I was recently deeply impacted by the latest rendition of Homer’s The Odyssey, directed by the amazing Christopher Nolan.

Let it be known, I am not a movie critic or analyst oriented towards finding what’s wrong or missing in a movie. I see it as it is. And, to me, this movie was one of the best movies I have seen, which allowed the stories and messages to come through very clearly.

I have been reflecting on these stories quite a bit in relation to my own life. Some of the major themes that resonated with me were the obvious journey and exploration guided by cleverness, hubris, curiosity, and integrity, as well as the journey towards right relationship, Love, and self-actualization.

I also need to say that life is full of journeys within journeys and that perhaps there isn’t one Ithaka. I think that is why it’s important to take note that this journey back home took approximately 10 years.

I look at the last 10 years of my life and see quite the journey within that to being here, at home, more times than not, in my heart and body. But it certainly wasn’t always like that. Far from it.

I see myself at age 19 thinking I knew it all and was the wisest of them all. I don’t think I had the capacity to hear another’s perspective unless I deemed them wiser than I, as if teachers are only those with a platform.

I felt like I had a lot of life under my belt. I had a hubris, like I could navigate any situation, get my way over anybody (if I didn’t, deciding I didn’t want it), and skate my way through life knowing people liked me and I had luck like no other. Boy, was my thinking so small and narrow, despite all the experimenting I had already done with my consciousness through meditation, breathwork, and mind-expanding substances.

To me, my Trojan War was the constant battle happening within my mind. And eventually, I thought I had won. I had found clever ways to stay within an illusion—intentionally maintaining distance from others emotionally and physically, distracting myself with exogenous things, and keeping myself numb. The battle had quieted, and I mistook that quiet for victory.

I was deceived… by myself. The war was over. Until the worst day of my life shattered all the strategies I had developed: the day I answered a phone call telling me my mom was dead. That was the day my journey home, to Ithaka, started.

This was the major impetus for leaving the only place I had ever known and embarking on my journey to the West Coast. On this journey, I faced monsters, terrifying energies and visuals, temptresses, consequences due to a lack of awareness, messages from the underworld, and uncountable uncomfortable moments requiring me to shed who I thought I was and step into the man I wanted to be.

In ways, I got lost out at sea in my psyche, a glutton for self-centered pleasure… addicted to distraction through substances, eating, work, loneliness, social connection, self-improvement, transcendence, depression, and limiting and distorted thoughts and beliefs that kept me disconnected from my truth and power.

I don’t think I pissed any of the gods off like Odysseus did, but I did come into contact with beings and situations that stirred things in my soul that I needed to work on, which would prove conducive to more harmonious and meaningful relationships later on. Everything became a teacher. Every situation, an opportunity for learning about myself.

Embracing life in that way changed everything. This shift included all things as important to my becoming. I came to believe the universe was transpiring with me, for me to become more fully me.

Every experience led me closer to living in the wisdom of my heart. Despite these 10 years going nothing at all like I planned, with a lot of suffering and discomfort involved, I wouldn’t imagine any better way to have developed this connection to my heart, this connection to Home—something beyond what words can describe.

What I allude to is beyond stratagem, cleverness, intellect. It is refined, heart-ful action. This particular road to Ithaka has been a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. In hindsight, there is nothing I would want to have changed. It all contributed to me getting here, at a place I’m really proud to be.

However, now that I have arrived here, a new journey begins, with new creatures, entities, challenges, and opportunities. And having now recognized the shape of this journey once before, I know I will have more. This time, with more knowledge, understanding, and connection to Home.

With this level of awareness, the levels of challenge may increase with it. But I have built a foundation of trust, acceptance, and resourcefulness. I know I have the capacity to continue falling into the wisdom of my heart. It is going to be okay, likely better than okay.

So be bold. Experience as much of life as you can. Learn and go on learning.

You’ll eventually arrive at Ithaka again and again, always richer.

Practice

Here are some journal prompts to sit with.

• Can you recall a major event or a time in your life that sent you on a journey home? Do you sense that you arrived home after being lost? What did arriving home feel like?

• You are the hero of your mythical storyline. Can you recall a time when you faced a monster, a challenge, or a confusing moment or series of moments? How did you navigate it, and what did you learn through that situation?

• What does Ithaka mean to you? What does it mean to be on a journey home? What is Home?

Answer as spontaneously as you can. It is possible some answers might surprise you. It is possible some may come with resistance or defensiveness. No need to fight yourself. If it comes up, write it down and know that you have time for it to gestate and evolve.

To complete today’s article, read the following aloud or silently to yourself.

May I have the courage to let my curiosity lead me into unknown territory.

May I have the understanding that life is happening for me, not against me.

May I have the space to experience life fully.

May I move through this world open and receptive to its teachings about myself.

May I remember that everything will be okay and that I will return home again and again.

And so it is.

I want to explore some thoughts I am having around this sometimes ever-widening gap between knowing and action.

I’m sure you’ve heard it said before, “The first step to change is to take notice,” or perhaps this is your first time hearing it. In any case, it is here right now, and I’m happy for it to be in the field of awareness.

Because every great idea, movement, shift, or change started with someone becoming aware of something that was potentially causing harm, keeping themselves or a magnitude of beings stuck, or proving itself to be inefficient.

For me, I examine my years deep in the jam band scene, going to countless concerts, music festivals, and indulging in copious amounts of recreational mind-altering substances. I’ve talked about this before—that from the outside perspective, I may not have had a problem—but internally, I had a great chasm between what I knew and the necessary actions to embody that knowing.

Although I choose to be vague about specifically what I indulged in, one can take some guesses. They were certainly the kinds that opened my mind to so much rich information about the mysteries of the universe and beings of all kinds. These experiences simultaneously created a connection to the cosmos and a distance from my grounded human experience. I had access to so much, but couldn’t apply it here on earth.

I reflect on this because many of you know I have been completely sober for over a year now. Up until the point of total cessation, I was having lots of conversations with my therapist at the time and with support groups about whether or not these substances were serving me and my purpose.

I now sense that the way I was using these substances contributed to the distancing of my knowing from my actions. I learned a lot—more than I can describe in words—and yet, I kept going back in hopes they would provide the deep meaning I used to experience. The messages I started seeing clearly were, “This isn’t serving the life I want and the way I want to be in the world.”

Now this can be said for anything, not just substances. This could be a relationship, a job, your phone, or the town you live in. There is the knowing that something outside of yourself—or inside of yourself—needs to change. And then there are the actions it takes to make that change and begin living in line with your purpose.

I’ve come to believe there are lots of things in the modern world that muddy our minds, cloud our judgments, and keep much of our decision-making unconsciously driven by hidden forces and motives. I think the knowing I had came as bodily sensations, repeated thoughts, admiration for certain teachers, leaders, and peers, and visions for my life that I interpreted as impossible dreams but, for some reason, still held onto.

I became completely sober because the message was coming through clearly that my life was meant for more. I was becoming depleted, restless, frustrated, driven by fear, disconnected from those around me, and, most importantly, sensing that I was solely a consumer in this world with little value to offer. Whether true or not, it provoked deeper exploration.

What I’ve found is that my path is about being grounded and connected as fully as possible to my present human experience, without needing to change it, and recognizing that the relationship with the fullness of myself and with others is what I’m here for. I found that self-Love and a physical sense of consistent contentment grow from living in integrity and acting from my values, and that this is actually quite transcendent.

But anyhow, the main point of this week’s topic isn’t to say, “Don’t work with substances,” or, “Be sober.” I use that part of my story to lead me to why I needed to stop in order to finally start taking action.

What kept me from taking action were the parts of me that couldn’t embody what I knew to be true for my life. In fact, those parts were what kept me making certain choices that would keep my knowing and acting at a safe distance from one another.

I offer this because my hope is that it evokes reflection around the parts of you that are making decisions that keep your knowing—what you are here to do with your life—at a safe distance from actually taking the actions to begin living it.

I don’t know what that is for you, but I do know that, whatever it is, it takes guts to examine. Maybe you don’t believe in purpose or perhaps you don’t want to even go there. All I can say is that I became aware of my purpose here, I made choices to take action, and now I strive every day to embody what I know. Which is…

to serve humanity by utilizing my gifts.

to live in connection with myself, with those around me, and with the earth.

to show up to life in Love and shine light on all the parts of me that are endarkened.

and to Trust that Love keeps growing and growing, and it will bring us into harmony with everything.

What I ultimately wish for you is to live in alignment. We often do “know better,” yet we make choices that are out of alignment with what we value. I wish for you to not only look at those choices, but also to look at the conditions around you that help influence those choices.

I wish you all the support you need to create the necessary shifts for you to live in alignment, and to keep on that path.

Practice

I won’t be offering practices with sentence stems anymore. Instead, from now on, I’ll be offering three journal prompts related to the week’s topic.

• List three mission statements that start with, “I am here to...” Try to condense them down to their essence and simplest form.

• Make a list of what you know to be your values, perhaps making some distinction between the values that are personal and those you believe to be universal. If that doesn’t resonate or you want to go further, then make a list of what you know you want for your life, the way you want to show up in the world, and the life you want to lead.

• Make a list of the things you are doing in your life that may be keeping what you know from actually becoming action toward your purpose and, or at least toward a life that feels more fulfilling for your current self. In other words, what’s keeping you from embodying what you know?

Answer as spontaneously as you can. It is possible some answers might surprise you. It is possible some may come with resistance or defensiveness. No need to fight yourself. If it comes up, write it down and know that you have time for it to gestate and evolve.

To complete today’s article, read the following aloud or silently to yourself.

May I have the courage to be completely honest with myself.

May I have the awareness to notice that which doesn’t serve my highest reality.

May I have the courage to transform any conditions that are limiting my magic.

May I move through this world connected to my purpose, my values, and Love.

May I remember that only I define what it means to be in alignment and to live in accordance with that self-knowledge.

And so it is.

Thank you for being part of the Loving Forward movement—a community where we honor what is most real and true in each moment, and where we continue moving toward life rather than away from it.

If this was helpful, or if you feel compelled to offer any feedback, I would be more than happy to hear from you.

Introduction

I discovered breathwork after listening to a podcast with the Iceman, Wim Hof, back in 2016. I remember hearing about the amazing things he was doing and telling my friends what this crazy guy was up to—defying all logic at the time, climbing Everest with barely any clothes, running marathons with ease, and fighting off intentionally injected viruses with his immune system and mind.

I was one of those people who deeply believed he was an anomaly until I started doing more research into breathwork. I found that humans have been working with the breath for thousands of years. It turns out that people across cultures developed breathing practices for many different reasons. If I were to sum all of those reasons up into one, it would be this:

To become more connected to their aliveness.

What I have come to understand over the years is that breathwork is about much more than performance, stress reduction, or even healing.

It is about learning how to be present with the fullness of life.

The breath is always happening in the present moment. It is one of the few things that never leaves us. Whether we are anxious, grieving, joyful, overwhelmed, angry, excited, or deeply at peace, the breath is there.

Breathwork strengthens our capacity. It widens our window of tolerance. It bridges the gap between mind and body, external and internal, heart and spirit.

