Foundation #1: Embodiment

Posted on November 10, 2021 by barbmorris

Your body is the only thing you have for your entire life. Know your self as embodied. Know your body. Honor your body. Listen to your body. Celebrate your body.

You come into this world in a little wrinkled body, and you leave in a large wrinkled body … if you’re lucky. ~Wayne Dyer

But gosh, sometimes it’s hard to feel lucky, isn’t it?

Embodiment is the first foundation of my Coaching Intensive for a reason.

The process of disconnecting ourselves from our body begins at birth. We learn not to trust our body’s messages as we’re socialized in a capitalist culture. What your body wants is damned inconvenient for a product-driven, resource-draining patriarchal economy, so you’re taught not to listen to it.

This body-vacating, head-driven way of living is especially true for those of us socialized as women.

As women, we’re taught to be pleasing, which means small, quiet, helpful, compliant, and outwardly-focused. We’re taught that our bodies are not ours to do with as we please, but as others please. Our parents, our teachers and pastors, our husbands, Congress and the Supreme Court, the random dude on the street who ogles our breasts, the plastic surgeon who tells us we should want our pre-baby vagina back — all presume to take ownership of our bodies. After a while, our bodies never feel like ours, except in secret.

Our body’s voice becomes the enemy’s voice, a voice we have to resist and tame. So we diet, we exercise hard, we ignore our sexual preferences, we hate on our wrinkles and folds. We fit into the small, quiet, helpful, outwardly-focused box labeled “feminine.” This process of disconnecting us from ownership of our bodies has been going on for so long it’s invisible. It’s the air we breathe.

Abdicating ownership of your body is how you’ve learned to stay safe in a culture which only values your body as a commodity. It’s not your fault.

Stop reading and take a moment. Feel into your body. Is my bleak description accurate to you? Are you angry? Are you sad?

Again, vacating your body—seeing it as an enemy to be vanquished through self-criticism, diets, over-exercise, ignoring its cries for help—is how you’ve stayed safe in a culture that wants your body for its own uses and occasionally uses violence to get it. Being disembodied is not your fault. But, now that you see what you’ve been taught as the lie it most assuredly is, reclaiming your body is your responsibility.

Here’s what’s actually true.

Your body is yours to care for, direct, and enjoy. Yours, and no one else’s. Embodiment, being embodied, fully inhabiting and adoring your sweet pod, is necessary for healing.

Your body doesn’t lie. It only tells the truth. You came into this life only capable of telling the truth. Lying is a skill you acquired as your brain matured, and you became more savvy about how to get along in our sick culture.

Our minds tell our bodies that only our minds know the truth, and over time we believe the lie. What’s true? When you “let the soft animal of your body love what it loves,” you will turn toward home.

Underneath decades of accreted socialization and associated untruths, there you are. The real you. The embodied you. The you that carries who you really are and what you really want.

That’s why this is where we start. We re-center our knowing in our bodies, because our bodies are where joy, wisdom, and truth live.

Your body is waiting for you. Go home. Go home.

PS. The Body Compass tool is the first thing I teach new clients, and we use it throughout our work together. Contact me to schedule a free no-strings-attached Clarity Call where we can explore how to access your body’s truth-infused wisdom.

Photo credit: Anne Geddes

How to heal your life.

Posted on November 3, 2021 by barbmorris

These eight actions will heal your life.

Three Foundations:

Embodiment. Your body is the only thing you have for your entire life. Know your embodied self. Honor your body. Listen to your body. Learn to love your body.
Awareness. Be courageously present to your life: body, mind, heart, soul, spirit.
Ownership. Examine your theology. Deconstruct and reconstruct as you choose. Reclaim your rightful authority over your beliefs.

Four Healing Shifts:

More soul, less façade. Explore the difference between your essential self and your social self. We all have both, and we need both. Learn which one is driving your bus, and how to change drivers if you choose to.
More acceptance, less resistance. Explore your beliefs about the inevitable changes of being alive in a human body. To live is to change. Much of our suffering comes from misunderstanding and resisting change.
More intention, less reaction. Explore how your thoughts are causing your feelings, not the other way around. This is good news, because you can learn to choose your thoughts.
More creator, less victim. Explore the victim triangle and the empowerment dynamic. Create the life you want, instead of passively settling for the life you have.

Put it all together.

Design a solid, personalized, do-able plan to create what you want in your life.

