it so that after several minutes it was a few inches across….If we continued in this way until the cell was several miles in diameter, what would we see when we looked at the original point from which we started? Would there be anything there? Would there perhaps be an associated field of energy, with a distinctive feel?

In the quote above, Tulku suggests that when we stretch a cell, we may feel an “associated field of energy” that we can’t feel when the cell its original, microscopic size. As the cell is stretched, it becomes big enough for us to feel its presence. So too, with metaphoric images. In order for us to experience the potent feeling dimension of the metaphoric realm, the image must be “stretched” big enough for us to step into. 

In Doorway sessions, when we allow our hearts to intimately “be in relation” to whatever healing image shows up, something amazing happens: The image expands so we can feel it. Here is an example of a typical message that came through during a Doorway session:

“I am [the image]. I would like to expand out. You have seen me now. You know that I exist. Thank you. Now let me expand. I am not something you can figure out, like a tool in your toolbox. I am not that. I am something you will enter—a new space that you will enter. Enter me now. Imagine being inside of me. What will you do inside of me? You have to feel me first before you will know what to do. Feel into me. Let the cells of your body know me. I’m a new space for you.”

Feeling is how we connect with the potent creative forces of the Universe. And it is only through stepping into metaphoric images that we discover this potent feeling dimension.

Tulku continues: 

…the expanded world of ‘nothing at all’ and the ordinary world of substance coexist. The difference between them is not one of sequence, but of scale and perspective. If we look from the usual perspective, we see solidity; if we look from an “expanded” perspective, substance gradually grows more attenuated, eventually arriving at a final stage that is open and empty.

In other words, looking from our “usual perspective,” we believe that what we see is all there is. But there is an amazing aesthetic dimension that’s available to us; it’s simply a matter of perspective. If we had the capacity to become very, very tiny, spaces would open up that we couldn’t see when we are “regular” size. Well…we do have that capacity.

In the metaphoric realm, we can shape-shift into an infinite number of sizes and spaces. And these new spaces have their own unique “field of energy."

So why should we care about this? Because the feeling dimension of metaphor offers us a profound way of learning and knowing, one that brings us into potent relationship with the creative forces of the Universe. Through our heart’s capacity to feel, we enter a realm where we are gifted with a much different perspective.

And when our perspective changes, everything changes.

Power of Metaphor Interview with Shrink Rap Radio

Click here for a super fun interview I recently did with "Dr. Dave" at Shrink Rap Radio. There's even an experiential portion where you can get answers to your own personal questions.

I really enjoyed talking to Dave. It was the first time I've been asked about my time living in a remote area of northwest Montana. After growing up in a conservative Midwestern family, following corporate rules as a computer scientist at a large Fortune 500 company and then a rigorous PhD program at the University of Chicago.... I came to a point in my life where I needed wild.

Wolves howling at night, the mystical mountains (especially in the depths of winter) and magical encounters with bears...as well as renegades, rebels, artists of all sorts and hippies living off the grid, playing music on homemade instruments. I came to Montana because I needed to shake off all my previous training and ways of thinking and experience something totally new. My time there was a breath of fresh air, opening up abundant creative space for me.

Where in your life do you need some fresh air?

If you're ready to open up new possibilities and creative terrain like I did in Montana, please join me for a Doorway session.

FREE Experiential Teleclass this Thursday August 27: "Transformative Power of Metaphor"

Next week, in partnership with Depth Psychology Alliance, I'll be offering a FREE experiential teleclass on the transformative power of metaphor.

STEPPING INTO THE METAPHORIC REALM: FREE EXPERIENTIAL TELECLASS

Thursday August 27th 5 pm - 6:15 pm PST
(6 pm MST, 7 pm CST, 8 pm EST)

Click here to REGISTER.

In this teleclass we'll be drawing on the ancient power of metaphor as a portal into a realm of profound beauty and creativity. You will experience and feel the presence of sacred, symbolic space where you can see creative movement metaphorically, before it is manifested in the external world. When we receive a healing image from this dimension, something new has been brought into form.

