Integrative Healing - Lisa Meuser

06/23/2025

A scroll through IG, where I was
reminded of the foolishness of man.

And for a bit, I got caught up, and
I left me
for another reality.
Momentarily lost,
until I was found.
Collected again.
Perhaps the mantra herself had come alive, had
scooped me up,
reminding me to stay with her,
amidst a burning heart, amidst
knowing that people are dying, amidst knowing that
tragedy is happening,
still, here, a vessel for love.

Read the post in full, link below!

05/28/2025

May has been a challenging month for me. As always there’s lots of change happening outside of me, as well as inside of me, and of course the two are always in relationship with each other, but it feels a bit deeper, a bit more disturbing, a bit more transformative, a bit more disorienting, a bit more being reorganized from the inside out.

Even though challenging, May has also been filled with so much joy. I’ve had the privilege of being part of a May long event with Indiana’s Poet Lauret Curtis Crisler, which culminated yesterday. One of his poems he shared was filled with wonderful lines, but sometimes a line just grabs you and doesn’t let go. “The dedication of breathing” was one such line.

For me, breath is experientially filled with both awe, and wonder, which is convenient because I’m being breathed all day. All I need to do is consciously be *with* breath and I am able to be swept into the dedication of breathing. Breath is a never-ending-life-giving expression that I was born with. I don’t earn breath. Breath just gives.

I forget to stay consciously connected with breath. I get caught up in my fears, my worries, my core wounded stories. But breath always brings me back. Breath always reminds me I am HERE, within something mysterious and grounded at the very same time.

I know that change is a part of evolution, of growth, and I often look forward to it, even when it’s difficult, because I know the expression, the process, of evolution, but being connected to breath breathing me has helped me made it through so many rough moments.

Breath, and the song birds, and the shades of green, and the flowers!, and the neighborhood deer…. And so much more. Opening me to awe, and wonder, on the daily.

FFiona Robertsonand my 4-part gathering “Exploring Awe and Wonder During Insane Times” will begin next week. Please join us. Community makes everything better! If finances are an issue, please reach out. The event is pined at the top / is in my bio.

04/30/2025

It is natural, when the status quo is being torn down and the forces of oppression are particularly rampant and cruel, to feel a range of feelings – fear, anger, terror, outrage, grief, helplessness, to name a few. It can be hard to look elsewhere when distressing accounts of the latest assaults are constantly in our newsfeeds. But what if, in addition to acknowledging the full range of our reactions and emotions, we also invited in awe and wonder?

somatic empowerment is rebellious!

04/29/2025

My soul sibling Fiona Robertson and I are back together for an offering. I couldn't be more delighted, as there were years upon years where we worked so closely together doing trainings and explorations. This time we'll be gathering to explore Awe and Wonder. It is my experience that awe and wonder are powerful change agents of love, and phew y'all! we need that right now!

In this 4 part workshop we will explore a number of questions; how can we bring more awe and wonder into our lives, into our bodies, even in the midst of challenge and struggle? How can we come together and share in ways that enhance awe? What changes for us when we feel awe? How might awe and wonder be rebellious responses to the aspects of culture that want to keep us weighed down?

Please check out the event linked in comments! I'll be writing it over on my Substack account and web site later this week. 🙂

03/06/2025

...back to client sessions, where I get to be witness to the excruciating insanity of people’s past, as well as their kaleidoscopic awakenings to sanity.

Today’s 8 lessons from the field on how to stay sane in insane times.

Link in comments!

02/26/2025

What song are you singing? Can you find a way to sing it, amidst this great opportunity of change, even when you are afraid?

Shoshana hummed in our small authentic movement group yesterday. My job was to be a witness to them, and another person, as they both let their bodies move in spontaneous, organic flow. Shoshanna moved, but also hummed a little tune, a spontaneous song. I felt my body experience a sense of delight. Both people in free form movement, and one in free form song.
She shared later how this was an edgy move for them, to allow themselves to express vocally in the way they did. I nodded as I was listening. Allowing my voice, my song to sing, is not easy for me either...

That was a snippet from this week's fast write. I'll likely be sharing "tales from the jail" more in Substack moving forwards...

Link to my page in the comments!

01/29/2025

Empowered resilience. It's empowering to name what we have choice with, and act with purpose. It's empowering to notice that we are deeply uncomfortable, and also have choice with how we can have some regulation, AND act in ways that serve us collectively. It's empowering to know we can be rooted in love, and be a powerful change agent. It's empowering to know that we can have hard conversations, engage with what is unfamiliar, and find a hint of ok-ness through it all. It's empowering to move focus (and blame) away from the individual, and take a look at the systems and structures that got us to this place. It's empowering to embrace our role in consciously participating in co-creation... of the future. It's empowering to not have to deny there is fear here, and destabilization, and hopelessness, because **at the very same time** there is also hope, groundedness, and courage.

We go slow. We discover that we are far more safe than we've believed. We experience that discomfort is not dangerous. We learn how to have conversations with ourselves, and walk ourselves towards the next hard thing, taking time and space to connect to the living source of love breathing throughout us in every moment.

