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nourishingrelationship · 8 years

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with playfulness -- june 18th, 2015

"Happy Birthday and Octopuses!!"

Today is my birthday. I'm turning four and seven, and you're invited to my party!

You may be noticing some changes here — a new look, new colors and images.

I'm unfolding in new directions. And interestingly, it has a lot to do with octopuses. Now, that may sound odd (or if you know me, maybe it doesn't), but I'll go into that in a moment.

First, I want to acknowledge you.

You subscribed to this list because you came to one of my performances of Play after Play, The Eternally Present Past or Tao Soup ("let go of the rock!"). Something touched and intrigued you — the honesty, humor, or genuineness. The playfulness.

This newsletter - 'with playfulness' - continues in that tradition, touching on what it means to live a whole hearted life — only with more octopuses. If you know someone who you feel would benefit from this, I invite you to forward it along to them. And if you'd like to unsubscribe right now — guilt free — please feel free to do so. Life is so full, especially inboxes!

So, back to octopuses. I really love them. I love they way they move, their intelligence, their curiosity. I love how their whole body and being is engaged in each moment of their life. How deeply attuned they are to their environment. They make me feel alive from the inside out.

When I listen to my body, when I follow my inner currents of salty fluids flowing in and out of muscles, over and within bones, bathing the bubbling little cells inside, what I most feel like is an octopus — embodied curiosity. Moving as an expression of care, meeting the world with heart, meeting it fresh.

If my heart were to go swimming in the wide ocean, raw and naked, riding the currents and dancing in the light and shadows, it'd be an octopus — open, secretive, silly. All in the ongoing poignancy of touch and go, feeling and responding to everything around. Sometimes out in the open, sometimes darting under a rock, or carrying my own shell around to hide within.

To be alive, to feel, is intense — sometimes so much so that it hurts. And that's not a bad thing. To feel is to be in touch, to notice that we're connected and relating to our world.

To feel, and to be in touch, is to play — to explore the space between and the living space between you and me. We naturally seek connection, to feel how to be with our world, especially with those around us.

When I'm on the play mat with one or two or three other playmates, I feel like an octopus, all of my limbs and senses engaged and caring for the delight flowing between and within us all.

The work I offer is all about play. Embodied Relational Healing is a gentle way of touching in with the deepest currents of your life, sensing in a very direct way how you came to be how you are. Touching in with the patterns that shaped you and discovering natural and lasting shifts in becoming who you want to be.

These shifts begin in the body, in the heart of your experience, through touching in and feeling what it is like to be you — your particular delights and challenges and struggles. This is the Embodied aspect, to come to know yourself in a felt-sense way.

And when we come to know this together, you feel known and cared for in a new way. This is the Relational piece, being known by another in an attuned way.

Then, the Healing just happens. All on it's own. We naturally integrate and come together.

What I've learned in my many years of playing with thousands of kids, teens, and adults is this: the natural state we're all seeking and that we most deeply rest into is Play — connecting and being together in a safe, caring and delightful way.

And there's a great comfort I've found in something else about octopuses — they too Play! They're invertebrates, more closely related to clams and barnacles than people, and they Play! Maybe, just maybe, the universe is a friendly place, a friendly and playful place — a great big lolling ball of tenderness and care.

I think so.

Warmly, Marc

ps I've you haven't seen this, check it out now. Octopuses are great.

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