I’m traveling this week to help my mom recover from a surgery (healing energy and good vibes for her healthy recovery are appreciated!) and there’s also a lot of heart-holding I’m doing for friends and clients right now. Yesterday, my car gave me a maintenance light and I burst into tears.
This emotional reaction reminded me that I’m currently carrying more than I can easily handle. It’s not the check engine light that is derailing my life, it’s what I need to set down emotionally that is too damn heavy.
We blame external circumstances for making our life sucky (noting that there ARE bigger obstacles when you don’t belong to a dominant paradigm like whiteness or maleness or able-bodied-ness, etc).
But we also spend an inordinate amount of time railing against the bump in the sidewalk or the person who cut us off in traffic, aka THINGS WE CANNOT CHANGE. Fighting things we cannot change is exhausting and never productive. It will never make your life better.
Fighting things we cannot change is exhausting.
Credit: The Awkward Yeti by Nick Seluk
What most folks don’t realize is that we can learn to set down some of the rocks we carry on our backs (ancestral burdens, trauma reactions, stress from choices we’ve made where we pretended like we “had no choice”). This is what you CAN change—what you’re carrying from your past, how you react to it, how you direct your thoughts, and how you choose to behave.
Once you are carrying LESS, you are more agile.
You can skip over a bump in the sidewalk without thinking. You can smile and just shrug off an aggressive driver without it affecting your inner peace.
This is why we do the inner work—because the outside world will always have obstacles, small and large, that we cannot change. As my client quoted from Shafali Tsabary to me, “don’t delude yourself that the amount of fuckery in life will ever change.”
We CAN improve our inner agility and ability to adapt to unexpected obstacles.
This takes practice, more than anything. And I know, practicing the inner work is one more “thing” to carry. But it’s worth it. The alternative is to just gradually break down physically and emotionally over time. Not a great choice, right?
Obstacles? What obstacles?
What can make the inner work easier and more doable?
Community, support, and guidance.
I’ve been sharing with you how I train in weightlifting with a teacher and a group of students. It’s a commitment of time, money, and energy, for sure. But as a result, I’ve become much more physically agile (and I was a dancer already). I had no interest in lifting weights. They are heavy and I didn’t know what I was doing. But joining a community of students who learn and play and practice together encouraged me. Having an expert teacher who gently and confidently guides me through my physical obstacles is a godsend.
We need the same kind of support for lifting those heavy INNER weights. That’s what you will find in Soul School.
If you’re struggling with any of these inner obstacles…
- Feeling out of control at times
- Getting reactive or can’t control your impulsivity
- A lack of consistent energy and/or motivation
- Being stuck in toxic relationships at home or at work
- Feeling guilty because you’re worried about letting people down
- Getting overwhelmed and seeking comfort through “bad” habits
- Despairing about whether your needs will ever be met
… Then Soul School can really help you.
What happens in the 6-month journey?
I teach you the techniques I’ve learned as a psychotherapist and developed as a spiritual and metaphysical expert. Then we practice and build the skills during group sessions so everyone learns and improves together.
What will you learn?
- The “Power Pause” — interrupt your reactivity before it takes hold
- The “Soul Garden” — a vision board for your inner goals and practices
- The Enneagram — learn your unique growth path and deeper motivations
- Internal Family Systems (IFS) — a highly effective therapy technique to help your inner child and soothe your past wounds
- Resourcing Your Soul — a method for identifying what you really need and how to speak up for yourself
Soul School meets weekly for a two-hour class (12 classes total, 48 hours of live training and practice time). The cost for joining this six-month journey is $3,500, and payment plans are available.
We’ve got a cohort forming now (Spring start) to help you develop your agility and align your behaviors with your values so you become the person you want to be.
To growing with you.