What is The Embodied Soul?

It is all about creating a place where the feminine comes first; where she is witnessed, honoured, cherished, nurtured and developed. This is home to a growing body of enquiry about what it means to bring the feminine to consciousness and to integrate the masculine and the feminine in ourselves and in our world through working with the body, dreams, stories, and archetypes.

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Hello, and welcome...I'm Sandra.

I'm a mother, integrative therapist, therapeutic coach, writer, guide, and circle holder for the awakening and nurturing of the conscious feminine.

MEET SANDRA

"What I appreciate most in our sessions is that, from the first moment, Sandra is able to create a sense of space, silence, and deep connection. I trust her and I know we will go deep every time, beyond the superficial layers, and into what is really going on."

Corina

"Working with Sandra has been a transformative experience, providing me with profound insights into both personal growth and professional development. The sessions have empowered me to overcome self-limiting beliefs, balancing my body, soul and spirit, and enhancing my confidence and effectiveness as a leader and human being."

Ezo

"The calm and supportive space provided by Delighted Being Women's Group has become a sanctuary for me. Amid the demands and chaos of daily life, it offers a vital respite - precious 'me time' that I have come to cherish deeply. This time for self-reflection, learning, and connection has been invaluable, renewing my spirit and strengthening my resolve."

Shalena

Meet Sandra

I am a mother, integrative therapist, and coach, deeply rooted in the lineage of Jungian analyst, Marion Woodman, with a practice that is curious about our being and living in our current patriarchal and colonising system. I began my career in the corporate world. A profound inner call led me to retrain as a therapist and develop embodied, ritual, and soul practices. Now, I weave sacred ceremonies, storytelling, and shamanic journeying into my work, guiding others—and myself—on the 'soul-making' path of being and becoming.

As the year draws to its calendar close, I’m sitting with both the richness and the horror of what its days have revealed, and feeling the resonance of multiple endings, personal and cultural. I have felt myself in liminal space for much of the year, unsure of where life and the planet is heading and often unsure of how to be and what to say here. Against a backdrop of increasing violence and degeneration as the killing machine of patriarchy mows its way across the planet, I have been drawn to return to the feminine and the values that are being ignored and denigrated. In particular I’ve been deepening my study of the work of Jungian analyst, Marion Woodman who wrote much on the importance of bringing the feminine to consciousness. She argued that individuals and societies were meant to grow, and that our best chance for growth is to return the feminine to our culture.

I’m taking this seriously and have begun to focus my work on gathering women in circle as well as continuing to work one to one. I am especially loving working with women across generations as they begin to question and explore their own relationship with the feminine and are curious about their inner life, which may look very different to what has been prescribed for them by others.

However, this is more than a personal quest, leading others in their own personal quest. It’s more systemic than that.

To read more, go to my latest Soul Notes on Linktree and check out my new website at theembodiedsoul.co.uk

Huge thanks to @vanessatuckerphotography for the image above and for all the stunning images on my site. She is a photographer of the soul and I am deeply grateful.

#marionwoodman #thedivinefeminine #womenscircles #adifferentvoice #carolgilligan #ahumanvoice #hundredthmonkey #jeanshinolaboden #jung #theembodiedsoul #psychotherapistsofinsta

What a delight to begin our 9 month gestation with Marion Woodman’s The Pregnant Virgin last week. Twelve curious women from all over the globe coming together to slowly and patiently spiral our way through this rich and wise book.
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Chapter 1- The Chrysalis: Am I Really? introduces us to the idea of life as a “being” and “becoming”. Woodman shares her own experience of learning that the paradox of life is that it involves death. That we shed blood in order to grow. That we need to be willing to hold the tension of the opposites and be crucified if we are to discover the “I am”.
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She argues that the absence of rituals and containers in our western culture creates a meaningless and purposeless vortex for us to navigate. And so we need to create our own containers and rituals, internally and externally in order to mature and to become conscious. We need to find ways to build our own capacity to hold the tensions and to create community to hold these together.
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She writes: “Many people in our culture are attempting to suffer these transformations alone, without any ritual container and without any group to support the influx of transcendent power….Without the container and without the group, the aloneness is almost intolerable. “
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Grateful for this and all the other containers we are creating to support these transitions at this dark time 🙏✨
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Huge thanks to @vanessatuckerphotography for this gorgeous image
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#marionwoodman #thepregnantvirgin #womenscircles #circles #jung #communityastherapy #community #growingtogether #love #theembodiedsoul #psychotherapistsofinstagram