These eight actions are the core components of my Coaching Intensive, a culmination of everything I’ve learned in my six decades of loving, suffering, learning, and delighting in my one life.

I’d love to share them with more of you and dig deeply into them, so this space will be devoted to exploring them in depth, one each week until the end of the year.

Currently my Coaching Intensive is only available in a private coaching format. I’ll have a special announcement soon about another way you can work with me to implement these eight healing actions, starting in January. (If you just cringed because that feels salesy, I promise I’m not being coy. I’m just still working on the details.)

PS. Thank you for sticking with me as my right hand heals from its surgical intervention. I’m typing with nine fingers now! And emerging from my chrysalis full of words and ideas!

Ground yourself in your soul’s deep wisdom.

Posted on September 1, 2021 by barbmorris

Woman with tattoo of arrow on wrist overlooking a lake

What do I believe in when church doesn’t work for me anymore? Do I have to abandon everything I’ve loved and that has fed me for all these years? What about Jesus? What about God? What about prayer? Where will I find community? How do I do this?

These are the questions clients and readers ask me over and over. Not knowing the answers to these questions keeps them in the pew long after they hear the call to leave. They feel lost, afraid, and vulnerable when they think about leaving. They know what to expect in church. Church might not feel good anymore, but at least it’s familiar.

Why so much fear? Here’s why. You’ve been taught to fear. You’re so freaking used to accepting others’ truths as gospel, because that’s how you were trained. Your parents, teachers, and pastors didn’t teach you to think for yourself, especially about God and religion. Of course you feel terrified of leaving the comfortable fold. Of course you look to others for permission. Of course you don’t believe you’re up to the task of doing your own theological work. Because you’ve been told, both explicitly and implicitly, that you don’t have the right. That you don’t have the education. That you’re just not smart enough. That you need to leave God stuff to the guys, sweetheart.

Who are you when you’re no longer who you were? Who are you, out here in the wilderness? Who are you, floating in this Sea of Ambiguity?

First of all, you’re okay. Yes, this feels scary, and you’re okay. You’re just in Square One of the Change Cycle. You’ve done this before, and you can do it again. You’re okay.

We navigate through uncharted territory by following a compass. In this case, the compass is your soul, the part of you who knows the way home.

Here are three simple ways to ground yourself in your soul’s deep wisdom.

Be in your body. Women’s bodies, especially aging women’s bodies, have been denigrated for centuries by patriarchal religion and capitalist culture. That’s some toxic bullshit right there. Please, get back into your body. Love her. Listen to her. Body scans. Walk. Run. Yoga. Sweaty work. Warm baths. Delicious food. Beauty. Move your attention from your head to your body, my sister. Your soul speaks through your body. (The first tool I teach clients is always the “body compass.” Your body can’t lie, because it doesn’t use words. Only brains and minds lie, because it takes words to lie. I’m happy to walk you through this exercise on a Clarity Call.)

Meditate. Meditation grounds you in your truth, as opposed to someone else’s truth. When you meditate, you begin to separate what you know to be true from the cultural messages you’ve absorbed. You begin to discern your soul’s wisdom bubbling up through all the thoughts. You begin to separate the fear from the call. You can start meditating by simply sitting still and paying attention to your breath. It’s simple and incredibly powerful.

Lectio Divina. Give your brain something to do in service of your soul. Lectio Divina is just the fancy Latin name for “holy reading,” and it’s super easy to do. You can bring the Lectio process to nature, to images, and to text. Everything speaks, when we learn to listen. Here’s a free ebook I wrote several years ago with background and directions. (We’re doing some Lectio to begin today’s Zoom Community Conversation. Subscribe here for updates, including events like this one.)

You’ll be okay. As you begin to trust yourself – body, soul, and mind – you will be sourced from a deep holiness who’s always there for you. You will be guided by your own deep wisdom, which is both unique to you and as common as dirt. Let me know if I can help.

Photo credit: Natalie Rhea Rigg on Unsplash

How to swim in a sea of ambiguity.

Posted on August 19, 2021 by barbmorris

Little girl sitting in the forest with sun shining on her

I’m awash in questions these days. Who am I if I let myself be healed? Who am I if I expand? Who am I if I let go of my stories about myself? Who am I if I anchor down into something deeper, bigger, and truer for me?

Martha, the hero of my Camino novels, is asking herself these questions, too. (Download Lost and Found for free here, and see this newsletter for an excerpt from the in-process sequel.)

