B O D Y P O E M

I L L U M I N A T I N G U N T H O U G H T K N O W N S

T H E I N S T I T U T E F O R R E L A T I O N A L H A R M O N Y S T U D I E S

P R O F E S S I O N A L T R A I N I N G & R E S E A R C H

BODY POEM DOCUMENTARY

This documentary was filmed by Pure Productions in October 2022 during the first in-person Body Poem retreat held in the Esconhais retreat in the mountain town of Castanheira de Pera in Portugal. A group of dedicated Body Poets came together to deepen practice after months of learning online. We were joined by practitioners living in the mountains who were curious to discover what this is.

BODY POEM

Body Poem is a practice that facilitates illuminating unthought unknowns and unspoken parts of the self into spontaneously emerging poetry that brings alive exiled aspects of the self which become somatised when not acknowledged through symbolic representation. 

This process is relational, the world of one person being received into the chords of the heart and voice of another. 

The structure of Body Poem has specific rules of engagement that facilitate the harvesting of projections into digestible poetry. In moments of gratitude, when exiled parts are resonated with and acknowledged, there is the potential for receptivity into the precipice of presence; rather like how attuned caregivers transform and bridge an infant’s somatically felt experiences into a shared reality. With a shared niche of attention, with symbols and metaphors, we learn to recognise; we are not on our own in the soup of undifferentiated realities that otherwise disable us from playing and co-creating relationship agreements to meet our needs.

When a person's exact words are read back, their unique metaphors come alive with enhanced viscerally felt granularity, offering recognition of aspects of the self that may have been rationalised out of awareness or out of the range of acceptance, harvesting projections that are passing on revenge.

The Therapist becomes an instrument, transforming communications that may have lost their belonging into poems that become part of the chorus of life again rather than pharmacologically or surgically removing the PANIC and RAGE of exile. These poems transform the nothingness and physical pain of alexithymia into embodied symbols that harmoniously bring life and PLAY with what was indigestible and projected into the body. 

The role of artistic self-expression in all cultures is to transform rationalised, suppressed aspects of self into a shared experience of beauty. Meaningless symbols of nothingness can spontaneously become embodied, illuminating aspects of self that have been calling for felt recognition. 

This offers an opportunity for tension from pole positions of our heart’s chords to be simultaneously borne and transformed into something digestible and harmonious.

At this precipice, we might live or die and metaphor of a poem holds us safe, like the banks of a river, containing and allowing the flow of what might have been dammed, unresolved resentment and makes what might ordinarily be unbearable, bearable, even beautiful and harmonious; like a love song transforms the lament of loss into a song we can weep with together.

Training & Certification in BODY POEM

is explored in Waves over 6 months

  • Body Poem and Dream Poem

    are an alchemical synthesis of 3 elements: ~ Body Focusing - Symbolic representations of felt senses, Dream Form - Discovering communications projected into symbols using this Playback Theatre practice and the final ingredient is Clean Language - Coaching model for eliciting Symbolic and Metaphorical recognition

  • Clean Language skills

    ~ David Grove, the originator of Clean Language, discovered the power of acceptance as he studied the transcripts of Carl Rogers. His genius is in asking very simple questions that open us to the life-saving treasures of our metaphorical life within. We can enrich low granularity by bringing alive the descriptive imaginative parts of the mind by asking questions that are like spells, bringing alive our metaphorical life within.

  • The art of listening

    ~ If each aspect of ourselves was allowed to emerge, express, and be witnessed, these expressions might eventually self-organise into harmony along with the other life and matter around us. Here is an invitation to explore the art of listening, and opening receptivity while practicing reducing evaluation habits. Listening pairs come from the co-counseling tradition. It is a practice that supports us listening, without fixing, changing, or doing anything with another's expression. It can be a profound experience to have undivided attention and space to express whatever is there to express without interruption. .

  • Dream Form

    ~ We can apply relating to elements of a sleeping dream to the waking dream we call reality. All the elements and relationships we are viscerally interacting with while we are awake can become a drama playing out before us like a dream. This brings us into the realms of Feng Shui Body Poem which we will be exploring where we bring alive and animate the world around us remembered or happening now. When the different sentences are read back new meanings can emerge from their transposition which can be revelatory. This can take the dream out of a literal interpretation, elucidating and shedding light on metaphorical meanings. The Teller witnesses their internal world playing out in front of them.

