meeting the moment with reverence & care
I've been to other worlds and back — devoting my time and energy to deep study, developing new skills/unearthing old gifts, and allowing myself a deep sense of presence, curiosity, and play that comes with this. I am still processing all that I learned and am excited to share more about it in the near future. In the meantime, my hypnosis and past life regression books are open again!
A few announcements I'd like to share first:
I am raising my rates this September. I celebrated over three years of practicing hypnosis and past life regression this past March! This change reflects 3+ years of practice, my time and attention, my commitment to continued education and skill-building, and a need for sustainable financial support so that I can continue to share this care work on an ongoing basis. You can still book at my current rates through the end of August.
I am also excited to share a few experimental offerings at introductory rates later this fall based on my studies from this past spring and summer. Stay tuned.
Thank you for your understanding and continued support <3
ceiba speciosa/silk floss tree/tree of refuge in-bloom in my neighbor's yard
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I am trying to be in the present. I am trying to slow down. I am trying to be very mindful.
Of course, there's a voice that scoffs, Who has time to be present, these days? These are dire times. You need to be everywhere, at once. Everywhere except here.
At the very least, I am able to find something to marvel at everyday. In spite of grief and urgency, I can access a sense of wonder at even the most mundane things. Through wonder, I can sometimes feel my heart swelling — expanding outward until maybe I forget about myself for a moment as I behold, for example, my neighbor's silk floss tree in-bloom.
I am trying to keep heart, even when my heart is hurting — not just on a personal level, but for preventable mass displacement, destruction, illness, and death. When grief brings me to my knees, presence can ask: In this very moment, how can I simply be with what is here now? And from here, how can I move with the utmost reverence and care for life itself?
In my hypnosis work, presence is key. Through the trance state and engaging the mind/imagination and body/somatic experience, hypnosis allows us to be present and in mindful relationship with our struggles.
Through this work, we can allow our critical, rational mind — the part of us that wants to problem-solve, intellectualize, and fully control our experience — to take a back seat, while we meet what surfaces from our subconscious in the present. From here — though we might experience fear and resistance to what emerges — we have more access to curiosity, wonder, play, reverence, care, and perhaps, change.
An example: A client described struggling to find a sense of purpose and clarity on their path. In session, we moved beyond the narrative of their experience and identified the feelings associated with it. They described, with fascination and surprise, seeing and feeling the tension/anxiety/discomfort in their body as a heavy, smooth, slimy, dark gray goop in their chest and spine.
I guided them to find different ways to meet with and relate to this “thing.” In their curiosity, a question emerged: Is this feeling even mine to carry? They described a sense of relief at this question, connecting it to ancestral grief. By the end of the session, the goop had become a beautiful hardened crystal. Beholding this, they described feeling a sense of curiosity, wonder, and intimidation, recognizing the transmuted feeling as sacred.
A message, in contrast to their prior feelings, emerged: everything you need to fulfill your purpose is already within and all around you. Abundance lies within and exists all around you in the present always.
This client realized that they did not have to live with the “goop” in their body. By being present with the goop, other, more generative possibilities emerged.
In the present, we can acknowledge that each given moment is an opportunity to choose differently, to imagine other life-giving possibilities for ourselves, and to allow our hearts to expand outward.
We can take a breath before lashing out at someone. We can allow our loved ones space to breathe as they process their feelings. We can remind someone that we love them and that they are not alone. We can utilize and donate to our local mask blocs and clean air initiatives trying to care for our communities in the face of disabling airborne diseases. We can decide to contribute even $5 toward a mutual aid fund for a local community member or toward a fundraiser for those in Palestine, Sudan, or Congo struggling for self-determination and seeking refuge from genocide. We can give ourselves grace and patience as we keep trying to practice presence and care within our web of relations.
We can we can we can. We shackle ourselves to the past and limit our futures to think otherwise.
from a moment spent with a banyan tree friend
I will leave you with two other things influencing my reflections on being present:
Excerpt from Báyò Akómoláfé's “A Slower Urgency:”
"…I offered an invitation to 'slow down', which seems like the wrong thing to do when there's fire on the mountain. But here's the point: in 'hurrying up' all the time, we often lose sight of the abundance of resources that might help us meet today's most challenging crises. We rush through into the same patterns we are used to. Of course, there isn't a single way to respond to crisis; there is no universally correct way. However the call to slow down works to bring us face to face with the invisible, the hidden, the unremarked, the yet-to-be-resolved. Sometimes, what is the appropriate thing to do is not the effective thing to do.
Slowing down is thus about lingering in the places we are not used to. Seeking out new questions. Becoming accountable to more than what rests on the surface. Seeking roots. Slowing down is taking care of ghosts, hugging monsters, sharing silence, embracing the weird…”
A breathing exercise from Thích Nhất Hạnh's “be free where you are,” a talk he gave at the Maryland Correctional Institution at Hagerstown in 1999:
Breathing in, I know I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I know I am breathing out.
Breathing in, I notice that my in-breath has become deeper.
Breathing out, I notice that my out-breath has become slower.
Breathing in, I calm myself.
Breathing out, I feel at ease.
Breathing in, I smile.
Breathing out, I release.
Breathing in, I dwell in the present moment.
Breathing out, I feel it is a wonderful moment.
With fierce care,
Kristen
PS — a reminder of gigantic, big, big love (and a sweet bassline).
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