Sanctuary for the Heart.

04/16/2026

Love is never anywhere but right here.

04/16/2026

Healing trauma and awakening to our true nature requires building trust between the fragmented self and our own nature of loving presence. It’s a relationship of trust that is nurtured over time with patience and gentle compassion. We are bridging the gap of dissociation that created a separate survival self. As we restore the right conditions to the physiology it allows the physiology to rest and come into alignment with true nature. One of the many paradoxes on this “path” is that it takes time as we learn to meet the creature nature of survival in ways that can be received. This is how we learn through our lived experience that the body lives in time and our true nature is timeless.

If this kind of slow and gentle “work” resonates you are welcome to join me and a small group of compassionate friends for my Sunday Online Gathering where I teach and provide guidance around how to navigate the intersect between healing trauma and spiritual awakening. For more information email candace@candacekirby.ca

04/15/2026

Guidance around how to navigate the intersect between healing trauma and spiritual awakening.

For the body being small, tight and contracted is safe. Openness is experienced as dangerous. It’s for this reason we go slow and help the body to come into greater reliance on the present moment; gravity; ground; sky; breath; nature; simplicity; rest; the space around body; looking; listening; touching; quiet; stillness; ease; presence; tenderness and care.

When was the last time you just felt and enjoyed the warmth of the coffee mug in your hand?

If this kind of slow and gentle “work” resonates you are welcome to join me and a small group of compassionate friends for my Sunday Online Gathering where I teach and provide guidance around how to navigate the intersect between healing trauma and spiritual awakening. Email candace@candacekirby.ca

04/14/2026

Wounds Are Gifts of Grace.

It is our wounds as much as our insights, our vulnerabilities as much as our strengths, our failures as much as our clarity, that open us to the shared ground of being human.

It was my own insecurity, my sensitivity, my wounds, even my confusion, that led me into a deeper sympathy— a deeper compassion, and a more intimate acceptance of the human condition.

The road of my life led to surrender. It wasn't a choice, it was the consequence of being brought to my knees by life, and of embracing the whole of it— not just the parts I wanted or liked.

Perhaps this is the quiet truth of our lives—that everything we have lived is leading us back to the same open heart.

Kavvi Jezzie Hockaday
borrowed from Substack

04/13/2026

What about this self?

The one that is here right now,

sitting on the couch

drinking hot coffee

feeling contact with the ground

noticing what is happening

in this moment

not another moment

listening

open curious aware self

noticing the ground

and gravity that keeps this body

here and stable

this self and the hand that reaches

for another sip of coffee

this self undefined

beyond simple and ordinary

ripples and waves

and energetics in the body

beyond story

beyond time

beyond beyond beyond

just this like this

right now.

04/12/2026

“Before you can hear, much less follow, the voice of your soul, you have to win back your body. You have to go on a pilgrimage beneath the skin.”

~ Megan Watterson

04/12/2026

I love soft quiet mornings
when I can feel the cool air on my skin
and hear the faint sound of traffic.

The stillness holds me
and the silence gently
invites my mind to return.

I am reminded that
here is all there is.

I sense a great ocean of quiet.

04/12/2026

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7k_QWsglIo

Wes "Scoop" Nisker describes his first meditation retreat in Bodhgaya, India 2008: "My mind had a mind of its own" From "Crazy Wisdom Saves the World Again"...

04/12/2026

https://www.facebook.com/reel/909291401758939

04/11/2026

“Trauma can seem like an ongoing tidal wave of karma that has no end. A little respite here and there and then another wave. It’s essential that we remember that right beneath that tidal wave is an ocean of quiet. A quiet and mysterious immensity. An oceanic wonder that we miss completely when we are fixated solely on the wave. Every surge we experience comes directly from the depth of the ocean. The quiet wonder of who we are.

If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be seasick every day.” ~ Leonard Cohen

04/11/2026

The internal wall of, “I can go no further with this” is intelligent and truth telling. Sometimes it feels life threatening to not know what I don’t know or not be able to do what I can’t do. It’s so fascinating and yet it’s obvious that I can’t know what I don’t know or do what I can’t do. It's just a simple fact.

This is often when I push through with a kind of urgency or internal pressure to make it happen. It always feels like life or death even when it’s so apparent that it’s not.

I’m learning to be gentle and patient with this for all the times my life depended on pushing through. Pushing through was my super power. I wouldn’t have survived if I hadn’t pushed through and now it really hurts to push through. I'm learning to not judge; to be kind; gentle; patient and understanding of this habit of pushing through while my system adapts to listening to my body that calls me into congruence with the present moment.

04/11/2026

Disconnecting from the present moment is a habit in the physiology formed in response to trauma and returning is a practice that creates new pathways in the brain. The body is faithful to calling us back to ourselves and to the present moment….over and over again. Come back here.

If you feel in need of a safe and compassionate community of trauma/awakening support you are invited to check out my Sunday Online Gathering. Email candace@candacekirby.ca