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Hello friends and colleagues,
August has been a month to rest and restore. I took my first vacation since 2017 to spend three weeks Dall Sheep hunting, high in the Alaskan mountains. When this trip was planned, I had expected to be surrounded by beauty, and challenged by nature.
But, I found myself surprised by the sheer vastness of my natural surroundings. I was amazed at the survival skills of the beings, like the sheep we were searching for, in such rugged terrain. I was struck with a sense of overwhelm when I felt the roughness of lichens on rocks that have been here since the beginning of time. Being in a place that is so open and desolate, yet magnificent and filled with lifeforms that have endured immense challenges brought forth in me a way to describe some feelings I have only experienced silently before.
The only word I can think of to describe how I felt is: AWE.
Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world. As stated by Haidt and Keltner (2003), “Awe can be elicited by nature, art, acts of great skill, or virtue.”
As I hiked my way through the Alaskan outback with everything I needed to survive on my back, I felt that what I was experiencing was beyond imagination, dancing in mystery, and I perceived this sense of expansiveness with wonder and curiosity. It can best be described as a love affair with “I don’t know.”
Each day’s search for sheep unfolded into a myriad of emotions for me. I felt resolute as I clamored over boulders, and stricken with fear as I crossed rivers, vulnerable and empowered all at once. Haidt and Keltner described this feeling of awe as residing “…in the upper reaches of pleasure and on the boundaries of fear…”
Awe can be found in extraordinary moments and everyday events, and we can all experience it if we open ourselves up to it.
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~A new cohort for the Somatic Certificate course begins September 20th. If you would like to join me or share about somatic skills to expand nervous system capacity, the link is below. Myself and the team at Collectively Rooted are so grateful and appreciative of the community support through word of mouth sharing, which has allowed us to reach so many people.
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~I am extremely excited and humbled to team up with Bessel van der Kolk, Deran Young, and TaLisa Ramos-Watts to be a part of this trauma education initiative, providing a FREE and self paced educational summer series to all Pennsylvania residents, community members, and professionals looking to become trauma aware.
The Pennsylvania Office of Advocacy and Reform, HEAL PA, United Way of Pennsylvania, and Collectively Rooted are working to help Pennsylvania residents become more trauma aware and have practical tools to identify and address the trauma in their world.
~For those of you who would like to re-visit some of the somatic techniques that I teach (with some new ones for good measure!), or would like to share my nervous system tools with friends and colleagues, here is a refresher class, offered through Chicago Minds on Tuesday, Sep 6, 2022, from 5pm-6:30pm EST. You can register here with CE or here without CE.
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~If you missed my last offering through Chicago Minds, on Demystifying Structural Dissociation of the Personality, you can purchase the recording here until September 15, 2022. Here's an image from that presentation to pique your interest:
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~CIIS Public Programs is hosting me for a live, daylong, online workshop on Saturday, October 15, called Healing the Legacy of Historical and Transgenerational Trauma. This event is for anyone interested in exploring traumatic legacies passed down in families. This workshop provides a synthesis of research presentations and storytelling—the practical and the soulful—and includes guided writing activities, mindfulness practices, and somatic practices. Scholarships are available for this workshop (applications due by Friday 30th September).
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~The Master Series, which I hosted for the last two sessions, is now featuring the Shame Edition starting on September 16. This edition will give you the opportunity to hear from and interact with experts Pat Ogden, Deran Young, and Terry Real, along with host Frank Anderson as they carefully examine shame and its immediate, persistent, and generational impacts on our lives. If you use the code Linda20 at checkout, you can get a 20% discount on this program! Register here.
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~I would like to thank the folx at Tidwell Social Work Services in Boise, Idaho for inviting me to provide a 2-day training for their staff. It has been a pleasure to be able to share both my experiences as a social worker and as a former child refugee in order to help them to better serve recently resettled refugee individuals and families.
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I have intentionally given my brain a rest... listening to the gentle sound of rain against my tent and taking in the lessons taught when we quiet our mind and listen to the whisperings of nature around us.
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Music can be a powerful portal for shifting the state of our nervous system and, as Polyvagal expert, Deb Dana, says, "State creates story." I recently created a YouTube playlist that elicits, for me, feelings of awe and expansiveness, wonder and grandeur. I invite you to create your own playlist to inspire Awe & Wonder, for those moments when your nervous system would appreciate a reminder and a reset.
August is a month of ripening in the garden. In patient anticipation and impatient anticipation for the coming harvest. For me, dirty hands and bare feet = happy heart! I am practicing leaning into the joyous tension of the process of practicing (im)patience.
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