  • Feng Shui Body Poem

    ~ A useful application of Dream Poem is harvesting projections from our physical environments which can be understood as our waking dream worlds. This practice can facilitate opening our senses through exteroception and finding words that come close to describing our somatic relationships with our environments. Aspects of our environments and our body's relationship with our environments experienced through exteroception can be brought alive through the process of projection of unconscious aspects of ourselves seeking recognition.

  • Representing Emotions

    ~ Through using clean language we can enrich even the most barren voids of nothingness, allowing that nothingness to be accepted and these simple questions, asked within this structure, can potentially open a way of transforming that nothingness into something with presence. "... and what kind of nothingness is that nothingness?" "... and what is that nothingness like?" These questions invite giving qualities is nothingness or emptiness. Lisa Feldman Barrett refers to over rationalised language as low granularity. The lower the granularity, the less available a person is to receiving communications from their body to know what they need or want which is a disability for intimacy and health.

  • I want Body Poem ~ The decisions that we have made in the past may not be the appropriate strategies to meet the current emerging aspects of the self. "I want" is an assessment tool. Assessment is in every session and can be understood as the evaluative parts of our minds making sense of the emergent experience. There are various methods of gleaning an understanding of a person's desires, wants, and needs to support them translating these into new strategies to meet these needs in their lives. I want, I need, I desire emerges from a soup of biochemical communications from our bodies, activated from memories and associations in service of our creativity, adventure, safety, belonging, and survival. In this soup are many parts of ourselves, each with needs, wants, and desires and sometimes with pre-determined strategies of how they want their needs to be met. It is our job as adults to manage this chorus that may be out of tune. You will be guided in facilitating “I want” Body Poems developed by Katie Sarra out of 35 years of practice. This practice inherently brings alive the Emotional Command System (Jaak Panksepp) drivers needing regulation into shared awareness illuminating outdated strategies that offer insight into discovering more effective ways of meeting needs.

  • Holding Space

    ~You will be guided to explore and experiment with increased granularity ways interoceptive, exteroceptive, proprioceptive, inner dialogue, and role power influence our availability to listen. This practice enhances your attunement skills and trust in the self-organising intelligence inherent in each human being when they are allowed to unfold without interruption

  • Repeating back what the other has said

    exactly in their words. You will be guided in developing your unique creative Clean Language interventions with what questions to ask and when to ask them taking you as a practitioner to the precipice of presence.

  • Not sure I quite understand that?

  • CARE

  • Nurture

  • PLAY ~ Experimenting with self expression and understanding the difference between intention and impact

  • Maybe I was a bit too much?

  • What did you say?

  • ... and what are you noticing?

  • Song Poems ~ Growing our creative self-expressive confidence with our voices. Ancient cultures all around the world have used songs and chants to communicate and remember complex multidimensional knowledge that is like dry moss when rationalised in speech without the waters of rhythm and melody. Without our spoken words being in rhythm in songs or poems, we are physically and intellectually less energised in learning something new about our reality and are more likely to be in slow thoughts maintaining old versions of reality which in turn disables us from being in the stream of living.

  • This is perhaps, for some, the most challenging of practices involving trusting spontaneity with your voice as an instrument in service to enhance learning. You will be guided in practices step by step developing your confidence as a conduit for knowledge to become referenced memory for another. This practice supports enhancing capacities for learning more about ourselves as Dreamers and Dream Scribes co-creating intimate shared reality. You will be guided by teachings from voice coaches in exercising your abilities to play with your voice in service to this. This can also be a lot of fun, I might add!

  • Where people settled, they embodied/embedded/projected their knowledge into created objects, monuments, temples and shrines for prayer carried in songs and chants. Complex knowledge in this way can be remembered and recalled back from the physical into consciousness from the mind that stored them there receiving data from nature. This can be understood as the origins of projections as a central phenomenon for remembering knowledge for survival.

