Feeling Connected to the Universe

I am a mom of two seven year olds, I have a remarkable life partner, a house in renovation, a yard sided by a forest, a cat, two cars...a postcard of the American dream, really. We live frugally, but we manage thanks to buying a rundown house and using a lot of creative design-sense and elbow grease.

Despite the American post-card life, I’ve lived much of my life feeling like an outsider -- not only among people, but from life itself. This feeling has ebbed and flowed during my life and I have dealt with it in many ways with greater or lesser degrees of success. For the past few years, I have worked with Mark and Rachel on permutations of my feelings of ‘outsiderness’.

The Mandria Healing Nurturing Program did not solve all the fascinating ways I embody outsiderness, but it has made a huge difference in the way I feel about life. Primarily, the program has helped me feel connected to this life, this body, on this earth. It made me aware of patterns of behavior that, ironically, kept me feeling like an outsider. The program has given me tools to explore better ways of getting what I need and want rather than relying on ineffective behaviors constructed in infancy and childhood.

For the first time in memory, my life does not feel overwhelming to me. I have much to learn and unlearn, but I am no longer afraid that I’m stuck, that there is no solution, no real possibility to change things. Recognizing patterns of behavior that don’t work for me, having tools to work toward change and actually experiencing change is amazing to me. Making change may be common practice for some people, but it is profoundly new to me. It is remarkable to feel like I can handle life and me and anything in between.

The following is my overview of the Mandria Healing Nurturing Program weekend and the parts of the program that I’ve used most since that balmy October weekend in Lexington.

Nurturing Program Weekend

The workshop began on a Friday evening with an introduction to the other participants and the Nurturing Program. Mark and Rachel talked about how abandonment in infancy manifests itself in the body and evolves throughout our lives. That evening, using worksheets, we contemplated patterns of behavior that were troubling us and explored whether they stemmed from anxiety, desperation, helplessness, overwhelm -- a framework of responses to abandonment.

I had two patterns that I wanted to change: the feeling of wanting to shut down two-thirds into the day (infants will simply shut down when overwhelmed) and my habit of having a dialogue in my head with someone I wanted to acknowledged me (children will jump into the past or future to avoid experiencing abandonment in the present moment). As I contemplated my patterns, an image flashed in my mind that connected my two patterns together: I saw myself in front of my parents’ glass sliding doors with a universal silence in my head, wanting someone to recognize that I was here and I needed something. To fill in the silence, I moved into my head and had a conversation with my mother who, in my head, listened very approvingly.

Over the following two days, we took six journeys which began with Rachel recounting the purpose of the Nurturing Program followed by Mark talking us through the journey. I can best describe the journeys as guided meditations. I often felt I was in that place between sleep and wakefulness. Sometimes I would was aware of Mark talking and other times I would wake up near the end and have little awareness of what I had experienced.

After each journey, Mark and Rachel encouraged us to write down any part of our experience, our feelings, any changes we experienced. They also encouraged us to share any parts of our journeys with the group.

The six journeys covered the following topics:

• Reconnecting with and opening to the places and patterns that need nurturing
• Exploring our ability to nurture and introducing universal nurturing
• Separating the ineffective connections -- “twizzling” -- of emotions and physical body systems (hormonal, nervous, immune) that occur when infants can’t distinguish between needing food, love or physical care
• Unwinding projections (issues we project onto others rather than dealing with them within) and protections (behaviors we use to protect ourselves from real or imagined dangers)
• Finding true intent beneath ineffective patterns and creating new options to get what we need
• Re-patterning old behaviors and associations with current awareness/wisdom through time

Each of the journeys seemed to build upon the previous ones, but after the program I most often utilize Journey Five whose purpose was:

• To find the real intent beneath a behavior pattern that we have done forever
• To create new options for getting what we really need or want
• To take the journey within a framework of gratitude for the ineffective behavior or pattern (since it did have a useful purpose at one time and likely did serve that original purpose well)

My experience of this journey during the program was as follows:

Journey Five

• I thought of my behavior of filling in universal silence with imagined dialogues.
• Mark kept asking what the intent was beneath the behavior and then beneath each answer. My responses were: acknowledgment, recognition, grounded within self, grounded within the universe on this earth.
• Throughout, Mark emphasized that gratitude toward this behavior was important for it had been attempting to get us what we needed.
• Next, Mark asked us to consider new behaviors that might better help us achieve our desire. My answers were: sit on the earth with my hips and base open, listen, translate what I hear (construct interpretation of what I hear, i.e., write!)
• I also considered my shutting down response. It too seemed to desire recognition and belonging. A better chance for reaching that was again to sit open to the earth and feel my connection to all.

Responses after Journey Five

• I felt such joy that I already had what I wanted -- I was already connected and a part of this universe!
• I also felt true gratitude for how valiantly my patterns of dialoguing in my head and of wanting to retreat from everything had tried to get me connected to the universe.

Since The Program

Since the program, I have been able to access feeling grounded by simply focusing on my hips and my base -- a more flexible variation of sitting on the earth as a reminder of universal connection (solution from the program). The desire to feel and be connected to the universe must be very crucial for me, because I have changed a number of ineffective patterns and behaviors when I remind myself of this fundamental connection.

I’ve also had a number of things come up that are not quite solved by grounding myself. Some of my behaviors and patterns have required additional exploration, because the intent of the ineffective pattern has had a different quality than the patterns I explored during the Program. I can better resolve and open to more effective behavior options if I have a precise intent behind a pattern.

I explore the intent of a pattern by doing the fifth journey. The moment I wake up works well, since I’m still in a drowsy state. When I do the journey without Mark and Rachel's guidance, it is not as flowing as it was when they were leading us through it, but it begins to open awareness and possibilities for me. After such a journey, I find that taking a long walk and working through the journey again brings me even more clarity. From there I apply what I’ve uncovered when I find myself following the old pattern.

Another bonus of the program is that I truly feel grateful for so many things in my life. I always knew that I had much to be grateful for, but I could not feel the peace or smile that comes with heart-felt gratitude. I do feel it now. My heart smiles when I drive up to my half-shingled house, I warm my icicle feet on the shins of a man I’ve been lucky to sleep with for half of my life, I get a bear hug from my son or a snuggle from my daughter, I smile into the yellow eyes of my cat, even though she walks on me with lead feet.

The heart-felt appreciation I have felt since the Nurturing Program is a prize unto itself. I have also discovered that this kind of gratitude is my fastest way of feeling grounded in this universe. I don’t know why, but feeling gratitude makes me a part of all of this. And, since the Nurturing Program, I finally know, in the core of my being, that I can handle this!

- Anne

Other client experiences: