I stood before a silk worm one day
And that night, my heart said to me,
‘I can do things like that, I can spin skies,
I can be woven into love that can bring warmth to people;
I can be soft against a crying face,
I can be wings that lift, and I can travel on my thousand feet
Throughout the earth,
My sacks filled
With the Sacred.’
And I replied to my heart,
‘Dear, can you really do all those things?
And it just nodded ‘Yes’
In silence.
So we began
and will never cease.
(Rumi)
The Universal Heart
… lies at the centre of the Inner Constellation Mobile (ICM). Its movement is highly relational and organic, creating an experience of life as an intelligent flow within our nervous system. Although each of us carries this generous heart-capacity within us, a regular practice group helps to awaken and stabilize its inclusivity.
There is a palpable coherence within the transpersonal nature of the Universal Heart (UH). Each moment we choose to slow down and embody our experience as both witness and receiver, we deepen its coherent depth within our nervous system. Both the UH series and ICM Workshops provide relational structures where transpersonal and personal dimensions can co-exist in a more fluid integrated intelligence.
Free Universal Heart Quarterly Gatherings
… these 1.5 hour zoom-hosted sessions are designed to regularly support our nervous system attunement to the Earth’s rhythms. In 2023, they take place from 10 to 11:30 AM (Pacific) on the following Wednesdays: March 22, June 21, Sept. 20, & Dec. 20. (Please contact me by text or phone at 604-222-4111, if you wish to be added to the email reminder list.)
Each of these quarterly gatherings consists of a theme-related guided meditation, triad sharing, and large group sharing. We close by creating a whiteboard drawing together to express our experience. This is sent to all the participants, along with recordings of the meditation and group sharing.
Spring Equinox Emergence as Becoming: Like the sap rising, discover the energizes that are emergent, fresh, and alive? The energy of spring is an alluring promise that lives within our heart.
Summer Solstice Tending our Belonging: What has ripened within us that allows for more wisdom, depth, meaning, and relational flow?
Bowing to the Ancestors,
holding more intimately the disrupted ground I stand upon.
Honouring the wounded life my body wears
invites eternal belonging ...
Learning to bow becomes a blessing stream.
A home for Restoration
A place of Peace
A walk with timeless Grace ...
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- The secret of our greatest blessing lies within this sacred relationship between the dark and the light.
- By honouring the darkness, we also honour the unborn, hidden, denied, and exiled parts of ourselves and humanity.
- We turn towards the light, not to get away from the dark, but to honour the mystery of life and our soul’s timeless belonging here.
2023 UH/ICM Alumni Gatherings
ICM/UH Alumni gatherings are open to those who have participated in a minimum of 2 ICM Workshops in 2022 or a previous Universal Heart Series.
- 2023 Alumni gatherings are from 10 to 11:30 AM Pacific on the first Sunday of alternating months: Feb. 5, April 2, June 4, Aug. 6, Oct. 1, & Dec. 3.
- Designed to till the soil of our group’s depth and connection, we will begin with meditation and group sharing. The direction of the group will evolve organically with the option of a full or partial ICM, sound healing, or simple practices that support inner-stillness and unconditional belonging.
- All sessions are recorded and emailed to participants after the session.
Cost: $100 (Canadian) for one year
The Universal Heart Annual Series
We have to discern the heart first, then bring in the mind. The heart doesn’t mean the emotions either. Listening to our heart means to fall into silence, into quietness. The impulse of our heart arises from stillness. As it arises it becomes freedom, and carries great excitement with it, great certainty.
(Richard Rudd, The Gene Keys)
Please note: due to dissertation and training commitments, the Universal Heart Series will take place this year from October 2023 to March 2024.
The Universal Heart lies at the centre of the Inner Constellation Mobile (ICM) where healing becomes a humble gesture of being available for a life we don’t already know. As this “unknowing” opens in our nervous system, a palpable coherence begins to open in the heart. With practice in a group, we slowly become more intimate with the universality of life as a movement within us. Each moment we choose to slow down, witness, and receive life as it is, we deepen the coherent movement in our nervous system and naturally meet the life around us in new ways.
