a peek inside
A Day In The Life
These sorts of relationships are unique. We get together, typically for an hour each week, in service of you and your world, in service of your health and wholeness in whatever dimensions are most important for you.
Typically this involves lots of attention and curiosity coming in your direction (except when that's not actually helpful) Often there can be some unspoken assumptions about what sorts of information about your practitioner is permitted to be shared.
In some traditions there are even strict rules forbidding your practitioner to share any personal information ... leading to more of the unfortunate, empty, invulnerable routine 'hey how are you?' ...'oh I'm good, but what about you?'
The thing is .... a human is the most social creature on the planet ....
So many of our deepest wounds occur in relationship
Much of our most significant healing also occurs in relationship
The implicit messages in some therapeutic relationships are things like ...
The client is filled with problems and the practitioner is the source of solutions
The client is the only one with problems
You can't have challenges or vulnerabilities if you are going to help others
Feelings of challenge or distress need to be 'fixed' before anything (or anyone) else can receive attention
The thing is ... as humans ... the capacity for relationship is essential to our wellbeing
Perhaps relationality is a better word, as is suggests less of a fixed noun and more of an ongoing, dynamic process ... a dance
As you are probably well aware one of the hallmarks of relationality is complexity ...
Our ability to be with opposites, to balance giving with receiving ...
Our capacity to be able to set a boundary with someone we love from a place of care, to have access to our healthy aggression that lives between the poles of violence and passivity ...
to, as Walt Whitman says 'contain multitudes'
And so, in recognition of the realationality required for human wholeness, I offer these forays into my personal life. There is no expectation that you read this, or even like what you see. It is simply a way to share some of my humanity, in hopes that it may help serve as a spark that ignites the intelligence and goodness that lives in our shared humanity.
Woodworking
Many of the art forms that I naturally gravitate towards are empermeral in nature...snowboarding, dancing, massage, coaching...none of these tend to produce a final tangible form to return to.
I learned to enjoy working with wood and the creative process of imagining something and figuring out how to take it into form from my father. He was a pretty handy man who would bring his artistic flair to practical projects such as a retaining wall or bathroom remodel or a mirror frame. I certainly see some of his eccentric tastes play out in some of my projects.
I like to make things that are both beautiful and functional and am drawn to simplicity and the perplexing...maybe a blending of MC Escher's allusions toward the infinite with the aromatic sturdiness of a juniper. Most recently I have been building a mobile sauna that will be able to venture to mountain overlooks and desert rivers. Look for us in the southern San Juans!
Movement
When I am living my best life I am moving my body often and in a variety of ways. This looks like riding the luscious flow state in snowboarding, playing hockey, backpacking trips of various lengths, acro-yoga, strength training and dancing.
I remember going to one of my first concerts in high school - The Mars Volta was playing and I saw people dancing....really just shaking their bodies around a bit and nodding their heads. I felt simultaneously thrilled and terrified as I noticed something inside of me wanting to move my body in new ways and also totally frozen against doing so. This was the beginning of a many year journey that took me to various dance floors at concerts and festivals where my body slowly began to thaw and I eventually regained access to the delights of expressing myself through movement. This is a website that lists many ecstatic dance communities across the globe.
Challenges and Opportunities
My own life journey has included an early infant heart surgery, growing up in a family with addiction, mental illness, an abusive sister and a well-meaning mother who didn't know how to provide healthy boundaries, and early sexual experiences that left me with significant shame and confusion about my body and my pleasure. My world also included access to nature and team sports, an agile body and mind that excelled in acrobatics and school (for a while at least), guidance from dreams and camp counselors, and a trend of basic physical needs being met.
At an early age I learned (both on a bodily, unconscious level as well as a conscious relational level) to track other peoples' needs and states better than my own, to deal with stress by shutting down or becoming aloof or dissociative, and that I needed to distance myself from things like anger, ambition, sexual appetite, and other forms of my power and aliveness. After experiencing the early deaths of many of my friends during my teens and early twenties I decided to move away from Atlanta and my habits and relationships. This probably saved my life and it certainly catalyzed a beginning of my own healing and exposure to new possibilities of what health, relationships, purpose, and life might look like.
It is a great joy to get to share from all that I have and continue to learn, and an inspiration to encounter the struggles, resilience and aliveness of each person I get to work with.
Wilderness
Another thing that is happening when I am living my best life is that I am taking extended adventures into wild places where my ordinary sense of routine and comfort gets to be disrupted, even challenged.
I first tasted the exhilarating aliveness of being close to the earth during adolescent summers in western North Carolina.
I was fortunate to get to spend some weeks at a summer camp and I credit the camping trips we took and the rhythms of community there as very significant developmental supports in my life. I have participated in a week-long survival trip in the Cascade Mountains of Washington with only the clothes on our backs. In Colorado I spent two years working in wilderness therapy where we would make friction fires each night and face the uniquely human challenges and connections that seem to come alive in wild spaces in ways that aren't quite accessible in our modern world.
The Wilderness Awareness School offers classes and immersions in these directions:
Tea Ceremony
I was turned onto gong-fu tea ceremony by a mentor and friend in Asheville North Carolina years ago. If you are ever in that area I highly recommend you go find Dobra's Tea house and give yourself a couple of hours to experience the atmosphere and sample the teas from around the globe. They also have locations in Ashland Oregon, Pittsburgh, Burlington Vermont, and the original location in Prague.
Over the years my enjoyment of tea and the slowed-down atmosphere it can create has evolved into creating and hosting a small mobile tea lounge with a few friends. We host this unique experience primarily at a couple of events around the southwest each year.
Dobras locations: https://www.dobratea.com/locations