We’re both, Martha and I, in the middle of an identity crisis. I don’t want to be. If you relate, you probably don’t want to be, either. Swimming in a sea of ambiguity isn’t fun.

Will there be a “me” left when I step out of the boxes that define me? Maybe not. Maybe there’ll only be flow and movement and connection with the One Deep Heart, the Immensity Underlying All That Is, the Holy Aquifer.

The woman calling to me from my core, the Wise Self inviting me to leave my self-imposed limitations behind, is a deeply joyful woman. I don’t yet know her well, this profoundly joyful woman who’s in love with her life.

Where will I go? Who will I become? What will I learn? What pain am I opening myself to as I soften my front? These are the questions that continue to bubble up from the scared part of me who desperately wants to feel safe.

I’m trusting there’s good news here. That this identity crisis is also an identity opportunity. Ambiguity means there are many possible outcomes. And I get to choose. Just as I have created my current life with my past choices, I create my future life with my current choices.

This evolution is not about looking for direction from outside. This evolution is not about getting it right. This evolution is not about waiting for permission.

This evolution, this turn of the wheel, is about being who I am, knowing what I know, and making choices from who I want to be. This turn of the wheel is about listening to wise future me. She’s who I already am, and who I’ve always been, and also who I’m not yet. Sounds crazy. Feels true.

I am the one who chooses. I am the one who intends. I am the one who acts, and by acting, creates.

So how to swim in a sea of ambiguity? The best way I know to hold space for yourself and your becoming when you don’t know where the ground is or if there even is any ground, to get in touch with your wise future self who is also your inner wise child and wise woman, is to meditate.

How does meditation help? Here’s how it works for me. When I sit in silence, I see those false identities and untrue stories I’ve carried around for decades for the lies they are. I get in touch with an achingly sweet inner spaciousness. I fall back in love with myself as I am.

Nothing is more powerful than loving ourselves as we are.

Let me say that again. Nothing is more powerful than loving ourselves as we are.

You are love. Anything you find in yourself that isn’t love also isn’t true.

Let the limiting lies you believe about yourself fall away, one by one, for as long as it takes, which is probably a lifetime.

Trust love. Trust yourself. Trust your wise inner knowing.

I don’t yet know well the deeply joyful woman who’s inviting me to grow into her. I don’t know her well, yet I trust her. I trust her with my life.

Who is calling you to swim in the sea of ambiguity? Remember, life evolves in the sea. Wade in. Swim. See what happens.

If you’d like companionship as you find and listen to your wise self, I offer a free, no-strings-attached Clarity Call. Follow the link to schedule.

Here’s a link to subscribe to my weekly newsletter for current coaching openings, offerings, and events.

Photo credit: Melissa Askew on Unsplash

Seven good questions.

Posted on July 15, 2021 by barbmorris

When you schedule a Clarity Call with me, I’ll ask you to answer three questions. Many of you tell me that those three questions alone provide you with powerful clarity before we ever begin working together.

1. What’s going on your life that’s causing pain or suffering?

2. What do you want to happen?

3. What obstacle(s) prevent your desired outcome?

Writing is thinking. Just writing down what’s going on, rather than letting it spin and spin in your mind, helps you see patterns and gives you insight into your own heart. Clearly articulating the issue helps us stop avoiding it and begin to give it our attention in a meaningful, healing way. We give ourselves regard and respect when we take the time to write down what’s hurting and where we’re struggling.

The second question comes from author Pam Grout, so long ago I can’t find the reference. These six words are powerful because the only way to have what you want is to know what you want. When you describe what you want in clear words, you’ve already begun to create it. You’ve begun to take your power back.

And question three gives you insight into what’s going on in your mind that’s keeping you stuck. I teach that thoughts create feelings, feelings lead to actions, and actions produce results. When you articulate your obstacles, you see them as either stuff you’ve made up in your mind that isn’t true, or as reality that must be accepted. Either way, you’ll know your next step.

These questions are why just 45 minutes together on a free, no-strings-attached Clarity Call can be life-changing. No kidding.

These next four questions, from psychotherapist and Holocaust survivor Dr. Edith Eger’s The Choice, are the focus of the last session in my three-month Coaching Intensive. They also underpin “Get Your Thing Done.”

1. What do you want?

2. Who wants it? (You, really, or someone else?)

3. What are you going to do about it?

4. When?

Coaching relationships begin and end with questions. Along the way, of course, there are many more questions. Good coaching is rich with good questions.