@jasminecooray’s poem Years That Ask Questions and Years That Answer carries an energy that feels fitting for today. From her gorgeous anthology, Inheritance, this poem asks important questions. I read it at my Women’s writing group this morning, led by @fionaparashar and @jackeeholderinspires
and felt the burst of her words in our hearts and hips….here it is…

“Some years asked what are you made of,
and you started getting out cupcakes and bunting
and they shook their head and said, no, really,
and you curtseyed in a nurse’s uniform and halo,
and they sighed and said yes but what else,
and you felt around in there and said ok, fire,
And nailbombs and rubble, and they said good what else,
and you said a scream filling the universe,
and before they could ask again you coughed up parachutes and kaleidoscopes and carnival outfits
and panthers and peacocks and flying fish,
and spider webs holding cannonballs
and mountains and rivers and tree roots
and then the years answered by rising,
breaking through the roof like Alice, a giant
treading the earth, then, curling up in the ocean
to rest from all the work of those question years,
hip curving above the waves, a new country.”
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Years That Ask Questions and Years that Answer.
after Zora Neale Hurston by @jasminecooray
#inheritance #badbettypress #poetryastherapy #poetry #womenscircles #writinggroup #writingastherapy #theembodiedsoul #psychotherapistsofinsta

This week we begin our community reading and exploring by of Marion Woodman’s The Pregnant Virgin.

In the first chapter, Marion Woodman writes about the searing pain of the inner conflict between ego and Self as we individuate and give birth to ourselves. She notes:

The ego “knows that something new is being born; it has to breathe into the pain and let it be.

Many people in our culture are attempting to suffer these transformations alone, without any ritual container and without any group to support the influx of transcendent power….Without the container and without the group, the aloneness is almost intolerable.”

This is why I wanted to create this group. So that we might gather to hold ourselves and each other as we explore Marion’s wisdom and feel into our own chrysalis, and what wants to be born through us. Holding in community rather than alone.

I’m so excited to be embarking on this 9 month journey with an incredible group of curious creative women 🙏❤️✨
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Huge thanks to @vanessatuckerphotography for this exquisite image 🙏
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#marionwoodman #thepregnantvirgin #jung #jungianwomen #individuation #vanessatuckerphotography #theembodiedsoul #psychotherapistsofinsta

Jungian analyst, Marion Woodman has been a huge influence on my life and work. Her talks and writings have been a portal for this second half of life. She has introduced me to a deeper experience of my embodied self, brought me into a loving relationship with my own lost feminine, my vulnerability, my sense of wholeness, and has mirrored and affirmed my intuitive calls to a more soul-led life.
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Her book, The Pregnant Virgin describes just this birthing of Self. She writes: “This book is about the struggle to become conscious. It is about overcoming addictions – to food, drugs, work, etc. It is about the wisdom of the body, initiation rituals, dreams. It is about relationship and the search for personal identity. It is about a celebration of the feminine, both in men and in women. It is about becoming free.”

I would like to share this exquisite text with those who are curious about Marion Woodman’s work and dive deeper into its relevance for our own lives.

Over a period of 8 months, we will take a chapter a month and I will facilitate a process of enquiry and integration as we read and respond together to these timeless ideas and find their relevance in us today.
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Would you like to join us? You can choose to come along for the whole reading journey, or join us for individual sessions.
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Starts: 7 November 2024 (and will be first Thursday of each month until June 2025) - 7-9pm
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Message me for more details 📚✨
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Art by Mara Berendt Friedman of newmoonvisions.com
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#marionwoodman #thepregnantvirgin #readingastherapy #healingincommunity #groups #jung #marafriedman #psychotherapistsofinsta #theembodiedsoul

Fluent
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I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.
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— John O’Donohue
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#consciousfeminine #waterenergy #riverenergy #johnodonohue #poetryastherapy #waterastherapy #thresholds #theembodiedsoul #psychotherapistsofinsta

The Gaia Therapy Collective, at hackneycityfarm_official runs an eco-therapy group for people of colour and is currently open to new members.
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It is free and runs on Monday daytimes. It’s facilitated by Chand, a community worker and psychotherapist and Rabiah, an East London based community herbalist.
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The group has become a nourishing space for members to explore woundings and find healing around legacies of slavery, colonialism and the ruptures in belonging that can come through migration.