  • The language we use as part of our self-expression creates bridges of sound carrying meanings in more memorable ways when carried in melodic voices. Ancient indigenous nature cultures have known this for thousands of years in the oral traditions where knowledge is remembered and communicated in song lines. Knowledge was literally embodied in song lines embedded in aspects of nature brought alive and recalled in poetry and songs like moss expands with water. This is how people cared for each other sharing knowledge for community harmony and survival.

  • These ancient cultures created ways of living with rituals that utilise Pyramid-shaped receptors called "Place cells" in our hippocampus. These 'place cells' have been discovered to energise to around 100 Hz when receiving data carried in songs and rhythm which opens our sensory receptors to receive more of ourselves, and each other in our interactional relationships with nature. These cells are collections of neurones whose function is to receive data and remember it as recallable knowledge to inform future survival.

  • Activating the olfactory system enhances the pyramid "Place Cells" in the hippocampus enhancing our ability to remember knowledge. Knowledge enhances our wisdom and this is enhanced with opening our receptivity with songs, poems and prayers. This contributes to our personal power participating in life with recallable referenced knowledge to inform our decision making.

  • We explore and practice Body Focusing and what supports safety and relaxation to listen in to ourselves. This exploration is foundational for developing the micro-skills you will later integrate into Body and Dream Poems.

  • ... and noticing the mineral worlds of your body resonating with the mineral worlds of the planet that holds memories in the rocks and the stones, the sands and the soils, the gems and the jewels, the crystals and the mixed metal ores that are our foundations.

  • Dream Form was the original inspiration for Body Poem and comes from a Playback Theatre ritual form where the actors playback a Teller's dream in spontaneous improvised theatre choreographed by the Conductor. In Playback Theatre Dream From, the Teller describes their dream and then assigns a sentence to each element of their dream. The Teller then chooses an actor to physically represent and embody each element of the dream on stage. The Conductor then signals each element (actor) when to come forward to speak or sing and embody this sentence, creating new sequences of the repeated sentences. All the elements represent the inner life of the dreamer.

  • You will be guided into enhancing your creative spontaneity as a practitioner attuning the chords of your voice with the chords of your heart, like a musical instrument, to play back what might have been rationalised into a harmonious translation that offers radical acceptance. This practice brings alive repressed awareness memory channels and translates what has not been recognised and digested into poetic forms that are more easily received in the emergence of living updating conscious versions of the self.

  • Areas to focus on through guided meditation might be Noticing and simply naming what you are seeing in your environment without attributing meaning ... and feeling for the mood or atmosphere of what you are seeing Listening to the sounds in the distance, close by, from the body and memories of smells. Remembering and opening awareness to smells can viscerally change the state in the body.

  • Opening the direct routes to presence through self touch ~ opening the sensory receptors of the hands and discovering textures, temperatures, cold and warm, freezing and hot, soft and hard, wet and dry, sharp and rounded, furry and smooth, fluffy and flat, curvy and straight ~finding words that come close to describing these sensations over writes projected knowns and enters us into the worlds of emergnce from the holograms of projections.

  • I want

    ~ activates powerful action motivating circuitry in the brain bringing alive the different aspects of self in need of allostasis, satiation and the life long quests for gratitude. We are all at the affect of hidden drivers of our decision-making about which strategy we employ to meet a need. We do not need to be experts in neurobiology. However, a basic understanding can help us see beyond our personal stories into the origins of our belonging needs on this planet. We all engage with trusting decisions to achieve gratitude in harmony and balance. Harmony and equilibrium between the drives for safety and belonging, and drives for exploration and expansion of consciousness with different parts of ourselves requiring different strategies to achieve gratitude and satiation.

  • Feng Shui Body Poem invites us to listen to the projected identification we imagine an object might be communicating to us. For example, a jug, chair, rug, pile of books, wall, window, tree, river, street, building, bus, truck, caravan, airplane, boat, car, bathroom sink, cup, toilet, mountain, fridge, table, spoon, the sky, the weather, a vase, door, kitchen sink, pair of shoes etc can inhabit an aspect of our selves finding voice through inhabiting an object or aspect of an environment. There may be times when a person is at a place where they want to make decisions about their life and want to make changes in their home and relationships. Exploring what is outside of us using Feng Shui Poem, can illuminate inner conversations. You will learn ways of harvesting the psychic function of projective identification as this psychic function indigenously intends. This shifts the focus from other people digesting our projections and interpreting them into self-digestible acceptance and integration with the other simply as a conduit for this. The metaphors and symbols contain the intensity of affect, rather like “transitional objects” (Playing and Reality - Winnicott) supporting enhanced practitioner resilience which in turn transforms what might have been historically too much for others into acceptance.

