I’ve been thinking about energy lately. Also about connection. I want to share how I feel they’re related. But first, a story:
I’m a twin. When my brother and I were born we were 5 weeks preemie and super small. The first thing they did was put us into isolettes, little incubators to keep us warm and safe from disease. (Now they suggest putting all babies, even preemies, skin to skin with a parent, but when I was born this was considered best practice.) I went from being connected to being isolated, and I imagine I felt lonely, abandoned, scared, confused, and hurt, because I continued to feel those things for the rest of my growing up. I had a hard time making friends, and I hid who I was in order to be who (I thought) my parents wanted me to be, since there was obviously something terribly wrong with me, since I was so unlovable and alone.
When I finally started therapy in college, my therapist talked about emotional connection with other people, and I asked her what she was talking about? I didn’t understand what emotional connection felt like. I didn’t know how to get it, or how to keep it, nor did I believe I was worth getting it. Slowly, over many years and with a lot of help, I learned more about emotional connection.
So. Emotional connection is tangible with our feelings. It’s not tangible with touch, or by taking my temperature, or by hearing my emotions ring. It’s real, and I’m very glad to know it and experience it. But the way I feel it, in my heart, in my body, in my feelings, is itself not very tangible.
I have recently been thinking a lot about energy. When I last got a massage, my masseuse did some sort of energy work on my body. I have no idea what he did. I didn’t feel anything with my skin. Did I feel something energetically? I don’t really know how to tune in to that. Or even if it’s real. I went out walking, and felt like the earth was singing joy to me. Was that the energy of the world that I tapped into? Or a projection? I put my hand on a tree trunk, and tried to feel the sap running slowly up and down. I felt like I could touch the energy of the tree, slow and steady and grounded. Again, real, or a projection? There is a piece of me that can’t believe it’s real because it can’t be measured. I must be making this up. It’s all in my head. But. Emotional connection can’t be measured, and it’s real. Could I really be feeling the energetic pulse of the tree? Could I really feel the unbounded joy of life from the earth?
I feel very mixed about things like this. I want to honor the scientists who have learned about how things work, and base their work on observation and repetition. I think science is real and valuable. I also want to honor the mystical, spiritual, energetic parts of life. I have so little experience here, so little language, I don’t even know what’s true, what I myself feel when I feel it. I didn’t grow up valuing this feminine energy, I grew up honoring logic over emotion, and study over intuition. But then, I didn’t even know how to connect emotionally to my parents from my time as an infant in solitary. So how could I know the divine?
One reason I haven’t written about this very much is I’m afraid that people won’t want to work with me if I get too woo-woo. I have heard people start talking about how the aliens are affecting our DNA, and I can’t take them seriously. I want all of you to take me and my work seriously, so I try to stay in the world of serious science. I can talk about how our hands and brains evolved together, and that’s why using our hands helps us think. Science. Practical. Measurable. But I think that my early experience of isolation has changed me, made me more able to help people connect, and that I have an intuitive sense of how to work with groups. When you hire me, that’s what you’re really getting.
Yes, when I work, I have the benefit of the science of neurobiology and evolution and group dynamic theory. There is science behind LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and I have been trained in the methodologies. There is also the reason I was drawn to this methodology – it includes everyone. No one gets left out. As someone who felt left out all my growing up years, this is extremely important to me. I feel able to help bring people together and move a group through a shared process from deep inside me, from my heart, not just my brain. I am invested in the energy of the group, in making it inclusive, in showing the benefit of inclusion. Not because of science, but because of connection.
I’m going to continue to commune with trees (though I might not talk about it all the time) because it makes me happy. It feels like the energy of the tree is the emotion of the tree. I like feeling connected to the life force of the natural world. I believe everything is connected, through webs of energy, emotion, and physical influence in the world. We all affect each other. Pulling on one thread of the world pulls on countless beings in an unknown myriad of ways. It is my mission to help all the disparate parts of the world to work together in harmony, valuing the contributions of every single part.
Play Dates with Talia 