You might have noticed there’s not one “Why?” question among them. That’s because I find “Why?” questions generally unhelpful in coaching. “Why?” is more a therapist’s territory, which I am not. “Why?” can be a useful question to answer. “Why?” can also keep you stuck when you use it as an excuse not to take necessary action.

“What?” and “How?” are more my jam as a coach, which I most decidedly am. Throw in a little “When?” and we’re really rocking. “What?” and “How?” and the occasional “When?” will move you forward.

You don’t need me when you answer these questions, although saying something out loud (letting me or someone else “hear you into speech,” to paraphrase bell hooks) leads to greater awareness and greater accountability to our wild heart’s wisdom. There is power in using your voice to articulate your clarity.

Take some time to answer these questions. Answer them in the privacy of your journal, share them with a trusted friend, or talk them through with me. Revisit these questions regularly. Give yourself the gift of listening to yourself. Give yourself regard and respect. I think you’ll find yourself growing and healing as you see and hear yourself ever more clearly.

PS. Subscribe to my weekly letter for the latest news on coaching openings, new offerings, retreats, workshops, classes, and monthly Community Conversations. Thanks!

Photo credit: Billy Pasco on Unsplash.

The crucial difference between pain and suffering.

Posted on July 1, 2021 by barbmorris

“Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.” This statement drives my clients bananas, and not in a good way.

After giving you three ways and then three more ways crappy theology might be causing you to suffer, I want to be clear about how I understand the difference between suffering and pain.

Many theological, spiritual, life-coachy teachers use them interchangeably. I wish they wouldn’t. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about suffering except that maybe eventually we get tired of it and we learn how not to do it.

Pain, on the other hand, can be the beginning of healing.

Pain is what you feel when you hit your thumb with a hammer—nerves fire and send distress signals to your brain to activate your body’s healing response. Suffering is when you call yourself an idiot because you hit your thumb with a hammer.

Pain is the elemental grief you feel when your mother dies, and you miss her bodily presence in the world. Suffering is the sludge you begin to swim in when you think she shouldn’t have died, or that she did dying wrong.

Pain is what you feel in your knee when bone rubs against bone. Suffering is when you think you shouldn’t have arthritis in your knee, or that you caused the arthritis in your knee, or that people who have arthritic knees are old and useless.

Pain and suffering feel different in your body. Pain opens you up and moves through you, making you bigger in the process. Pain is time-limited. It rises and subsides. Suffering closes you down and shrinks you, and it can hang around for decades, until you finally see it for the choice it is and do the work to release it. (Want to explore this together? Contact me here to schedule.)

Pain is creative and healing. Suffering is victimhood and it will kill you.

Pain opens you up for rebirth, for the next stage, iteration, creation of who you are becoming. Suffering keeps you stuck and stagnant and refusing to ride the holy wheel of change. Too bad, because resistance to change is ultimately futile. Change is the way of the universe, and refusing to go along with the divine program will only cause you to suffer.

Pain is a human response to something outside of us—aging, death, illness, loss, injury. Suffering we do to ourselves.

One Buddhist term for suffering is the “second arrow.” The first arrow strikes us from outside. We shoot the second arrow ourselves, at ourselves.

My dad’s fatal accident and my mom’s too-young cancer death were painful. They came from outside of me and were events over which I had no control. But I caused my own suffering when I made these circumstances mean things about me and about the nature of God. When I made them mean that I was expendable and didn’t deserve love, and that the Universe is capricious and cruel, I was causing myself suffering.

Their deaths were the first arrow. I didn’t know that all I needed to do about their deaths was grieve them. To feel the incredible loss, and to explore the contours of these new holes in my heart. My only job was to feel the pain, and to heal.

What sane alternative do any of us have to events outside our control that cause us such pain? Resisting reality causes suffering. Judging ourselves causes suffering. Shooting that second arrow into ourselves causes suffering.

Go ahead and feel the pain, knowing it will pass. Your heart is big enough, I promise you.

Pain heals you. Suffering only keeps you in hell.

A few resources:

Here’s Buddhist psychotherapist Dr. Tara Brach on the subject of pain and suffering: https://www.tarabrach.com/the-dance-with-pain/

Practitioners of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) call suffering “dirty pain.” In this Unf*ck Your Brain podcast episode Kara talks about the difference between clean pain and dirty pain, and how to get yourself out of dirty pain. https://unfuckyourbrain.com/clean-v-dirty-pain/

Photo by Sarah Wolfe on Unsplash

PS. My weekly letter is where you’ll find updates for my coaching business – openings, events, and new classes. You can subscribe here. Thanks!

