Energy of Life

By Kim Ladd

My name is Kim Ladd. I am a SoULL student and a registered nurse in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in Chicago. I work in a world of monitors, alarms, lights, sounds and distractions, a place where small infants and often very ill, tiny humans are connected to beeping ventilators, IV alarms and heart monitors. This technology is vitally important to saving small lives. But there is a lot more going on there than our technology measures. And maybe a lot more to saving a life than we usually talk about. 

I remember a text sent to me by a father of a tiny, premature infant in our NICU. His daughter had been in our unit for several weeks. Slowly and surely she was growing bigger and stronger. On the day she reached a 4 pound milestone, Dad texted me: “if only she drank her bottles.  We need to work on that... she needs to practice… so we can go home...”  I listened deeper.  She wasn’t developed enough neurologically to do this.  But I heard his frustration; if only she drank her bottles… it was a measurable task.  It had an end goal dad could understand. Doing this equals go home, which is of course the measure of success in the NICU. I heard his language, but I heard the language that dances on the energy of life within the tiny baby. I took a deep breath, quieted myself before responding.

What I wanted to say to this dad was this:  “This baby needs you in order to grow and develop so she can drink her bottles. She feels safe when held against your skin, laying on your chest or upon mom’s warm full breasts. When she looks into your eyes, she connects with life energy that is secure and full of love. She listens to the rhythm of your heart as it beats a familiar and comforting sound, she knows so well as she grew inside her mother. She breathes a rhythm of calmness.” I wanted him to know that he was doing and providing so much more than he can see. 

In my mind’s eye I could see how babies lay upon their people. I see their small fists unfurl while laying safely upon her parents’ skin. It is like a flower petal unfurling in spring, full of hope and promise. This is a season of human life as well. It is in this energy she blossoms, from this she is given the strength to drink from a bottle and go home. It is this familiar beating of heart that quiets the sounds of the NICU, if only for a few hours a day, where safety, familiarity, comfort and love are the primary energy of this space. It is the rhythm of life force. In this connected space of safety, love, and reciprocal energy she develops fully, brain, body and soul. 

I breathe in deeply and let that breath out. I send dad a simple text that reminds him that he is helping bring his baby girl home, he is connecting, touching, exchanging energy and supporting her growth. I reminded him that the quiet connecting moments are doing important work, that this fosters the neurological maturity that will have her drinking bottles and leaving the NICU, safer and stronger than she was before.  

“Thanks, I needed to hear that”, responded dad. I felt a shift in his energy. The language of life.  

Bringing this calm, rhythmic awareness to the NICU and to parents is what I do. But holding this awareness hasn’t always been as accessible.

As a young child I can remember feeling connected to all the energy within and around me. It was a magical aliveness.  I always knew there was a different kind of visceral life energy, understated in healthcare and too often in life. It was always there, deep in my bones without language.  It was a sense, a feeling, a stirring. Intuition. As I grew older I began listening outside myself. Social norms, institutions, technology, and the expectations of others separated me from my own senses. I began to lose this inner language. I have a memory of things feeling untrue, but I had no one but my tiny self to help protect this truth. I began to lose my inner language. How do we quiet the noise of the world and touch the energy of life? Can these energies of technology and this knowing deep inside me coexist? 

Fortunately, my work in the NICU reawakened this truth.  My heart and soul knew what I did in the NICU was true. It wasn’t measured just in science and data, but in life energy, in feeling and in presence. But it really helps to have support for this knowing. Pilgrim SoULL for me was like this baby finding the safety of her parent’s skin. In this community I could validate my truths. I felt safe to explore my feelings about the intuition we all have if we slow ourselves down enough to listen. 

Physics has proven energy always remains, redirected, released, but it’s always there.

In SoULL I learned that our energies are reciprocal. We each have an energy in flux, moving, changing and responding when we connect with others. With this support, it feels like I’ve come back to myself, to my people. The fuller I am, the more of me there is to share. I imagine it’s ripple effect as I connect with the families and tiny humans I serve. Quieting the noise.

Header image by Tembinkosi Sikupela

Finding and Loving your Pilgrim Soul(l)

By Jeanne Denney

God I love Yeats. And I love poetry.

You know what I love most about writing poetry? Putting one word next to another and having them both explode into something even more wildly true. Some of the words in this poem by Yeats did that for me about the time that I was finding a name for the school. I could not get them out of my head.

