On Listening, on Being Moved
We are often taught to hurry past what unsettles us. To smooth the rough edges, silence the cacophony inside, and distance ourselves from the things that make us ache.
What might be there for us, if we didn’t?
What if the discomfort is not a mistake to be fixed, but a message, a signal, a language?
This is not the kind of language that points us towards knowledge that sits cleanly in the mind, but the kind that disrupts us. Shakes us up. The kind that is felt before it is understood.
This is where the work begins—not in fixing, but in listening.
To listen is to let something in. To allow a word, an image, a sensation to meet us—and to change us—before we try to control it. Listening takes courage, and is the opposite of turning away.
But listening does not mean drowning.
This is not about throwing ourselves headfirst into the river when we don’t know how to swim. It is about stepping in—just a toe at first, then stepping back out. Learning to wade. Learning to trust the movement of the water. Step by step. Slowly, in our own time, we learn to surrender—to float atop the water. We learn to swim.
We learn to allow our experience to unfold in the present moment, to meet it with curiosity instead of fear. This is a human resource, and a way of knowing.
"In this moment, when we face horizons and conflicts wider than ever before, we want our resources, our ways of strength…
If there is a feeling that something has been lost, it may be because much has not yet been used. Much is still to be found and begun." — Muriel Rukeyser
And so, when it is hard to hold for even a moment
the vast clusters of event and meaning that unfold each day,
it is time to remember this other kind of knowledge, this other kind of love.
However blurred the scene of our life appears, however torn we may be—we can face it.
And we can go on to be whole.
„These roads will take you into your own country...“
Coming Home to Yourself
When we are suffering, we tend to run further away from ourselves. Perhaps you find yourself overworking, endlessly scrolling, or losing yourself in taking care of others, all while feeling increasingly distant from yourself. But what if the part of you that is looking is the part that already knows the way home?
In my work, I help people turn inward—not to analyze or fix themselves, but to rediscover what has always been there and to compassionately learn to be present with it. What we most deeply long for is often also what scares us the most. So self-development work often involves becoming aware of how we are running away from ourselves and addressing the underlying fear, guided by the deep longing to come home to the Self.
Through NARM, we explore how early patterns of adaptation may have led to disconnection. We gently bring awareness to the places inside that long for safety, care, and authenticity and examine what might be getting in the way of experiencing more of what we long for in our lives. The adaptive strategies we developed to survive early wounding do not erase who we are at our core—they only cover it up. In the self-development process, we uncover the Self that has been there all along.
Informed by Core Energetics, we engage both the body and consciousness to release blocked energy and reconnect with the vitality that has been waiting for us to experience it. This process helps us move beyond projections and into the present moment, allowing us to fully inhabit ourselves in the here and now.
"You were within me, but I was outside myself, and there I sought you."
—St. Augustine, Confessions
But what happens when we pause and feel what is already present? For many, simply being quiet with themselves for any extended period is incredibly difficult. As human beings in the modern world, we tend to fill our lives with frenetic doing—endless thinking, planning, and striving. This constant activity serves as a way to protect ourselves from feeling, from truly dropping in on a deeper level.
Yet at the same time, there is a deep need to be connected to the Self and to be truly seen and understood by others while we are in that place. And paradoxically, we invest so much energy into ensuring that doesn’t happen—though in different ways and to different degrees. For example, we may forbid ourselves from showing up authentically with who we are or what we need.
Why does this happen? Because at some point, these authentic parts of ourselves felt dangerous. As children, certain aspects of our authentic self may have threatened our attachment relationships—relationships that were paramount to our survival. Sensing this, we adapted. We learned to disconnect from those parts of ourselves in order to preserve connection with our caregivers.
We carry these strategies into adulthood, even though, as adults, the situation is different. We are now capable of withstanding rejection or whatever we feared back then. It no longer represents a threat to our survival. And yet, we continue to act from an outdated necessity to adapt, and that comes at great cost to ourselves.
So in a way, the path to self-reconnection is about becoming present with what is and learning to be with it through the eyes of the adult we are now, rather than the child we once were. And paradoxically, when we do this, we actually gain more access to our childish glee and wonder—the freedom to play, to feel, to be fully alive.
As we reclaim these lost parts of ourselves, we come home—not just to safety, but to the full aliveness that has been waiting for us all along.
Why NARM?
People ask me, why do NARM? Everyone has their own reasons. But from my perspective, one great reason is to get support in being present for life.
As a professional dancer, I always thought I had a deeper relationship with my internal experience than most.
The dancing I was doing was avant-garde, often incorporating different forms of meditation, touch, and speaking, and required me to improvise in the moment—to notice patterns, to work with my thoughts and emotions, and to direct my attention to my physical experience and environment. When I began training in NARM, I assumed my experiences as a dancer had prepared me well for this work.
I never imagined what I would experience when, in the context of a NARM training, the trainer asked us to simply shift our attention from the external world to our internal world, and to take a moment to notice what it is like to be sitting here right now.
I closed my eyes and the clock started ticking. Perhaps one minute went by…
…And I remember it was as if I opened a door, stepped through the threshold, and suddenly found myself in a storm, completely drenched in rain. There was thunder and lightning around me, the thick smell of rain on a hot sidewalk, my clothes sticking to my skin. I was shocked. I had thought I was going for an easy walk in the park, tuning into my internal world, and instead I found myself standing in the middle of a thunderstorm.
I remember deciding to open my eyes again, looking around, and feeling relieved.
Tuning into my in-the-moment experience, just for a moment, of being a body, a subject, a person with emotions and thoughts—having an experience, being in my current situation—it felt like stepping into chaos.
I realized that I had not often given myself the option to “tune in” in that way. Had not really known that it existed as an option. Reflecting on it afterward, I realized that, although scary, there was something vivid and alive about what I had experienced. There was fear, but there was also excitement in connecting with myself. I could only handle small bits at a time, I needed to move slowly, but I had the desire to feel.
Part of my journey in learning NARM—which is the basis of my work with clients—has been to reconnect with my own subjectivity, with what’s it like in any given moment, slowly, gently, and in a way that I can handle. More and more there is a feeling of home inside myself. That I am dwelling in my body, here and now. And this sense of dwelling roots me, gives me strength and integrity within myself to show up more fully for life, with myself and others.
When I talk about dwelling I don’t mean that I’m connected with myself all the time. Dwelling can also mean, “I notice I’m not very present right now even though I would like to be. Huh. Interesting. I’m curious what that’s about...”
So why do NARM? To get support in being with and in your internal landscape, whatever it is, if you so choose. The important thing I learned in my own process is that these internal landscapes are in constant transformation. Especially given the right support, there is calm to be found in the storm; there is a lake in the desert.
NARM supports building more capacity for being with our internal experiences. We build capacity to be present and to hear the messages our internal experiences communicate to us. All this supports our ability to transform our inner landscapes, and to discover new and wonderful places inside ourselves we never dreamed of.
And this is what I would like to bring to others with this work.