  • There are many categorisations of emotions

    from all over the world that attempt to symbolise collections of felt visceral feeling states in the body to support our shared empathetic reality with each other. Emotions can be understood as an expression of our inner state of being and a call to action from visceral felt sensations in the body, a biochemical nervous system response to a survival need. Emotions have different meaning associations and there are several categorizations of emotions from all over the world that attempt to symbolise collections of felt visceral feeling states in the body to support our shared empathetic reality with each other. We do this because it helps attuned communication and empathy with each other. "We are all the same under the skin" - Jaak Panksepp

  • It's all projections!

    Lisa Feldman Barrett understands emotions as being constructed predictions that come alive in different ways each time in response to our experiences, informed from what we have experienced before, with no predetermined circuitry or neural networks configured in emotion circuits."You aren't at the mercy of your emotions, your brain creates them" - Lisa Feldman Barrett. You will be guided in exploring emotional “affect” regulation through bridging our worlds with another in symbols and metaphors giving rise to your deeper attuned understanding of how and why this supports integration and acceptance.

  • We will explore understanding emotions

    boadly from essentialist and existentialist perspectives. However we all experience our emotions in our bodies regardless of what we name them as. When we can`t feel them, we are at the affect of defences like confusion or judgements. We and other animals all experience viscerally felt "Affect" and have defenses to remembering experiences of pain. Jaak Panksepp, who coined the term "Affective relational neuroscience" understands emotions as being inherently universally biologically predetermined and hard-wired in neural networks that we are at the "affect" of in universal ways. He categorised 7 Emotional command systems, that we share in common with other animals, defined as neural networks that have specific behavioral, hormonal, and nervous system responses when stimulated. "We are all the same under the skin" - Jaak Panksepp

  • The essential use of Symbols

    Our ability to come into a relationship with ourselves requires finding ways of connecting to, feeling and expressing what is happening inside our body. Embodiment can be understood to be this symbolic relationship with our feeling states, senses and how we create meaning from these experiences.

  • Symbol Formation

    Discovering, and gaining access to symbols and language can help us self-reflect, communicate and integrate the visceral responses from our bodies and embody these. This work guides us into an exploration of embodied states, enhancing our capacity to be intimate with ourselves and with each other. This supports co creating relationship agreements with conscious awareness and integrity.

“Body Poem has been a priceless resource for me. It has enabled me to access, accept, and integrate parts of myself that I didn’t know existed, through providing a safe container for that process. I have seen it do the same for my clients. It is truly an honour for me to guide others through this powerfully gentle process.”

- Rosi Lalor ~ Certified Body Poet

At the end of each session, there is an option for recording the Dreamer’s Body Poem

This reading back serves similarly to how a caregiver attunes and recognises the affect communications of the infant and vocalises these back transforming upset into regular harmony. This can be understood to be an adult version of this transformational process of affect finding home through the chords of the heart and voice of the practitioner embodying the client’s unique symbols and metaphor.

Here is an example of a recorded Body Poem from a session. There are no recognisable aspects of this and the person’s privacy is preserved.

A gift that I have been experimenting with is collaborating with a filmmaker here in the remote mountains in Portugal who intuitively takes this creative metaphorical process to another level by adding images and music to the poem. This further transforms unthought knowns into a mini film - in the language of video.

What you will learn

Practitioners have been training in Body Poem over the last Six or so years as Katie discovered ways of articulating the micro-skills with nuanced granularity into transferable skills that can be learned and practiced. She discovered that Body Poem has many applications and variations that offer practitioners the creativity to inhabit the role of the practitioner as a Dream Scribe* comfortably trusting their attuned spontaneity with the therapeutic choices they make in each moment of the process with their finest attention receiving the client’s communications as a Dreamer*. Body Poem can be a stand-alone practice and also be woven in with other therapeutic specialisms.