Creativity has been a significant part of the life of the group, and many members have been exploring writing songs, poems and drawings about their deepening relationship with the natural world.

There will be space for listening, reflecting and connecting with the natural world. This coming season they will be focusing on growing a herb garden. They hold a strong commitment to gathering in a way that is actively anti-racist and queer affirming.
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The group runs in seasons of 12 weekly sessions. They are looking for new members who are facing difficulties in life and have an interest in being part of a group exploring nature, creativity and sharing life stories.
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If you, or someone you know, might be a good fit then please get in touch with chand@hackneycityfarm.co.uk and arrange a time to meet.
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#gaiatherapycollective #hackneycityfarm #decolonizingtherapy #natureastherapy #antiracism #healing #therapy #theembodiedsoul #psychotherapistsofinsta

“The greatest great to a successful transition is the possibility of abortion. What is sacrificed must be recognized and its loss acknowledged and mourned for as long as that may take before final irrevocable burial. Burial represents the conversion of subjective identification into objective facts, the separatio of the alchemical process.”
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Marion Woodman
The Pregnant Virgin
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#initiations #transitions #change #individuation #marionwoodman #thepregnantvirgin #psychotherapistsofinsta #theembodiedsoul

“When a system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to elevate the entire system to a higher order.” — Ilya Prigogine

I have met this quote three times in the last few days and felt it land deep as a truth in me each time I read it. We can often be swept away by the sea of chaos that is churning away at this time. And yet as I look around, I see wise, creative and resourceful people creating their “small islands of coherence” with love and care and clear intent.

It may be a protest, a women’s circle, a men’s circle, a circle for everyone, a family, a group of friends or colleagues, people centred around values and/or activity, places to hold the waves of grief and loss in a ritual container, an island of writing together, reading together, knitting together, a place to connect and show care, a movement of highly organised and focussed activity. It may be all of these things and much more. The poet, John Donne wrote that “No man is an island” – he understood our need for connection with others – to feel our relatedness in the world and our part in its “going on being”.

So much in our current culture is aimed at disconnecting us from ourselves and each other in this increasingly automated world. Staying connected, staying with and keeping our hearts, mind and will open are practices for us to develop, so that we may find our own islands with others and weather this together.

Where are your islands?

Thanks to @shaunrounce for this image from @unsplash

#smallislandsofcoherence #presencing #theoryu #weboflife #circles #womenscircles #menscircles #psychotherspistsofinsta #theambodiedsoul

As part of the research for my book on women’s initiations, I am deep in the work of Francis Weller who writes and speaks so profoundly about grief and rituals.
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In an interview with @thomashuebl, he quotes human biologist, Paul Shepard who wrote: “The grief and sense of loss that we often attribute to a failure in our personality is actually a feeling of emptiness where a beautiful and strange otherness should have been encountered.”

He adds that we don’t have this “strange otherness”, which is the world at large, in our minds any more. Many of us in the modern western world don’t listen to the myths or move into encounters with the trees, wildlife, water, land so there is a profound emptiness in us. The grief that we feel for the earth right now is not just grief for what is tangibly disappearing, but also for that which we have never imagined . He says: “The world has drifted from our imaginations. Our prayers. Our ritual life.”

This is the ground of our “Trauma Culture”. He argues that we need to return to an “Initiation Culture” – to remember that grief and sorrow remind us of what we love and so are to be greeted and blessed with gratitude, not anaesthetised. So that we may reconnect with our histories, with our lands, with ourselves and each other as we move through this life.

