[Rerun] Things Without (Shame)

I recently discovered the wonderful little comic, Things Without Arms and Without Legs (A Comic About Creatures Who Are Kind), and it delights me. But as adorable and lovely as they are all on their own, I was especially taken when I found this old post, about some favorite topics of mine: vulnerability and shame.

When your body is a prison

I had the pleasure recently of listening to Invisibilia, the relatively new podcast that spun off from Radiolab with Lulu Miller. The first episode concerns thoughts – one of the many invisible forces that powerfully influence our lives. The second story in the podcast follows a very bright young man named Martin, who, at 12,

What was taken from you? Where do we get it back?

This weekend, we focused on soul: what feeds us, where we feel at home, how we connect to passion, to center, to power, to connection itself. As part of that, we talked about the thwarts to passion: what does your passion call you to do, and what gets our way?

An important learning from this was that most of the time, the thing thwarting us is not of us. We may have internalized it, sure, but it was something done to us. “Something taken out of my soul. Something I would never lose. Something somebody stole.” Or, something somebody put there, something that doesn’t belong, that we should never have been forced to carry.

Things Without (Shame)

I recently discovered the wonderful little comic, Things Without Arms and Without Legs (A Comic About Creatures Who Are Kind), and it delights me. But as adorable and lovely as they are all on their own, I was especially taken when I found this old post, about some favorite topics of mine: vulnerability and shame.

Announcing my new range of services!

Things are in continuing revision here at Power In Your Hands, but I’ve just completed a pretty good version of the page for the audience I’ve been reaching lately. Take a look here to see my new, expanded range of services and the people I’m hoping to reach.   While I’m still in revisions, comments are

Working with Sexuality: Decoupling touch and sex

In a previous post, I mentioned how often, especially for men, touch can be linked up in their bodies with sex.  In our current society, unfortunately, we have a disordered relationship to touch.  When we are tiny children, if we are lucky, our parents and other caregivers touch us all the time.  We are carried,

Working with Sexuality: Arousal in session

There are a number of issues that come about when working with clients around sexuality, and there are a few that are especially relevant to Rubenfeld Synergy, as it involves touch.  The most obvious of these is a client becoming sexually aroused during a session. During the second year of my training, I began to

[Rerun] Trauma and streaming, or, why I was shaking this morning after falling down the stairs

Yes, this morning I fell down the stairs.  I had put on comfy fuzzy socks, and was looking at my phone a little, and my foot slipped and I tumbled down a half-flight to the landing, bracing myself with my left hand.  My forearm got bruised up and I’m still figuring out what’s going on

Today is World Listening Day

By chance on BBC this morning, I caught a story about the fact that today is World Listening Day, as established by the World Listening Project.  Given that the work I do has a strong basis in listening, and that in fact Ilana Rubenfeld’s book is called The Listening Hand…well, my ears perked up, so

Double Edge, again: becoming one with presence

Yesterday, I spent more time with the wonderful folks at Double Edge Theatre, out in Ashfield, MA.  Their highly physical Open Trainings, as I’ve described here before, are rigorous, inspirational, and transformative, and I would encourage anyone who is not mobility-challenged to try one. Here are some moments from this one, particularly as they relate