In a world that often requires us to live in our heads, the rest of our system tends to become dormant. I might even say neglected and numb. There is a whole world within us that goes untended to and remains foreign to our awareness.

The breathwork that I offer, which we will spend the majority of our time practicing and which stems from the David Elliott Method, steadily guides our awareness toward the landscape of the body, bringing us into a deeper sense of presence, sensation, emotion, and, ultimately, aliveness.

This practice helps us connect to the body, regulate the nervous system, release stuck, stagnant, or old energy, and reconnect to our spirit and higher wisdom. At the end of the day, it fans the flame of the heart, helping us generate more love within ourselves to support our healing and offer to the world.

Breathwork is not about fixing yourself or becoming someone else. It is about coming home to your natural equilibrium.

It is about creating the flexibility your nervous system needs to navigate life. It is about becoming more embodied, present, and alive so that you can show up more fully to your relationships, your purpose, and your life.

What Is the Breath of Awakening Journey?

The Breath of Awakening Journey is a private, one-on-one, eight-week container created with the intention of supporting deep healing and transformation through the breath.

That healing unfolds in ways that are difficult to fully describe here. The intention is not simply to have big experiences or release big emotions, though those things certainly can happen. It is also about learning to work with the breath as a practical and lifelong resource.

Throughout this journey, you will learn how to use the breath for insight, guidance, regulation, cleansing, clearing, centering, creating space, settling into your body, cultivating presence, accessing deeper wisdom, expansion, grounding, and much more.

My greatest intention with this container is for you to develop your own relationship with breathwork.

I want you to create the conditions necessary to integrate these practices into your everyday life so that the breath becomes a trusted companion and supportive tool that you can return to long after our time together has ended.

The Container

• An 8-week private journey

• Weekly 75-minute sessions

• A combination of short-form breathing practices and long-form conscious connected breathing

• Grounded primarily in the David Elliott Breathwork Method

• Personalized to your nervous system, intentions, and goals

• Ongoing support and practices between sessions

Each week’s session builds upon the last as we gradually create and strengthen a foundation of trust, safety, and connection.

I am tracking your process and staying attuned to what you are showing up to work on, what your nervous system is communicating, and what you genuinely want more of in your life.

I often describe this work as awareness, activation, and back to awareness.

First, we learn to become more aware of the body and its language. Then, with intention and support, we move toward activation and the larger energies that live within us at a pace that feels natural and workable for your system. Finally, we return to awareness once again, often finding ourselves with greater clarity, deeper presence, and an expanded capacity to integrate our experiences.

Over time, this rhythm teaches us that we can move toward intensity without becoming lost in it, and that we can return to ourselves with greater trust, compassion, and aliveness.

Why an 8-Week Container?

Consistency is key when it comes to breathwork. With consistency comes integration, and integration is what creates the lasting changes you want. Transformation doesn’t usually come from one big experience. Of course, those experiences can make a meaningful difference in the grand scheme of your life, but I am more interested in helping you develop the tools to access your own wisdom and healing rather than creating another co-dependent relationship.

Eight weeks is an adequate amount of time to begin building the habits and practices needed to work with your breath for the rest of your life.

Furthermore, this work naturally compounds and deepens with each session. I learn how to best support your process while you learn how you most want and need to be supported, with plenty of space to communicate those wants and needs along the way.

At the end of the day, my role is to create the conditions for you to go as deep as you would like to go while also helping you learn how to create those conditions for yourself.

Because of the time we spend together, we get to become familiar with your nervous system and explore which short-form breathwork techniques are the most supportive for your life right now. We get to practice them in real time, observe their effects, and develop a better understanding of what helps you feel more regulated, present, and connected.

We also need time and space for the nervous system and all of its protective parts to soften and gradually build trust in me as the facilitator, in the practice and container itself, and ultimately in your own body’s capacity.

We do not figure everything out in eight weeks. But you will leave with incredibly valuable insights about yourself and a set of tools that can continue supporting your healing, regulation, and growth long after our work together has ended.

What We Explore Together

This structure is held loosely. Breathwork has a way of revealing what is most ready to be seen, felt, and worked with. While each week has an overarching theme, the work naturally unfolds according to your nervous system, intentions, and lived experiences.

Week 1: Rhythm & Safety

Learning the foundations.

• Understanding the breath

• Creating safety and trust

• Establishing intentions for the journey

• Beginning to build awareness of your body, emotions, and nervous system

Week 2: Building Awareness

Developing a deeper relationship with your internal experience.

• Breath and body connection

• Interoception and nervous system awareness

• Learning to notice sensations with curiosity

• Regulation through simple breathing practices

Week 3: Opening & Flow

Exploring what happens when we allow more movement.

• Breath and energy

• Expression and curiosity

• Trusting the process

• Allowing experiences to unfold naturally

Week 4: Heart Connection

Connecting to compassion, tenderness, and care.

• Self-love and self-compassion

• Receiving support

• Connecting to the wisdom of the heart

• Softening protective armor

Week 5: Expression & Release

Creating space for what has been held.

• Emotional expression

• Sound and vibration

• Movement and release

• Healthy ways of processing and expressing experience

Week 6: Resilience & Capacity

Strengthening your ability to stay present.

• Working with activation and intensity

• Expanding your window of tolerance

• Meeting challenges with greater awareness

• Building confidence in your capacity to navigate life

Week 7: Integration

Bringing the practice into everyday life.

• Relationships and communication

• Boundaries and self-care

• Working with stress and challenge

• Everyday regulation and presence

Week 8: Embodiment & Continuation

Looking back and moving forward.

• Reflecting on the journey

• Celebrating growth and insights

• Creating a sustainable breathwork practice

• Clarifying next steps and ongoing intentions

These themes often emerge organically throughout the journey and frequently overlap. We are not trying to complete one week before moving to the next. Instead, we revisit these themes again and again, each time with greater awareness, trust, and capacity.

What Makes This Different?

What is so beautiful about this ongoing 1:1 container is that we meet consistently, creating and strengthening the neural circuitry for new, powerful habits, behaviors, and the integration of insights.

We develop a relationship that stems from deep care, presence, and commitment to your awakening. I am locked in as your support person. I take notes after each session to help track your progress and to refer back to so that I know exactly where we are on your journey.

Meeting every week greatly supports accountability. I am going to ask how you’re doing, whether you’ve been practicing outside of sessions, and bring curiosity to how you’ve been doing between sessions and how the work is metabolizing. You will also have my reliability of consistently showing up to do the practice, which means you will need to show up as well.

Integration is key. Without integration, this becomes just a string of interesting experiences that don’t extend beyond our weekly sessions. This work must be brought out of the confines of the container and practiced, lived, and experimented with. Each session, you can bring with you what is working and what isn’t, have that influence the direction of our work, and make integrating the practice even easier.

This 1:1 container is deeply personalized. Our discovery call sets the table for that through questions that explore what you want to get from this practice, how you want to feel at the end of this journey, and how I can best support your awakening.

A fun part of this container is learning various breathwork techniques that are most supportive to you at this current place in your journey. If this is something you want to lean more into, we certainly can. If you would like help creating a daily breathwork practice, that is well within the scope of this container.

Breathwork is a tool that humans have been working with for many thousands of years. It is beyond words how useful it can be. In this container, you have the space to discover that for yourself. You will learn a lot about yourself and this practice, and do a lot of deep healing along the way.

Potential Benefits

You may experience:

• Greater presence and connection to the moment

• Increased emotional capacity and resilience

• A deeper relationship with your body and its wisdom

• Improved nervous system regulation

• Greater self-awareness and understanding of your patterns

• Increased confidence and self-trust

• More access to joy, gratitude, and aliveness

• A more compassionate relationship with yourself

Is This For You?

Who might benefit:

• People feeling disconnected from themselves

• Those wanting to develop a deep relationship with breathwork

• People navigating stress, transitions, grief, or uncertainty

• People who have pent-up emotions or energies that feel stuck

• Individuals seeking greater emotional awareness and resilience

• Those wanting a direct, experiential practice rather than more information

An Invitation

Breathwork may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for those who find themselves drawn to this modality, it often becomes a practice they deeply love and value. It is work, but it’s the type of work that consistently leaves me feeling noticeably better, clearer, and more connected to my life.

I cannot imagine a stage of my life where I will not be practicing breathwork to support regulation, energy, energetic cleansing, immunity, cardiovascular health, embodiment, empowerment, and the list could go on.

I invite you to sit with this information. Ask yourself if, at any point while reading, you felt a light turn on, a bell ring, or a moment where you brought your awareness to your breath and it felt good.

Could you see yourself living with 10 percent more vitality? Twenty percent? Thirty?

Could your life be better with a tool that helps naturally increase your energy rather than reaching for that afternoon cup of coffee?

Could you imagine what it would be like to not feel so bogged down by the heaviness, sludginess, and fogginess of our modern societal predicament?

The invitation is to slow down, listen, and connect with your inner guidance.

Does this journey feel important to you? Exciting? Kind of scary?

Would this container be supportive for where you are on your path right now?

Are you ready for something different?

Are you ready for the Breath of Awakening?

Breathe into your body and notice the resonance. Not forced, but ready for more.

The next step is a discovery call.

No pressure. No expectation. Just an opportunity to connect, ask questions, and feel into whether this journey is right for where you are in your life right now.

Go to moonmountainhealing.com to learn more.

One of the things I’ve noticed through my own journey and through supporting others is that most people already know what is keeping them stuck.

They know their patterns.

They know their reactions.

They know the stories they tell themselves.

They know the cycles they keep finding themselves in.

Perhaps it’s because they have been doing therapy (or something similar) for years and can speak openly, clearly, and transparently about themselves.

Yet they continue doing the same things to themselves and in their relationships again and again, often leaving them feeling hopeless, deflated, defeated, confused, and sometimes even nihilistic.

Then there are people who can sense that something is off but aren’t quite sure what it is.

They may feel disconnected from themselves, confused about why they react the way they do, or unaware of the role they play in the challenges they keep encountering.

Wherever you are on that spectrum, I think most people who seek help want the same thing.

They want freedom from the spirals, emotions, cycles, relationships, and dynamics that keep them stuck.

They want to feel more autonomous, more connected, more present, and more trusting of themselves.

The challenge is that we are often trying to change the symptoms without understanding the roots of why we do these things in the first place.

And that is where real change begins.

Not simply through more thinking, analyzing, or talking about our problems, but by bringing awareness to the deeper patterns operating beneath the surface and learning how to include all of ourselves in the process.

From my perspective, the change you seek is waiting to be met in your body. Lasting change happens when awareness connects to what is happening beneath the neck. My process is deeply somatic where the feelings in the body tend to be the entry point into your shadow material.

Shadow work is the process of becoming conscious of the unconscious forces that influence how we think, feel, behave, relate, and ultimately live our lives.

It is a practice of authentic and compassionate inquiry with the intention of not discarding any part of ourselves, but instead including those parts in our awareness and human wholeness.

It is about becoming more of who we are rather than getting rid of who we are not.

It is about becoming fully alive.

Bringing the parts of ourselves that have been hidden, rejected, wounded, or forgotten back into awareness so they can be met with compassion, understanding, and care.

The Loving Forward Path is the framework I use to guide that process.