 Pilgrim:

1: one who journeys in foreign lands : WAYFARER

2: one who travels to a shrine or holy place as a devotee

Soul:

1. the spiritual part of a person that is believed to give life to the body and in many religions is believed to live forever

Pilgrim. Soul. Wow. The idea that our soul itself, our most essential enduring self, is on a pilgrimage to a holy place, moving lifetime to lifetime through different bodies, different foreign lands and strange situations, on its way somewhere holy. Can’t you just see and feel this as true? My bones do. To be a true pilgrim requires that we leave a known identity (job, family, language, culture, comfort, safety, the land of “the known”) to find something transcendent. Of course. Why else would you do it, but that you longed to meet parts of the self, otherwise unknowable? What else would be worth giving so much up for?

So we go, over hill and dale, on our way somewhere with only a compass, some strange intuition, a map if we are lucky. Relying on the kindness of strangers for a place to sleep and for meals. Relying on the great stream of life that carries us. We are barely aware of what truly carries us when we are in our overly secure (insecure) existence. But on the road, without our usual baggage, as pilgrims, we become very aware of it. We learn to swim in it. The soul knows itself as movement. As beauty.

I loved the words “Pilgrim” and “Soul” so much together we eventually named the first year of the school for this. It requires moving away from comfortable but misleading delusions of our culture, out on the open road with others. Changing up our view of life and seeing larger patterns, finding self, just like a pilgrim.

But there is more to this line than those two words. Yeats says “But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you”. He distinguishes between ordinary garden variety vain love of self-interest, (you know, love of the beautiful people that you get enamored by), and the deeper movement of love that sees more.

But wait! He isn’t done. In the next line where this one loving man does something more than love the pilgrim soul. He loves “the sorrows of your changing face”; Woah!! Stunning!

As a woman in her 60’s I know well the difference between love false and true. But to be loved for our changing faces (not just accepted) is a real wake up to love. It is easy to be attached to youthful excitement, but to love the movement of change itself as sorrows overtake us and flesh falls. Wow. That is a true promise of love. I feel that in my bones too.

I hope that you are aware of at least one or two people in your life who have seen and loved you like this. Maybe it is a childhood friend who has watched you move from town to town or from partner to partner, or has seen you through illnesses and bankruptcies. Maybe it is an old love you have known before this life and will know again in another one. Maybe it is a war buddy who went to near death with you and knows a part of you few others do. Maybe it is a parent. Now and then, we find loves that transcend our identity and the form that our body has taken. THAT seeing. They follow you, however imperfectly, through all kinds of different landscapes, roles, fortunes. These folks are not connected to us through our personae, our “moments of glad grace”. They are dancing with our soul. Our task is to recognize them. Thank them. And to see and love their moving souls too.

The fact is, we all long for this kind of seeing and this kind of connecting and this kind of love. We need it. It should not be rare. The more we connect to this part of ourselves, the more people we see deeply and love deeply. On the other hand, when we identify with only our outer personae, aging makes us despair. We have difficulty finding love that truly satisfies. We have a pervasive feeling of disconnection. But connected to this deep, moving current of life within us, somehow we source vitality, no matter what condition we are in or what problem we have, even on our deathbed. Our heart finds a way to carry us. Our love goes deeper.

The truth is, you can learn to see like this and love like this. It is your birthright. It may be easier than you think to find the pilgrim soul in you and in others, and to allow others to love it. There are ways to move from despair. Even though the face may be changing.

Trust me, you are so much more.

Header photo by Finding Dan | Dan Grinwis

SoULL in the Pandemic

By Barbara Pettibone

Hey, my name is Barbara.

I’m a SoULL student and a Clinical Social Worker. I’ve worked in the mental health field for much of the past 45 years (yikes). With the onset of the pandemic however, I found myself becoming increasingly isolated, almost reclusive. I had not been seeing clients for some time, preferring to hunker down and pull inward rather than engage with what seemed an increasingly irrational world. Then, I learned about SoULL, this strange school that embraced a body/mind perspective of healing. Curious, I decided to take the plunge because empty pandemic days were taking me nowhere.

I began Pilgrim SoULL in the summer of 2020 and my world opened up dramatically. Not only was I in an online community, but much of that community was from Europe, so here I was studying with an international community in the middle of a pandemic. Wow! To say that I “took” or “completed” Pilgrim SoULL is a misnomer because it was an experience that only began with Unit 1. I realize now that the deep learning, the energy of the group as we worked with one another, testing questions and ideas, role playing power structures, doing individual process work under the eyes of our companions – all of this allowed me to not only survive the pandemic, but also to grow and plant more seeds in the soil of myself that continue to bloom. Experiencing the pandemic with European friends through distance and virtual group meetings reinforced my understanding of how much we share and how connected we are.

