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Greetings from Rocky Point, Mexico,
I’ve been down on the Sea of Cortez since the beginning of the month, working on my new book, Traumatized: A Love Story. It is a story of transforming trauma, self-doubt, shame, and fear into love, connection, and self-compassion. I hope to bring this to you before the end of 2024. It has been a labor of love and a personal healing.
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I am returning on March 4th and have a lot of new classes and programs planned starting in March. Here’s a quick overview of what’s coming up. You can click on the links to find out more:
Inner Path Studio, NC
03/05 Open Gathering 4-6 pm
Inner Path Studio, NC
7 sessions plus two practice labs
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Please consider joining some of our upcoming programs. Our programs are designed to: “Heal the wounds that separate, alienate, and marginalize us.”
Thank you for your partnership in this endeavor.
With love and gratitude,
michael
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Trauma: the Invisible Pandemic
Awareness, Integration & Post-Traumatic Healing
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Healing means releasing yourself from the version of you
that you created for survival.
Alice Miller
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There is a hidden pandemic that affects us all. We don’t often recognize it because it has been normalized and remains difficult to see clearly despite how pervasive it is in our culture. We are swimming in a sea of personal, familial, collective, and ancestral trauma. It is the most misunderstood, avoided, belittled, denied, and untreated cause of human suffering on our planet. If we look at the most critical personal and collective challenges we face today, they can all be traced back to unintegrated trauma. The most significant impact of trauma is that it fractures our ability to genuinely connect and relate with others, reinforcing our sense of being disconnected, defensive, and separate from life itself.
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 |  | Trauma isn't about the events that occurred 'to' us but rather about what happens 'in' us when faced with overwhelming situations. It's like a psychic wound lodged within our nervous system, body, and mind. While it might be tempting to judge our responses to trauma and label them as a disease, pathology, or brokenness, that's inaccurate. These responses are an inherent intelligence within our nervous system, honed over hundreds of thousands of years to protect us. When we have threatening or overwhelming experiences, our nervous system, working faster than our minds, reacts by fragmenting, freezing, tensing, and constricting a part of our essential self. These fragments manifest as body tension or numbness, often leading to pain and discomfort. Recognizing this dynamic helps us approach our trauma responses with more compassion and a new lens. It guides us in integrating these fragmented experiences, offering a path to healing and resolving past injuries that linger within our bodies, hearts, and minds.
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People must become aware of their physical sensations and how their bodies interact with the world around them to change. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.
Bessel A. van der Kolk
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When we experience physical tension or numbness in our bodies, it often signals the presence of trauma. Initially, our responses to trauma might encompass feelings of exhaustion, grief, anxiety, panic, agitation, confusion, dissociation, hyperactivity, and apathy. If left unaddressed, trauma can potentially lead to various health issues such as cardiovascular disease, arthritis, asthma, chronic pain, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, long-term stress disorders, and gastrointestinal problems.
​A significant portion of our trauma originated during the formative phases of our development when we were vulnerable children relying on caregivers to provide emotional security. As mammals, receiving emotional support—being felt, seen, soothed, heard, held, nourished, guided, and protected—is crucial for our growth, development, and evolution. When this support is lacking from caregivers, it impedes our ability to regulate emotions, thoughts, and actions effectively. To develop the capacity for self-regulation, we need the foundational experience of co-regulating and forming bonds and connections with others. When we allow another person to witness our pain, it supports us in integrating, evolving, and healing the hidden, dissociated, and painful parts that have been suppressed and numbed.
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From early infancy, our ability to regulate emotional states depends upon the experience of feeling that a significant person in our life is simultaneously experiencing a similar state of mind.
​Daniel Siegel
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Some years ago, my path led me to establish Trauma Integration & Meditation Circles. In these sanctuaries, I witnessed a quantum leap in post-traumatic healing among individuals who were previously only focused on individual trauma resolution. What truly touched my heart was witnessing the powerful healing when people realized recovery isn't solely an individual journey but flourishes with shared experiences. When we have a safe environment to share challenges, difficulties, addictions, and dysfunctions, we begin to recognize that we are not alone in our struggles.
