Tapping Into Your Inner Wisdom

Finding meaning and direction in a way not governed by the mind, but attuned with the body. How needs express in sensations and offer us guidance.

Many of us feel a certain aimlessness or purposelessness as we go through life. With this, making any kind of decision can be challenging. Even knowing what we might need to decide about can seem murky. Trying to sort things through in our head seems to offer the solution, but while there is a need for thinking things through at times, we often get lost, go down useless rabbit holes or are stuck in some overwhelm.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Now this sounds to good to be true. And if this is your response, I agree with you because it’s not that easy. We have educated ourselves well in seeking for peace of mind, purpose and direction in places where we cannot find it and letting these stratgies go turns out to be more challenging than might be initially expected.

I will offer a workshop with the same title as this post on the 16th of October locally in Hiraeth Gallery, Llandovery at 18:30.
The core principles of this workshop are about listening within, letting go of our ideas about how things should be or what they mean and attuning to our needs.

Needs are the qualities of life that life needs to thrive. As we are all taking part in this miracle called life, we share the same needs. These include physical needs such as air, water and shelter but also needs like community, attunement, touch, closeness, intimacy, meaning, harmony …
Whatever a human being does - it is an attempt to meet a need. The attempt may be unsucessful, fundamentally flawed or based on false premises and still it is an attempt to meet a need. This is a radically different perspective than is most common in society where it seems to be accepted that some people are just “bad” and they do “bad things” because of that.
This different perspective comes from Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and offers a compassionate view on why people do what they do. This offers ways of seeing other people, ourselves and the world that lead to care and compassion instead of impatience and anger (and many other emotions).

In my workshop I propose that attuning to our needs in an embodied way can offer us a different way of finding direction, purpose and meaning. It includes letting go of ideas of what it means to be “successful in life” or “how we ought to be”. At first it can seem as if this invitation to get in touch with our needs is an invitation to become hyper individualistic, ego-centrically carrying the expectation that “our needs should be met”. Many people go through such a phase as they begin to explore what it means that they have needs and that they can be met. When they explore that sacrificing and stretching in the attempt to be accepted or liked isn’t serving anyone, they might at first become rigid and protective about their needs. Some people go as far as believing (and using it that way) that NVC is just a way of expressing that makes it more likely that other people will do what we want - in other words manipulation only looking at personal interests. However, this disregards the fundamental purpose of Nonviolent Communication which is about connection. And this means true connection without any further purpose apart from itself. And in this space it becomes clear that the separation of “my needs” and “your needs” does not make any sense. Instead, there are needs. What life needs to thrive. And this is what we look at and work for together and meeting needs together is the most joyful thing, where giving and receiving become indsitinguishable, because receiving fully the gift of my care is a gift, and so I receive as I give. And your asking is a gift, because it gives me the opportunity to express my care of life and for you.
All we need to learn is how to remove the things that get in the way of this wonderful flow. My workshop on the 16th of October is one step of many and while it may seem small at first it is a giant leap indeed.

About Kirstin

I have been learning and teaching Nonviolent Communication since 10 years. As of yet I am not certified in any way, but with shifts in my life both my ability and longing to share with people what I have learned have grown. Things seem to begin to bear fruit and I am grateful for what I have learned and the ways in which I have educated myself so that now I can be a resource to others for learning and to transform their life.
I love working with the body and incorporating fine-tuned awareness of sensations where this is accessible to people. I have learned many things also about our nervous system including polyvagal theory, somatic healing, trauma and much much more. To my list of important resources I have learned from I have recently added “A Course in Miracles”. I have learned a lot from this book and it is continuing to help me bring out only love, because this is what I want to do. Apart from this, important figures of inspiration have been: Marshall Rosenberg, Dominic Barter, Miki Kashtan, Carl Rogers, Robert Gonzales, Sue Marriott & Ann Kelly, Eckhart Tolle, Sarah Peyton and many more.

Feedback from other people is that they experience me as very stable and safe. They appreciate my presence and attuned and precise listening skills. They enjoy my authenticity, transparency and realness, making me approachable and fun. They are touched by my gentleness and considered wisdom.

I have two children, am currently studying Counselling and once upon a time I completed a Master’s degree in Software Engineering.