Three more ways crappy theology causes suffering.

Posted on June 24, 2021 by barbmorris

Last week I wrote about three ways I see crappy theology cause suffering for my clients. These lies, taught to us by (usually) well-meaning people, are in there so deep we don’t recognize them as made-up ideas that just aren’t true.

We know they’re not true because they cause us to suffer.

In case you missed it, here are the first three lies.

Lie #1: Jesus died for your sins. On the contrary, God and Jesus aren’t concerned about how you in your wickedness are breaking their rules. What they are concerned about is how much you love yourself, each other, and the world. The only sin is failing to love.

Lie #2: God despises the world and “things of the flesh.” On the contrary, God IS the world. The world is made of God. As the bumper sticker puts it: The Earth is my church. My body is the altar.

Lie #3: God has a plan for your life, and your job is to figure it out and follow it. On the contrary, Creator God is always at work, and all She wants from you is to be the fullest version of yourself you can be, right now, at this moment.

Three more lies:

Lie #4: You need to be perfect, as God is perfect. On the contrary, beloved, God wants you to be yourself in all your miraculous messiness. God loves your messiness.

The word translated as “perfect” in many versions of the Bible (Matthew 5:48) would be better translated as “whole.” (I like Eugene Peterson’s rendering in The Message: “In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”)

Being human is messy and unpredictable, and you’re making yourself crazy and miserable when you try to be perfect. As Anne Lamott says: “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life ….” Be whole instead, beloved. Be whole.

Lie #5: Following your heart and your desires is evil, and being “selfish” is bad. On the contrary, beloved, your desires are holy and necessary. God wants you to want what you want.

When we believe that wanting something is bad, we fight against ourselves and our deepest longings. Instead of honoring our soul’s yearnings, we talk ourselves out of them and we lose ourselves in the process. This is an especially insidious one for women, who are expected to be the caretakers of the world while staffing bake sales, cleaning toilets, and never ever saying NO. (I am NOT saying to act out every desire you have. What I am saying is that every desire has wisdom for you. Honor that wisdom. Listen for it.)

It’s a cliché, I know, and it’s still true: Put on your own oxygen mask first. Only then will you be full enough to give when it’s your turn to give.

Lie #6: God is outside of you, “up there” somewhere, separate from this messy world and its pain. On the contrary, beloved, God is Mother, here with us.

God is not “the man upstairs” or the spirit in the sky. God is not our Father in Heaven.

When we believe this lie, we make the disembodied sacred and the bodied profane. We make spirit good and flesh bad. We then look outside ourselves for guidance and answers, and we avoid our adult responsibility to listen for the Wisdom within. We’re incapable of giving our gifts freely, because we’ve forgotten who we are.

God your Mother inhabits your everyday moments. She is as common as dirt. And She loves your body like a mother.

Oh, my beloveds. These lies cause so much suffering. They leave us contorted and stuck and so self-critical we’re paralyzed with shame and self-loathing.

You can feel their destructive power when you hold them in your body. Try saying one lie and notice how your body feels. Now say the truth (use my “On the contrary … “ formulation or your own words) and notice how your body feels. Lies cause suffering. Can you feel how you stop suffering when you disbelieve the lies causing you to suffer?

Beloved, you are not called to suffer. Being human on Earth is full of pain. Being human on Earth is full of joy, too.

Please take your suffering seriously. Look underneath your suffering and find the crappy theology causing it. We can do that together if you want to.

Heal crappy theology and you heal yourself.

We need you whole, healthy, and healed. We need you telling the truth. We need you raising your voice in the wilderness so we can find each other.

PS. A deep bow of gratitude to you voices in the wilderness who joined our inaugural Community Conversation on June 17. We were witnesses for each other’s pain and joy, and we formed deep community almost from the first moment. I’m so grateful to meet you “face to face,” and look forward to our next gathering on Tuesday, July 13, at 2:00 pm Pacific. Newsletter subscribers will get the Zoom link the day before. Missed the first one? No worries. You can join anytime.

PPS. I’ll be sending emails only to my weekly letter list beginning on July 1st. Email subscribers will get new content, current offerings, and notifications of upcoming events delivered straight to their inbox. You can subscribe here, and thanks!

Photo by Nikola Knezevic on Unsplash

Barb Morris

Writer, Teacher, Facilitator, Artist

Category Archives: Four Healing Shifts