When You Get Lost Amongst The Bamboo…

Behind my house is a bamboo forest. 

It’s easy to get lost back there. 

The kids that come over for therapy all go back there to look for Pandas. 

They turn over green shoots and muddy rocks searching 

for evidence of recent Panda inhabitants. 

The women who call to seek out body recovery,

are searching for evidence and hope that they can get better.

When you have lost touch with crucial parts of self, it's hard to imagine you can feel whole again.

It's hard to imagine you can feel well again–not well for others, but well for yourself. 

It’s hard to imagine that you can be self determining, 

and that you can connect to the right resources 

and find people to guide you out of this place of loss of self 

into a place of connection to 

self, other, and embodied possibility.  

This is what the women who call me want for themselves.

They don’t just want to get better, 

they want to be with someone who can understand 

what they are going through now. 

And then they want other women 

who are sharing this experience 

of self loss and betrayal 

to tell them and reflect back 

that they are not making this deep sense of self loss up!

They need other people that believe we have pandas 

in Austin, Texas

amongst the bamboo that you can find in our urban backyards. 

And all these women tell me, 

I especially need to be with other women right now. 

I want the empowerment that comes from coming together.  

I am going through so much and I want to give and receive support 

and learn to move myself again and again and again. 

And in the Whole Body Recovery Group we move. 

We research through Somatic movement. 

We share our discoveries with one another. 

We listen to our inner voices and our cells simultaneously.

And you are not alone in the forest. 

You are guided 

and led 

and supported 

to explore on your own—

so that by the time you complete the year,

 you are ready. 

You will come to trust your own Somatic guidance. 

You will be able to make the right choices for yourself

You will be able to find Pandas in the bamboo forests.