Incarnating is a big deal. So to begin with, you’re already a badass. In addition, during our lifetimes we’ve been through many life/death/life cycles. Dozens of them. Let’s honor these cycles and the letting go process that’s been inherent in all of them. Including and especially our births, which required us to surrender to the void, to nothingness, and to the mystery of the next chapter. We’ll contemplate the transitions we’ve been through and look at the transitions we’re facing. We’ll discuss how we can learn to trust the letting go process more fully. We’ll examine the actual somatic process of the cycle of letting go. In a supportive process, we’ll practice letting go until it becomes a familiar pattern. 

Whatever you call it: Soul, Self, Spirit, God/Goddess, divine, inner voice, intuition, consciousness, guidance, or essence…..what is the quality of your relationship with this eternal part of you? Regardless of who surrounds us at the moment of our death, the experience will be between us and this infinite part of us. If we’ve built a strong relationship with our essence we will be stepping into a world where we are related, connected, and familiar. Doesn’t that sound delicious? Let us begin. Let us nourish, strengthen, and turn up the volume on this primary relationship. 

Being human is tender. And we do a lot to protect ourselves from painful experiences. Yet learning to be present with all of life is a prerequisite to receiving, which is a prerequisite for a good death. On the journey towards being more fully present, it’s helpful to realize that there’s an intelligent universe inside of us–vast, wise, ever evolving, and benevolent. We will examine how trauma, shadow, and conditioning often stand in the way of this expansive world view. We will discuss some processes of moving through these blocks and beginning the process of opening the heart, trusting life, and honoring all experiences as necessary for the soul’s evolution.

A healthy life is about the balance of yin and yang. Our culture is very YANG: driven, productive, outward facing, image conscious, and youth oriented. It values being active well into old age. There’s value in this, but it’s remarkably unbalanced. Dying requires exquisite receptivity. Living requires receptivity. We receive from the sun, from food, from sleep, from others. In fact, the most important and most valuable things in our lives often come when we allow ourselves to receive: friendship, support, nourishment, connection, contemplation. If we neglect the receptive, interior, and quiet parts of ourselves, we do damage to our capacity for a healthy life and death. We will explore how to turn up the volume on the YIN in our lives and grow our capacity to notice, celebrate, and enhance our receptivity.