#francisweller #paulshepard #thomashuebl #initiation #initiationculture #grief #sorrow #suffering #psychotherapistsofinsta #theembodiedsoul

Sylvia Britton Perera illustrates the struggle to find the ground of inner female authority in a masculine orientated society, using the myth of the Descent of Inanna-Ishtar to her dark sister, Ereshkigal. This is the oldest known myth about the descent to the goddess.
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The motif of descent is widespread in Jungian work. We descend so as to gather more of ourselves from the shadows to return the exiled parts to consciousness. The myth tells of Inanna’s sacrifice so that a balance can be restored between outer and inner; between the high ground and the low ground.
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Perera writes: “She needs to sacrifice her dependence on the patriarchal gods to find her true home in the basic feminine and procession ground of being.”
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Her return to the dark goddess is a return to her own potency and feminine instinct. A way of initiation.
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I’m exploring women’s initiations and how to hold space in the therapy room and community to accompany each other on these often perilous journies. How do we keep company with the myths and herstories that come before us? What do we know already of this terrain and how can we remind each other?
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#initiation #psychologicaltransformation #descent #divinefeminine #goddess #inanna #ereshkigal #herstory #womenscircles #jungianpsychology #sylviabrittonperera #psychotherapistsofinsta #theembodiedsoul

“I have to stop looking for a place of belonging and become a place of belonging.”
Francis Weller

Psychotherapist, writer and soul activist, Francis Weller talks about what is needed from us so that we might offer containment for us all to initiate, grow and become what the world needs us to be.

#francisweller #wisdombridge #initiation #soulwork #psychotherapistsofinsta #theembodiedsoul

Twelve women meet on the ley lines of Glastonbury to celebrate and honour the Medicine Woman within.
The group gathers in the sacred space of Little Earth and creates a home together where we sit in circle, eat together, sleep together, journey and celebrate together. For 5 days this is home.
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In Circle of Stones, Judith Duerk asks the question: “How might your life have been different, if, as a young woman, there had been a place for you, a place where you could go to be with women? A place where you could be received as you strive to order your moments and your days. A place where you could learn a quiet centredness…to help you ground yourself in daily patterns that would nurture you through their gentle rhythms…a place where, in the stillness at the ending of a task, you could feel an ancient presence flowing out to sustain you…and you learned how to receive and sustain it in return? How might your life be different?”
She imagines the circles that women once sat in together, guiding each other, holding each other, witnessing and tending to, life’s passage.
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Little Earth hosts this experience in June 2024. We get a taste of what it is like to hold each other, to transition actively from one stage to another. We are initiated as Medicine Women. We come home to ourselves, to our deeper wisdom, to our connection with nature, to our connection with each other, to the rituals that summon our power and our light, to the sources of power that help us navigate the darkness. We are reminded of all that we are, and invited to live the fullest version of ourselves in this life, in this place at this time; to move towards wholeness.
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Thanks to @mackinnonchrista and @vanessatucker_author for holding the space for our Medicine Woman journey and to the wonderful women who continue to journey with me.

#womenweavingchange #medicinewoman #circleofwomen #glastonbury #littleearth #mackinnonchrista #vanessatucker #psychotherapistsofinsta #theembodiedsoul

How might your life have been different, if, as a young woman, there had been a place for you, a place where you could go to be with women?

A place where you could be received as you strive to order your moments and your days.

A place where you could learn a quiet centredness…to help you ground yourself in daily patterns that would nurture you through their gentle rhythms…

a place where, in the stillness at the ending of a task, you could feel an ancient presence flowing out to sustain you…and you learned how to receive and sustain it in return?

How might your life be different?”

Judith Duerk, Circle of Stones

#circleofstones #judithduerk #womenscircles #ceremony #ritual #women #howmightyourlifebedifferent #theembodiedsoul #psychotherapistsofinsta

I am a woman of words. Language has always been important to me. It’s how I make sense of the world, wrapping my tongue around syllables that describe the inner and the outer landscapes I encounter. Translating experiences into the shapes of vowels and consonants, weaving sentences of word constructions that somehow miraculously convey something of meaning to others. I have relied heavily on this mode of transportation to connect the far flung reaches of me to you, to them. But something has been happening recently. The words aren’t coming. My translation skills have deserted me. I’ve been in a word wilderness, wondering when the next bus is coming. So I’ve been sitting with the question…. what to do when the words don’t come?so

To read more, go to the link in my bio for my latest Soul notes.