Within these closed committed circles, running for 4-6 months with weekly sessions, we build a cocoon of trust and mutual understanding. This space becomes a safe haven where genuine conversations unfold, embracing authenticity and vulnerability while making sense of what didn’t make sense when we first encountered the overwhelming experiences we call trauma. Here, we learn and build the courage to feel the things that haven’t felt safe, let alone talked about in the past. Many of us walked solitary paths, lacking someone to confide in during our darkest moments, especially as children. But within these circles, our stories interweave, creating a tapestry of healing through shared compassion and empathy. It's remarkable how we find solace, strength, and a renewed sense of connection by embracing our shared struggles.
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In our programs, we introduce embodied, awareness-centered practices that foster individuals' experience of feeling felt, seen, held, and heard within a supportive group setting. Our circles begin with a grounding, centering, and 'presencing' meditation designed to expand inner spaciousness and deepen external awareness. This intentional practice aims to create a safe space to meet, embrace, and integrate personal, familial, collective, and ancestral traumas. From this place of connectedness, we open the circle by exploring practices, encountering challenges, and embracing opportunities for trauma awareness, release, integration, and achieving post-traumatic healing.
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“Trauma fundamentally means a disconnection from self.
Why do we get disconnected?
Because it is too painful to be ourselves.”
Gabor Maté
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Video of the Month
Thomas Hubl:
The Point of Relation
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Book of the Month
Walking through Darkness:
A Nature-Based Path to Navigating Suffering and Loss
by Sandra Ingerman & Llyn Roberts
Every one of us experiences periods of pain and loss in our life—dark nights of the soul. This is a groundless territory where one feels directionless and devoid of tools, with no sense of how to take the next step. In ancient times, elders guided their communities through life’s initiations and challenges, paths we must all take to transform and grow. In Walking through Darkness, legendary shamanic experts Sandra Ingerman and Llyn Roberts help us forge a pathway through the dark—as we embrace nature as our guide and healer.
Sandra and Llyn share metaphorical stories that engage animals, plants, trees, and other aspects of nature. Through the feminine process of circular joint storytelling, they weave the rich tales of their own experiences alongside wisdom that they have gathered for years from their own studies and healers around the globe. Through teachings from the land, the sky, the sea, and the spiritual world, this sensitive and empowering guide opens us to our spiritual light to face our most significant challenges with courage and love—no matter what,
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We are in the wake
of a great shifting
awaken
you better free your mind
before they illegalize thought
there’s a war going on
the first casualty was truth
and it’s inside you
the universe is counting on our belief
that faith is more powerful than fear
and in that the shifting moment
we’ll all remember why we’re here...
we gotta believe in a world where
there’s room enough for everyone to breathe
cause reality is made up of 7 billion thoughts
who made up their minds
of what’s real and what’s not
so I stopped believing
in false idols of war
greed and hate is not worth my faith
my mind’s dedicated to justice
my soul is devoted to love
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and love is God
and God is truth
and truth is you
and you are me
and I am everything
and everything is nothing
and nothing is the birthplace of creation
and transformation is possible
and you are proof
we were born right now for a reason
we can be whatever
we give ourselves the power to be
and right now we need
day dreamers
gate keepers
bridge builders
soul speakers
web weavers
light bearers
food growers
wound healers
trail blazers
truth sayers
life lovers
peace makers
give what you most deeply desire to give
every moment you are choosing to live
or you are waiting
why would a flower hesitate to open?
now is the only moment
rain drop let go
become the ocean
possibility is as wide
as the space we create
to hold it.
By Naima Pennima
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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
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Soul Remembering and Restoration: Rediscovering Our Essential Goodness
- Somatic Trauma Integration Facilitation
- Group & Couples Counselling
- Movement & Meditation Experiences
To meet the financial and emotional challenges of our time Michael is now offering a sliding scale for therapeutic sessions online & in person.
If you are interested in working with Michael you can set up a 15 minute introductory call here.
For more information click here.
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"It's so good to get out of the rain!" Buddha | | | | |
