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 Something real and important has brought you to this moment, looking for help.
       You need some support or guidance. Natural counseling is an approach that is holistic and active. Natural Counseling uses a Somatic or body oriented approach, it can help you get out of your head or around confusion. This approach takes the usual talk therapy to a deeper, more effective level. At your pace, we uncover and explore the patterns that can seem to control you. This creates openings for new experiences and healthier possibilities.
 
 
Natural Counseling allows the body’s wisdom to guide the path toward change. Unlike traditional forms of therapy, in Natural Counseling, the body is part of the process. Using tools such as mindful attention, body awareness and talking, we can uncover unconscious beliefs and patterns. For example, patterns are often expressed through habitual movements, breathing patterns or physical signs of stress or tension. Bringing attention to and working with these movements and signs can gently disarm or even avoid the defensive reactions that operate automatically to keep our deeper experience hidden even from ourselves. This "somatic" or body-oriented work allows us greater access to our core issues.
     * Understand and release old patterns
     
     * Find the strength to support you through life's challenges
    
     * Heal wounds in a safe, loving and supportive environment
     
     * Tap into your natural creativity and aliveness

 

What is mindfulness?

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Now that I posted these two mindfulness sites, I might as well add my own two cents! I believe that mindfulness is good for pretty much all of us. I do not believe that everyone needs to meditate, but I think it is possible that we all would be freer, happier and more comfortable in our lives by developing the ability to get mindful. Mindfulness is about tolerance, increasing our ability to tolerate different states without having to run from them. States like anxiousness, sadness, confusion, joy. (Joy? Am I saying that it can be hard to tolerate joy? Yes, I am!) And we know what I mean about running from them, these states, these feelings. Getting busy, turning on the computer/tv/phone, using food, drink, or other substances to alter our state, even talking can be a way to run from or avoid uncomfortable feelings. So mindfulness in a very simple way can help us have less need to run, it can really help us be more comfortable in our own skins!

I find myself saying the following to clients frequently, if we fight (resist, run from, avoid, argue with or try to ignore) almost any emotion, we usually lose. It works for the short term, but  usually that feeling comes back and sometimes with a vengeance! It seems that fighting what is, makes what is, stronger. I want to be clear, I am not suggesting that we need to or should be mindful all the time. We have rhythms. There are times to be mindful, times to be dreamy, times to be busy and more. I am advocating for increasing our bouts of mindfulness. For a bit more, or longer or more frequent forays into this present moment, slowing down and checking in with ourselves. For more moments of noticing exactly where we are, what we are thinking, feeling, doing. and then accepting what is. The benefits can be subtle but are surely freeing.

I would love to hear about your experiments or experiences with mindfulness.

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This is a post from a wonderful Buddhist Teacher's Blog, Tara Brach. Please read, ponder, question, enjoy!

Accepting Absolutely Everything

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” 

—Carl Rogers 


Mohini was a regal white tiger who lived for many years at the Washington D.C. National Zoo. For most of those years her home was in the old lion house—a typical twelve-by-twelve-foot cage with iron bars and a cement floor. Mohini spent her days pacing restlessly back and forth in her cramped quarters. Eventually, biologists and staff worked together to create a natural habitat for her. Covering several acres, it had hills, trees, a pond and a variety of vegetation. With excitement and anticipation they released Mohini into her new and expansive environment. But it was too late. The tiger immediately sought refuge in a corner of the compound, where she lived for the remainder of her life. Mohini paced and paced in that corner until an area twelve by twelve feet was worn bare of grass.

Perhaps the biggest tragedy in our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns. Entangled in the trance of unworthiness, we grow accustomed to caging ourselves in with self-judgment and anxiety, with restlessness and dissatisfaction. Like Mohini, we grow incapable of accessing the freedom and peace that are our birthright. We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small. Even if we were to win millions of dollars in the lottery or marry the perfect person, as long as we feel not good enough, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy the possibilities before us. Unlike Mohini, however, we can learn to recognize when we are keeping ourselves trapped by our own beliefs and fears. We can see how we are wasting our precious lives.

The way out of our cage begins with accepting absolutely everything we are feeling about ourselves and our lives, by embracing with wakefulness and care our moment-to-moment experience. By accepting absolutely everything, what I mean is that we are aware of what is happening within our body and mind in any given moment, without trying to control or judge or pull away. I do not mean that we are putting up with harmful behavior—our own or another’s. Nor do I mean that we are confirming the truth of a negative belief, such as “I am a loser.”