With this burgeoning awareness came the realization that maybe I still had something to offer as a therapist. So, probably due to a combination of individual therapy and SoULL, I began working again as an online therapist. This was a miraculous change for me. I felt useful again, and received so much support from my classmates.

Putting what I learned into words isn’t easy. Let me try to explain what it feels like. First, everything in the world is so much more alive than it ever was before. I see movement, breathing, everywhere. Death is no longer something to be dreaded but a part of a cycle that keeps on going. I often feel ready to burst with clients who speak of their fear of death, wanting to tell them, “No! It’s all okay. It never stops.”, but I restrain myself and listen. I try to help them open further to this glorious life in a more subtle way. I use this study in other places in my work with clients: in helping the anxious ones to ground themselves and breathe; those who are depressed to reach into their early wounds and pull out hope; those who are suicidal to see that there are other options to the darkness they feel. I see their body struggles so much more clearly than before, along with my own. I work to ground us all.

Now I’m really looking forward to SoULL Year 2. The first year experience is growing me every single minute – growing Barbara into a more connected and loving being. What I’m most enthused about now is learning to further integrate SoULL into my work with clients, and I hope to focus on this in Year 2.

So may we continue to grow as a school and SoULL as a force in our hearts. I am so blessed to have found you.

Header photo by John Thomas

A Place at the SoULL TABLE

“Oh hey there- ! Hi ! …Come on in… I’ll get the door for you. We were just sitting down to share a meal and we saved a place for you at the table. Are you hungry? How was your day?”

Imagine feeling embraced by this greeting walking into a group of strangers. This is a reflection of how it felt on my first day of SoULL Unit one. I could feel these inviting words echoing from the group.

Growing up I spent a lot of time after school at a friend's house whose mom would sit and talk with us every day around the family kitchen table. When we came bouncing in she would stop what she was doing, sit us down at the table and make us something to eat, and talk to us about our day. She made us peanut butter sandwiches and we drank juice from recycled jelly jars that had cartoon characters on them. My favorite had a cat and mouse on it. My friends had a dinosaur. I looked forward every day after school to going to my friends house and us talking around that kitchen table. As I grew older I realized it wasn’t the kitchen table, the fun jelly jars of juice or even the peanut butter sandwiches that I looked forward to each day. It was the sharing and the connection that was so special when we gathered.

Unit one of SoULL felt like a gathering of close family/friends sharing around a kitchen table. And like someone was holding the door for me as I walked into class holding both my fears and courage by the hand. I could feel the “soles” of my shoes were worn from walking a journey and living a story I hadn’t shared before. And my “soul” became instantly aware of the untold stories in my heart. It was like learning a foreign, yet familiar language. How many of us, afterall, remember who we were before the world told us who we were supposed to be? It had been a while since I felt fed.

Before you read on, feel free to take a breath with me, if you’d like: Sit back, relax your neck and shoulders.…take a slow breath in and inhale gently… now exhale slowly... Relaxing that little space between your eyebrows … and focus on your breath. Now relax your jaw and breathe in again. This time breathe in a feeling of deep compassion and exhale a feeling of deep peace.

After taking this breath, you might feel as I did after experiencing many of our classes. I felt more at ease and maybe like the edge-y parts inside were smoothed a bit. I had a deeper feeling of self awareness and like I dropped into a deeper sense of belonging inside myself as a result of our classes.

On my first day of Unit one, I felt a bit like I was getting ready to give my first speech in front of my 3rd grade class. I was nervous and knew I’d be sharing parts of me, but didn’t know which parts or to what extent. I started a letter to myself a week before class began that was filled with my fears and “what if’s” and “I don’t think I cans”. Just minutes before the class started I quickly finished the letter to myself writing:

“But what if I fail?…. Oh, but Darling, what if you fly?”

Peace and love,

G.

After sealing the envelope, I entered the class, fears and all. And I’m so thankful I did. What I experienced was invaluable. It changed my world view and gave me a new interpersonal framework from which to build. I learned more about our changing rhythms and movements that are interconnected with nature, as well as our expansions and contractions. I found a gathering place where each of us had a gift to bring. And a place where all of our gifts were welcomed.

SoULL Unit one was reminiscent of a welcoming place and a gathering table for my younger self, around which we shared our common threads of our humanness: our strengths and fears, our joys and struggles, our clarity and uncertainties. All of our internal pulses that make us human were welcomed at this table.

Now I can share this with you:

Oh hey there-! Hi! Come on in. I’ll get the door for you. We were just sitting down to share a meal and I saved a place for you at the table. Are you hungry? How was your day?

Thanks for taking a breath with me.

Gina Rubin