The structure of Body Poem has specific rules of engagement that when surrendered into, support liberation from acting on the mind’s predictions. This is a practice of surrender far more for the practitioner than the client.

…and when this happens, receptivity into the precipice of presence opens.

At this precipice, we might live or die and metaphor holds us safe, like the banks of a river containing the flow and this makes what might ordinarily be unbearable, bearable.

This allows more of the self to emerge expanding the limits of the therapist’s response flexibility while attending to the exact words being expressed by aspects of another that might be otherwise outside of the range of acceptance.

One crucial aspect of Body Poem is that the structure regulates tendencies to try to make better or change a person’s experience which although can be soothing, can also avoid the very aspects of the self that are needing recognition and acceptance.

Body Poem is not something that the conceptual mind can fathom.

It is a practice of presence in the emergence of living and as such, no two body poem sessions are ever the same. Even as the Body Poem is emerging, it is always surprising what unfolds and illuminates into awareness when the Poem is read back.

The process is relational with the world of one person being received into the chords of the heart and voice of another. The practitioner becomes an instrument transforming communications that may have lost being part of the chorus of life into communications that are harmonious and digestible. This is rather like how attuned caregivers transform and bridge an infant’s somatically felt experiences into a shared reality. Without a shared niche of attention with symbols that both people can learn to recognise, we are on our own.

Affective relational neuroscience research and ecosystem perspectives inform and are woven in with all of the teachings and practices. 

Interview with Katie Sarra ~ by Julian Marcus sharing an introduction to Body Poem

“Body Poem has been a crucial part of my journey, it came into my life at exactly the right time, as an act of grace.

It is gentle, intelligent, nature-based, and in alignment with indigenous teachings that have supported me in my desire to heal, learn, and accompany others. I find it comparable to soul retrieval while being grounded in sound nervous system theory and trauma awareness.”

- Karen Yendal ~ Certified Body Poet

BODY POEM

Body Poem is a practice facilitating radical acceptance. This can be understood as central to honouring and trusting the self-organising intelligence inherent in every human being. It is a skilled synthesis of Body Focusing*, Clean Language*, and Dream Form* illuminating unknown and unspoken parts of the self in spontaneously emerging poetry.

Katie Sarra has devoted 35 years of clinical practice to exploring and studying, through research and working with hundreds of people, what supports a person to discover becoming indigenously integrated with exiled aspects of the self, bypassing (often painful self-harming and/or harming others) defences and harvesting the psychic drives for creative self-expression and integration through the function of projection* and projective identification*.

Body Poem is the primary coaching/therapeutic model used in the Institute for Relational Harmony Studies Sexological Intimacy & Somatic Sexology Training.

Like many things that work, the obvious is right in front of our eyes when we learn from the intelligence inherent in people and animals living indigenously with nature.

Body Poem structure effortlessly facilitates each person’s unique metaphors to come alive with enhanced viscerally felt granularity offering recognition of aspects of the self that may have been rationalised out of awareness.

This creates opportunities for trusting curiosity in the emergence of living, liberated from predictive rationalised absolutes. Meaningless symbols of nothingness can spontaneously become embodied and illuminate aspects of the self that have been calling for felt recognition.

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“I have deep gratitude towards myself for being able to be in connection with my body and being able to listen to parts of my body. It was such a relief to allow myself to sense and speak out the sensations I was noticing but most importantly that I did not have to do anything to change what I am noticing.

I had a deep relaxation and I felt grounded, present, and energised. I find the process so powerful, witnessing yourself and being witnessed without any judgment or expectation is healing and soothing.”

~ Armand Botha ~ Certified Body Poet

  • ~ and noticing your breathing massaging your heart and lungs like a jellyfish in water expanding and relaxing with the currents of the ocean …

  • Wave Two

    ~ and noticing your spine moving with each in and out breath like a snake shedding skins and inhabiting new ways of being …

  • I can be with you like a Jellyfish conduit attuned to the currents of your feeling states.

  • Wave Four

    ~ and swim again with your curiosity and dreams listening to ancestral wisdom from just beneath your skin held in the cells in your body and receiving the collective knowledge from the morphogenetic fields …

  • I can be a Turtle while you are swimming in deep waters and coming home to shore to harvest the eggs of your journey. I am the warm beach for welcoming you home.

  • I am with soft eyes holding space for you as you transform allowing you to do this with dignity and privacy and celebrating you as you emerge liberated from the skins that have held you safe but held you back from your naturalness.

  • ~ and practising radical acceptance with everything you are discovering and knowing that you can come back onto the beach and rest from your adventures …

  • ~ and imagining you have released ruptures and resentments that have shamed you away from your grace and you have shed the skins that have held you in and held you back from what you really want …

  • ~ and imagine with each in and out breath you are now unfurling your new strong, light, and colorful Parrot’s wings and entering into the multidimensional altered states of Sexological Bodywork.

  • I can be with you like a Parrot with Body Poem communications as you fly and experiment with multicolored feathers in multidimensional paradigms and I am the leafy branches of your tree to land softly in as you feel your roots again.

Facilitating the basic Structure of Body Poem

  • ... and what are you noticing?

  • ... and what is the mood of ..... that you are noticing?

  • ... and if this ... had a voice and could speak, what might they say?

  • ... and what else are you noticing?

  • and what is the mood of .... that you are noticing?

  • ... and if .... had a voice and could speak, what might .... be saying?

  • ... and what is that like to notice?

A wider range of granularity leads to a wider range of personal power and agency 

Every human and animal has allostasis and relational belonging needs that produce viscerally felt affect with hormonally activated drives in service to the expression of these needs.

A wider and more detailed range of granularity leads to a wider depth of range of personal power and agency. This directly impacts the ability to become a human being who has the skills to be in a relationship rather than alone and is correlated to this.

Words that come close to describing what I am feeling help me learn what I need and to communicate these with others. This in turn makes me more easily relate with others.

Without language that is symbolically granulated when recalling and referencing the three realms, as seen below, that influence decision-making with attuned receptivity, we are essentially disabled from creating a shared understanding of ourselves with conscious awareness.

The four realms of awareness that are alive and interactive in decision-making - “Nested Hierarchy”

  1. felt interoceptive internal, visceral, emotional landscapes of the body and affect that drive calls for action

  2. Proprioceptive awareness of resilient edges and limits

  3. felt exteroceptive sensory relationships with the environment

  4. self-referencing identity and belonging concerns, memories, associations, predictions, and projections of inner dialogue

Referencable symbols contribute to co-creating shared reality. Without these, we are likely to act outside of relationship agreements as, without language to represent the different aspects of the self, all we have is uncategorised gestures and actions disembodied from referencable symbols. These, therefore, remain unconscious. 

It’s very hard to have a relationship with someone who is acting out needs outside of recognisable agreements. This essentially disables us from playing together.

A person without metaphor and symbolic means of representing the self is likely to very rapidly get excluded and rejected from playing with others. This can potentially lead to deep disturbances with drives for erotic creative co-creation, nurturing and being nurtured, exploring and discovering that are fun for everybody being frustrated.

Unmet needs can mount like water in a dam with rage, fear, and panic driving these needs to be met. When out-RAGE is doing its job representing the injustice and pain of rejection, the visceral affect of this, always assumes it is right which can further propel a person into elevated lonely pole positions in entitlement castles demonstrating recognition.

A person in desperation to get intimacy needs met might come into living rooms without introducing their needs at the door rather than requesting these from fears of further rejection. Unfortunately, this inevitably leads to more rejection until these fears are regulated by confidence in learning how to play with attunement.

Co-creating relationship agreements requires shared recognisable embodied symbols. Body Poem generates the emergence of metaphorical life and co-regulation of the intensity of affect seeking a home or service station. Everybody has some language, even if the feelings have been rationalised, rinsed out or never found a home. 

As dormant moss expands with water, so do unmet needs become embodied when given attention with relational radical acceptance.

We are all essentially rendered alexithymic if our self-expression is not understood by another.

Communications are only as effective as how they are understood.

We each have unique frames of reference referencing unique learnt niches of attention that are never the same as others. But we can come closer to understanding each other with relief from loneliness and being understood when we hear our own words in the chords of another’s voice representing us. The other undoubtedly will have their own unique associations with the words and symbols another uses and the Body Poem structure facilities to not impose these.