All of us contain a vast reservoir of untapped creativity. Please join us to meet new resources, possibilities and answers that you wouldn't receive in any other way. What shows up will likely surprise you.

"Kim's way of working is like gliding silently and spontaneously through a secret passageway into a brimming inner realm where I can feel and see and experience with exquisite sensitivity. Something always appears. Usually something odd and always something unexpected. The hum of these visits remains long afterward, as though the energy that was ignited through my inner encounter with the image continues to radiate within and around me. The process is so easy and so very profound. Overall, I feel as if I am interacting with a new reality, one that grounds me at the intersection of heaven and earth, the above and the below, the within and the without. Its mystical."
~ Barbara Taylor, Befriender of late midlife, Victoria, BC Canada

Click here to REGISTER for the FREE teleclass.

1 CEU is available for MFTs and LCSWs

Tell your friends! PLEASE FORWARD this to anyone who might be interested. Thanks!!

 

Recent Lecture on the Power of Metaphor & the Creative Process

In case you missed my recent talk on metaphor and the creative process for Depth Psychology Alliance, here is the link to listen or download it.

http://www.depthinsights.com/pages/radio.htm#hermanson-metaphor

The talk includes two experiential components that will give you a sense of the power of this realm. I also share my own journey with this work. Enjoy!

Standing "Divided No More...Here is My Pledge

My work with metaphor chose me; it was not my expected path in life. Through a series of experiences—harrowing, mystical, and profound—I came to be an advocate for a non-ordinary realm of profound beauty that we access through metaphor.

Metaphoric images are the heart of the creative process and…

I grew up in a family that (like the culture at large) valued science and dismissed creativity as unimportant and frivolous. It was certainly not “real work.”

 So my brother became an engineer, my sister a radiologist, and I went into the computer science field.

In my mid-20s, working for a large fortune 500 company in downtown Chicago, I took a weekend trip with my boyfriend and had an experience that changed the course and direction of my life. We had traveled to the upper peninsula of Michigan and while cruising down a highway at 65 miles per hour, a car crossed the centerline and hit us head on. I was wearing a seat belt but because of the position I was sitting in the car and the force of the impact, I was critically injured. I broke T-12 in my back and my spinal cord was displaced by 40 degrees. After being airlifted to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, I was given less than 5% chance of walking again.

I did recover from the accident, and there are two parts of this story that are important. First, I was in excruciating pain and traumatized when I arrived that night at a county hospital in the middle of the night. I knew my back was broken, I had no feeling below the waist and I was facing the very real possibility that I might spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair. The nurse saw my condition, walked over to me and whispered in my ear, “Imagine that you’re floating on a cloud.”

So I closed my eyes and imagined myself floating on a cloud, and that shifted everything. It relaxed my body, it was comforting. That imaginary—yet very real—cloud got me through the trauma and shifted me into a state of peace.

That was my first encounter with the power of metaphor and how central it is for shifts, breakthroughs and healing.

The second part of the story that I want to share is this: the main reason I recovered from the accident was because my body was in top physical condition. For some unknown reason, I spent the months leading up to the accident intensely exercising several hours per day. I’ve never done that before or since. It was like some unconscious part of me…knew that the accident was going to happen and was preparing for it.

After the accident I was in recovery for a long time, so it gave me a long time to reflect on my life and what lit me up, and I realized that I loved learning. I was working in the artificial intelligence field, trying to be “close” to my passion by working with “computer learning.” But I wanted the real thing. I had become disillusioned with artificial intelligence, realizing that there was no way computers could replace humans at their best—their most creative, most realized selves. The creative is where we are most alive.

So after months of recovery, I became a PhD student at the University of Chicago.

Before the accident, getting a PhD was completely outside of my realm of possibility. For one thing, I had $40,000 of debt from my Master’s degree and taking on more debt was out of the question. For another, no one in my family nor anyone else I knew had ever gotten a PhD. I knew nothing about academia.

The accident bumped me…from one track to another, from one life path to a very different life path.

