Emotions are evolutionarily baked into us. There’s an intelligence to them that can be our ally. I share why I value this evolutionary perspective and how it might help us understand the high degree of emotional energy in our collective nervous system right now.

How do you know when you’re feeling a particular emotion? Core emotions live in the body so body-based clues and practices offer us tools to better answer this question. We can cultivate our ability to perceive sensations due to emotions inside our body. We can grow our interoception.

My story of being humbled and taught by yoga. How yogic practices help to cultivate the art of compassionate, nonjudgmental observation. This coupled with emotional literacy is a powerhouse of skills for us feelers. The convergence of wisdom traditions and science is alive and here to support us with the many normal feelings that come with being attuned and of service to the changes going on in our world.

How AEDP and the work of emotions educator Hilary Jacobs Hendel think about trauma: how defenses are born and its relationship with trauma, as well as how undoing aloneness is a crucial entry point for healing, and is something that emotions education offers.

The act of turning inward and exploring emotions is no small feat. Society has taught us to block and misunderstand our emotions. I know it firsthand. Luckily research on emotions abounds! I share my story and why I got trained in the emotions 101 curriculum I did. Sense of responsibility and ethics.

Is the answer so much a “yes or no?” Or more of a “how and when?” Join my new Emotions 101 with Yoga course to unpack and explore this even more.

October’s theme

In these dynamic times that we’re living in where things are changing at a rapid pace, how can we be in relationship with uncertainty in a way that’s grounding, generative and liberating? As things continue to change, what can we be certain about within ourselves, the Universe, our relationships and the world?

The bad ass field of Polyvagal Theory is giving us more and more tools to better define healing and make a case for why cultivating a relationship with our internal worlds is necessary. Especially the more subtle dimensions. Neuroception - where wisdom traditions meet neuroscience.

Coming up with our own answers about this time of complex world change. Between mass media, political divisiveness and urgent calls for social action, we can find ourselves being inundated with voices and perspectives that tell us what and how to think. In Circle we create space for you to figure that out for yourself.

Sure, this question seems obvious, but it’s more than just seeing from another’s view. Within the two forms of empathy — cognitive and emotional — the latter provides us with an embodied, felt sense understanding of each other that’s sorely missing in our divided US politics. Join my Post-Election Circle on Nov 8 to practice cultivating that empathy and tapping into our shared humanity.

I had been mad at the world for awhile… Personal reflection on the interconnectedness between my personal wounds related to abuse and injustice and the collective wounds of oppression I’ve fought so hard to defend. New era of learning.

Can our emotions be entry points for deeper insight and understanding of the changes going on in the world? Can our emotional experiences be portals for the past, present, and future in a way that shifts things at a more subtle dimension? Prayer, poetry, reflections.

Here we are. Staring ourselves straight in the eyes. Wondering what’s next… Information overload, collective awakening, emotions as fuel.

News stories and information overload that leads to being desensitized. Not allowing the information to land in the body. Reflections on learning to sit in the fire of discomfort and not knowing. To build our capacity for that. Heads up: content may be triggering.

How to deal with our divergent, fragmented notion of truth as a collective? Knowing that we all create our own realities of truth based on our unique algorithm of who we are. I watch myself begin to disappear. I’m brought back by the spiritual. What if I fully trust in the presence of this specific, complex web that is me? That even in the face of adversity that it has a place here, a right to be here and is needed.