The person expressing their felt senses in the emergence of these communications, whether they be gestures or in other symbolic forms, has an unadulterated opportunity to more accurately house these.

The practitioner is like a conduit supporting the embodiment of these symbols. In this process, the self is more likely to create identities that do not repeat the original adaption dilemma of a recognisable sense of self inaccurately defined by the niche of attention of the other. In our role power as practitioners, it can be easy to influence our frames of reference which can further contribute to adaptive identities.

This inevitably renders the “congruently true aspects of self “ staying in the boot of the car and not given passenger or driver recognition for their needs to be met.

It is not our job to become the driver for the drives of another but to support them to drive their own car representing each of their inner passengers and accessing the service stations they need with the learnt ability to play with intention and impact while representing these needs and not crash into others.

Harvesting Projections in Feng Shui Body Poem

Here is an example of a recorded Feng Shui Body Poem from a session.

I held my tears reading back this “Feng Shui” poem recognising the significance of what the objects in her environment were representing. Feng Shui Body Poem facilitates our collective consciousness and the timeless unconscious to speak to us through our surroundings illuminating unthought knowns. 

The communications from this Dreamer’s environment brought alive her lost sister reuniting them together and embedding their togetherness back in her heart

  • What is Radical acceptance?

    To love is to accept, receive and digest. Humans are alchemical ecosystems in the process of digesting our life experiences in symbiotic union with the colonies of bacteria and viruses that live in us and around us.

  • Self Acceptance

    Radical acceptance begins with our own ecosystem. 

    Before we can integrate, we need to see the forms within us differentiated out of the blind soup of our beings.

  • Justice is being with the Just is

    Radical acceptance includes our rejections and the harm we have caused and the harm we have been impacted with. The pain of this acceptance is an understandable withdrawal from love and unity.

  • Self Expression

    Finding words that come close to describing these emotional, sensual, and physical multidimensional aspects of ourselves literally activates receptors of self-acceptance when we are witnessed with radical acceptance.

  • Kindness with our inner critics

    Radical includes acceptance with our internal self-referencing inner dialogue. For example to self-evaluating aspects of ourselves that are maintaining our adaptive belonging.

  • Easing the pain

    Reframes, advice and affirmations may feel comforting like a bandage for our wounds to feel protected and cared for but when the time is right to be freed from these, it is radical acceptance that will ease the pain

  • Courage to be seen

    Under the bandage, wounds from our dark nights of the soul remain unseen and these exiled aspects of ourselves are sent back into the unseen bowels of humanity to endure continued separation until we are supported with courage to be seen with radical acceptance

  • Repair

    Cycles of undigested exiled aspects of humanity are ultimately seeking to be seen from underneath the shame bandages that have been nursing them.

    Being seen requires acknowledgement and understanding so we can repair and allow our remorse to teach us to learn not to harm again. 

“memory channels from this lifetime and lifetimes that have gone before us - generations of unintegrated aspects of humanity emerge out of the soup of the collective conscious to be witnessed and accepted.”

MEET OUR CERTIFIED BODY POETS

  • Abi Denyer - Certified Body Poet

    Abi is a passionate advocate for cyclical living, a sea creature and a lover of the seasonal changes in nature and in ourselves.

    She works using Body Poem, Menstrual Medicine Circles, Yoga, Grief Rituals, Sensual Kink, Eating Psychology Coaching and Functional Medicine to design personalised programmes to facilitate deep healing.

    She brings her embodied intuitive wisdom to her work with people, gently inspiring them to move towards greater intimacy with themselves and their quiet longings.

    Abi also works with young people around body autonomy, menstruality, consent and pleasure, initiating them into the wisdom that is held in their bodies and what supports them to listen more deeply.

    Becoming a body poet brought Abi back to the simplicity of her essence, holding a space for people that is kind and welcoming of whatever is present, even when sometimes what is present might feel full of paradox, confusion and fogginess. Everything is welcome.

    Abi remains convinced that everything we do in life can be improved by slowing down, breathing and listening to the wisdom held in the body

  • Karen Yendal - Certified Body Poet

    For the past 20 years, I’ve walked (sometimes ran, sometimes crawled) my own path of healing from early developmental trauma. I have a deep personal understanding and intimate experience of the complex facets that form our human condition.

