January 2024 Newsletter

On Surrender!

Click Here to see Upcoming Programs at the Well of Light

Dear Michael,

Life has a funny way of teaching us lessons, doesn’t it?

For months, I’d been looking forward to retreating to the Sea of Cortez in Mexico to finish editing my soon-to-be-released book, Traumatized: A Love Story. My bags were packed with everything I’d need—books, supplies, and enough dog treats for Buddha to last the trip.

Then, life intervened...

On Christmas Eve, Buddha got into a tussle with another dog, and when I jumped in to break it up, I broke my hand. No big deal, I thought. A splint would do the trick, and I’d still make the three-day drive south. But just before leaving, my doctor looked at the X-rays and said, “Nope. You need a cast.”

I left the office with a bright blue monstrosity from my elbow to my fingertips, making me feel like I was lugging around a bowling ball on the end of my arm. Determined, I hit the road anyway.

I made it as far as Los Angeles before reality set in. Between not being able to unzip my pants to pee or pull my wallet from my pocket, I realized this trip wasn’t going to happen. Over dinner with my daughter, I made the difficult but correct decision to turn around and head home.

Back in Grass Valley, the universe decided to double down. I came down with the worst cold of my life, making COVID-19 look like a day at the spa. For three weeks, I’ve been in bed, humbled, and learning yet another lesson about slowing down.

In the stillness, I witnessed a familiar pattern: even at almost 80 years old, I still find myself chasing my father's approval, seeking to prove I am worthy of love and life itself. After all these years, these deeply ingrained patterns still emerge, but in noticing them, I reclaim the power to let them go. It’s a reminder that awareness is the first step toward liberation.

This brings me to you and the circles and programs we’ve created for you—designed to foster healing, connection, transformation, and empowerment.

✨ Are you ready to expand your capacity to meet life fully?

✨ Do you want to transcend challenges and struggles while integrating their lessons?

✨ Would you like to connect with others authentically on a deeper level?

✨ Are you ready to transform scarcity and lack into abundance and fulfillment?

✨ Would you like to deepen your connection with your ancestors, tapping into their resilience and blessings?

If you answer yes to any of these, join us on one of our transformational journeys. Let’s explore, heal, and grow together!

With Love, and Blessings,

Michael

Special Valentine’s Weekend Workshop

This immersive workshop is for those ready to deepen their connection to themselves, others, and the world:

Details and Registration Click Here

Video: On Relational Intimacy

Integration and Healing Circles- Live in Nevada City, CA

These circles are a safe, nurturing space to explore the innate wisdom of our bodies and nervous systems. Through somatic trauma-informed practices, we reconnect with our authentic selves and discover more profound creativity, connection, and healing.

Why Join a Healing Circle?

✨ Learn to listen beyond words, activating all your senses.

✨ Discover your unique, transparent voice and express it authentically.

✨ Open yourself to the abundant love and support that surrounds you.

✨ Support others in their healing journey, fostering connection and compassion.

✨ Feel seen, heard, and held with reverence and respect.

As Rich Villodas says:

"We are wounded in community, and we are healed in community. Healing might not come from the community where the wounding occurred, but the community is needed for healing nonetheless."

Upcoming Circles - Nevada City, CA

🌿 February 18th - June 17th Tuesdays 4:00-6:00 pm: Ancestral Healing & Integration Circle

For those who have previously worked with Michael.

This circle explores ancestral patterns and fosters resilience:

Navigating the ancestral field
Healing ancestral wounding
Transcending legacy burdens
Building ancestral resources
Making peace with your ancestors

💞 February 17th - June 16th Mondays 5:30-7:30pm:

Fundamentals of Relational Intimacy

Deepen your connection with yourself, others, and the collective through somatic practices:

Principles of attunement
Post-traumatic healing
Embodiment and emotional competency
Transforming habits into freedom and potential

A 4-part healing process: Presencing, Witnessing, Embracing, Integrating

Free Offering:

Do not let the behaviors of others

destroy your inner peace.

Dali Lama

Like many of you, I'm scared of what the future holds. That fear is not something to get rid of, it is something to embrace, explore, and befriend. Fear heightens our senses, focuses our attention, and reveals the areas where we are not peaceful within ourselves. The solution to peace is to become aware of our inner unrest and turmoil.

Join Michael for this community inquiry into finding peace in troubled times... Click below to receive your free pass!

Peace is not something you must hope for in the future. Instead, it is a deepening of the present; unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.

Thomas Merton

Real intimacy is a sacred experience. It never exposes its secret trust and belonging to the voyeuristic eye of a neon culture. Real intimacy is of the soul, and the soul is reserved.

John O'Donohue

A Grounding Meditation for You

Book of the Month

Anam Cara

[Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition]:

A Book of Celtic Wisdom

In this revered classic, John O’Donohue weaves lyrical wisdom and Celtic spirituality into themes of friendship, belonging, solitude, creativity, and imagination. His timeless insights invite us to rediscover the soul's thresholds, reconnect with our natural rhythms, and embrace sacred connections with one another and the landscapes we inhabit. This collection nourishes the heart, elevates the spirit, and is truly “a book to read and reread forever.”

Video of the Month

David Whyte & Thomas Hubl

| The Vulnerable Choice of Breaking Our Hearts Open |

Point of Relation

Poetry Corner

Very little grows on jagged rock.

Be ground. Be crumbled.

So wildflowers will come up

where you are.

You have been stoney for too many years.

Try something different.

Surrender.

by Rumi

The Journey

One day, you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice –

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do –

determined to save

the only life you could save.

by Mary Oliver

About Michael Stone

Michael Stone is a spiritual author, mentor, shamanic practitioner, radio host, producer, and trauma integration facilitator who co-creates individual and group environments and experiences that support people in transcending the myth of separation, and experiencing deep and profound interconnection with others and all of life. He has been teaching and leading experiential events, classes, teleseminars and workshops on Organizational Development, Embodied Shamanism, Moving Meditation, Mysticism, Relational Intimacy, Personal Growth, Trauma Integration and Spiritual Fulfillment for over 40 years. www.WellofLight.com

Soul Remembering and Restoration: Rediscovering Our Essential Goodness