THEME 1: Initiation and the Ongoing Journey of the Wounded Healer

Living in the Experiential Discovery That the Path is Everywhere

Many of us interested in spirituality and healing have been wounded in our lives – physically, emotionally, or at a deep soul level. Whether this wounding takes form as relational or attachment trauma, narcissistic injury, or through any other number of forms of personal betrayal, it has a way of coloring our perception and affecting our capacity to feel safe, connected, and that we truly belong here. 

For some, initiation occurs only by way of transition, dissolution, and loss, through an embodied confrontation with the unconscious and the unlived life. These experiences are not signs of error or mistake, but calls to depth and evidence of how our wounding can serve an initiatory function.

Whether or not we identify as being a “healer” in some professional sense, we are each touched by the living reality of this dimension of experience, as open, sensitive human beings. In this way, we’re all “healers” as we engage and interact with others and the world each and every day, offering the gifts of our own presence, empathy, consciousness, caring, and compassion. 

Even though it may seem as if we are alone – and in part we must walk this path by ourselves – we are never truly alone, as unseen helpers, friends, and companions are always nearby. 

Throughout the course, we’ll explore:

• How our wounding serves an initiatory function into deeper layers of spiritual and soul-awareness
• A deeper understanding of our unique wounding and sensitivities and how these are not obstacles to our path, but the very path itself  
• The nature of a contemporary, embodied, emotionally-sensitive approach to the felt experience of wholeness and aliveness
• How even our most difficult experience is a unique portal into the heart, connection with others, with the Divine, and with all of life

THEME 1: Initiation and the Ongoing Journey of the Wounded Healer

Living in the Experiential Discovery and Reality That the Path is Everywhere

Many of us interested in spirituality and healing have been wounded in our lives – physically, emotionally, or at a deep soul level. Whether this wounding takes form as relational or attachment trauma, narcissistic injury, or through any other number of forms of personal betrayal, it has a way of coloring our perception and affecting our capacity to feel safe, connected, and that we truly belong here. 

For some, initiation occurs only by way of transition, dissolution, and loss, through an embodied confrontation with the unconscious and the unlived life. These experiences are not signs of error or mistake, but calls to depth and evidence of how our wounding can serve an initiatory function.

Whether or not we identify as being a “healer” in some professional sense, we are each touched by the living reality of this dimension of experience, as open, sensitive human beings. In this way, we’re all “healers” as we engage and interact with others and the world each and every day, offering the gifts of our own presence, empathy, consciousness, caring, and compassion. 

Even though it may seem as if we are alone – and in part we must walk this path by ourselves – we are never truly alone, as unseen helpers, friends, and companions are always nearby. 

Throughout the course, we’ll explore:

• How our wounding serves an initiatory function into deeper layers of spiritual and soul-awareness
• A deeper understanding of our unique wounding and sensitivities and how these are not obstacles to our path, but the very path itself  
• The nature of a contemporary, embodied, emotionally-sensitive approach to the felt experience of wholeness and aliveness
• How even our most difficult experience is a unique portal into the heart, connection with others, with the Divine, and with all of life

THEME 2: Trauma and the Sacred: Exploring the Link Between Spirituality and our Wounding

How the Path of Healing Unresolved Trauma and Wounding is Itself a Spiritual Practice

We’re all given more experience in this life than we can process. Unresolved trauma, which is held in subcortical and somatic circuitry, shapes our perception and deeply impacts our capacity to feel safe and connected, with ourselves, others, and also with our spiritual nature. 

There is a powerful, yet mysterious link between healing early emotional wounding and the spiritual path. These two streams are not separate and intertwine together in the body and the heart. 

It is through a unique kind of holding environment that we are able to access, verbalize, make sense of, and thereby integrate psychic, emotional, and somatic material that has falled out of embodied, conscious awareness. 

Through the establishment, together, of a safe and surrounding container, we’ll explore the realities of trauma and how it is an experience of de-linking and disassociation; how it is healed, and how the felt sense of safety and connection are re-established. 

Relational psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, somatic psychology, neuroscience, and the clinical aspects of mindfulness and meditation each have something to contribute to this journey. Each will be lens through which we will deepen our understanding and experience, as we open to the reality that tending to trauma is in itself a deep and merciful spiritual path. 

Throughout the course, we’ll explore:

• The nature of trauma and how each of us has unmetabolized and unlived experience which affects our perception and how we’ve come to imagine ourselves
• How trauma organizes in the body, psyche, and nervous system; and how it is unwound and untangled 
• The felt sense of safety and how safety is the ultimate medicine and “neural scaffolding” for healing and deeper layers of self-discovery 
• The link between trauma and the sacred and the relationship between our deepest wounding and our spiritual lives 

THEME 3: Meditation, Therapy, and the Creation of an Internal Holding Environment

Discovering a Spirituality of Your Own and the Way of Empathic Attunement

There are many types of inner work, forms of meditation, inquiry, yoga, and therapy. What’s vital is that we begin to discover a spirituality of our own, one that is unique to our own bodies, hearts, nervous systems, and souls. 

