Overview

Overview

Haven Yoga and Counseling

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Overview

Haven Yoga and Counseling

A place to reclaim the beauty and wisdom of your perfectly, imperfect body.

Hi, and welcome to Haven.

We're really glad you're here.

Titles

Titles

Your body is more than an image. It's more than an object. Your body is your home.

At Haven, we believe bodies—all bodies—are elegant and wise. We practice yoga and engage in counseling to re-remember how to inhabit ourselves.

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Stats

And so it begins! It is even more magical than anticipated to have these women gathered together. So much delicious food, conversation, and creation has already been generated. 💞🙌🏽🍂🍂🍂🍂🍂🍂🍂
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#shameandplay #retreat #haven #havenyoga #createtoheal

Soul Care for the Caretaker is SOLD OUT. I'm so sad that not all of you can be there to experience the love and healing of this day together. Carter and I are already planning our next retreat for January, so stay tuned!! So grateful for the outpouring of support for our work 💞
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#shameandplay #haven #creativity #wisebody #soulcare

Today in Wise Body we are spending time with the foundational experience of safety in the body. I wrote this a few nights ago while I was planning for class:
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In the beginning, our bodies were safe. We were wrapped in the warmth and the darkness for ten months, and then we descended into the world. Blinding light, overwhelming noises, big humans to catch you. And in the next year that followed you learned, I safe, or I am not safe. When our needs are attended to, we feel safe. When our needs for food, shelter, emotional closeness, and a clean environment are met, we know we can relax into the moment. But when our needs go unmet, as they do for many insatiable needing tiny humans, we may begin to feel desperate, or hopeless, or numb in the face of consistently unmet needs. Our visual memory does not trace back that far, but our visceral memory does. We learn, on a body level, I am safe, or I am not safe. If I am safe, I can relax into any moment and know that I’m going to be taken care of. If I’m not safe, I either go numb because I know it won’t be okay if I allow myself to feel, or I feel desperate to escape this moment because it is so unbearably unsafe that I can’t sit still with myself. Some of us proceed in the world knowing on a deep level that we are safe and are going to be taken care of, and some of us proceed feeling cut off from our bodies or hypervigilently afraid. Turn your gaze inward and ask, Do I feel safe? Right here, in this moment? Can I trust my body to relax down into the earth? If you can, wonderful. Please allow yourself to rest. If you can’t, allow your body to feel unsafe if it feels unsafe. We are not trying to change your experience, we are trying to keep your experience company. Whether you are resting, or not, greet yourself. Say to yourself, “Hello self. Hello body. It’s good to come into contact with you. I might have a lot of complicated feelings about you, but I’m glad I’m paying attention to you. I’m doing the work to teach you that you are safe and that you can rest.” .
You can teach your body that you are safe by breathing DEEP breaths, and landing yourself onto this little patch of earth you are connected to. 💓

I’ve been working on my Seattle School Symposium lecture today, (thank you @ronnadetrick!!) and feel so fired about about finally being able to get my thoughts in order. In all of my writing and preparing, I came up with a bit of writing that I think beautifully summarizes the way that I feel about this body image work. If you resonate with my writing, maybe you’ll consider coming to attend my first ever public talk. I’m terrified, but also excited which I think is a good sign. It will be at The Seattle School on October 7th at 2:00 p.m. You get 25% off of your ticket when you enter the promo code: SPEAKER25. You can buy tickets by following the link in my bio:
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“I believe that body shame and disgust are not evidence that our bodies are shameful or disgusting, but evidence that we live in a societal system that perpetuates us feeling ashamed of our bodies. Once more, it is not that our bodies are disgusting, but that we are told in a million little ways over and over again that our bodies are not right. Body disgust is a conditioned response. Bodies are essentially neutral. We assign meaning depending on our value system as a culture. Our response to the sick culture cannot be to diet or over-exercise our way into the ideal or to dissociate from the experience of our bodies, but to learn to be in relationship with our bodies. Some of us try to relieve the pressure of the sick system by trying to stay as close to the ideal as possible, which relieves some of the anxiety that we feel. Some of us choose to vacate their bodies and live in our minds. But controlling or leaving our bodies are not long term solutions, because your body will never be good enough. Instead, we can turn towards our body and attempt to understand it, to be in relationship with it. To trust that it is telling the story of our lives for us, and that it is an important part of who we are, whether we aesthetically love it or not.”
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#bodylove #bodypositive #bodypositivity #goodbody #goodbodyyoga #theseattleschool #TSS #tsssymposium #alumnisymposium #bodyimage #bodyresilience #embodiment # embodimentpractice #embrace #ihaveembraced