    Body Poem has been a crucial part of my journey, it came into my life at exactly the right time, as an act of grace.

    It is gentle, intelligent, nature-based, and in alignment with indigenous teachings that have supported me in my desire to heal, learn and accompany others. I find it comparable to soul retrieval while being grounded in sound nervous system theory and trauma awareness.

    Body Poem supports me to hold a safe space and work with professional responsibility.

  • Julian Marcus - Certified Body Poet

    Julian has passionately immersed himself in somatics for over two decades training, practicing and teaching bodywork and embodiment.

    He is the founder of Lucid Learning teaching Relational Bodywork and supporting practitioners and the public find their embodied felt-sense clarity in choice, relationships and life. The focus of this work follows his main passions which include combining Body Poem and Bodywork as one of the core practices. This is a powerful alchemy of client-lead coaching and touch.

    Katie and Julian have collaborated for some 11 years now providing each other an ongoing source of inspiration for each other’s artistic and therapeutic practices and teaching offerings.

    Julian’s practice specialism is relational bodywork and somatic sexology which he uses together as an alchemy so support others find their embodied health.

    East meets West deeply in this work, integrating ancient Chi Kung and Taoist alchemy practices with modern neuroscience, Wheel of Consent® and embodiment practices to foster fuller personal life leadership and symbiotic win-win community creation.

  • Armand Botha - Certified Body Poet

    I have deep gratitude towards myself for being able to be in connection with my body and being able to listen to parts of my body. During the session I found a deep relaxation and contentment. It was such a relief to allow myself to sense and speak out the sensations I was noticing but most importantly that I did not have to do anything to change what I am noticing. When the dream scribe read back the noticing, I had a deep relaxation and I felt grounded, present, and energised. I find the process so powerful, witnessing yourself and being witnessed with out any judgement or expectation is healing and soothing.

  • Rosi Lalor - Certified Body Poet

    My name is Rosi Lalor I am a Body Poet based in Cork, Ireland. Back in 2004, I trained as a Holistic Therapist (Massage, Aromatherapy and Reflexology). For nine years I taught young adults with a broad range of special educational needs. I have been writing and performing songs for the past fifteen years and recently recorded my second album of original songs. In 2006 I completed an MA in Creative Writing for Personal Development at the University of Sussex. After moving from the UK to Ireland in 2014 I trained to become a Reiki Master and a Magnified Healing practitioner and teacher. I now offer in-person treatments at The Natural Clinic in Cork City, as well as distance healing and Body Poem sessions online.

    I have always been drawn to somatic/ embodiment practices, largely because I needed to learn to regulate my highly sensitive (and often overwhelmed) nervous system. My journey from feeling unsafe in my body and disconnected from its messages, to being in a deep loving connection with it, has been a slow one, and my greatest teacher.

    Body Poem has been a priceless resource for me in creating this shift. It has enabled me to access, accept, and integrate parts of myself that I didn’t know existed, through providing a safe container for that process. I have seen it do the same for my clients. It is truly an honour for me to guide others through this powerfully gentle process.

  • Cat Stevens - Certified Body Poet

    As the dream scribe I was aware of my attunement to my partner. I found myself adjusting my tone of voice and speed I was speaking to accommodate them. I am always really taken by how this process is so quick and takes the dreamer straight to those places within that are calling for attention and acknowledgement. Its an honour to hold space for someone in this way and fully hand their process over to them, offering them a safe space to explore.

  • Deborah Hood - Certified Body Poet

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  • Kat Malowsky - Certified Body Poet

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  • Rebecca Thompson ~Certified Body Poet

  • Simone Silverpath - Certified Body Poet

  • Briar Rose Kai Cheng - Certified Body Poet

  • Grete Hilde - Certified Body Poet

  • Kate Orson - Certified Body Poet

  • Jackie Scott - Certified Body Poet

  • Suzi Lister - Certified Body Poet

Post your unanswered Question here

We welcome you to post any questions that haven't been answered here and we will send you an email with answers and/or invite you with a booking link to arrange a 15 - minute call with Katie Sarra - Director of Studies or Phoebe Garland - Head of the CSSE Training.