Our being needs to feel intimacy to repair and grow. Derived from the Latin intimare ‘impress, make familiar’, from intimus ‘inmost’, intimacy implies a place where we are truly prepared to be with and make known our innermost experiences.
How do you make space for intimacy in your relationships?
Read MoreWith the new year very much underway, this can be a time that we can experience overwhelm and anxiety, as we feel the jolt of our daily life routine, against the relaxed mode of the summer holidays just past.
This short post is designed to give you the basic elements of grounding, as a first step to coming into present moment awareness.
Read MoreRegardless of the type of relationship, if we want it to work we have to put the time in.
The more we 'show up', the more we get out of the experience.
But what does 'showing up' really mean?
Read MoreAs a working mother, there are frequently moments when I feel stretched. Whilst I have the privilege of running my own business and within that dictating my own hours, life doesn’t always go to plan.
The question I often sit with is…”how do I make all of this work and still feel whole?” And at the end of the day, I am struck by it all coming down to the quality of the moments throughout the busyness of life.
Read MoreSo I lost my nerve with my writing. It has been months since I have pondered my experience of the world on the page. Something about ‘that is not how it is done’ became a bigger voice than I could battle. So rather than battling, I let it have its rein for a while. I sat with it, I wondered and I discovered a little wounded part of self, who believed she was never good enough. We became friends, we played games, and rather than trying to convince each other who was right and who was wrong, we eventually chose to accept one another for all of the messiness and the incompleteness that we are.
Read MoreWholebody Focusing can transform your life. If you would like to learn more about how this practice can help you feel empowered, more satisfied in your relationships and more engaged in life, watch this short 2 minute video...
Read MoreThis morning I received a text ...“Mum, I have my first pimple, I am growing up!”.
Now let me put this in context, this text is from our youngest child, who is at that moment is upstairs, in her bedroom, and it is 7am!
I bound upstairs, and I am invited to inspect the blemish on her cheek – no it does not appear to be a mosquito bite, nor an allergy spot, yes I confirm it does appear to be a full blown pimple.
With delight, our child proudly confides that this is truly evidence of her development.
I share in her excitement, as I look about her room filled with soft toys and pink…and I note for a moment, I am able to sit with both the joy and grief of motherhood...
Read MoreAs the year starts to roll on and the pressures of life ramp up, many people can begin to feel anxious about their capacity to cope. Anxiety is often a response to a feeling out of control or overwhelmed. To help combat this feeling of anxiety, it can be helpful to develop skills around 'grounding'.
Read MoreThere is something so perfect about time on the beach
The sand in its capacity to enter every nook and crevice
Between my toes, up my togs and despite my efforts through too many pages of my book
Sand demands I stay present
Present to my experience
Read More
Last night, I found myself seeking a glass of wine. Usually only drinking socially, I was alone in the kitchen preparing dinner for the family. It had been a busy day…what was this seeking of an experience altering substance about?
Growing up in rural Australia, alcohol has always been present in my life. My father drank to alleviate the stress and pain of history written in his body. My mother drank to be with my father. I drank to because that is what everyone did once they hit adolescence. Alcohol was always present. At dinner, at events, at celebrations, at commiserations, whenever adults were gathered there was always alcohol. It was a “social thing” ….or was it?
As children, we live moment to moment, and those moments define our experience. Whether it be joy in discovering the first egg laid by the family chooks in spring, or the rage of injustice as one sibling crosses the other…children live in their experiences. Yet in our growing up, it appears that some children learn that both the pain and the ecstasy of life are too much and that rather than learning how to regulate their experiences, they begin to seek distraction and in time disconnection from these highs and lows of life.
At the extreme, modeled in; alcohol dependence, excessive food consumption, cigarette addiction, overwork, social media obsession, or perhaps our inability to be alone…as adults, we demonstrate to our children how to disengage from truly living in experience.
This learning to disconnect from experience however is multi-faceted. As parents, as teachers, as caregivers in a child’s life, being unable to simply be with a child, regardless of whether it is meeting the child at their best or at their worst, if we, as adults can not tolerate a child’s experience, how will a child learn to tolerate their own? It is in how we respond to the child in their distress, with acceptance, with love and with care, that they discover their own capacity to self regulate.
Pause and take time to be with our own experiences and with the experiences of the young people around us. This is an investment in both ourselves and the generations to come.
Reflection: “What is your relationship with alcohol or similar detractors from experience?”
(As a Wholebody Focusing oriented therapist, Sarah Sacks actively supports her clients to come into relationship with their experience)
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