What it feels like to work with me

Ease-filled, which is different from easy. You manage to bring a quiet, steady, low-ego, low-center-of-gravity confidence to interactions that creates a safe "room" in which to do deep and difficult work. You seem at ease with yourself and genuinely present and interested. Confident, skilled boundaries are there, but permeable, and there's very little emotional static.

Less alone. And like I can look at some things I've been avoiding because I have help and support to go through whatever those avoided or stuffed things might bring up.

In a way, though we only met a few months ago, it feels really familiar to spend time with you. I think because you are so grounded yourself, yet you show when you are not sure, and that makes me trust you. It feels really safe, especially when I am going places I am scared to go, but know I want to try.  I feel challenged in a really deep way, and I also feel held when my heart is breaking. It feels like you are genuinely looking out for me, in the spaces when we are together on Zoom, and also in the spaces between.  

Time with you is like spending time in nature. There is something simple and truthful, grounding and honest. You help me be true to myself, to become "more" of myself, to be brave. You make a very real and tangible difference in my life.

What can you do now that you couldn't do before working with me?

I value myself and my opinions and desires and dreams just as much as those of people around me - and sometimes even prioritize them without reflexively explaining or justifying myself.

I can turn with ease and near-automaticity to sensations in my body when I'm trying to figure out what I'm feeling, how I want to respond, and how to soothe and calm myself when that's called for. 

I can tell when I'm in my body and when I'm in my head.

I can hear my own voice- my guidance/my heart/my intuition- and trust it enough to act on it.

I can chose to go into an emotion and ride the wave, or chose to resist--there's an awareness of it being a conscious choice.

I am less hard on myself, or at least realize when I'm judging how I feel instead of letting myself just feel an emotion.

I can breathe a little more freely. I feel more open.

I can honor my own knowing. 

I can be in my body and heart and spirit more and in my mind, anxiety and fear less.

I have more confidence when it comes to running my business in a way that feels aligned with my soul, not with what my industry expects of me.

How would you introduce me to someone we both respect?

This is my friend Jay. She's an accomplished yoga instructor, writer, and coach. But she really helps people to hear themselves- like in that Mary Oliver "let the soft animal of your body love what it loves" kind of way. And she helps you understand how to use the biggest tool you have- your body- to help guide you in being your full self in the world.

This is Jay, I know her as a teacher, a guide, and a superhero for real.  She's part goofy sense of humour and dance party, and part wisdom and adventurous soul. And the best part is, she has chosen to share all of these gifts with those who are willing to take a risk.    

This is my wonderful friend, Jay. She’s a Teacher. But really, she helps people to be more curious, more adventurous, and more courageous than they may have imagined they could be, to fall in love with feeling the experience of truly being themselves .

Jay is an embodied spiritual counselor. But really, she helps people realize how much they love themselves.

This is Jay. She’s a wise old soul. But really, she helps people to become more of who they are meant to be. She helps people believe in themselves. She heals the karmic wounds of self-doubt and shame. She makes the world a better place. You will like her. Everyone does.

And for those of you who want the whole picture...

Here is a letter, posted in it's entirety with permission, from a client who has beautifully illuminated what she received from her time working with me.

Oh dear Jay,

How do I ever express my gratitude?

If I describe myself at best right now I feel stable, calm and contented. Working with you over the past 4.5 months has brought me to parts of myself that I thought would always be locked away and require stifling and pushing down if I was ever to find inner peace. It is ridiculous now to think of it like that, but before connecting with you I didn’t know of any other way. Each session was a story in its own right and brought up clumped up messes of hurt and pain that I didn’t know I was holding. Pieces of my timeline rose out of my body in ways I would never have accessed if it wasn’t for the safety I felt with you, with your calm and kind guidance to come back to my body. It is amazing to think I have lived for 36 years without knowing how emotions felt on a physical level. I have spent my whole life creating stories and reasons for my emotions, and explaining them away from myself, instead of learning how to feel them and be with them. You have held the space for me to fracture those messes of pain. 

This work with you has brought me closer to myself, and in doing so, I have become closer to my daughter. In learning how to be with my big emotions I am finding it easier to be there for my daughter’s, and she now seems less panicked and ferocious in the way she reacts to things. It is as though she feels reassured and confident that I will really be there for her. 

I now recognize myself as a child, a woman and a mother – all integrated into one. Healing has begun on each of these parts by being able to revisit the trauma of infancy and childhood and the dysfunction that grew from those early hurts. My relationship with my daughter (6yrs old) has never been as strong and it has a foundation to it that now will be there forever. I feel more balanced and whole in my relationship with my husband. I have an internal understanding of how it feels to be grounded and of how boundaries and resilience are an offshoot of being grounded. 

None of these changes are ‘big’. They are so small and ordinary that they could pass unnoticed to others, but I have now experienced how it feels to be without a sense of striving or pushing or building for a future. Now I know how it feels to live for today. There is nothing grandiose about how I feel or where I want to ‘be’ with my life. I feel at peace with being ordinary, and being ‘me sized’! It is a novel and liberating feeling. 

In disbanding my hurts I hope that I have now brought myself into contact with my inner resources enough to allow future discomforts to be felt and expressed without taking me away from myself again. And I like to hope I will always have you to call on for when I need more space than I can give myself. I will always be a ‘work in progress’ and I have no doubt I will still be challenged in my daily life. However I now know what it is like to feel whole. My wounds have been cleaned and are healing.

Jay I just can’t thank you enough for your stable, sure-footed guidance and support. Whatever it is you are doing in your own life to support this growth in others, it is working. Thank you for your dedication and commitment to serving others.