Rather, this is an inner process of accepting our actual, present-moment experience. It means feeling sorrow and pain without resisting. It means feeling desire or dislike for someone or something without judging ourselves for the feeling or being driven to act on it.

Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart, is what I call Radical Acceptance. If we are holding back from any part of our experience, if our heart shuts out any part of who we are and what we feel, we are fueling the fears and feelings of separation that sustain the trance of unworthiness. Radical Acceptance directly dismantles the very foundations of this trance.

Since non-acceptance is the very nature of the trance, we might wonder how, when we feel most stuck, we take the first step out of it. It can give us confidence to remember that the Buddha nature that is our essence remains intact, no matter how lost we may be. The very nature of our awareness is to know what is happening. The very nature of our heart is to care. Like a boundless sea, we have the capacity to embrace the waves of life as they move through us. Even when the sea is stirred up by the winds of self-doubt, we can find our way home. We can discover in the midst of the waves, our spacious and wakeful awareness.

Mindfulness Schmindfulness

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Mindfulness schmindfulness!


What is all the fuss about mindfulness? It seems to be everywhere now, but what does it
mean? And why would I do it?


Mindfulness comes out of eastern meditation practices. Yes, let’s sit on the floor in a
saffron robe folded in a lotus or some other flexibly impossible bent position with our
eyes closed, a serene expression of bliss on our faces. This seems foreign and impossible.
In this world of cell phones, work demands, and general busy-ness, the idea of sitting and
doing nothing but breathing quietly may sound like torture. Others can only imagine how
difficult it would be to sit still and quietly. Countless people have told me, “I can’t do
that, I can’t make my mind be quiet!”


Fortunately you don’t have to be able to sit on the floor, folded like origami and manage
somehow to stop the lightening fast non-stop thoughts that run through your brain in
order to experience and benefit from mindfulness. You don’t have to make your mind be
quiet.


What good is it?? What good does it do? First we have to talk about what mindfulness
is in order to understand what good it may serve. I think of mindfulness as curiousity. It
is taking a moment to notice our inner experience. What is that!?!?! We have an inner
experience? We do! All of us, all the time. Most of the time we walk around vaguely
aware of ourselves. We’re aware of tasks, working, worries, lists, a few body sensations
like hungry, tired, stiff, etc. A few flashes of emotion here or there, anger at the person
who just cut you off, annoyance at the price of gasoline, a laugh at the cuteness of your
baby or a smile from a co-worker or friend.


Is that all of it? Is there something else going on inside us that we are not aware of???
Here’s how mindfulness can change things. What if we spent a little more time on one
particular worry. What if we tried a mindful practice of stopping, sitting still (on a chair
or couch is fine!) and checking in with ourselves about that one thing. Ok, so I keep
worrying about my son’s new habit of chewing on his sleeve. Sit down, take a breath,
what can I notice when I think about this habit? Ugh, it’s kind of gross. Ok, so there’s a
little concern about the cleanliness of it. What else? Ah, there’s a worry thought. Is he
ok? Is he doing that in lieu of his old pacifier habit and does that mean he’s stressed?
That leads me to thought of what has been going on in his life and reasons why he might
be stressed. Ok, that could lead me to a whole lot of other thoughts and worries but I 
want to stay mindful of this one worry. Curious. So back to it, I
imagine him doing that in my mind, there he is (cutie-pie) and I can see him with his wet
sleeve in his mouth. Ah, I notice a feeling of compassion. The thought arises, it must
feel good to him, to chew on that. He must need it for something, even if I am not sure
what. Then I notice that I take a deep breath. Ok, so maybe that’s enough for now. I have
noticed my concerns, my worries and I am reminded to pay a little more attention to his
stress level.


So a moment of mindful curiosity has given me greater understanding of how I feel and
what I want to do with this one worry. Now instead of having that worry run around the
hamster wheel of worries that lives in my brain, along with all the other unexamined
worries, I have done something with it and it is mildy relieved.


The “practice” of mindfulness is the intentional action of doing what I just described,
bringing slowed, conscientious attention to the present moment and being curious. It doesn't solve everything, it doesn't try to solve anything. It just helps me understand myself a little better.