Embodied Essence

09/25/2025

Comfort Measures: Deep Dive

Saturday November 1, 1-4pm
North Carolina Birth Center, Chapel Hill

Planning a physiological birth experience out of hospital? Planning an unmedicated hospital birth?
Partners wanting to support with confidence.
Doulas wanting to support out of hospital birth.
This class is a deep dive into comfort measures and techniques for the birthing time. Whether you are a birthing person, partner, or a doula, this class will take you on a journey of exploring the senses and the way our body and mind interpret our environment and how to access safety within our system. Some topics we will explore in this class will include:
Grounding touch
Environment
Mindset & reset
Aromatherapy
Positioning & Movement
Hydrotherapy
Breathe & Vocalization
Tools & how to use them
This is a hands on class with demonstration and practice to build confidence. Wear comfortable clothing.

09/24/2025

I’m so grateful to collaborate with Sacredsong Birth & Wellness - sacredsongdoula💗🙌

Birth is more than a physical passage. It is the threshold where life imprints itself most deeply into our being. The way we enter the world—whether through ease, challenge, intervention, or separation—leaves a mark. These imprints live not in our conscious mind, but in the tissues of the body, ...

09/23/2025

Bare feet on the bank, wind on my skin, sun dancing on the water—this is the altar. The present moment holds it all.

09/19/2025

'Beauty, happiness and love are just the common names for reality, the stuff out of which all experience is made.'

- Transparent Body, Luminous World - Rupert Spira

Available in paperback or as an audiobook, via the website https://bit.ly/4mcbaP8

09/19/2025

✨ The Power of Our Transmission ✨

When we begin to truly feel the power of our words and intentions, everything changes.
Each thought, word, and gesture becomes part of a great current — either lifting life into harmony, praise, and gratitude, or pulling us deeper into disconnection.

When we see this clearly, life stops being about blame or punishment.
We begin to live as transmitters of light, choosing presence, kindness, and openness in every moment.

🌿 Today, may your words become blessings.
May your presence leave a little more love than it found.

09/15/2025

✨ New Writing on Substack ✨

Dissolving into True Relationship: An Inquiry into the Heart as Doorway to the Soul

Beneath all our roles, all our stories, all our attempts to manage life… lies the quiet invitation to loosen the garment of personality and remember the spark within. 🌿

This week’s piece is a reflection and a meditation:
→ How the body carries ancient intelligence
→ How early imprints shape the paradigms we live inside
→ And how awakening is the gentle dissolving of what we are not, until essence shines through.

You’ll also find a short guided practice, Wearing the Garment Lightly, to help you touch that inner spark.

✨ Read it here:

Unveiling the Luminous Ground of Being

09/09/2025

✨Embodied Reiki: First Degree + Somatic Energy Foundations

October 17–18, 2025 | Chapel Hill, North Carolina

“When the human body for this planet was designed, Reiki was incorporated into the genetic coding as a birthright of all people. It is a universal energy and was never meant to be lost.” — Diane Stein

✨ Reiki is the energy of life. It’s a simple, sacred way to meet your entire lived experience with meaning, gentleness, and presence.

In this First Degree training, you will receive four Reiki attunements and a grounded introduction to somatic energy healing. This added foundation helps you learn how to remain centered in your own system, so that you can support others in deepening their embodiment, healing, and awakening process with clarity and care.

You will receive:

• Four First Degree Reiki attunements

• History and lineage of Reiki

• The Reiki precepts

• Grounding, centering, and energetic protection

• Introduction to somatics

• Introduction to the chakras and energetic harmonics

• Practitioner presence & relational field dynamics

• Introduction to the human energy field

• Supervised practice time

• Study manual & certificate of completion

No prerequisites are required. Reiki is a gentle, non-invasive modality that can be practiced for self-care, and offered at a distance with friends, family, and community.

💫 Investment: $295
$75 deposit reserves your spot (applied to tuition).

🌿Class is already half full!
Please reach out soon if you’d like me to save your seat!

📩 DM me details and payment info.

🌻Learn more about me and my work through the link in my bio.

08/27/2025

✨ This is why I do this work.

Not because we need to be “fixed”—but because we deserve to be free. That freedom is inherent in our core.

And sometimes, it’s in the quietest moment—when another layer of the wall softens—that we remember what it feels like to be whole again.

Here we breathe a deeper breath, one we didn’t even know was possible.

🌿 For those who may be new here (or re-finding me), I’m Mary Justus.

I guide, support and honor individuals as they move through the healing and awakening process.

Through Polarity Therapy, Reiki, Perinatal Somatic Therapy, and Somatic Movement, I offer pathways of healing and awakening that support you in meeting what’s been held, integrating what’s ready, navigating the core wound and its deep imprints and returning to the freedom that is your birthright.

🕯️ I share more about this journey and the modalities I work through in my latest Substack writing—

link in bio if you’d like to read the full piece.

With love,
Mary Justus | The Embodiment Temple

05/10/2024

Nothing needs to happen to the self that you already and essentially are. It does not need to be stilled, purified, transformed or improved. Above all, it does not need to be enlightened. It is already the bright light of awareness that shines in the midst of all experience, be that a deep depression, a moment of ecstasy or the taste of tea. It just needs to be seen for what it is. That is, it just needs to see or recognise itself as it is, before it is coloured or qualified by experience. What is the nature of the ‘you’ – the one you call ‘I’ – that shines brightly in all your experience?

– from ‘You Are The Happiness You Seek’, by Rupert Spira

To continue reading, order your copy here: https://rupertspira.com/store/you-are-the-happiness-you-seek

To book onto Rupert’s upcoming online retreat, 10–12 May: https://rupertspira.com/event/2024-05-10-the-divine-presence-within-online-weekend-retreat-at-home-10-to-12-may

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