Being a therapist right now is no joke. And, phew, I am so grateful this is how I spend my days. ❤ ❤ ❤️

12/21/2024

12/19/2024

I forgot. I forgot! But that’s ok. Maybe it’s the perfect time to receive free resources that can help you get some regulation, and in the process some peace of mind and openness of heart. Just in time for the holidays. But really, it’s always time to learn how to be regulated amidst the mess of being human on a messy planet. It’s always time for heart nurturance.
Anyway, i send a newsletter about 4 x a year w links to free recordings and blog posts. In the comments/my bio is a link to the one I sent out a couple months ago. If you subscribe you’ll get another one soon, with my latest list of resources and a link to my new Substack blog. (is that what it’s called?). More about that later. I’m titrating its release.

10/28/2024

I once blogged about how our parents are our first gods.

What a bad deal for god, and parents, for no parent, no matter how amazing, can be unconditionally loving towards their kids all the time. As kids, we’re going to live as we are genetically coded and try to do our best to be good for our parents (after all, we rely on them 100% for our survival). And, for some reason or another, our parents are going to get mad at us, and we’re going to try harder to be good. And harder. To no avail. And this, in part, is how we get it in our little beings that we have to earn our survival, and that we’re being punished for not being good enough.

Colonized and imperialized versions of god as punisher meld just perfectly in with that. So, yeah, god gets a bad deal, and we get a bad deal in turn, thinking that inherent within co-creation (another word I use for god) is a complicated matrix of blame, shame, punishment, earning worth, and so forth. Yes, co-creation may be complicated, at least from where we sit, but I don’t think it’s actually about blame, shame, punishment or earning worth, in any kind of way.

I’m a bit infatuated with the leaves right now, it being Autum where I live. And so, I look to the trees. Where is the blame, shame, punishment or earning worth for them? In the leaves that fall in the Autum, and the buds that form in the Spring. In the hurricanes that pluck some trees right out of the ground, and leave others. In the bitter cold and broiling heat that some trees don’t survive through. Do we ever say some trees were being punished, when they die? Or that some trees were especially good, and so they got to live through the tornado that blew through town, and others were bad, so they had to go? No, we say there are a multiplicity of events co-occurring- a giant web of variables that are largely unseen, but that have a very large role in the co-creation occurring.

Yes, we too are within that co-created web.

I for one feel relief when I step away from the invention of a god who is obsessed with right, wrong, good and bad, who is somewhere “out there” with a tablet keeping track, punishing some and rewarding others. When my kid was young, she proudly told her great aunt that we don’t believe in the Santa Clause who sees through a lens of “naughty or nice.” For me, Santa Clause has always been about a resonance of giving, mystery, and fun. I feel relief when I extend that perspective to the co-creation that we are within. Ok, I don’t always experience life as as fun, but I do experience co-creation as a never-ending exchange of giving (even in death, there is giving, after all- just ask the soil underneath a decomposing leaf) and definitely mystery.

I’m breathing with the release of an imposed characterization of god being some kind of punisher. I’m breathing in the release of a manufactured belief we are being punished and rewarded by co-creation/god. I’m breathing in the exchange of what brings life to my body every moment, every moment, and remembering the agency I have when I slow down to be with the simplest aspect of co-creation that I can directly experience.

Especially right now, with the weight of Sudan in my heart. And all the other big, and small, conflicts co-existing right now. May I remember my agency, and use it intentionally. May I remember the breath I am re-born from, and in, every moment.

10/22/2024

Tales from the Jail. The check out words from today's circle were; dreaming, leadership, insightful, rebirth, trust, optimism, abundance.

I always love my visits to the jail. Is it because I get to leave when my time is done with the writing circle?
On my way out today I saw an old circle participant. I was so happy to see him, but then I realized why I was seeing him.
It’s hard for many people to understand how hard it is to escape the industrial prison complex. Once you're in, the way the system is set up, it is so difficult to get out.
And so, when I saw this amazing human who I have gotten to know over time, my heart burst with joy and my heart broke with sorrow all in a matter of seconds.
It is not by my choosing that I am not incarcerated. I have done plenty of things which, had they gone a different way, would have put me in the system. I try to never forget that.

My writing for day, prompted by a poem “Last night as I was sleeping” written by Antonio Machado:

It was back in July when I first wrote about bees inside my heart. Buzz, buzz, prickle, prickle- making room inside my heart seemed to be what was happening. The bees may still be here, and more so, the sweet honey that comes from the hard work of going in deep, pollinating old wounds with kisses and breaths, and watching and feeling the wounds transmute into new stories, new possibilities, new realities of coexistence.
I've been handing my buzz buzz inner narratives over to god lately, which is to say, when mostly empty and predictable old thoughts arise, I turn to god, and the conversations continue, with god being included.
There is something sweet, sweet as honey, for me in this. Curiosity, slowing down, and surrender all seem to show up. The thoughts lose their power, because love has entered the scene, and everything changes with love.
My teachers often ask me what love is teaching me in my life. I am grateful for this question, for, just like the bees going flower to flower, this question is like a generative pollinator. Or maybe it taps into pollinations co occurring in my life.
What is being pollinated, what love is teaching me, is that my relationship with god is more simple, more sweet, more Now than I've ever known. And, more vast. There is a harvest happening than I am within, and I don't know what it’s going to look like, but I can trust how it's unfolding.