It emerged from my own healing journey, years of self-inquiry, and supporting others in theirs.

While everyone’s journey unfolds differently and in its own time, I have noticed four phases that tend to emerge naturally throughout the process.

I know because I have lived it, and I have learned from others who have walked this path as well.

My work isn’t complete.

It never is.

You can move through all four phases and still find yourself meeting more of your shadow.

In my experience, I often find myself moving between multiple phases at once, revisiting old terrain with new awareness, and discovering deeper layers of the same lessons over time.

There is no destination to reach but so much to be gained along the way.

This work is about learning to consistently show up for your life.

It is about cultivating a life of depth, ongoing self-discovery, and integration.

It is about learning how to meet yourself with honesty, compassion, and courage again and again as you continue walking the path of Loving Forward.

Phase 1: Meeting the Shadow

Becoming Aware of Why You Do What You Do

Most people begin shadow work because something (or many things) isn’t working in their life.

Maybe you are realizing there is more to experience, more to feel, and you are stuck in a pattern of desensitized living.

I’ve heard someone say before, “It seems like I’ve only been living half of my life my whole life.”

I really related to that statement.

Maybe you find yourself stuck or unfulfilled in relationships, work, or community.

Maybe you struggle with anxiety, anger, shame, fear, self-criticism, people-pleasing, caretaking, depression, or a lack of motivation.

Maybe you are getting the sense that you can’t keep living this way.

Or maybe you simply know there is something deeper calling you on this path of healing and self-discovery. It’s not that the other things don’t work. It’s that they don’t work anymore.

What I know is that not only does something need to change, but change is absolutely possible.

Phase 1 is the beginning.

It is about bringing awareness to the deeper layers of who you are and uncovering the roots of why you do what you do.

Together, we begin exploring bodily sensations, triggers, emotional reactions, recurring stories, relationship dynamics, habits, and behaviors.

As you follow these threads, you often discover that many of the ways you relate to yourself, others, and life were formed long ago.

What once began as intelligent adaptations—strategies for belonging, safety, connection, or survival—may still be operating today, even though they are no longer serving you.

This first phase helps create a map of your shadow, an elusive part of yourself that can be incredibly difficult to spot without support.

As awareness grows and hidden patterns are brought into the light, change often begins to happen naturally.

Sometimes slowly.

Sometimes surprisingly fast.

There is no exact timeline for this process.

However, within six weeks, I am confident we will have uncovered what lies beneath your conditioning, gained valuable insight, and identified several shadow elements to continue working with, learning from, and integrating.

Questions We May Explore

What are my reactions, triggers, and moments of disconnection?

What patterns keep repeating in my life?

What situations activate me the most?

What emotions are hardest to feel and express?

How does my nervous system respond when it feels threatened?

What am I protecting?

What am I avoiding?

What part of me is asking to be seen, heard, or understood?

The goal of this phase is to learn how to turn toward your pain, wounding, emotions, and the parts of yourself you have spent years avoiding, suppressing, judging, or disowning.

Rather than trying to fix yourself, you begin learning how to understand yourself by going beneath the surface.

Rather than disowning very real parts of yourself, you begin bringing them into awareness with curiosity and presence.

When you turn toward your shadow, you begin understanding yourself on a visceral level.

When you better understand yourself, you can relate to yourself differently, and change begins to emerge naturally.

A closed fist, when forced open, only tightens its grip.

But when it is met with respect, tenderness, and a genuine desire to understand why it closed in the first place, it begins to soften.

And the more you soften internally, the more your capacity for connection, creativity, vitality, and authentic, Heart-aligned power becomes available.

Phase 2: Working With the Shadow

Getting to Know the Roots Beneath the Patterns

Once you begin recognizing what’s beneath the patterns, the natural question becomes:

What do I do with this?

In Phase 2, you have much more awareness and capacity.

With this capacity, you can continue exploring your reactions, triggers, emotions, and adaptations, and therefore continue meeting your shadow.

Feeling it.

Fully inhabiting that space.

And, with my guidance, learning how to create enough space to relate to it rather than unconsciously being it while moving through the world.

This phase strengthens your connection to the elusive shadow elements that are helping create your life.

As this connection deepens, so does your awareness.

And with more awareness comes spaciousness.

The spaciousness to pause.

To notice.

To see and feel clearly what is happening.

And to respond differently.

This phase is where you begin applying what you are learning in the real world.

Not perfectly.

Not all at once.

But consistently.

We do this together.

Being witnessed, supported, challenged, and held accountable can make a tremendous difference when it comes to applying what is discovered.

This phase is not about blaming parents, partners, circumstances, or the past. Nor is it about condoning the behaviors of others that caused harm.

It is about deepening your understanding.

Because understanding often creates the conditions for compassion.

And compassion creates the conditions for forgiveness and healing.

You are not changing or rewriting your story.

You are learning to relate to it differently.

As your relationship with it changes, its grip on you begins to soften.

The story no longer unconsciously runs your life.

Instead, it becomes something you can learn from, draw wisdom from, and call upon when it genuinely serves you or others.

As you develop this deeper understanding of your story, your relationship with yourself and others begins to change.

You become rooted less in judgment and more in curiosity.

Less in shame and more in understanding.

Less in self-rejection and more in self-acceptance.

As you continue following the threads uncovered in Phase 1, you begin noticing how often these shadow elements are enacted and how deeply they are woven into your nervous system, brain, and body.

This is where you deepen your awareness of the nervous system and the role it plays in your reactions, relationships, and daily life.

You begin to see and feel just how intricate and brilliant your strategies are for staying safe, surviving, and protecting yourself.

The nervous system’s priority is not connection.

It is survival and safety.

The work here is learning how to consciously find your way back to connection after your nervous system has been activated.

Through this work, what once seemed impossible, stuck, frustrating, or irreparable begins to feel workable.

There is a path.

The challenges don’t disappear.

In fact, life can, in some ways, become more difficult.

You become increasingly aware of how much responsibility you have in creating the life you live and the relationships you participate in, and that can be an incredibly difficult thing to face.

Yet your relationship to challenge is what ultimately changes.

Rather than resisting it, avoiding it, or becoming overwhelmed by it, you begin learning how to embrace it more fully.

Questions You May Explore

How do I know when I am identified with a shadow element?

What helps me create space between awareness and reaction?

What does my nervous system do when I become activated?

What situations cause my nervous system to become activated?

How do these patterns show up in my relationships?

What supports me in responding differently?

What am I learning about myself through this process?

The goal of this phase is to strengthen awareness, build capacity, and develop a conscious relationship with the parts of yourself that operate automatically.

As you learn to relate to your shadow rather than unconsciously acting it out, you gain more freedom, more choice, and a deeper sense of self-trust.

You gain enough space to recognize that you are not your thoughts, emotions, reactions, or adaptations.

You are the awareness that can hold them, learn from them, and consciously choose how you want to relate to them.

This is where insight begins transforming into embodiment.

Phase 3: Embodiment & Integration

Embodying More of Who You Want to Be in the World

Awareness is powerful.

Insight is valuable.

But neither automatically creates change.

At some point, we must begin living what we have learned.

And that happens through consistency.

This phase is about integration, and integration, in this context, means practicing what you believe to be the core of your truth.

At the same time, we remember a quote often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi that I deeply appreciate:

“My commitment is to truth, not to consistency.”

My understanding of truth changes from day to day.

The consistency is not in rigidly holding onto old beliefs.

The consistency is continuing to show up openly, honestly, and willing to learn.

Especially in this phase.

By this point, you have learned so much and practiced so much that you naturally begin seeing opportunities in your everyday life to work with what you have discovered.

This phase is about taking everything we have learned through meeting and working with the shadow and bringing it into your relationships, work, community, and daily life.

We are not trying to make every moment about “doing the work.”

Rather, you become increasingly open to working with conflict, discomfort, uncertainty, and challenge as they naturally arise.

Again, not perfectly.

But honestly.

Staying connected to your body.

Staying connected to your feelings.

Staying connected to your emotions.

Responding appropriately to your nervous system, needs, and conditioning.

Learning how to navigate life as a more whole version of yourself.

This phase asks:

What happens when we take the courageous step toward saying or doing the thing that feels scary or terrifying?

What happens when I communicate the boundary?

Express the feeling?

Ask for what I need?

Take responsibility for my mistakes?

Tell the truth?

Choose the healthier path even when it is uncomfortable?

What happens when I do this on a regular basis?

This is where awareness of self begins deeply informing how we show up in the moments that matter most.

This is where insight is practiced and lasting change becomes embodied.

This is where you begin discovering who you are when you stop allowing fear, conditioning, and old protective strategies to make every decision.

As you continue practicing, something remarkable begins to happen.

Trust in yourself becomes deeper.

Trust in your ability to navigate difficulty.

Trust in your ability to feel.

Trust in your ability to respond consciously when life asks more of you.

Not because you have become fearless.

But because you have spent enough time doing hard things that you now know how to keep showing up.

Questions We May Explore

What does this look like in my real life?

What courageous conversations am I avoiding?

What truth wants to be expressed?

Where is my nervous system still disconnecting me from life?

What boundaries need to be communicated?

How do I stay connected to myself under stress?

How do I take even better care of myself?

What would it look like to trust myself more deeply?

Who am I becoming through this work?

The goal of this phase is embodiment.

Learning how to consistently bring awareness into the moments that matter most.

Learning how to live what you know.

And stepping even more fully into your wholeness as the person you are here to be.

Phase 4: Loving Forward

Living With Greater Awareness, Compassion, and Choice

The journey doesn’t end, but you are no longer searching for answers. You are living.

You are learning to Love Forward with all that you are, and your lifestyle now includes ongoing self-discovery.

Not out of urgency, but as a wonderful, inspiring, exciting, and rich unfolding that is always informing you of who you are in each moment.

The final phase is less about doing shadow work and more about living from the wisdom gained through it.

You have gained tools. You have deepened your relationship with all the parts of yourself. You know yourself on a level that allows you to trust yourself in difficult moments, challenging conversations, uncertainty, and change.

You understand that life will continue presenting challenges, opportunities, losses, victories, mistakes, and moments of growth. The difference is that you now have a much greater capacity to meet those experiences with awareness, compassion, honesty, and choice.

This may be the deepest phase of the whole system because you are working on more subtle levels and learning to use these tools in ways that help you access the wisdom of your body at any time, not just during sessions.

This is the advanced level.

Because you know yourself so well, you can trick yourself.

The patterns are often less obvious now. The defenses become more sophisticated. The mind learns how to use insight, awareness, spirituality, and even shadow work itself as ways to avoid what is true.

In this phase, you work with the shadow of shadow work.

You explore where growth has become another identity. Where self-improvement has become another strategy. Where awareness has become disconnected from embodiment.

This is where you fine-tune what it means to live a life of ongoing, earnest, and sincere growth.

It is the clear embodiment of the phrase:

“I am perfect as I am, and I can be better.”

The invitation is to live in alignment with your deepest nature while remaining connected to your heart.

The invitation is to become increasingly honest in knowing and living your truth.

To trust all that you are.

To listen deeply to what is happening within you and around you.

To stay humble while remaining stable and powerful in your stance.