There is an image and metaphor given to us by D.W. Winnicott of a “holding environment,” a warm and poetic description of a relational configuration rooted in empathic attunement, resonance, warmth, and presence.

It is from such a matrix of experience that we can explore ourselves and the world around us, resting and playing in unstructured states of being. From this ground of safety, we are able to take riks, lead with our vulnerability when appropriate, privilege our own integrity and autonomy in other situations, and stay embodied to the full range of human feeling.

We’ll explore together the nature of this holding environment and how both meditation and psychotherapeutic inquiry can help us to cultivate new layers of insight, wisdom, and compassion for ourselves and others.

In this, we’ll discover the reality of how all healing is relational in its essence, and what that truly means: intimacy with self, others, and with the Mystery itself. 

Throughout the course, we’ll explore:

• The importance of a daily self-attunement and compassion practice and what is most important when it comes to deep transformation and healing
• How to include in your “alchemical toolkit” insights and practices from the meditative and psychotherapeutic traditions 
• How to rewire the way the way you have come to organize and work with difficult and challenging experience, and encode new neural (and soul) circuitry 
• Engaging your own path with heart while at the same time not turning your life into one “unending self-improvement project”

THEME 3: Meditation, Therapy, and the Creation of an Internal Holding Environment

Discovering a Spirituality of Your Own and the Way of Empathic Attunement

There are many types of inner work, forms of meditation, inquiry, yoga, and therapy. What’s vital is that we begin to discover a spirituality of our own, one that is unique to our own bodies, hearts, nervous systems, and souls. 

There is an image and metaphor given to us by D.W. Winnicott of a “holding environment,” a warm and poetic description of a relational configuration rooted in empathic attunement, resonance, warmth, and presence.

It is from such a matrix of experience that we can explore ourselves and the world around us, resting and playing in unstructured states of being. From this ground of safety, we are able to take riks, lead with our vulnerability when appropriate, privilege our own integrity and autonomy in other situations, and stay embodied to the full range of human feeling.

We’ll explore together the nature of this holding environment and how both meditation and psychotherapeutic inquiry can help us to cultivate new layers of insight, wisdom, and compassion for ourselves and others.

In this, we’ll discover the reality of how all healing is relational in its essence, and what that truly means: intimacy with self, others, and with the Mystery itself. 

Throughout the course, we’ll explore:

• The importance of a daily self-attunement and compassion practice and what is most important when it comes to deep transformation and healing
• How to include in your “alchemical toolkit” insights and practices from the meditative and psychotherapeutic traditions 
• How to rewire the way the way you have come to organize and work with difficult and challenging experience, and encode new neural (and soul) circuitry 
• Engaging your own path with heart while at the same time not turning your life into one “unending self-improvement project”

THEME 4: Opening a Temple for the Lost Orphans of Psyche and Soma

Much of our wounding occurs prior to the acquisition of language and is not able to be healed through the questioning and reorganization of patterns of thinking. In other words, we can’t think our way out of trauma, attachment, and relational wounding. 

When our capacity to process unbearable terror, panic, shame, and rage is overwhelmed, undigested pieces of experience are held subcortically and in our cellular circuitry, unreachable by thinking which is a layer removed from the fires of the alchemical body.

Encouragement to “just get over it, that’s totally irrational, you can’t really believe that, you know that’s not true” and so forth is experienced by an inflamed nervous system as the activity of violence and aggression.

It’s like an autonomic form of gaslighting and reflects a deep misunderstanding of trauma and the workings of implicit memory, and only contributes to re-traumatization, in personal, cultural, and collective networks.

In addition to shattering and unendurable experience – which is painful and terrifying enough – there is a profound sense of aloneness that goes with this, the sense that no one can understand, that there is no companionship into the dark night. I am alone in this. This is devastating to the soul.

When that raging alive little boy or aching little girl cries out longing to be held, known, felt, and heard, they’re really not all that interested in our clear cognitive analysis, rational inquiry, thoughts on the matter, or even our powerful spiritual insights. 

They’re yearning for something else… for you, your heart, your holding. To know that you will stay near, not abandon or shame them, that you will do your best to provide sanctuary and safe passage for them to return Home, to be allowed to come out of that crystallized, frozen state and live and play and breathe once again.

In this way they don’t even want or need to be healed, but to be held. And to feel safe.

Together, we’ll open to the reality of the inner family and enter into a new relationship with the richness of our inner world. In this way, we start to discover that things may be a bit more alive, open, spacious, loving, and even magical than we thought.

Throughout the course, we’ll explore:

• The importance of establishing a caring, containing relationship with the inner parts of ourselves that have fallen out of awareness – and how to do this
• The true nature of “inner child work” and why it is so important (and misunderstood)
• The life-giving practice of giving a voice to the voiceless and making sense of our experience in a new, more integrated and cohesive way
• How, in the end, true transformation and healing is not so much about insight and clarity, but really about love, and what this means