After the winter hibernation/reset. How losing my voice became a “pause to notice”. How I’m diving into ‘where am I willing to do something for someone else’? And perhaps more importantly WHERE AM I NOT? How our cultural conditioning blinds us to where we are not willing… and how to notice it? Slow down, pay attention to sensation, and trust it!

How I felt that I couldn’t ask for what I want because that included an assumption to the other that in some way I **needed** them to be different. How I have learned that by NOT asking for what I want, I am actually withholding necessary information to the other which prevents me being able to connect with them. And how hard it is to change a lifetime of conditioning/patterns!

How I’ve spent my life thinking I’m to cause/blame for things that can’t possibly be my fault (and lots that can!). How I had to travel to “no one ‘makes’ anyone feel anything” to find the paradox between - where I can see I can contribute (both helpfully, and less so) but that I am not Cause. How the Wheel of Consent by Betty Martin has helped.

How my conditioning taught me to equate “yes” with love, and “no” with no-love! What does life look like now I understand a bit more how unconditional love is?

This is a theme that has been brewing for a while - why have I believed I had a right to someone’s attention? How have I been repeatedly tripped up by feeling someone else had the right to mine?

My musings on empathy as most people think of it (which can be a side effect of people pleasing), and compassion. Why does compassion feel different to me? How does it help me where empathy doesn’t?

How has unsolicited advice impacted me? How does it land for you? Recognising what’s mine and what’s not mine when people “gift” me their opinion.

How learning to recognise what’s mine and what’s not mine has expanded my ability to be neutral around any disagreement. How acknowledgement and reparation are KEY to healing disconnection, disagreements and differences of opinion. Reparation means I can improve upon a relationship after each ‘glitch’ rather than simply soothing my own wounds.

How learning to listen, and having a listening turns practice, has helped me. How a container can create safety.

How “being ethical” brought me to paralysis… and how realising that life = harm has begun to free me from ‘should’ and ‘must not’. More on embodied ethics here : https://www.instituteforeroticintelligence.com/embodied-ethics-webinar-series