Embody The Journey

I am sorry I have not been in touch - I was away for three weeks, of which two weeks were a meditation and writing retreat. It was wonderful and I am happy to be back! I am especially happy to be here and looking forward to be with you later this week. Please attend this second women's circle at the Library - let us build our strength and share our wisdom and love! I look forward to be with you.   NYACK LIBRARY offering a WOMEN'S CIRCLE: THURS., AUGUST 22, 6 - 7:30           Let's come together, be with each other, listen to each other, feel each other                              I hope to see you, listen to you, feel you! Healing and empowering ourselves for a more peaceful world Women ’ s Precious Power JOAN WHITACRE   Founder and Director, WHOLE WOMEN HEALING Women embody felt wisdom and spontaneous nurturance. From this comes their power to generate peace and...

  Healing and empowering ourselves for a more peaceful world Women ’ s Precious Power A WOMEN’S workshop with JOAN WHITACRE   Founder and Director, WHOLE WOMEN HEALING Women embody felt wisdom and spontaneous nurturance. From this comes their power to generate peace and healing. However, we often give it to others and neglect ourselves.    Meditation practice, exercises of sensory awareness, movement, and sitting in circle, and exploration of our masculine as well as feminine energies, will guide us to rest in, to listen to, and to derive strength from our precious power. This series will give participants an opportunity to deeply relax and cultivate essential self-care skills.  It will provide space to appreciate compassionate activity, and to support other women in their self and other care.    In nurturing our sacred ground of embodied presence and power, we will be enabling ourselves to wisely choose our offerings of presence and power to our world...

  Coming Home What does this mean for me and for all of us? Coming home, being at home, finding home – these are universal themes of human experience, found In ancient poems and current novels. I feel this is an urgent issue of our time, as our familiar world is being turned upside down and inside out, taking away our feeling at home, in our personal lives, society, and bigger world. Dwindling business and a cancer diagnosis four years ago moved me to give up my home and take to the road. For others it has been the loss of a secure job, a mortgage implosion, the literal destruction of home by fire or flood. I sense many of us are feeling home-less, without a place in the world where we stand and rest securely. Does coming home mean that we finally settle down, that we feel we’ve found ourselves and can be ourselves? Feeling at home can spring from a love or friend relationship or with our blood family. We can find it with a team or colleagues, or in an environment that feels r...

This is the full article that was pointed to, touched upon in the 12/6 post.   I was lost in the wild Arizona desert. Two days prior I’d set out on an informal pilgrimage, leaving the relative safety of a retreat center, where I had so recently completed a three week solitary retreat. And here I was lost. What had I done? It truly was wild, the road ended in a dry river gulch that could fill and flood from a drumbeat downpour or so I imagined. There was no habitation visible in any direction, but for the holes and rocks occupied by small but perhaps lethal living creatures. And the shade of night was drawing down, as the sun had already set. A dry, huge and silent landscape surrounded me. It felt absolutely groundless – no thing known other than the bare earth that I could touch, acknowledge,  seek comfort in, or say hello to. Standing in that dry river gulch I quaked in my sandals. This was definitely not Canyon de Chelly, where I’d thought I’d been headed in a rental car. T...

  Grounding, Uplifting, and Opening:  The Healing Power of Grounding, Uplifting, and Opening Healing arises when we awaken our embodied living, grounding ourselves on the earth, uplifting into space, and opening to our sensory and felt experience. Then we can move, act, and respond  as a reflection of our inner experience, our ability to care for ourselves, transform stress, and be present. We can tune into the experiential reality of grounding, uplifting, and opening ourselves, through awakening and exploring our sensory-movement dynamics, which are expressed in our living anatomy.    The Natural Elegance of Joining Heaven and Earth  Visualize a tall flower or a stalk of grass in a breezy field. Their elegance comes from rooting, grounding in the earth and moving, uplifting in response to space. We can awaken these same abilities in ourselves, connecting with the earth - touching it through our feet, releasing our weight to the pull of gravity and rec...

After the first year of grounding, WWH began to activate in fundraising and networking.  I have been creating fundraising events which center mind-body healing within a circle process, and have particularly been reaching out to American women to connect to their Afghan sisters.  At the same time, relationships are being built with various non-profit organizations, i.e., Women for Afghan Women, School of Hope, and Organization for the Advancement of Afghan Women.  These organizations, directed by Afghan-American women, are already working in or developing programs for women and children in Afghanistan as well as refugees in the US.  Opportunities to work with Afghan refugee women here in the Northeast  are developing.  Programmatically, the issues involve creating a somatically based trauma relief program that is culturally appropriate, relevant to the current needs and abilities of Afghan women, and practical.  From conversations with Afghan women, I u...