Teaching and Mentoring
Teacher and mentor are not roles that are mutually exclusive, but two aspects of the whole of how I work with people.
As a teacher I’m interested in exploring with you what is possible and building your resources for living an integrated, self-regulating, rich life in alignment with what is most important to you. When people ask me what I teach I say, “embodied communication and personal transformation.” But these are just words. I’ll ask questions and listen. I’ll share skills and tools (that all point you toward listening and sensing where you are and what you need.) We’ll look together at all of it: sensations, feelings, beliefs, ideas, history, expectations – and we’ll wonder about what is true in this moment. We may explore how you can begin or deepen a personal practice if this is something you want.
As a mentor I am entering into a relationship of companionship, care, positive regard, and presence in which intimacy and trust can unfold over time, allowing you a place to hang out, let loose, try things out, laugh, cry, share your insights, show the hidden parts of yourself you haven’t even discovered yet, and slowly make your way into a new life, one that is more full of everything – feeling, being, movement, presence and who knows what else. A life that is your own, in which your authority rests in your own heart, in your contact with the present, and your strong capacity to listen to what is arising in this moment.
Benefits of this work may include:
- Listening
- Developing resources (physical, emotional, psychological, energetic)
- Coming home to your body and awareness of felt sense
- Greater emotional capacity and integration
- Relaxing in the unknown
- Stronger sense of presence
- Acceptance of self and other
- Deeper understanding of relationship
- More effective and embodied communication
- Resolution of internal and external conflicts
- More playfulness, less depression
- The beginning or deepening of a personal practice
“We need the teacher or teachers who will help us along the way. No one seeks to excel at anything without the help of a teacher: the music student learns from the master musician, the athlete from the best coach, the brick layer from the craftsman of masonry. We accept the need for teachers in these situations as a matter of course. How much more important, then, is finding and accepting a teacher who can help shape the immeasurable richness of our lives.”
T.K.V. Desikachar, “Health, Healing & Beyond”
Painting by Hollis Heichemer.