In the 16th episode of LIFE THAT SAID YES conversations Ivan is joined by Linda Hartley, in a rich conversation about our relationship to nature and our own embodied being, hearing the voice of Earth, slowing down, Authentic Movement, connection of personal and transpersonal experiences, how to embrace both beauty and sadness, holding the healing space, redefining relationship to dying, and many other topics.
For five decades Linda has been involved in the study, practice and teaching of somatic movement and embodied awareness practices. She is a Teacher of Body-Mind Centering® and the Discipline of Authentic Movement, a somatic and transpersonal Psychotherapist, Author, and Founder (1990) of the Institute for Integrative Bodywork & Movement Therapy (IBMT). The three-year IBMT Diploma is an ISMETA Approved Training Program, currently running in the UK, Lithuania and Russia.
Linda’s first loves were nature and moving in the natural world, then writing. She had the good fortune of studying Dance and Creative Writing at Dartington College of Arts, UK, in the 1970s, and since then these threads have evolved and woven throughout her life’s work. She has authored several books including Wisdom of the Body Moving (1995) and Embodied Spirit, Conscious Earth (2024).
www.lindahartley.co.uk
01:04 - Relationship with nature and our own embodied being.
04:35 - Hearing the voice of Nature and Her messages. Listening through all of our senses. Slowing down to Nature’s pace.
13:00 - Intimate connection with immediate environment. Little changes towards our own health and wellbeing and dedicating that to the whole.
16:17 - The discipline of the Authentic Movement. Personal healing and a potential for touching and widening into the transpersonal and the mystical. Relationship and connection of personal and transpersonal, embracing both. Spiritual bypassing. Releasing the story of personal trauma.
23:52 - Widening embrace of the transpersonal view. Creating a container for trauma in order to deal with it when we are ready. Being released from the narrow perspective of the ego mind.
26:33 - Authentic Movement as a way to express our story and pain, but also to widen into a more transpersonal experience. The beauty of knowing both. How to be present and hold both beauty and sadness. Finding the balance.
31:40 - Servants of the Sacred Dream. Healing coming through inner work, but holding the healing space. Nurturing the feminine aspect. The myth of Inanna. Healing the wounds of the masculine. The archetypal underworld journey. Role of the witness.
43:12 - The challenges of descending into the underworld. Need for gentleness and a more subtle modulated process. Being in the life-long process. Listening, sensing, feeling the movements in our body. The embodied myth. The archetype of being in the birth passage - coming out of the underworld. Collective midwifing of something new and grieving the old.
51:55 - Redefining our relationship to dying. Midwifing the transition.
01:00:45 - Novel “The Broken Line”. Writing fiction.
01:03:26 - Embodies Spirit, Conscious Earth. Using somatic practices to allow our consciousness to open wider. Weaving somatics and spirituality.
01:08:50 - What more am I called to offer as I embrace my elderhood? The role of the elders.