A stance that says:

My Love speaks for itself.

It is my greatest sword.

I will wield it even in the face of great injustice and uncertainty, trusting that it will guide me toward the highest possible reality for myself, my loved ones, and ultimately, the world.

That is the path of Loving Forward: accepting reality exactly as it is, excluding nothing, while remaining rooted in your values and refusing to be pulled away from them or your vision for a more beautiful future by forces within you or around you.

Questions You May Explore

What kind of person am I, and what am I becoming?

What values guide my life and shape the conditions around me?

How do I keep going even when it’s hard?

What do I do when things are good?

How do I bring more awareness, honesty, and compassion into all of my relationships?

How do I stay connected to my heart and Love while living with discernment and Truth that honors both myself and others?

How do I actively participate in creating the more beautiful world I know is possible?

If I were dying, what would I want to look back at my life and see?

This is your life now.

This is a great responsibility.

This is a great power.

This is you living your purpose.

It is not always special, spectacular, or earth-shaking.

Often, the most real and potent beauty comes in the quiet moments when no one is watching.

When you are alone and, without thought of recognition or reward, you pick up a piece of trash from the sidewalk because you are in relationship with everything, all the time.

Each mindful step.

Each conscious choice.

Each time you expand your awareness.

You are helping create the world you want to live in and the world you want future generations to inherit.

This is ultimately how you relate to yourself.

This is ultimately how you relate to the world.

The Heart of My Work

At its core, shadow work, to me, is about being in right relationship.

The deeper we grow our understanding of ourselves, the more capacity we have for connection. The more connection we experience, the more gratitude we have for both the big and small things. The more gratitude we feel and express, the more Love we have for being human on this planet and sharing this experience with other beings who are not all that different from us.

Compassion contains the prefix co- and the root passion. Together, we share a common passion. At our core, we all want to feel safe, supported, resourced, and capable of living regenerative lives.

We cannot do that alone.

Freedom does not come from being alone on the mountain. Freedom comes from being able to wander down the mountain, interact with the communities in the villages, and meet others as though you are meeting another expression of yourself—a child of Source, whatever that Source means to you.

We are human, and that comes with traits that are both wonderfully simple and incredibly complex.

At the end of the day, we are doing this work so we can not only tolerate one another, but learn from one another, share this Earth and its abundance, and connect with and Love one another more deeply.

And we do whatever it takes to get there.

I believe shadow work is some of the most important work we can do in service of those goals.

We cannot truly be together, learn from one another, or connect without obstruction if we are unable to fully be ourselves.

And perhaps that is one of the main reasons we have enrolled here in Earth School.

Let’s take the journey together.

The first step is a discovery call.

By the end, you will know if we are a good fit for each other and whether this is the right path for you.

Either way, blessings on your journey.

So here’s the thing:

Every human has a shadow, just like every human has a light.

And in the lightest, brightest parts of you, there is also a speck of darkness.

And in the darkest of the dark within the depths of you, there is also a light.

This may sound like it resembles the yin and yang Taoist symbol…

Because it most certainly does.

I view the world through the lens of relationship and how things interact with each other.

Good exists insofar as it is in relationship to bad.

Same goes for all of life’s polarities. They can’t exist without the other.

Therefore, all the best parts of you — the highest, brightest parts — can’t exist without your shadow.

And your shadow is not something to get rid of. It naturally exists all the time as a part of the unconscious, containing aspects of ourselves that are outside conscious awareness or conscious relationship.

So not everything unconscious necessarily has to do with the shadow.

The shadow is a part of the unconscious containing the aspects of ourselves we’ve rejected, repressed, hidden, or disowned.

That is an important distinction.

For example, when I am happy, sadness — along with many other aspects of myself — temporarily move outside of my conscious awareness.

This isn’t necessarily bad unless my happiness is actually masking an underlying sadness that feels too overwhelming to face. Or maybe I think sadness is stupid and not worth my time.

In this scenario, the sadness is an aspect of the shadow, and the forced or performative happiness becomes a way to spot the shadow.

I think the shadow is deeply intertwined with the nervous system and can even be passed through family systems across generations.

That being said, there are two types of shadow: personal and collective.

The personal shadow develops through your unique life experiences, starting in utero all the way to the present day. This can also include shadow material inherited from your family.

The collective shadow is what we, as a collective, are unwilling to face — things like prejudice, homophobia, racism, rank, privilege, sexism, chauvinism, and all the “isms” that people become subjected to, causing significant suffering, disconnection, and even violence between groups and cultures.

This is influenced and reinforced by culture, traditions, religions, and overarching systems.

Spotting the Shadow

What I want to cover today is ways to spot the shadow when it is activated.

And the thing about the shadow is that it is usually underneath what is being expressed, which makes it a little tricky to access sometimes.

So if what is being expressed is aggression, there may be sadness, fear, shame, grief, or powerlessness underneath it driving the aggression.

And just so you know, it is totally okay to spot the shadow after it is activated.

It is like noticing that you are holding a fist.

The noticing is what then makes it unclench.

And eventually you will notice it faster and faster.

The ways to spot the shadow that I decided were important to name are:

• Reactivity

• Defensiveness

• Feelings and emotions

• Shut down and freeze

• Judgements and projections

• Aversion toward self

• Dreams

Reactivity

Hear me out.

I know this might seem like low-hanging fruit, but once it clicks that this is usually your shadow running a habituated pattern that likely developed at a very young age, things start to make a lot more sense.

The nervous system is plastic and malleable, but it takes on strong patterning during those formative years.

Legitimate danger may have been present, and you likely froze, became aggressive, went numb, or developed ways of being likable by becoming nice, agreeable, funny, useful, or hyper-attuned so that you could stay safe.

Now, much of the time, what we are responding to is perceived danger.

For example, I have a reactive behavior that comes from the perceived dangers of being in social situations — fears of being disliked, rejected, or not accepted.

This behavior turns on a certain charm, the comedian in me, or the blabbering fool that overshares.

I often leave these interactions exhausted or ashamed for having dominated the conversation, taken the spotlight, or shared far more than what was actually asked of me.

My shadow operates underneath this reaction, and what emerges is this adaptive behavior.

This part of me believes that simply being myself is not enough, and that I need to perform in order to earn connection, trust, respect, or belonging.

I was unconsciously strategizing for connection.

The type of reactivity this points to is a loss of connection to my core.

Instead of being anchored in myself, I become immersed in a familiar survival pattern that creates pseudo-connection through an inauthentic expression of who I am.

My journey then led me toward learning the difference between being aligned or misaligned with my actions and behaviors within social contexts.

I am still a charming comedian that enjoys attention, but I have found more balance.

Defensiveness

This one has come up a lot for me in intimate relationships where I have established enough safety to defend myself instead of fawning in the face of conflict.

Defensiveness is quite literally defending something that does not want to be felt, touched, exposed, or accepted because something underneath feels tender, vulnerable, or overwhelming.

Now, it is absolutely necessary to defend ourselves in certain situations — especially if our character is being slandered or something is being described wildly inaccurately.

But many times, what relationships actually require is our willingness to first slow down, feel, and understand what the other person is saying before immediately protecting ourselves.

And unsurprisingly, that can be incredibly difficult.

If you feel the immediate urge to defend yourself in conflict, there is a good chance some shadow material has been activated to protect you from discomfort, pain, shame, grief, inadequacy, or vulnerability.

And maybe it is simply the discomfort of accepting how we impacted another person — intentionally or unintentionally.

That discomfort, to the shadow, can feel threatening enough to protect against, but defensiveness can be deeply disconnecting in relationships.

So begin paying attention to your automatic defenses and look at what might exist underneath them.

Is there pain there?

Does this situation remind you of something from your past?

Is there an unmet need present?

Are you resourced enough in this moment to stay open to what is happening?

Feelings and Emotions

Feelings and sensations in the body tend to be a very common entry point in my shadow work sessions.

People tend to disown some or maybe all emotions for various reasons.

So those emotions got stuck and the body often stores the emotional material and conditioning that our conscious mind has become disconnected from.

The sentence stem:

“Right now in my body I feel…”

can be more than enough to uncover shadow material and reconnect with parts of yourself that are usually operating outside of your awareness.

Feelings often lead us toward emotions.

And emotions are not just isolated experiences — they exist within a much larger contextual landscape.

This work asks us to become curious about that entire landscape, where nothing arising is immediately rejected, dismissed, or excluded.

In terms of locating shadow material, it requires us to move toward the feelings and emotions, not away from them.

Not only to experience what is obvious on the surface, but to stay with the experience long enough to discover what may exist underneath it.

This might sound obscure or esoteric, and honestly, that’s because this is a skill that develops through long-term practice, deep self-inquiry, or consistent work with a skilled therapist, coach, or facilitator.

When the body, nervous system, emotions, and mind begin connecting with one another, things become much clearer, and the shadow elements become easier to recognize and work with.

Shut Down and Freeze

Shut down and freeze are protective mechanisms that may have worked really well when you were a child, but as an adult in relationships and life, can become limiting and disconnecting.

I was a chronic freezer in the face of conflict, fear, or emotionally overwhelming situations.

For some reason, my nervous system decided this was one of my best strategies for survival.

And honestly, it worked.

But part of my work has been recognizing the freeze response and intentionally generating life force into my system so that I can stay connected to myself and respond differently.

So that I may:

• speak my truth

• express the appropriate emotion

• act courageously

• move with grounded intention

• and stay connected to my heart

This is another place where the nervous system and shadow appear deeply intertwined.

There is often a core wound or series of experiences that both shaped the nervous system and contributed to the development of this shadow element.

In my case, the shadow here is tied to an inner child who learned to shut down because emotions did not feel safe to express or move through.

That younger part needs tending to in those moments.

It needs reassurance that it is safe to let go of control and trust that the adult Self has the capacity to handle what is happening — even if it is difficult.

Judgements and Projections

One would think this needs little explanation with how much people talk about shadow work these days, but honestly, this is still one of the easiest ways to spot your shadow at play.

This does not necessarily mean your judgments or perceptions are wrong.

The shift is that instead of solely focusing on what someone else is doing, we also become curious about what is happening within us. With enough curiosity and care, you can likely find some valuable information about yourself in every judgement you have.

I had a judgment and projection come up recently about someone in my community.

I told myself stories about them.

I cast judgments.

I projected motives onto them.

And maybe some of those perceptions were true. Maybe they weren’t.

But what became more important was recognizing what was happening inside of me.

What was true was that I felt hurt because I believed they were unavailable for connection with me.

That became the entry point.

As I sat with it more deeply, I realized I was carrying fears of rejection and abandonment, and even more importantly, I realized that I was actually the one making myself unavailable for connection.

A few days later, I intentionally opened myself up instead of withdrawing, and we ended up having a very friendly conversation — and another one later that evening.

Over the next few days, we continued having easy, sweet moments together.

And afterward, I felt a little silly for the projections and judgments I had created, which honestly is usually a good sign.

Aversion Toward Self

The first thing that comes to mind here is the inner critic.

This is when judgment becomes directed inward.

These critical voices often feel like they are ours, but many of them were actually learned from culture, family systems, school, religion, social media, peer groups, and society at large.

This is what psychology refers to as introjection.

