025 You can’t think your way out of this

Hello friends,

As I write this final newsletter of the month, I’m celebrating all of us. After all, there’s no longer-feeling month than January and we’ve almost made it.

I’ve written a lot about the benefits of inner and outer winter, but there’s also a joy in witnessing its slow path towards completion.

Perhaps you’ve noticed the sun setting a little later? Me too.

Here’s a fun fact: The closer we get to the spring equinox, the faster the days lengthen. For example, daylight lengthens 3x more on January 31st (1m40s) than on January 1st (32s).

Consider this trend over a week, from January 31st to February 6th. In that time, the day length in LA will grow by almost 11 minutes. In northern latitudes, the increase is even more pronounced!

In the seasons, so also in life: Due to an increasingly busy life and healing practice, I’ll be scaling back on the length of my newsletters moving forward.

For those of you who like to read from beginning to end, never fear! I'll still be tackling the big stuff – just in fewer words.

For you TLDR’ers, you’re welcome :)

Enjoy!

The power of thought

At some point or another, folks on the healing/spiritual journey come up against the limits of thought. They reach a stage where thinking and talking about their life (and the obstacles therein) is no longer sufficient.

They may even discover that thinking about healing has become part of the problem – an avoidance strategy of its own.

Eventually, after some initial resistance, these folks may accept the truth: Healing requires feeling – deep feeling.

Which is a hard pill to swallow.

And while most of us have to do it sooner or later, it’s never easy. So, for those of you who are at this particular moment in your journey – I feel you.

Impossible to miss

When people discover embodiment work, they’re often amazed by how palpable it is. Suddenly, they feel things which, up until that point, have been mere concepts and theoreticals.

As they emerge from their initial somatic healing and meditation experiences, they’re struck by an awareness of inner strength, aliveness, and peace – the very states they’ve been racking their brains to achieve.

Suddenly, it’s undeniable: Feeling is the path to healing.

And I agree. It’s what my entire personal journey and work as a healer/teacher is based upon. BUT, I find something else happens when people discover the path of embodiment.

The baby and the bathwater

Whenever we find something that really works, we’re left wondering what to do with everything else.

When we discover a new and “better” way, it colors our impression of the older ways. Suddenly, our old perspectives and strategies don’t seem as relevant or important.

We may even judge the older practices, and the person we were at that time, as being inferior.

And sometimes, in our discovery and pursuit of embodiment, we discard and reject the very resources and insights that led us to this moment.

I’m talking here about the practices we turn to early in our journeys, the ones that focus on the mind and mental processes: Therapy, westernized meditation, journaling, etc.

There’s plenty of room

But here’s the thing: The practices I just mentioned aren’t actually focused on the mind. Instead, they’re designed to use the mind as a doorway to feeling.

And once we begin to develop our embodiment, we gain access to what these practices truly offer.

Rather than being mental/intellectual dead ends, our established practices of therapy, meditation, yoga, etc become vehicles for deep embodied healing.

We find that sitting in mindfulness meditation strengthens our lying somatic meditation. Therapy sessions become deeper and more productive.

Our whole path, with all its many twists and turns, begins to coalesce as a single, self-reinforcing movement towards healing and realization.

Everything has its place and works together, with no one practice better or worse than another.

And, eventually, we discover that all practices – at their root – are the same practice. But I’ll have to explain that another time.

That’s it. Have a great week and I’ll be back in February!

Energetically,
David

**If you enjoyed this article, sign up for my mailing list and receive a new one every week!**