Venturing deeper into healing

there are always more layers, when we're ready

Something I have pondered over the years is the meaning of the word “healed”. I’ve been asked on different occasions if I am fully healed from the various traumas I’ve experienced, and I find that a hard question to answer. “Healed” is sort of like the word “fluent”: it’s totally relative, depends on the context, and always has deeper levels available. Does “healed” mean that there is no lingering residue whatsoever of the things I’ve gone through? If those things from my past don’t haunt me to the degree that they did 5 years ago, does that qualify as “healed”? What does the word actually mean?

Back when my husband and I lived abroad, I worked really hard at learning the local language. I got really, really good at it… some would say I became fluent. But that word “fluent” always felt like an ill-fitting jacket that would easily fall off my shoulders given the right (or wrong) scenario/conversation, such as understanding regional accents, technical jargon, and slang.

Healing is the same way. We can say with a fair bit of confidence that we are healed of this or that, until we find ourselves in a situation that pushes all the right buttons and triggers all the right memories, and those old, familiar patterns of tensing up or shutting down are alive and well in our bodies.

At the end of the day, labels that denote status aside (like “fluent” and “healed”), I think where we want to be is in a place that feels comfortable and good to us. If we feel that we are still suffering or enduring hardship in some way by not pressing further into it, then that’s when we may choose to keep going. And then there may be other times or seasons when what is most called for is rest and integration, letting all we’ve gleaned so far along the journey soak more deeply into our bones. Healing is experienced in bits and pieces, more and more fully as we continue to do the work.

It’s a lovely thing to know that healing is there for us, when we want it, isn’t it? That there will always be deeper realms of healing we can venture into, if we feel an un-comfy-ness about where things currently stand within ourselves, just as there will always be rest for when we don’t feel like venturing any further just yet. The choice is ours, and only we get to decide it for ourselves.

1 last spot in Feel to Heal

The Spring 2024 round of the 8-week Feel to Heal Program I developed starts in a week and a half, and there’s one spot left available until Tuesday, April 2. After that it’s time for me to move into printing mode, preparing the binders for all those that have signed up. As always, I’m having the time of my life reviewing all the teaching and exercises I’ve packed into the program, and adding in new stuff that feels relevant and helpful. Every round is an improvement upon past rounds, because I am a person who keeps growing and learning myself, and so the program reflects that.

If you’ve joined us for a Release & Refresh class and wish to dive deeper into nervous system work, or to understanding the role that emotions play in the healing experience, see if Feel to Heal is right for you. We’ll meet on Tuesday nights starting April 9, 6:45 - 8:45 pm, until May 28. But only 1 spot left, and only til this Tuesday!

Website is fixed!

In some ways running one’s own business is exhausting, and for me, I get tired quickly of things not working that are supposed to work. I recently discovered that several links on my website’s home page were directing people to the wrong pages, and that the Resources page of my website, which includes dozens of links, was completely messed up and not functioning. Ugh!! (I’d like to blame it on someone else, but alas, I do my own website. Double ugh.)

But all is fixed now! So if you’ve been having issues, I apologize, and I’m happy to tell you that it’s all cleaned up. (Y’all are welcome to tell me, by the way, if you discover a broken link or a mistake on my website. I’d be happy for the feedback.)

Release & Refresh classes have expanded!

After the last Release & Refresh class, I asked my co-teacher to rearrange the room with me to see if we could fit more yoga mats in if we flipped the orientation of the setup. Lo and behold we can fit 2 more people in easily if we do that, so good news!—we can take 11 for Release & Refresh classes now instead of just 9. It made me giggle, that all this time I’ve been bemoaning the fact that we can only fit 9 (we often sell out), when all I had to do was switch the mats to face the other way and BOOM—lots more room! So if you want to join us but have been finding the class you want is sold out by the time you go to book it, you may have better luck now.

Thank you for your support of my small business and my mission to make holistic, body-centered, trauma-informed work accessible to everyone in the area!

~Allie