Today I had an unexpected moment during a bodywork session. A memory surfaced of being held by my mother, and emotion came up with it. What caught my attention wasn’t the emotion itself. It was how quickly shame appeared alongside it. Not shame about anything I had done. Shame about being seen feeling something. I sat with it instead of shutting it down. And after a few minutes, the shame faded while the emotion remained. It made me wonder how often the feeling isn’t actually the hard part. Maybe the hard part is the story we learned about having feelings in the first place. Today was a reminder that emotions tend to move when we let them. Shame is often what keeps them stuck. This is what we’ve been working on in the first wave and places I’m still navigating.

The beta is still very much underway. We have three more sections ahead of us, and I’m excited about where we’re headed next. What is changing is that the first section, Foundations, is getting close to being ready for public release. The feedback you’ve provided has helped me refine the content, improve the exercises, and make the experience stronger than it was when we started. As I continue building and testing the remaining sections with this group, Foundations will soon become available for purchase as a standalone section within the classroom. New participants will be able to begin with those first five modules while we continue developing and refining the rest of the framework together. As First Wave members, you’ll continue to have access to the beta process and upcoming sections as we move through them. You’ll also continue to play an important role in shaping what this becomes through your feedback and experience. My goal has never been to create a course people watch once and forget. I’m building practical tools that can be returned to again and again, and your insights are helping make that possible. Thank you for being part of this process. What we’re creating together is already better because of your willingness to engage with it, test it, question it, and share what you’re discovering along the way.

The final scene of Call Me by Your Name is one of the most beautiful portrayals of emotion I’ve seen. There are no words. The camera simply stays with him as he sits in front of the fire. You can watch the emotions move through him in real time. Grief. Love. Longing. Loss. Memory. Gratitude. They rise and fall across his face without explanation. What struck me is that he doesn’t seem stuck in any one emotion. He moves through them. At moments he looks heartbroken. Then reflective. Then almost peaceful. Then the sadness returns. By the end, there is a subtle shift. Not because the pain is gone, but because he has allowed himself to fully feel it. It’s such a powerful reminder that emotions are meant to move. When we stay with them long enough, they often change on their own. Not because we fixed them or analyzed them it, but because we gave them room to be felt. That scene feels less like acting and more like watching someone be human. Here is the link to the final scene https://youtu.be/LDGhW1X-q4M?is=3T_79tE9JGm4xPaI

The more I think about Leigh Ankrum’s lecture, the more I find myself curious about one idea in particular. Birth may be the first way the body learns stress. Long before we have words, beliefs, or stories about ourselves, we have an experience. Pressure.Change.Uncertainty.Movement. For the first time, the environment we’ve known begins to shift. Something is ending, and something new is beginning. Leigh invited us to consider the possibility that birth is more than a physical event. It may also be our first experience of navigating challenge and transition. What caught my attention is how closely this mirrors something I’ve been exploring in emotional surfing. We spend so much of our lives trying to understand our experiences. We analyze them, explain them, and create stories about them. Understanding has value, but it often comes later. Experience comes first. Before we understand stress, we experience it. Before we understand fear, we experience it. Before we understand change, uncertainty, loss, or pressure, we experience them. The body experiences long before the mind understands. It made me wonder. When pressure shows up in my life today, am I experiencing it or am I immediately trying to understand it? Am I feeling what is actually happening, or am I racing ahead to explain it? I’m not suggesting that birth determines our future. Life is far more complex than that. But I am fascinated by the possibility that the body may learn something in those earliest moments that echoes throughout a lifetime. Maybe some of our responses to stress aren’t decisions at all. Maybe they’re patterns. And maybe awareness gives us the opportunity to notice those patterns and respond differently. This was only one small piece of a much larger lecture, and I’ll be sharing a few more ideas that caught my attention over the coming days. Because shining was never about having all the answers. Maybe it begins when we become willing to experience life before rushing to understand it.

Duration: 00:36:06 Shareable link: https://us06web.zoom.us/rec/share/Rhu-X5tb69XRMhg8nKfwetBUTOL0zIYMkWyCEsK-aSSwOuzPbjVHCdcRvionB6R3.AWId8DaEQaeKCd3w Passcode: 78gijn=^