I received a PhD at the University of Chicago in adult learning. I was lucky to have Mihaly Cskiszentmihalyi, the author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, and many other books, agree to be my advisor. He was very busy and in another department of the school (I was in the Education department, he was in Psychology), but I wrote a paper on learning in everyday life and it intrigued him. He agreed to meet with me, and subsequently agreed to be my advisor. Later on, he asked me to co-author a couple of articles on learning in museums. For those of you who are interested, here’s a link to one of them: http://goo.gl/J6prDi

I was honored by the job recommendation he wrote for me when I applied for my first teaching position:

“Kim is an exceptionally smart, thoughtful, and well put-together person. Her doctoral dissertation of how and what adults learn in informal settings was a pioneering study with all sorts of immediate implications for creativity and adult learning. The field needs the information she has collected and her insights about it. Personally, I feel proud to have been the supervisor of her thesis.”

But unfortunately, I was not in good shape after graduate school. I had entered with a real desire to understand how adults learn in life, and I graduated unable to read words without feeling nauseous. My left brain was fried. (This had nothing to do with Mihaly’s work; he was definitely a bright spot in my education. I was supremely grateful to be able to work with him.)

Words on the back of a cereal box would swim in front of me and make me feel ill. So for lack of anything better to do at the time (since I couldn’t read or write), I started giving psychic readings at the Berkeley Psychic Institute in Berkeley, California.

Giving psychic readings at the Berkeley Psychic Institute turned out to be an important part of my life path, not just a crazy thing to do, although I didn’t know that at the time. For myself, I was just looking for adventure and new experiences.

To me, giving psychic readings was fun and offbeat…taking me far, far away from the land of anything serious or academic.

What I noticed…was that during the readings I wasn’t predicting people’s futures. I was going “under the surface” and reading what I would come to call the “metaphoric realm.” I wasn’t telling someone they were going to meet a tall dark stranger. I was looking at whatever they were asking about and looking under the situation at the metaphoric image that lay beneath it. I might say something like, “you’re in mud right now, but you can move, it’s just taking longer than you expected,” or “that direction is closed to you, but there’s an opening to your left, what does the left direction mean to you?”

I was looking at their creative process…metaphorically.

This space that I was reading, this non-ordinary dimension, is pre-cognitive. It’s the place where we can see things before they manifest in the ordinary world.

We can tap in and work with that energy and...

THAT is exciting.

I did psychic readings professionally for awhile, but when I came to a point where I was ready to get serious about my career, I dropped all that and began teaching. I taught in the teacher credentialing program at UC Berkeley, and taught various courses on teaching and learning at a few other universities.

I thought I had left metaphor and psychic readings far behind.

After a few years, I moved to the mountains of northeast Montana because I needed wildness. I’d spent my life growing up in a conservative Midwestern family, then following corporate rules as a computer science at a large Fortune 500 company, and although I loved graduate school…there had just been too many words for me.

I needed wild.

I moved to the mountains, moving in with a long-haired hippy who lived in a teepee on 200 acres. My dog and I could hear the wolves howl at night, we crossed paths with bears during the day.  I was enchanted…immersing myself in the beauty of the wild with its craggy mountains and deep dark winters.

Several years later I returned to the Bay area of California to teach. While I was interviewing for a teaching position at a graduate school of psychology, the president of the school looked at me quizzically and said, “Instead of trying to fit you into our program and have you teach something on our roster, why don’t you tell me what you’d like to teach?”

It was a prophetic moment and a prophetic question because Spirit spoke through me and said, “Metaphor.”

I was in shock. I didn’t know anything about metaphor as an academic subject, nor how it related to psychology. And while I was in a state of shock, the president of the school picked right up on it like nothing out of the ordinary had just happened and said, “Great we’ll call it the psychology of metaphor.” I walked out of his office not knowing what I was doing or what was going on. The first class I would be teaching was a class of PhD students…and the class was scheduled to start in 2 months.