#soulnotes #words #tensionoftheopposites #marionwoodman #psychotherapistsofinsta #theembodiedsoul

So true.
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Thanks to @momentary_existentialism for this wisdom.
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#trauma #intergenerationaltrauma #pain #mentalhealth #healing #artastherapy #theembodiedsoul #psychotherapistsofinsta

Reading an article recently by evolutionary biologist, Dr Toby Kiers @spununderground in @nytimes, I was struck by the feminine wisdom of her story. She writes of how as a woman and a scientist, it often feels binary where she has to choose between her career or her family. She is a field researcher who collects data in remote, and often dangerous places, so how to align that with taking care of small children? Her answer was to take the children with her, in what she describes as an “act of defiance”. But it is what unfolds next that is most fascinating to me. She writes:

“I started tasting soils in the field — a technique I now use to notice subtle differences across ecosystems — only after seeing my kids eat dirt. Children have an uncanny ability to make local friends quickly; many of those new friends have led me to obscure terrain and hidden fungal oases that I otherwise would never have come across. And my kids’ naïve minds routinely force me to rethink old assumptions by asking questions that are simultaneously absurd and profound. Can you taste clouds? Do fungi dream? How loud are our footsteps underground?”

We are taught that good science requires detachment. But what if being a mother — with all the attachments that entails — allows you to explore different but equally fruitful scientific narratives?” What if it can be “both/and”, rather than “either/or”?

In her story, the terrain she is studying expands as she returns to an earlier way of doing things where work and family combine, rather than separate. A new knowing unfolds when the child’s natural relationship with the earth and curious nature infuses the behaviours and mindset of the grown ups. The children show the way and here their mother is listening and attuned.
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Thanks to Mihály Köles for this image.

#kierstoby #spununderground #mihalykoles #marionwoodman #femalescientist #bothand #psychotherapistsofinsta

“Root yourself on this earth,
right where you stand.
Inhabit the arising.
Feel the wisdom of the land
resonate in your bones.
Listen to the unfolding story,
participate with your whole heart
and your open hands.
Feel sun warm your skin
and wind kiss your face.
Stay alert for enchantment.
Feel your own magic
humming in your veins.
Trust your own belonging.
Stay with it.”

Molly Remer

Words of presence and wisdom from Molly Remer @brigidsgrove
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Taking these to heart and staying alert for the enchantment in the everyday.

#hereandnow #unfolding #femininewisdom #divinefeminine #goddess #enchantment #enchantedearth #mollyremer #brigidsgrove #theembodiedsoul #psychotherapistsofinsta

Posted @withregram • @robertjfdownes We are in troubling times. Times have always been troubling. They call for transformation, creativity and relations of livingness.

So what does the world require of us in this particular moment? What teachings, knowledge, practices and collective action is called for? What does a fierce spiritual practice look like when social justice is implicit to the spiritual thought and practice that Lama Rod speaks to? What does Foluke Taylor’s unruly black feminist therapeutic guide us towards if we think about abolition as also disrupting the borders between the therapeutic, the spiritual and the socially just. What kind of practitioners do we need to become?

Some of these questions and more will be explored as we invite Lama Rod Owens and Foluke Taylor into dialogue about their work and how their books and practices speak to this moment when we are in need of broken hearted spiritual warriors (The New Saints) and unruly black feminist therapeutics (Unruly Therapeutic). #foluketaylor #lamarodofficial

“If we could allow the pace of our meetings to slow down to the pace of our hearts, we might find genuine understanding.”
Marion Woodman
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#marionwoodman #heartpace #heartspace #empathy #deeplistening #ubderstanding #connection #theembodiedsoul #psychotherapistsofinsta

@nettledressfilm is a story of the creative transformation of loss and grief over 7 years into a dress made wholly of nettles.
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Textile designer, @allan.scott.brown forges a deep relationship with nettles growing on the edges of the land, and wonders if it is possible to make cloth with them.
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Accompanied by his dog, Bonnie and filmmaker @dylanhowitt, he picks them, strips them, spins yarn and then lovingly weaves yards of cloth that he makes into a dress. During this whole process, both his father and his wife die and he talks about the plant soaking up his emotions as he works with it.
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He describes the nettle transformation from “keep away from me” to “wrap me around you”.
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This is such a touching, heartfelt and magical film that meticulously traces the path of life and death running in parallel as is nature’s course. You can watch it on Curzon home cinema or at various screenings around the UK.
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#nettledressfilm #allanscottbrown #dylanhowitt #curzoncinemas #nature #nettles #nettledress #grief #loss #life #theembodiedsoul #psychotherapistsofinsta

In his book Love and Rage @lamarodofficial writes of the need to meet our anger, befriend it, tend to the hurt beneath it and embody its energy to bring about radical social change. He describes his personal journey of learning to love his anger and “treat it as I would treat anyone or anything that I consider precious and beautiful.” In so doing, he becomes free of the controlling nature of his anger and liberated to channel the wisdom of it.
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I’m examining my own anger and rage right now, wanting to love it; to feel its power in me and to channel it towards the things I believe in. It’s a rugged road. The obstacles laid down over generations of conditioning to be “nice”, stay under the radar, not to put your head above the parapet which demonise the red mist and make it “dangerous”.
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It’s time to break free of these constructs and find a voice that honours all that is important and speaks against the violence, destruction, dehumanisation, marginalisation, injustice and terror perpetrated in our name right now.
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It’s time to find beloved communities where we can practise meeting our anger and our selves.
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It’s time for some fierce loving.
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#lamarodofficial #loveandrage #anger #rage #conflict #bodywork #theembodiedsoul #psychotherapistsofinsta #ceasefirenow

I’m still trying to find the words to describe my time in Rhode Island with an incredible group of women for our Exquisite Tenderness retreat with@silreynolds.

Temperatures dropped to -6 degrees and we were snowed into our coastal stonehouse for a couple of days in what felt like a parallel universe. Every day a surprise unfolded. We said yes and moved together with the energies of the land, the ancestors, the collective, the myths, the art and the dreams that we shared until we were living in one great waking dream. It was beautiful, full of love, full of tears and full of laughter. But most of all full of the conscious feminine, allowing for connection and creativity and deep healing

As I hope our next gathering of the Women’s Group, Delighted Being on Saturday 9 March will also be. I am so thrilled that we will be together once again.

After the March session, entry to the group will close for the rest of the year so we will be a stable number. This will be the last opportunity to join for 2024. Just drop me a message if you would like a taste of being part of a creative and caring collective.
#womensgroup #silreynolds #rhodeisland #divinefeminine #consciousfeminine #heartwork #retreatsastherapy #psychotherapistsofinsta #theembodiedsoul #marionwoodman #littlecompton

Last night, The Relational School hosted an evening with @decolonizingtherapy, Dr Jennifer Mullan for @robertjfdownes @foluketaylor @whaliegooner and Nic Frealand to respond to Dr Jenn’s latest book, Decolonizing Therapy - Oppression, Historical Trauma and Politicising Your Practice. It was a charged evening, electric, poetic, prayerful, playful, rageful and ever so gentle and connecting.

“If we could allow the pace of our meetings to slow down to the pace of our hearts, we might find genuine understanding.” wrote @marionwoodman. And this evening slowed to a heart pace that opened up space for the beginnings of some deep dialogue and genuine understanding.

“Decolonizing therapy is looking at the entire individual. It’s putting a focus on how trauma from oppression and the history of colonization has played a role in people’s well-being and mental health. It’s realizing that we cannot just look at an individual without looking at what is happening systemically as well.”

I am grateful for this book; for this opening of a conversation about the systems at play in our consulting rooms; the cast of 1000s that often enter in our clients’ bodies, triggering responses in our own – the ancestors, theirs and ours, enacting scenes from the past that resonate in the present; replaying a history that many of us do not know or understand.
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I’m grateful for spaces like this, to open up new possibilities for new ways of relating; to feed us all as we grow thicker in our bodyminds and to begin to practise new responses to the important questions.

Buy the Book: discount code WN119 is offering a 35% discount when books are ordered through the UK site:
https://bit.ly/3Ojk0ga.
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#decolonizingtherapy, #robertjfdownes #foluketaylor #whaliegooner #nicfrealand #drjenn #therapy #therelationalschool #psychotherapistsofinsta

I’

I’m so looking forward to the second meeting of our Women’s Group tomorrow.
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It feels like such an apt time to be gathering as the Celtic wheel turns and we enter the season of Imbolc (1 Feb). The wheel is a ritual calendar handed down from our Celtic ancestors and rooted in the rhythms of nature. This is the time where nature awakens slowly, daylight lengthens and new beginnings emerge.
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@marikennedywisdom has a beautiful offering and community to explore and deepen our understanding and connection to these ancient rhythms - writings, rituals, wisdom and embodied practices.

As for us, we will be delving deeper into our personal stories - who we are and how we’ve been shaped as women. We will revisit Vasilisa the Wise, our initiation fairytale and will rest on the first task in the unlocking of the treasure of our psyche: intuition. Thinking about what is dying as well as what is emerging and wanting to be born through us.
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Spaces still available…do message me if this touches the emerging in you
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Imbolc blessings to you all 🌱
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Thank you to Jack Blueberry for this luscious image.
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#celticwheel #marikennedywisdom #imbolc #ritual #womensgroups #womenscircles #divinefeminine #consciousfeminine #feminine #aashna_uk #womenswisdom #ancestralwisdom #nature #womenwhorunwiththewolves #vasilisathewise #clarissapinkolaestes #fairytales #jackblueberry #psychotherapistsofinsta #theembodiedsoul

Poet,@judybrown_ writes of the persona that we develop; the part of us that grows where we believe that we are unlovable in our true nature. “The story that is ours to love completely” is our soul story – the eternal part of us that lives in this body whilst we are on earth.

Jungian analyst, Marion Woodman believes that we first bury our soul in the unconscious as we develop the persona that is prized by society. As we try to be something to others rather than who we are. The key to our authentic personhood lies in our inner well; the images of our sleeping and waking dreams; the feelings in the cells of our bodies which lay the breadcrumb trail back to our buried soul.

She further believed that individuals and societies were meant to grow. And our best chance for growth, she thinks, is to bring the feminine into our culture.

I am holding space for stories, for the feminine, for the soul, for consciousness every month on Saturday mornings in north London.

If you’d like to come and explore with us, you’re warmly invited to get in touch and find out more. Link in bio for more details or message me here @theembodiedsoul

#judybrown #poetryastherapy #womensgroup #womenscircle #divinefeminine #consciousfeminine #stories #womensstories #marionwoodman #theembodiedsoul #psychotherapistsofinsta

Something happens in me when I hear poetry, something that allows me to answer questions from a deeper, more knowing place. A poem opens a portal to an honesty that bypasses the usual, more conditioned response. It evokes images and metaphor which resonate throughout my whole body rather than leaving my poor overworked head to do all the work.

Marion Woodman speaks with such affection and humour about the power of metaphor. She was an English teacher before she was a Jungian analyst and she knew Shakespeare by heart. In one of her talks, she asks her audience, why does Shakespeare write: “Out, out, brief candle…” when Macbeth is speaking of his wife’s death? Why doesn’t he just say “she died”, keep it simple and say it how it is?