A simple example would be:

“Boys don’t cry.”

The aversion toward self happens when you feel, express, desire, or move toward something authentic, and an internal voice immediately criticizes, shames, or suppresses you in order to keep you “acceptable,” productive, safe, or controlled.

Many people even glorify their inner critic because it keeps them productive and pushing forward.

But the inner critic is often like a coach from hell.

Sure, it may help you achieve things, but there is no heart connected to it.

No compassion.

No warmth.

Another part of this category is the things we dislike about ourselves.

For most of my life, I disliked my voice.

Whenever someone complimented it or appreciated it, I would deflect it or insist they were wrong.

Through my work, I eventually realized it was not actually my voice that I disliked.

It was how disconnected I was from the words I was speaking.

My body was not involved in my speech.

And once that shifted, I became able to genuinely appreciate my voice and understand why others appreciated it too.

So work with your aversions toward yourself.

There is often rich and meaningful material underneath them.

Dreams

Dreams are wild.

There are people who work very deeply and beautifully with dreams, and honestly, I am still undecided on exactly where I stand with them.

I think there is tremendous value in exploring the symbols, themes, myths, and emotional landscapes within dreams, but they also remain incredibly mysterious to me.

That being said, there are occasionally very obvious figures, themes, or motifs that clearly resemble shadow material and can often be translated into something you are actively working through in waking life.

I do not work with dreams as heavily as some people do, but I do help people unpack them and explore how they may contain useful information or insight for their path.

Closing

One of the best ways to approach shadow work — especially if you are exploring it on your own — is with deep curiosity and openness toward whatever arises.

I want to leave you with this quote from Robert Augustus Masters:

“When we are aware of our conditioning and not letting it drive us or dictate our direction, it cannot at such times be categorized as our shadow. Because it is now out in the open, illuminated and held in our grounded awareness.”

Thank you so much for reading.

I hope you learned some things that you can take into consideration when you are out in real-world situations.

All of these ways of spotting the shadow can become incredibly helpful for gathering the information needed to continue living a life of self-inquiry, self-reflection, embodiment, growth, and integration.

In this solo episode, I share a real and honest update on what’s been unfolding in my life, my work, and the Loving Forward community.

I’m gearing up for a trip, and after months of deep creation and output, I feel a sense of stepping into a new chapter—one that includes slowing down, finding balance, and allowing space for restoration. I talk about my decision to shift the podcast to a biweekly rhythm and why honoring that shift feels important.

With an upcoming trip to Guatemala, I reflect on the power of stepping out of our normal environments—how travel brings us into presence, reconnects us to the magic of life, and creates space for both connection through intentional disconnection.

I also open up about my own patterns—especially around over-giving—and how I’m learning to trust that my presence is enough. There’s a deeper layer here around wounds becoming gifts, and what it means to truly live in alignment with the work I’m here to do.

Along the way, I share updates on:
– The Breath of Awakening 6-week program
– Upcoming free breathwork webinars
– The evolution of a men’s work offering here in Eugene
– My continued passion for shadow work and breathwork as tools for transformation

This episode is a reflection on transition, integration, and the courage to listen inward—even when it asks you to slow down.

If you’re navigating your own shifts, closing chapters, or feeling the call to reconnect with yourself… this one’s for you.

I used to think that if I meditated enough, did enough work on myself, and reached a certain level of intelligence, I would eradicate mistakes from my life—and no longer have to face the discomfort and frustration that come with them.

And there is still a part of me—much smaller at this point—that believes if I actually had my shit fully together enough to be a respectable human, then I wouldn’t make mistakes.

There is a deep-seated belief surfacing in these statements.

Somewhere along the way, I learned to equate being a man with never making mistakes.

I don’t recall seeing the men around me ever admitting to making any. It was as if they were omniscient—like they always knew the right thing to do, and even when things didn’t go as planned or someone was hurt, it was never named as something they had done.

This part of me has been in an unwinding process for years.

I’m still learning that what I call a “mistake” isn’t inherently a bad thing. It’s more so an event, an action, or a reaction that made sense given my conditioning, my level of awareness, and the state of my nervous system at the time.

I’ve seen role models of mine exemplify what it looks like to own their contribution to a relational rupture—another word for what we might call a mistake. Even without knowing exactly what’s happening inside of them, I can feel the strength it takes to move toward conflict—instead of moving away, which my inner child much prefers.

This isn’t just about men.

Recognizing that we all make mistakes on a regular basis touches something deeper about what it means to be human.

We make mistakes.
And we do it often.

And it can be hard to sit in the discomfort of being confronted with one.

The hope is to eventually move beyond what we typically think of as “mistakes”—a word that often carries undertones of shame or “being bad.” Closer to the truth is that we often act without full awareness of the effect we have on our environment or on others.

Is that still a mistake?

It gets nuanced here—but ultimately, I think it falls into this:

Something I did that had an intended or unintended effect on myself and/or another—something that has consequences, and something I now have the opportunity to take responsibility for, while also holding compassion for myself and all involved.

There is a path toward becoming more integrated—one where we honor our feelings and emotions in the face of conflict, take full responsibility for our part in the situation, and extend care and compassion for how our actions may have impacted others. Then, we apologize and move forward with a natural increase in awareness.

Sometimes we need a clear plan for the change that needs to happen following the apology. Other times, all that is needed is a small adjustment.

I find myself reflecting on the small adjustment category, because this happens so often—and for a long time, it was incredibly difficult for me to know how to handle these moments.

So you can understand where I’m coming from, let me give you some insight into my relationship with making mistakes—and where I find myself now.

The Conditioning of Shame

When it comes to mistakes, I have lived a life fraught with shame.

Shame that I learned.
Shame that was given.
And shame that I took on as mine to “fix.”

Why so much shame?

Because the culture here in the U.S. often demands perfectionism and exceptionalism—without honoring the long, winding process it takes to get anywhere close to that.

It’s commonplace to be reprimanded for mistakes—for missing the mark, for getting something wrong.

And pain often follows that reprimand.

At times, the mistake itself also triggered pain in another person, which then unconsciously transferred onto the one who made the mistake—creating even more pain.

This is a cycle many of us have lived inside of.

Instead of mistakes being a moment to slow down and learn, they were often handled in ways that conditioned us to believe there is something inherently wrong with us for having made them.

And that belief doesn’t just live in the mind.

It lives in the body—and it is uncomfortable.

It shows up as tension.
As contraction.
As the impulse to shut down, run away, fight, hide, or fix what just happened as quickly as possible.

That belief led me to ruminate—obsessively, and for far longer than necessary—on my mistakes.

I didn’t want to forget them.

I wanted to hold onto them for as long as possible so I could “learn” how to never make them again… or else I might lose something I needed.

Meeting the Inner Child

I’ve done a lot of work around this.

But what has been most helpful is my work with my inner child.

When I make a mistake, or get “caught” doing something I either chose to do—or unintentionally did or didn’t do—my inner child gets activated. Even now, as an adult, I can feel that familiar sense arise:

“I’m in trouble.”

And that sense commonly comes with shame, sadness, fear, freeze, and sometimes anger.

About two months ago, I self-led a profound process where I saw a vision of my inner child—distraught about something.

In the vision, my inner child was going up to my partner, trying to soothe or fix whatever was happening.

This was something I recognized as common in our relationship… but far from ideal.

My subconscious clearly noticed something was missing in this dynamic.

What was missing was me.

As the process continued, I stepped in as the mature adult and—in this imagined scene—told my partner:

“I’ve got this.”

Then I took my inner child into another room and tended to his needs with the love, care, and presence that only I can offer.

That moment changed something.

What I took away from this process was a simple truth: the best way to show my partner how much I love her is by loving and caring for myself.

This process gave me access to an experience that had been deeply missing in my nervous system.

What I witnessed was a way of tending to my inner child that made it no one else’s responsibility but my own.

I not only understood this mentally—I felt the power of it in my body.

The importance of tending to the relationship between my inner child and my present-day adult self is truly what has helped save my relationship—and will continue to be invaluable.

There Is Nothing to Fix

I bring this process up because a recent scenario necessitated the “I’ve got this” energy.

On a recent morning, I made several “mistakes”—some from lack of awareness, some from laziness, lack of foresight, and simple forgetfulness. Interestingly, a few of them surfaced in succession within about 30 minutes, which was kind of intense.

My inner child got activated and wanted to hide.

I could feel the onset of a shame spiral.

So I decided to slow down and sit, feel it, and be with it—but the compulsive sense was:

How do I fix this?

Then something shifted in my consciousness.

The space helped me see there was nothing to fix—
only something to face.

I gathered the energy to mobilize me toward communication.

I started by asking my partner for consent to talk about what had transpired.

She said yes.

And then I shared my narrative of what I perceived had happened, and how it was making me feel.

I owned the “mistakes” and the role I played in their effects.

I said clearly:

I did those things that led to these consequences.
I see my thoughts and feelings around it.
I see how that may have affected you.
I see how I could have done something differently.
I’m sorry.

And that’s essentially it.

Sometimes there needs to be a plan to ensure that the appropriate changes will be implemented, but other times what is needed is simply a natural expansion of awareness.

A Different Way of Being

It was beautifully received by my partner, and I felt so much better knowing I handled this as the adult man that I am today.

The repair was made, and we moved forward.

This may sound so incredibly simple—but wow, it has taken so much work to get to this point.

I know I am going to keep making “mistakes.” Ruptures are going to keep happening that could have been avoided by operating with more awareness, care, and mindfulness.

This is perfectly okay, normal, and sometimes really messy. There is a wide spectrum here.

And I understand the importance of this inevitability—without these moments, we would have far fewer opportunities to grow our perspective, our understanding, and our compassion for ourselves and others.

But there is something even more soothing about reminding myself that mistakes are not only welcome…

they are impossible to avoid as long as I am living.

My goal is to be even more connected to life, including all that life has to offer me.

And the beautiful thing that happens naturally from that is the Love that grows and grows.

That is truly all that matters to me.

May we all keep growing our capacity for Love.

And may we all perceive enough safety to lead with Love—and keep on Loving Forward.

In this episode, I sit down with Sophia for a conversation that moves from light, playful moments… into some very real and grounded explorations of truth, the body, and what it actually means to be in relationship—with ourselves and with others.

We talk about:

– Learning how to speak your needs clearly (and what it takes to get there)

– The difference between complaining vs. being proactive in your life

– How honesty creates real trust and connection

– What happens in the body when we feel shame, feedback, or discomfort

– The role of the nervous system, fascia, and the “gut feeling” in how we relate

– Breathwork, energy sensitivity, and experiencing the body as something much more alive than we’re taught

Sophia shares her path of going “full send” into truth-telling—what that disrupted, what it created, and how it shaped the way she moves through relationships today.

This conversation weaves between grounded science, lived experience, and the more subtle layers of being human—without trying to land on one “right” answer.

It’s honest.

It’s a little messy.

And it’s very real.

If you’ve ever felt the tension between what’s true for you…

and what feels safe to say—

this one will meet you there.

Referenced — Michael McMahon at movingmountaininstitute.com, Meredith Woods at meredithwoods.com, and A World Appears by Michael Pollan

To work with Sophia MacMillan, LMT, you can go to Mobility Project Physical Therapy’s website mobilityprojectpt.com.

