keeping an agile heart

My August books are open! I am offering Saturday sessions for the first time ever. 

A few other notes: I am not offering weekday sessions this month. You can automatically schedule 1:1 single sessions below or through my website. If you'd like to work 1:1 with me through a one-month, deep-dive container, please schedule an exploratory call.

this lake reminds me to open my chest wider

~~~

If there's anything that this past year has taught me, it's this:
Even when things feel fragile, keep an agile heart.

In hypnosis, this might mean connecting with the compassionate witness within us—not to bypass, avoid, or even fix our circumstances and the world around us, but to be with what is. In client sessions over the past few years, I have observed that being present with our current circumstances allows us more agency, adaptability, and creativity in how we respond to and shift those very conditions. Presence can expand possibility, while reaction—a state where we may find ourselves unconsciously replaying old, unsupportive, even harmful patterns—can shrink it. 

I quietly, though no less lovingly, celebrated my 34th birthday in the middle of June. Since my last solar return, I left my beloved limestone city and sacred swamp home of 15 years, and headed into unfamiliar worlds out west. I traveled through an emerald coast and other swamplands, was carried by forceful desert winds, shed tears over Martian-like badlands, read an omen in a tree, fled from raging fires, and encountered sparkly-eyed and troubled ghosts. Amidst this journeying, I was uncertain about how I'd make rent and pay for groceries, grieved the conclusion of a significant relationship, reconnected with kin, cultivated new kith, and kindled new romance. 

I remained a compassionate witness to, rather than a static character at the mercy of, shifting landscapes, circumstances, emotions, and storylines. Part of this practice has meant not rushing to mend my heart's ruptures—instead, listening for what my grief and desires want to tell me, and letting the fractures become pathways to other possibilities. Whenever I try to avoid this process (a protective strategy, naturally), I notice myself feeling stuck, blocked, and disconnected. 

An emergent thought since my 33rd birthday: embodying presence can make way for reverence for what is. Maybe it's the animist in me, but this is to say that 'what is' is animate, sensate. It has a pulse, a spirit. I'm practicing reverence as a relationality, as an orientation of aliveness, as right relationship with what is—whether that's fear, anger, heartbreak, juicy desires, or unfathomable events. From this perspective, we are not victims of our circumstances, nor do we have absolute control over them. We are collaborators that can listen for, speak with, and shift our relationships to what is present.

My home for the summer resides on an ancient lake at the base of a dormant volcano that kisses the sky. I'll be moving again soon, just before the season changes. I've been wandering much this past summer, but my heart always knows its place.

What is most alive for you right now?
What is your current relationship to your circumstances?
What ruptures are asking for your presence?
If you saw your heart as the bridge of your mind and body, heaven and earth, dream and action—how might you tend to it now?
 

With fierce care,
Kristen

PS — 
Consider reverence in beauty medicine and acoustic enrichment. 
Let yourself be a butterfly and remind yourself that you are already on your way to freedom.
Support essential aid in Gaza here and Palestinian beekeepers here.
Support community members impacted by ICE's siege of L.A. here.

~

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