Catalyst Somatic Therapy

12/09/2024

Each one of us is alone in the world. It takes great courage to meet the full force of your aloneness. Most of the activity in society is subconsciously designed to quell the voice crying in the wilderness within you. The mystic Thomas a Kempis said that when you go out into the world, you return having lost some of yourself. Until you learn to inhabit your aloneness, the lonely distraction and noise of society will seduce you into false belonging, with which you will only become empty and weary. When you face your aloneness, something begins to happen. Gradually, the sense of bleakness changes into a sense of true belonging. This is a slow and open-ended transition but it is utterly vital in order to come into rhythm with your own individuality. In a sense this is the endless task of finding your true home within your life. It is not narcissistic, for as soon as you rest in the house of your own heart, doors and windows begin to open outwards to the world. No longer on the run from your aloneness, your connections with others become real and creative. You no longer need to covertly scrape affirmation from others or from projects outside yourself. This is slow work; it takes years to bring your mind home.
JOHN O'DONOHUE
Excerpt from the book, Eternal Echoes
Photos from Pend Oreille River Ranch, Salmo, BC. Boys Nature Camp 2024.

This is my work at the moment. It feels so good to land this truth!

12/08/2024

Sensitivity is a super power!

Do you ever feel like you are TOO SENSITIVE?

Can you imagine your sensitive nature as a doorway into connection with your True Self?

12/05/2024

What can I say?
I was born to play.

Came to this world, smile as wide as my face.
Moment of grace.

Then I hit muck.
F**k!

Life's race began,
I swerved and ran

Keep pace with haste,
Laid waste by hate

Weighted on by fate.
Waiting

Here in this maze
To taste what I came for.

I stand amazed.
Astounded by the ground of my unraveling.

I stand aground.
Washed up on the shore of my replenishment.

Carried out to sea by the warm summer breeze
Until I'm crying on my knees

Sun in my face
Breaking through my own astonished falsehood.

Called to the altar of life.
What's good?

I do not claim to know.
But I know that I can throw myself at the feet of my own destiny.

Carried on the back of infinity
Into the tidal wave of remedy

That will at last be my undoing.
Thank God I am no longer waiting.

I am ready to be taken.
Given up to what was always in my cup.

In my hands.
I stand at the shore of inifinity.

Will you stand with me?

11/24/2024

How do I experience my eternal nature?

The part of me that has played an essential role in the creative process of shaping this world since before time began? The timeless part, that is interwoven with all life.

Unique, but deeply connected.

How do I access this aspect of my being? Do I?

What tools and resources bring me into connection with supersensory existence.

How do I attune with the creative impulses that are forever shaping and moulding the manifest world?

Or do I feel limited to my sense experience in this life? Do I know myself as only the personality, name, and experiences immediately accessible to my explicit memory?

Implicit memory is everything that we carry as knowing that does not show up in our everyday thought process. This includes all stored memory of how to be and move through this world. It typically refers to experiences in this lifetime.

What is it like to imagine that our implicit memory includes the whole of existence throughout all time and space? How does this change our experience of being embodied here in this world now? How can this inform, in the most practical sense, our present day decision making and orientation?

These are the threads I am following at this time, through meditation and reflection. Through forgetting and remembering.. Following the thread of remembering my true nature.

Can you relate? What questions are you carrying?

11/21/2024

Hi, my name is Ariel Paul Saunders. I work as a somatic therapist and a cross cultural shamanic healer through the Pachakuti Mesa lineage. I do facilitation and one to one therapy, combined with body work. I work 1-1 and in groups, in person and online.

I am especially interested in working with people who are tapped into the unseen world; who are sensitive to their environment in a way that can be challenging at times and also deeply resourcing and powerful.

I help people who have encountered moments of significant challenge in their life, who have what I would call deep soul wounds; to process, integrate, and transform them into the gifts that they are meant to be. Because it has been known throughout time that our greatest vulnerabilities, our greatest challenges can become our greatest gifts.

If we are given the support that we need to transform them. And if not, they continue to show up, make themselves known, and sabotage our lives until we find the opportunity and the support to really integrate them and transform them into the gifts that they are meant to be.

This is an age old, archetypal story of human development, and I'm here to help with that. To help those who are on that arc, on that journey, recognizing their patterns, recognizing their gifts, and knowing that something is needed, some step is needed to transform these really challenging patterns into the full potential of what they're meant to be.

So if that's you, if you recognize yourself in the story that I tell, I invite you to reach out. I invite you to make a connection and initiate a conversation and let's see what you're working with, how we resonate, and if there might be some way that I can support you on your journey. Thank you.

06/12/2024

Stoked to be supporting this overnight camp this year. If you have a boy between the ages of 10-13 and are looking for a potent and enriching experience for him this summer, this could be the opportunity!

01/18/2024

Home..

What does it mean to you?

How does it feel for you?

How far does this feeling of home extend?

Your body? Your house? Your block? Your town?

Or maybe further.. Your ecological bio region? Your continent? Mother Earth?

Do you include the stars in your sense of home?

That's jupiter up there by the way, watching over the waxing gibbous moon setting beyond the mountain.

Glorious to be welcomed home in this way after a an incredibly juicy and fulfilling day filled with laughter, enthusiasm, heart connection, healing... o and dragon riding! 💖🐉💖🐲💖

01/17/2024

Our nervous systems thrive in relationship with nature's pharmacy. Thanks Kami McBride for this wonderfully simple and effective way to welcome in more medicine around the dinner table!

Involve your children in your herbal routine. Provide them with simple ways to incorporate herbs into their food and cooking projects. Let them be in charge of garnishing their foods with herbs. We always have several herb sprinkles on the table that my son can use at any time. In classes I pass around a platter of little herb-filled bowls.

People are usually inspired by the idea and, without much effort, put herbal condiments on their kitchen table for everyone to use. The feedback from introducing just this one little trick is amazing. People tell me how their kids are now using all kinds of herbal condiments and love sprinkling cinnamon on their oatmeal and rose hips on their rice.

01/17/2024

Body Poetic
Gaian Mystic
Lead to Gold like the Old Physic
Sophia Wisdom here to Feed your Vision
Find your Rhythm
Free your Mission