But not surprisingly, since Spirit was speaking through me that day, Spirit developed this class for me. In uncanny ways, out-of-print books about metaphor and the psychology of metaphor would “appear” in front of me at the library where I like to study. One of these books, the most remarkable of them, was by a man named Martin Foss, who wrote a book called Symbol and Metaphor in Human Experience that had been published in 1949 and had been out of print for many, many years. This book was extraordinary, about how metaphor is the creative process of life itself. (No one I knew had ever heard of Martin Foss, and I established a Wikipedia page for him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Foss)

Teaching this course on the psychology of metaphor was an awakening experience for me, causing me to look at the world differently. It was obvious to me that there was some realm of beauty that we couldn’t see with ordinary eyes—it was there beneath the surface. I kept looking around me asking, “How do we see the beauty? How do we see the beauty?” I was frustrated.

I wanted to be able to see it, but I didn’t know how.

Two months after the metaphor class ended, I had a profound, totally life-changing visionary experience where I was shown this realm by Spirit and it was urgently made known to me that guiding people to this realm would be my life’s work. I had had experiences throughout my life, the first one when I was 13, of being touched by a dimension of non-ordinary beauty. But as I mentioned before, I grew up in a conservative, Midwestern family that prized academics and science. “Spiritual” experiences didn’t have a place in my frame of reference. Rather than share them, it was easier for me to dismiss these experiences. So I did.

I’m an academic, I’m introverted, I love research and writing. I am not by any means, a spiritual guru. Talking about anything spiritual or other-worldly is far outside of my comfort zone.

But the truth is… this realm of profound beauty urgently wants to be known.

I’m sure that many of you have had experiences of beauty in non-ordinary reality. Whether it was a breathtaking experience in the natural world, a moving experience with a work of art, or through some sort of creative process modality you found yourself stepping into an “other world”—a very real world of exquisite, stunning Divine beauty.

These experiences of other-worldly beauty need to be valued and honored, not swept under the rug or dismissed.

As I did for so many years.

They need to be in mainstream conversation. They need to be integrated into the culture as a central way of learning and knowing.

I love this statement by Greg Braden in his book Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer:

…the power of beauty is real. In its presence, we are changed…the power of beauty appears to be dormant until we give it our attention. While it may very well have the power to change our world, that power is asleep until it’s awakened. And we are the only ones who can awaken it! As the only form of life with the power to experience beauty, it is awakened only when we acknowledge it in our lives.

We need to acknowledge beauty in our lives.

In his book, A Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer uses the phrase “divided no more” to name the point at which we can no longer live in disharmony within ourselves. My work in adult education was solidly based in traditional ways of knowing, but my visionary experience was clearly showing me something new.

I myself have come to a point where I am no longer willing to live “divided.” I know that there is much more to human learning and knowing than we acknowledge or know. I am no longer willing to dismiss experiences of divine beauty. It may not yet be known or valued in our culture, but I can value it.

Here is my pledge:

I will no longer allow cultural or social norms to dictate what is “acceptable” and what is not.
I will no longer dismiss powerful experiences of other-worldly beauty through art, nature or creative process, even if I don’t know how to share them with others.
I will no longer discount non-rational experiences of learning and knowing as something trivial or unimportant.
I will no longer allow beauty, art and the natural world to be marginalized. I know that it is a source of great power.

It’s amazing to me that the metaphoric realm is untapped in our culture. We spend billions of dollars on outer space exploration, and yet…a very real realm of creative potential is there for us to tap into and explore. It will open up our lives and our world if we let it.

And it urgently wants to do that.

Stepping into the Feeling Dimension

The Law of Attraction tells us we need to step into the feeling of what we desire. Feeling is how we connect with the potent, creative forces of the Universe. Metaphor allows you to feel and be what your soul wants to manifest in the world.

There is a lot of focus in psychology on ‘the image,’ and it’s easy to think that when an image shows up we’ve experienced the depth of the metaphoric domain. I get lots of creative people in my groups that receive beautiful and complex imagery, while others feel bad they’re not “doing it right” when they don’t get something brilliant and fascinating. But it’s not about the image. The sole purpose of the metaphoric image is to evoke a feeling response in us. When we allow them to, these images take us to a potent feeling dimension.