The transpersonal nature of our Universal Heart connection allows the morphic field within and between us to become more apparent. This is optimally supported within a community of like-hearted pioneers wishing to explore and embody the profound intelligence of the Universal Heart in everyday life.
In conjunction with the ICM Workshops, the Universal Heart series provides an ongoing container for exploring shadow and light in a safe manner. Embodied spirituality—or spirituality in and through the body—remains a relatively new paradigm of spiritual practice. Traditional spiritual practices have tended to retreat from culture, whereas an embodied spiritual practice engages with the world immediately around them as a living and very alive practice. Our own bodies, emotions, and mental tendencies become the pioneering fields of awareness for this exploration.
With time and practice, the “compassionate presence” of the Universal Heart begins to make soft and subtle connection with traumatized patterns of fear and fragmentation within ourselves and the collective field we share. With increased spaciousness, the Soul’s purpose begins to find take root in our Heart.
Universal Heart Themes: October 2023 to March 2024
* Please note this group is limited to 12 participants.
A palpable coherence lives within each of us as the Universal Heart. Every moment we choose to slow down, witness, and receive our experience of life in this moment, we deepen and stabilize that coherence within our nervous systems. When working with a group of people practicing in the same way, we magnify our individual potential.
The profound gifts of the Universal Heart first emerge as tender shoots of direct experience through a more spacious consciousness. These experiences also show us where we have been blocked, numb, or unavailable. We learn to go slow and be kind when we are given the gift of seeing and feeling these retracted places. Authentic healing is a generous field of spaciousness. When nothing is pushed, relationship becomes an emergent process that allows the hidden or exiled aspects of ourselves to come back into life.
October 2023: The still language of the Soul. How do we listen to this timeless beauty? What happens in our body, heart, and mind when we hear this calling, even faintly?
November 2023: Human Conditioning through time. A reflective look at the impact of our collective tendency to emphasize the light/positive/outward/masculine, at the expense of the dark/negative/inward/ feminine.
December 2023: Listening with the Nervous System. Our nervous system is designed for connection and deep relationship with life. What happens when we focus on “attuning to” rather than “thinking about”? (Note: The 3-hour session this month will be an Inner Constellation Workshop.)
January 2024: Recognizing our bodies as a flow of Ancestors walking through time. When we heal the Ancestors heal, as do future generations. What changes when we experience this humbling reality?
February 2024: Spaciousness as the elixir of change. A small amount is a timeless blessing. (Note: The 3-hour session this month will be an Inner Constellation Workshop.)
March 2024: Culture is a co-creative manifestation. Global Social Witnessing (GSW) is the practice of identifying our essential relationship with this phenomenon. We are indeed, the world changing itself. Walking life in this deep paradox allows for boldness and humility, strength and availability as we find our organic place.
Cost: $525 (Cdn. $, includes $100 down payment)
Cost: $425 (for previous UH participants)
Monthly Structure:
- Twice-monthly Saturday Meetings – 1st and 3rd Saturdays of the month. (1st Saturday is 3 hrs, 3rd Saturday is 1.5 hrs). The first Saturday will focus on Inner Constellations, and the second on small and large group sharing.
- Weekly emailed meditations and sound healings (These are theme-related to support the weekly dyad practices.)
- Weekly Dyads (20 – 30 minutes, with partners changing every 2 months). These dyads are dynamic expressions of what is moving within. Expression can be made in words, art, dance or sound, and can be done by phone or Zoom. Dyads help to ground our inner-discoveries within relationship and therefore within the intimate details of our everyday life.
- Two full Inner Constellation Workshops: in December and February.
Monthly Schedule:
All classes are hosted on Zoom. The 1st Saturday is from 10 AM to 1 PM, and the 3rd Saturday is from 10 AM to 11:30 AM (Pacific).
October 7 & 21 (2023)
November 4 & 18
December 2 (*ICM Workshop) & 16
January 6 & 20 (2024)
February 3 (*ICM Workshop) & 17
March 2 & 16
Important Reminder: If this is your first series and you have not met me before, please phone (+1) 604-222-4111 prior to registering. This is a routine check-in to make sure this program is a good fit for you.