Reach out to me at onehappylife@moonmountainhealing.com if you would like to be supported in breathwork or shadow work. Available online and in person.

Fall has always been my favorite season—until I moved to Eugene. Then spring became the obvious favorite.

Eugene is so special in the spring. People everywhere, smiling. Flowers growing from the ground, flowers blooming in the trees, more flowers covering bushes—and verdant leaves everywhere.

I naturally grew to Love the process of tracking the leaves on trees as they begin to bud into these little pods that eventually explode into a surprise of neon green leaves, flowers, and sometimes bundles of flowers.

Of course, with all these plants coming to life also comes major allergies. This place ranks among the highest in the U.S. for seasonal allergies—but that is a whole different story.

It is just so damn beautiful, and the sun is shining, with temperatures around 65 degrees. What in the whole wide world could be wrong with that?!?!

I guess I’m finding great challenge this spring, and I recognize this is an unpopular opinion. What I’ve been saying lately is “spring is hard.”

I should specify that this spring is hard—and I know why.

This past year, I have been working on living my dreams. My dreams are to be a full-time healer, coach, a guide in service to the awakening of human consciousness and the Heart’s of all.

Last spring, I was planting seeds for what I wanted to fruit from trainings that I saw in the horizon. I knew these trainings were the gateway to stepping into my dreams.

Those seeds certainly took off and had a natural cycle that led me to starting my healing practice as a breathwork and shadow work facilitator and guide, and of course eventually lead to a major null in the winter.

Now this Spring, the pressure feels more intense. I have planted many seeds—some I am seeing sprout already, some I am uncertain will germinate—and this is bringing up a lot for me to work with.

I must not forget the intensity in this country and in the world. People are scared. People are angry. Confused. Nonplussed. Depressed. Numb and detached, because we are at war.

Conflict is everywhere right now.

And of course, the opposite is happening, too—joy, beauty, happiness, excitement, peace, and gratitude—because being human and having this one life is so special and precious, even when we are faced with great turmoil and destruction.

So the seeds are sprouting, trees are growing leaves, flowers are blooming, the sun is shining, and the whole world, in terms of seasons, is asking us to come out of our darkness.

This, to me, feels like a terrifying task. I wake up most days not wanting to get out of bed because of how vulnerable I feel—exposing myself and my soul’s yearning to the world to help myself, my Loved ones, and anyone else I can have an effect on.

How do I reconcile my longing for harmony, abundance, peace, and open Hearted Love when there is so much wanting to deflate or inflate my power?

How am I to feel good about the garden I’m creating when there is so much suffering in the world due to abuse of power, rank, and financial freedom?

I ask these questions on behalf of those, like me, who are creating the conditions for the life they want, while praying that life is valuable and beneficial to others.

So the seeds did their work in the darkness of the soil and are now exposing themselves to the world—to be seen, expressing to the world with undeniable life force.

This is so scary to something younger in me. In my past, I have planted many seeds that never really developed into a mature, well-rooted, strong perennial plant or tree. I am sensing fear, because of those experiences, that I will fail in living my dreams.

I am naming that not to incite pity or conciliation. I am naming that so that I know it’s present. This fear is welcome at my table, no matter how uncomfortable. If it wasn’t, it would more than likely stop me in my tracks.

I would stay in bed. Instead, I get up and have to reconfigure my whole being through my routines, practices, and centering activities.

This is like watering the garden. I am tending to myself so that I get the nutrients and nourishment I need to keep going.

This tending takes immense care-full presence.

And conditions fluctuate. I must remember to be open and receptive to my inner needs so that I can be responsive to the needs I see around me.

I am in service. This is what I am here to do.

I am committed to balance. And, speaking of those who have the privilege to find a sense of balance—because not all do—life, especially spring, is a dance between the polarities.

Life is a series of cycles. One emotion following the other. I am mostly water, like the ocean, with waxing and waning motions to experience. Rain follows sunshine, and vice versa.

This is all so necessary, from where I can see. And yet, it is all so hard.

But what is hard, really?

Lately, I realized that when I say I am struggling, I mean I am stuck. That is antithetical to what I want, which is flow.

But when something is hard, that is actually something I prayed for in some way. It’s uncomfortable, it’s a force to work with, but it’s not going against what I signed up for.

So admitting that something is hard does not mean I am weak, nor does it mean that something is wrong. I have to remind myself of that, because this is the point where people tend to quit. The path is too obstructed. I can’t move any further.

I must remember that I chose this path. My dream profession or life isn’t necessarily my purpose here on Earth, but it complements the deep healing, clearing, growing, shedding, connecting, and Loving that I am here to do.

I get the sense you may still be reading because you are also on the path of creating the conditions for the life of your dreams. You see it. You can feel it. You’ve been planting the seeds and tending to the garden.

Maybe your garden is thriving… and still, new and unexpected variables arise.

There is a tension between what is beautiful…
and what is hard.

Between what is growing…
and what feels like it could fall apart at any moment.

So beautiful, and so unsettling.

I imagine this is what people would consider being on the edge of something.

This is why spring has felt so hard this year. Individually and collectively, we are on the edge of something big. Conditions are being created and destroyed constantly.

Life keeps changing.

And in life, we must remember the difference between when we are struggling and when things are simply hard. Both may support and practices for working with it all.

No matter what, be present with what is. If you are crying with grief in paradise, don’t resist it.

If you need help understanding why you feel energetically off or challenged—even when the external conditions are so beautiful, when a world of life and possibility is right in front of you—find your support people. Find your healers.

You don’t have to navigate this alone.

To understand our patterns.
To articulate our wounds.
To make sense of our past.

And yet… something doesn’t fully shift.

It’s because the body hasn’t been sincerely included.

In my experience, the real turning point in this work comes when awareness drops beneath the thinking mind and into sensation.

Into what is actually being felt.

That’s where the emotions are.
And when they’re given space to move, something begins to open.

Not all at once. Not forcefully.
But honestly.

This is where more choice becomes available.
This is where freedom starts to take root.

The mind can only take us so far.
At some point, we have to feel.

If you’re exploring this path, let this be a simple invitation:

Pause.
Breathe.
Notice what’s happening in your body.

And stay.

That’s where the work begins.
Keep on Loving Forward 🤍

I just listened to Michael Pollan on The Ezra Klein Show talking about his new book A World Appears, where he dove deep into the subject of consciousness in his science-, research-, and experiential-based way.

There is a lot of beautiful information and discovery that Pollan found through this process—much of it things I’ve felt for a while—but one major takeaway stood out the most to me, because it feels like such a vital message to bring into the mainstream:

His latest understanding, and something I deeply agree with, is that thinking is not the center of consciousness—embodiment is.

Consciousness is deeply tied to the body. In some way, the brain developed to keep the body safe, not the other way around.

Essentially, we are embodied beings first, and thinking comes after.

Feelings happen in the body. Emotions are the consequence of the way our mind and nervous system perceive those feelings.

Then thoughts are what we may use to make sense of what is happening.

Feeling → Emotions → Thoughts

This is a model for how to work with consciousness—and how to experience a fuller range of the human experience.

The mainstream largely disavows feelings and emotions. If you’ve been following me, you know this is something I say often.

And I should add that there is no strict hierarchy, linearity, or sequence that is cut and dry with this.

Thoughts can engender emotions, which then cause your body to feel things.

This happens whether you are aware of it or not.

What I am interested in—as someone devoted to raising consciousness—is supporting myself and others in becoming more aware of the interconnections of this process.

In other words, as Michael Pollan points to, being embodied is a major aspect of consciousness. And in my opinion, many of us have been conditioned not to include that aspect of consciousness within our experience.

This isn’t new. It has been happening for hundreds of years.

What This Means for Therapeutic Modalities

I think this book is huge for those of us somatic practitioners who have been consistently speaking to how important it is to practice connecting to the feelings in our bodies.

This is not an intellectual thing. This is a practice that must be tended to.

And once you begin doing it, it becomes something more than just a practice—it becomes the way you move through life. This is what you do everywhere.

Why?

Because it is a major part of existing as a species that is aware it is aware.

And for some reason, we have evolved to be less aware of our whole experience.

I’ve heard people say, before beginning deep inner work that is somatic-based, “for my whole life, I’ve only been experiencing half of my life.”

That feels so beautifully and heartbreakingly true.

There is a resonance I feel with that statement—and I know others can feel it, too.

So, Interoception

To put it simply, interoception is the ability to sense, be aware of, and interpret sensations and feelings within the body—sensations such as heartbeat, sore muscles, tension in your shoulders, gut reactions, a heavy or broken heart, etc.

It’s not totally necessary to break it down like this when it comes to doing breathwork and shadow work, but in science, they often describe it in three parts:

Interoceptive awareness → noticing sensations
Interoceptive accuracy → how precisely you detect them
Interoceptive sensibility → how you relate to them

In my work, I am working more so with awareness and relationship, not accuracy.

Even though I really enjoy learning about science, I can also find it limiting and not always applicable. So I tend to jettison it at times and instead remain open to what is happening now—without concepts, theories, ideas, and data guiding me.

That being said, however, this book that Michael Pollan has written provides research-based, serious journalistic discovery into something that ancient civilizations and spiritual traditions have always known about the layers of consciousness.

Now it is reaching the mainstream, and it is being backed in the way the mainstream tends to trust.

So I sense that a bigger wave of the embodiment movement is coming, which I am happy about.

How Interoception Ties to the Work

So in shadow work sessions, we see that emotions are usually connected to sensations in the body—and sometimes instructed by them, and vice versa.

That means when you are sad, there are bodily sensations tied to it. When your body is hurting, you might feel frustrated or scared about that.

The same is true in breathwork sessions.

We carry a lot of stuck emotions from life experiences that required us to repress them in order to stay safe, small, or “smart.”

The breath has this amazing way of quieting the thinking mind and allowing us to drop into the emotional and feeling aspects of consciousness.

This is where we can finally—if the nervous system deems it safe enough—release big emotions.

I have also seen the thinking mind quiet, and awareness settle first onto feelings in the body, which then leads to big emotional releases.

From what I have seen, that is what tends to happen more often than not.

Someone brings their full awareness onto the feelings and sensations in the body first—then the emotions come.

Then the mind begins to have thoughts that are clearer and more refined.

We eventually connect all three together—unifying these levels of conscious awareness—which I think is incredibly useful in all of life, especially in the relational domain, which Michael Pollan expressed as part of his theory for why consciousness developed to this complex human level—because of our deep proclivity toward being social.

How Interoception Ties to All of Life

Once we can unify all aspects of ourselves and make that a normal way of living, so many amazing things begin to happen.

My experiences in the work has led me to an increase in self-trust, self-Love, self-regulation, balance, autonomy, inner strength, clearer thinking, flow, overall health, and presence.

The most important thing in all of this is the increase in presence. This is what helps us learn to include all parts of life into our awareness—even that which disturbs, shakes, or dysregulates us.

Something important that increases when learning to feel is a confidence in your ability to face anything that arises.

Feelings and emotions can be, for some people, the last thing they want to experience.

I’ve certainly been there.

In doing deep work, my resistance and fear have sent signals such as, “If you feel this fully, it will destroy you, and you will never come back from it,” or, “If you feel this, then you will lose everything—such as Love, respect, reputation, esteem, motivation, etc.”

The nervous system protects us from feeling.

This is because we have been so hurt in the past. Being vulnerable and feeling has likely been used against us in relationships and social contexts. It certainly was for me.

So I really understand how powerful that protective mechanism is.

But on the other side of feeling what you have avoided feeling… is freedom.

Then you keep feeling and connecting your awareness to it.

Suddenly, you are not as afraid of feeling as you used to be.

You are not as afraid of others, now that you are less afraid of yourself.

Now the other half of your life—your consciousness—is online, invigorated, and alive.

In Closing: How to Integrate More Interoception

Integrating more interoception starts with the breath. At least, that is where I started.

In my day-to-day experience, I am consistently using my breath to help include my body in my awareness. I commonly notice stomach tightness, spots that itch, tingling in my feet. Sometimes my organs have sensations. I like to bring my full awareness to those areas in the moment so I can see if there is information I can work with immediately.

This touches on Traditional Chinese Medicine, which attributes emotions to sensations in respective organs. This is fascinating to me, and something I believe to be very true—which is why I am studying TCM to incorporate into my own life and into the way I support others.

So, breathing your awareness into your body is one of the easiest things you can do.

Another is formal meditation that is body-oriented—or breathwork.

Another is going for a walk and using the breath in tandem with your steps to help keep your focus on the body.

And then, of course, you can reach out to me or your local shadow work and breathwork facilitator to receive support in safely connecting your awareness to the feelings and sensations in the body—and then processing the emotions around that.

This should eventually give you the tools to work with feelings, emotions, and thoughts safely on your own, and in real time while operating in social contexts.

I’m more than happy to support anyone who is interested in becoming more interoceptive, because I believe it is so crucially important for experiencing the fullness of being human.

Thank you for reading.

Bless you journey <3

But thinking isn’t what creates change.

Feeling is.

In this short piece, I share what makes breathwork and shadow work so powerful—and why learning to shift your awareness into the body changes everything.

Because what we don’t feel…
we hold.

And what we learn to feel…
we can finally move.

If you’ve been feeling stuck, looping, or disconnected—this is a doorway back into yourself.

Read more, and explore the work here:
moonmountainhealing.com

—

If you want reflections like this + simple practices you can actually use in your daily life, you can join the Loving Forward newsletter.

That’s something I find myself coming back to again and again—in my own life, and in the work I do with others.

Thinking is useful. It helps us make sense of things, organize our lives, and navigate the world.

But it can also keep us stuck.

Looping the same patterns.
Rehearsing the same stories.
Trying to solve something that doesn’t actually live in the mind.

What begins to open things up is learning how to feel.

To slow down enough to notice what’s happening in the body.

The tightness in the chest.
The contraction in the belly.
The subtle signals that are always there, waiting to be met.

Because when we bring awareness into the body, something shifts.

New information becomes available—sensations, memories, images—things that don’t always make sense right away, but are deeply connected to what we’re moving through.

This is where the work gets real.

—

If you feel called to explore this more deeply, I offer breathwork and shadow work sessions to support you in this process.

🌙 moonmountainhealing.com

But most of us were never given the space to feel them.

So they got held.
Pushed down.
Stored in the body.

And over time…
they don’t just stay emotions.

They become patterns.
Tension.
Reactivity.
Disconnection.

What I see in the work again and again is this:

There’s nothing wrong with you.

Your system adapted perfectly
to the environment you were in.

But what once helped you survive
may now be what’s keeping you stuck.

This work is about learning how to meet
what’s been held inside of you.

Not forcing it.
Not fixing it.

But creating space
for it to finally move.

Because when it moves…
something opens.

More space.
More presence.
More life.

If this resonates with you,
this is the work I offer 🌙

Find out more at moonmountainhealing.com

I started my professional healing practice a few months short of a year ago.

Anyone who has ever taken on a business venture knows that it takes a lot to get it established and moving. It is a beast of a project—and believe me, it doesn’t happen in one day.

My life coach at the time would often remind me that “a rocket burns 80 percent of its fuel on lift off.” That really landed for me. It validated what I was experiencing—something I think all entrepreneurs understand.

There was a period where I was either doing things for Moon Mountain Healing, or thinking about what I should be doing.

Basically, it was a job that had me on the clock 24/7.

After months of hard work—where the website was functional, ongoing events were published, a consistent social media presence was established, and some paying clients were coming in—I was able to take my foot off the pedal a little bit.

Looking back, I can see that I was in a state of urgency. I was living in an activated state that felt like life or death.

I remember the thoughts:
“If I don’t get this done, I will fail.”
“I have to keep grinding.”

And I do think those thoughts had some validity to them.

But after working with them, I could see they weren’t sustainable—and that I was on the road to a major burnout.

This is not the first time I have done this.

Something big came into my awareness while doing parts work with my therapist a while back. I noticed that I carry the same thoughts and energies that I infer my father was driven by—and honestly, I think a lot of people are driven by this.

The part I discovered within myself, and continue to work with, shows up as this devilish fire-lord figure—fiery red from head to toe, horns, a menacing smile.

He goes by Rocky.

His job is to keep me busy.

The messages he uses to keep me moving are:
“I will fall behind.”
“I will fail.”
“I will lose everything if I fail.”

Rocky has been with me for a long time. I sense he precedes me—something that has moved through my family line for who knows how long.

And in some twisted way, he helps.

I sense this is the part that many workaholics have. The part people tap into when they need to work incessantly to support their family. The part that pushes people far beyond their limits—beyond what is actually healthy or sustainable, often for very real reasons.

I mention Rocky because he has been an important figure in my most recent work around finding balance.

Where is balance, and how do I find it?

Balance is actually really easy to find—just hard to sustain.

Last November, after supporting a 9-week shadow work program that my mentor, Luke Adler, co-facilitates, I was told that my work right now is learning how to rest regularly.

The simplest way I could integrate that was: give myself some days off.

Up until then, I hadn’t taken a full day off to truly rest in months. I was okay at that point, but they could see where that road was leading.

Luke shared something with me that felt both grounding and expansive—that everything is going to work out for me, and that I can ease up on the work.

That I can grace myself with two days off a week.

I can rest.
I can trust.

I went home really believing that.

And for a moment, it felt like life was giving me reasons to believe it too.

Then December came around, and people immersed themselves in the holiday madness.

Suddenly, things felt uncertain again. That inner, turmoil-driven part came up, and I found myself working every day again—being driven by the same thoughts that had been running me before.

I like to think this was the period where I was earnestly working with these shadows, these parts, these forces—whatever you want to call them—and actively seeking the balance I so deeply believe in.

I’ve been coming out of that work this last month, and I’m going to share what I’ve learned about how to find—and restore—balance.

Step 1 – Reflection and exploration of your inner world

Reflection, to me, means looking at and observing yourself as if you are looking in a mirror or watching a movie of your life.

Questions to ask yourself are:

Am I aware of my actions?
Am I being fully truthful about what I see?
What am I most resistant to?

And maybe the most important question:

What is something that is incredibly normal for me—and for my family system—that might not actually be healthy or life-generating?

Through this reflection, I was able to bring a microscope to my actions and recognize that I was deeply out of balance.

From a Taoist perspective, life is made up of polarities.

And from a shadow work perspective, when you are doing something, then nothing lives in your shadow.

To take it a step further, there is a kind of harmony—what Taoism points to—where you can be doing nothing within the something, or be soft while being hard, and vice versa.

In shadow work, we explore parts—what I would describe as intelligent, nervous system–patterned responses to perceived stimuli.

And we especially want to meet the parts that hold a lot of power, because that points to an imbalance within the system.

This leads into the work.

Step 2: Work with it

This is where the rubber starts to hit the road—all four tires.

You begin to see where you are out of balance, and the choices that are contributing to your system being out of whack.

You start to recognize where there is an excess of energy.

And in this work, you learn how to create space within yourself so that you can actually meet that energy—and intentionally soften or reduce its intensity.

I know this might sound a little out there, but there is a path for this.

I know because I’ve experienced it myself, and I witness it in others all the time.

This is where the work becomes less generalized and deeply personal.

Your process is unique. Your context is different than anyone else’s.

But the intentions are the same:

Feel it.
Move toward it.
Meet it.
Relate to it.
Give it space to move.
If you are being guided by a professional, allow yourself to emerge into it.
Understand it as intimately as possible.
And integrate that understanding.

Because what happens is this—

That pattern will get triggered again.
And it will try to run the same pattern it has hundreds of times before.

But now you know it.

You can feel it as it starts to come online.
You can sense how it tries to use you.
You can catch yourself the next time you are operating from that place.

And likely—you don’t want that anymore.

And just like in relationships, you can begin to have conversations with these parts.

You can set boundaries.

You can let it know that you—as the adult—are here now, and you’re the one handling this.

And as a healthy, mature adult, I believe finding a sweet balance in your life is ultimately key.

Step 3: Balance your life as often as you can

This is integration.

It isn’t perfect. Actually, you fail a lot in this part. I fail all the time.

It isn’t about obsessing over getting it right or reproaching yourself when you get it wrong.

This is about an earnest commitment to your life’s fullness—your health, your wellbeing—and knowing that this is an ongoing process.

A simple example is the times I catch myself working really hard, long hours without taking a break.

I can do that. That’s not the hard part.

The hard part is taking the break. Closing the laptop. Giving less of myself when my body is telling me it has reached its limits—or even surpassed them.

Lately, this often looks like getting out into nature, or even just sitting outside for 20 minutes.

Often after doing this, I come back even more resourced to continue whatever I was working on.

At any moment, I can ask myself:
“What have I been doing?”
“Do I need to do the opposite for a little bit?”

The body will tell you. It’s actually simple.

If you’ve been moving and expending a lot of energy, then when it’s available to you—do nothing.

Be still.
Be silent.
Listen to the birds.
Let thoughts settle.

This is the hardest—but most important—thing for us “devil fire-lord” inner-part-types to do.

And it’s ongoing and ever-evolving.

Maybe you don’t need to stop completely. Maybe you need more mobilization.

But can you check in with your body and notice if you’re tense as you do what you’re doing?

Can you soften into the doing?

Can you find stillness within the movement?
Softness within the hard?

That is the balance we are seeking—moment to moment.

Don’t worry, you can’t mess this awareness thing up.

Closing

Balance isn’t something we arrive at once and then we’re done.

It’s something we return to—again and again.

Through awareness.
Through honesty.
Through an underlying commitment to honoring our energy, our well-being, and our force of Love in the world.

I recognize that we are all working with and through big things. And something I’ve been reflecting on as I work with others and create more offerings is this:

What kind of state do I want to be operating from for when my dreams are fully actualized?

By cultivating balance in my life now, I am preparing myself for a more balanced and harmonious future.

This is the work I’m devoted to—in my own life, and in the spaces I hold with others.

If something in this resonated with you, I’d love to stay connected.

You can follow along with my work, reflections, and practices through my newsletter, Loving Forward, where I share weekly thoughts and simple ways to come back to yourself. You can sign up on the homepage at moonmountainhealing.com.