Receiving an image in a Doorway session is in some ways like pulling a tarot card. Although the artist’s rendering of the High Priestess or Fool may be quite beautiful, we pull the tarot card for the information the card is pointing us to, not for the image itself. The same is true in Doorway sessions. It’s exciting and thrilling to receive an unexpected image, but the shift and transformation come when we step into it. Stepping into the image allows us to enter the feeling dimension and be touched by it. And when we are touched by this other dimension, we naturally shift. Our lives change.

To manifest anything new, we need to feel. Feeling is not the same thing as emoting. Raw, undirected emotion such as anger, fear, rage, frustration, grief, actually get in the way of our ability to feel the subtle wisdom of a metaphoric image.

In Doorway sessions, deep profoundness comes with deep feeling. Some “thing” from another dimension… comes and touches us. This thing is alive and its presence is gentle, loving and hard to convey in words—it touches us in a way that bypasses the cognitive mind. Our bodies are being embraced by another dimension where potent, transformative energy lies. This feeling sense is gentle, beautiful and directional—-it has a way it wants to move.

Below are a few messages from the feeling dimension that have come through during Doorway sessions with individual clients. Hopefully they will give you a sense of this very simple, very profound, very real and alive place.

You might notice that the voice shifts in the piece. The initial voice speaks as the image itself, and then it shifts into offering guidance for the client.

A client who, after we opened a new space in this realm, was instructed to FEEL:

“I am [the image]. I would like to expand out. You have seen me now. You know that I exist. Thank you. Now let me expand. I am not something you can figure out, like a tool in your toolbox. I am not that. I am something you will enter—a new space that you will enter. Enter me now. Imagine being inside of me. What will you do inside of me? You have to feel me first before you will know what to do. Feel into me. Let the cells of your body know me. I’m a new space for you.”

 “You are in a new place, a very spacious place, but you don’t have to be scared. You know how to sit and let life flow around you. This is not about doing, this is about being. You need to feel into this space—that is what will give you your next step. Write or paint what you feel, not as work, not as something you have to do, just as a way to take note of what you are feeling, sensing, and knowing in this new space. The moment this becomes ‘work’ to you, please stop. You are simply an investigator, taking note of what you are experiencing.”

 

Another client who received the feeling sense of UP:

“I am the bubbling pool of water. I have a place that I want to go—Up. What’s wonderful about this upward movement is that it’s natural—I’m not forcing a direction. This is the way I am designed and this process occurs without me having to feel like I’m doing anything. I have an upward expression that I would like to make. What does this mean for you? If you were to make an upward expression, what would it be? This is the way your creative process wants to move right now—reaching new heights, so to speak. Make an upward expression.”

 “I am the Easter lily. I have a grace and beauty about me. I am going up—that is my direction—up. But you don’t need to do anything. I just want you to know me and feel my energy. It’s up and out. Do you see how that happens when we allow things to move in their natural direction? There is a natural organic need to have them flow out as well. There is a presence to me, as you know. Just hold this energy. Hold this feeling. Hold the beauty and grace. Embrace the beauty that is you. You are so beautiful and holy.”

 

A client who was given the feeling sense of LIGHTNESS:

“The space that you are working with right now is light, ethereal, floaty. Try becoming lighter. What does that mean for you? Lightness will allow you to move in new directions. Allow yourself to become lighter, allow your work to become lighter, so that you can float in new ways that you can't imagine right now. The lightness of this Light energy can meander into places that would normally be blocked to you. Become lighter and let yourself move in new ways."

“If you become light you can find your way easier. Lightness allows you to move.”

 

Tapping into this sensory body wisdom is much more than cognitive information for the mind to process. It’s a direction of creative expansiveness that will change your life. The true power of metaphor is that it allows us to become the very things that we want to experience in our lives. The wisdom is not in the image. It’s in the space that the image opens up for us.

Beauty is a transformative power

"Recent discoveries in Western science now add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that beauty is a transformative power…beauty is an experience…Through our experience of beauty, we’re given the power to change the feelings that we have in our bodies. Our feelings, in turn, are directly linked to the world beyond our bodies. The ancients believed that feeling—especially the form of feeling that we call “prayer”—is the single most powerful force in the universe….when we say that beauty has the power to change our lives, it’s no exaggeration to say that the same beauty also has the power to change our world."

~ Greg Bradon