Her answer is that the metaphor lands in our bodies and there is an alchemy…..we see the image of the candle…we see the light disappear….we feel the darkness descend and the warmth evaporate. We immerse in the cold dark place where Macbeth finds himself in these four words.
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That’s what poetry does for me. I feel deep into the layers of myself as I read, and then my own words flow through, reflective of this felt experience.
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But this only happens if I slow down and allow my body to soften so that the poetry may enter and weave its magic. A brisk and perfunctory read, hoping to glean the meaning, doesn’t do it. The sorcery bounces off me like a spell repelled. I have to offer a piece of myself to the poetry to let it do its work.
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What enables you to get closer to your soft places?
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How intimate are you with yourself?
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What are you offering yourself to?
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Thanks to @beingamazed for this image
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#poetry #metaphor #deepwork #soulwork #gettingintimate #marionwoodman #theembodiedsoul #psychotherapistsofinsta

“Whatever we set our days to might be the least of what we do, if we do not also understand that something is waiting for us to make ground for it, something that lingers near us, something that loves, something that waits for the right ground to be made so it can make its full presence known.”
Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Wise words as always from @clarissapinkolaestes book The Faithful Gardener.
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Questions that it prompts for me to take to my journal…

What is waiting for you to make ground for it?
What is lingering near you?
What is loving you?
What is waiting to be fully known in you?
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Whatever you’re setting your day to today, you may want to sit with these questions for yourself for a few moments too…watering the ground that may as yet look fallow…
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#thefaithfulgardener #clarissapinkolaestes #gardeningastherapy #soulwork #writingprompt #journalling #journallingastherapy #theembodiedsoul #psychotherspistsofinsta

Gertrud Muller Nelson writes in “Here All Dwell Free” that according to her daughter, myths and fairytales are “stories that aren’t true on the outside but are true on the inside”. I love this description and often work with fairytales as a way for people to understand and map their own personal story.

We did just this in our Women’s Group last week with the Russian fairytale of Vasilisa the Wise. I chose it as a story of a woman’s initiation. In the tale there are nine tasks that the young girl must complete in order to survive and fully become herself. In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes in detail about each of the tasks and how we might complete them in life. These are:

~ Allowing the too good mother to die (separation from the protective mother)
~ Exposing and experiencing one’s own crude shadow
~ Navigating in the dark (heading back to the Wild mother)
~ Facing the wild hag
~ Serving the wild hag and getting used to the wild powers of the feminine psyche
~ Separating this from that
~ Asking the mysteries to find out more about wild nature
~ Taking on immense power
~ Recognising and reacting to the negative aspects of our own shadow

We sat in circle and let the story infuse us. Then we began to explore the tasks that felt most relevant for each of us, asking questions of the story and of ourselves and revealing images and ideas that were raw and remembered. The work continues days later.

If you would like to join us for more exploration, we will meet next on 3 February. Please message me for more details.
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Thank you to Simon Berger @8momentsnow for the beautiful image.

#womenwhorunwiththewolves #womensgroup #divinefeminine #wildfeminine #wildnature #womenscircles #vasilisathewise #gertrudmullernelson #fairytales #stories #clarissapinkolaestes #theembodiedsoul

Saturday saw the first gathering of a wonderful group of women. As we moved from the noise outside and the many roles we play, to the quiet inside and a connection with the world where we belong to ourselves, we shared, we listened, we played with a fairytale, we drew pictures and we felt the presence of the divine feminine in our circle.
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It was a glorious sacred space.
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I feel delighted and honoured to be holding this space each month for those who long for this kind of company, connection and discovery.
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There are two more spaces in the circle. The next meeting is on Saturday 3 February at @aashna_uk
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You are welcome to come and join us if you are looking for a community of women to journey with. Just message me for more details.
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With love
Sandra x
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#delightedbeing #marionwoodman #clarissapinkolaestes #sacredspace #divinefeminine #feminine #womenscircles #womensgroup #theembodiedsoul #psychotherapistsofinsta

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"The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door."

Clarissa Pinkola Estés,
Women Who Run With the Wolves

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Working with me

I work with women to explore what it means to awaken the Feminine within and harmonize the Masculine and Feminine energies through the body, dreams, stories, and archetypes. Through one-to-one coaching, women's circles, ceremonial work, workshops, and therapy, I create a sanctuary for 'soul-making,' where women can engage with practices to build inner strength, find community, and experience the rites of initiation needed for maturation. Through these practices, they uncover parts that feel more authentic, find routes into their embodied experience and feel into a wholeness beneath the conditioned layers.

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