If you feel called to go deeper, I offer 1:1 shadow work sessions and breathwork experiences to support you in meeting what’s within you and learning how to work with it.

You can also listen to The Loving Forward Podcast, where I explore these themes in real, human conversations.

And you can find me on social media, where I share pieces of this work in real time—follow me on Instagram @moonmountainhealingllc.

This is a path of learning how to live in relationship with yourself.

And you really don’t have to do it alone.

In this episode, I sit down with Katie Rose for a real, honest conversation about what it actually looks like to meet ourselves in the deeper layers of healing.

This is Katie Rose’s first time on a podcast, and what unfolds is not a performance — it’s a lived, embodied exploration.

We move through her experience with chronic sleep challenges that lasted for years, the hormonal imbalances that surfaced, and the deeper layers of childhood trauma that were quietly living underneath it all. Not as something to fix, but as something that needed to be met, listened to, and given space.

There’s a powerful thread here around anger — not as something to suppress, but as a life force. A signal. A boundary. A movement of energy that, when allowed, can actually support healing.

Katie Rose shares about the courage it took to speak her truth in her family, and how that moment became a turning point — not because it “solved everything,” but because it shifted her relationship to herself.

We talk about somatic experiencing, resourcing, and what it means to actually feel grounded in your body — not as an idea, but as something lived and practiced over time.

There’s also an honest look at resistance, fear, and the reality of doing this work while also holding space for others. The balance of being human and being in a role of support.

Toward the end, Katie Rose shares about her group mentorship, The Thriving Path, and how learning to trust flow — instead of controlling everything — continues to stretch and shape her.

This conversation isn’t about arriving somewhere.

It’s about learning how to be with what’s here.

The messy parts.
The powerful parts.
The parts that are still unfolding.

Check out Katie Rose’s website vibrant-way.com to learn more about her and her offerings.

If something in this conversation resonates with you…
if you’re noticing there’s more beneath the surface that wants to be felt, explored, and understood…

I offer 1:1 shadow work sessions and breathwork experiences
to support you in connecting with your body, your emotions, and the deeper layers of yourself.

You can reach out to me directly,
or explore more at moonmountainhealing.com

“It is crucial not to make a problem out of our resistance to facing our fear. There is enormous energy bound up in resistance, energy that can be freed up for more life-giving purposes if we will but approach our resistance with clarity and compassion, moving at a pace that neither rushes us nor proceeds too slowly.”
– Robert Augustus Masters, PhD

So what is fear?

Fear is a primary emotion — one of the oldest, most pervasive and persistent feelings experienced across living beings.
It’s deeply wired into the nervous system and has roots in the most primitive parts of the brain and body that are oriented toward survival and protection.

Fear is a feeling in the body that arises as the nervous system detects something as threatening. It happens nearly simultaneously, often without our conscious awareness. Living organisms developed this so there could be an automatic, immediate response to danger.

You can imagine even single-celled organisms having the capacity to contract and move away when needed. How else would we have evolved?

It is so necessary, but in modern times, fear has become something to get rid of. Because of this, it gets pushed into the shadows—smoldering like a coal fire beneath the surface, quietly acting as a major influence on our lives.

I would also add that fear is dominant in many socially acceptable and normalized forms, such as worry, anxiety, paranoia, fright, angst, dread, and doubt.

These are often expressions of a deeper root that is commonly treated with medication, or not addressed at all—contributing to imbalance and, at times, disease. It can look like a failure of the body, when in many cases it is a disconnection from, or avoidance of, fear.

The body, the fear, the nervous system is working perfectly.

My process with fear

I recently left town to “get away from it all” out in the open skies of Central Oregon. I went deep into the wilderness, where there was little access by cars or people—complete solitude, and loads of silence.

I also decided to do a full 24-hour fast for this detox. Part of the fast was not taking in any outside information besides the rawness of nature, which meant no books. That was really hard, because the books I read are freaking awesome.

I arrived with many intentions, but the meta-intention was to counterbalance the overexertion of energy I have been putting into productivity—into Moon Mountain Healing, particularly. There has been so much stress around building this healing practice, and I am commonly thinking about things I can be doing.

From a Taoist perspective, if one is constantly going, then in order to balance the system, the prescription is sitting still. I went to be still, silent, and simple. There was a lot of resistance in my system to this.

So I thought my work was going to be solely with resistance, but after softening into what I was experiencing in my body, I found something much deeper.

What I found was a familiar, persistent feeling of fear. I have met this fear before, but this time I was able to relate the feeling in my stomach—this fear—to the constant stress, worry, dread, doubt, and anxiety I’ve been experiencing this last year.

I have been living with so much fear.

Working with the fear

I touched the fear that evening, but I didn’t work with it until the next day. The energy wasn’t there yet.

The next day, I found a lovely spot next to a creek after breaking my 24-hour fast with oatmeal and some protein-packed snacks. My energy was revived. I was ready to work with the fear.

This means meeting the fear head-on, understanding it, learning from it, and allowing myself to fully enter into it. From there, something begins to open—revealing even more. And eventually, emerging out of the fear, I can begin to integrate it into the wisdom of my Heart and the broader perspective of my consciousness.

I’ll unpack what this means exactly.

I use sentence stems as a way to work with the information that comes through the mind-body connection. I get into a mindful, settled state, and start diving within.

Meeting it — I intentionally bring fear into my awareness, starting with the stem:
“What memories or thoughts arise when I think about being afraid is…”
and then I go from there.

It is brought into my awareness for me to meet. I use stems that help me describe and define the feelings and sensations of fear clearly. This builds connection to it, rather than what normally happens, which is to avoid or run away.

Understanding it — This is where I start using stems to connect the sensations and feelings with my past.
“When I am afraid, I usually do…”
“I’ve been doing this since…”

This takes me into memories that live deeper within my personal psyche. Going further into the body’s experience, I use the stem:
“I felt most afraid as a child when…”

Learning from it — In this part of the process, I am interacting with my inner child. I can see memories of certain events or dynamics that made me very afraid.

Using sentence stems, such as “If I could speak to this child, I would say…” or “If the fear could speak, it would say…,” I’m able to extract simple terms from these memories that capture what made the child so chronically scared—words like “unpredictability.”

Fully entering the fear — I am skipping stems here, but I eventually come back to my body’s sensations. I allow myself to return to the fear that is living in my body.

I use stems and my imagination to move closer and closer to what I have identified as a spikey, black, rubber ball in my abdomen.

I move closer and closer until I am fully inside of this ball.

Inside the ball, I see that I am in a meadow field—the sun shining, the temperature perfect—almost like a sensory deprivation tank. On the edge, however, there is a metal wall that is sealed and locked. I notice I’m claustrophobic here.

Within the fear — This is a rich place to be. Being in the safety and protection of the fear wasn’t challenging. I had already taken the time to get to know it and understand it. The emotional context had been worked through.

Now this was my opportunity to innocently explore fear and what it’s like to be consciously, fully in it—whereas at other times, I am in it, but not by choice.

I use stems such as, “I would now describe my fear as…” or “If my fear could now speak, it would say…”

Now I’m in a state where I can have a clear, open, and informative conversation with fear. I learn so much here.

Emerging out — I gathered the information I needed. I see clearly the function of my fear—why it developed, what its positive intentions are for me, how it wants to keep me safe and protect me, how it Loves me.

I feel deep gratitude for my fear and how it helped me survive.

But as I know, this fear was helpful for a child, not for the adult man that I am now. I feel less resistance to it. I am more intimately connected with it. This relationship is strengthened.

I can emerge out and know I am safe enough to keep Loving forward, integrating this experience into my Heart.

Final thoughts

What I realized while submerged in the fear—inside the rubber ball—was that this is where my younger self went when he was so afraid. The environment was unpredictable, he had no control, he wasn’t safe, he was powerless.

It was ingenious, because it worked. It helped him in countless ways.

A simple example was in social contexts—he learned to be quiet and cause little ripples in his movements, almost like a ghost, in order to prevent ridicule from saying or doing something “stupid.”

This hasn’t been appropriate for a long time.

In the ball, in the meadow biodome, I was safe—but cut off from energy flowing in or out. Disconnected. Frozen in numbness.

In relationships, in business, in community, in various life activities, I experience fear. Life is scary, and we are never completely safe. But sometimes—often—the fear my system is experiencing is incongruent with what is actually happening in my immediate reality.

When that happens, I don’t show up in the world the way I intend to, which is to operate from my big, warm, Loving heart. What fear does in the modern age is disconnect—especially in the relational domain.

I have felt frustrated with the way fear shows up in my close relationships and in my healing practice. This doesn’t mean getting rid of it. It means continuing to do the process I outlined above, as many times as needed, until my system can relate to my fear rather than from it—bringing it into my conscious, connected present moment.

Maybe even transmuting the fear into energy that is life-generating—ultimately creating more Love and connection.

An Invitation

If you feel called, you might explore this in your own way.

Notice where fear shows up in your body.

And gently try a sentence stem:

“If this fear could speak, it would say…”
“What made this so scary was…”
“If I could speak to the younger part of me, I would say…”

Let it be simple.

See if a word or phrase emerges—like “unpredictability,” “not safe,” “I have no control.”

And just notice what happens when it becomes that clear.

Not something to fix.
Just something to be with.

If You’d Like Support in This Work

If this resonates with you, you don’t have to do it alone.

I offer 1:1 shadow work sessions and breathwork experiences where we slow down together and meet what’s present—at a pace that honors your nervous system.

This work isn’t about getting rid of fear.
It’s about building a relationship with it, so you can stay connected to yourself, your Heart, and the people in your life—even when fear is present.

If you feel the call, you can reach out to me directly,
or explore more at moonmountainhealing.com

I’d be honored to walk with you in it.

In this episode, I sit down with Nathan for a real, alive conversation that moves between play, depth, and honest reflection on what it means to be human.

We explore this idea of “becoming more human” — not as something to achieve or perfect, but as something we allow ourselves to soften into. The messy parts. The uncertain parts. The parts that still feel, still react, still don’t have it all figured out.

Along the way, we play with this idea of a “10,000 point human scale” — a lighthearted but surprisingly revealing way of looking at growth. Not as a finish line, but as an ongoing unfolding… where being more human doesn’t mean being perfect, but actually allowing more of your full experience to be here.

There’s a thread here around the desire to be “done” — to be healed, to be clear, to arrive somewhere — and the quiet realization that maybe the path isn’t about getting there at all.

Maybe it’s about learning how to be here.

We move through reflections on:

• Letting go of perfection and the pressure to “arrive”

• What “doing the work” actually means — and how it can become a weapon or a doorway

• The role of teachers, mentors, and learning to trust your own inner authority

• Accountability, self-awareness, and the felt sense of embodiment

• Sitting with not knowing, instead of reaching to escape it

There are moments of laughter, moments of pause, and moments where something deeper comes through — the kind of conversation that doesn’t try to perform, but instead lets itself unfold naturally.

At the core of it all:

You don’t need fixing.
You don’t need to become someone else.

This is about learning how to be with yourself as you are—
feeling what’s here,
staying present,
and living from a more honest, connected place.