Moving towards connection

Happy *almost* last month of the year to all of you. It feels like this year has been another roller coaster ride with new challenges and new learnings.

One of the most valuable classes I have taken this year was a program I attended this past week with Adele Lafrance about emotion science.

She is a therapist who works with families and has a technique for how to move beyond our ruminating, self-criticism, and resentment. It was a powerful day-long workshop with her, and there was one thing that really resonated with me.

She describes almost every feeling and motion as being one of two experiences, yum or yuck. She has an extensive background in neuroscience and as a therapist, and I was surprised at this simplicity.

Yuck is that feeling of no, of moving away, of shrinking in. Fear or shame are yuck feelings. They draw us into ourselves and isolate us. For me, isolation is never a healthy place.

Yum is the feeling of curiosity, of moving toward, of connecting. The greatest joys of my life have been those moments. It’s the moment when two people “get” each other, that quick smile exchange with the driver in the car next to you at a traffic light, the gazing into the eyes of someone you dearly care about and seeing that care reflected back to you.

Connect is our December theme. It seems a better choice than the word yum, but it means the same things. It means consciously recognizing our innate desire and critical survival need to be with others in a meaningful way.

With the most severe threat of COVID behind us, it feels like this holiday season, we will resume many of the old gathering together traditions. Maybe you are excited or not about that.

We have learned new ways of connecting due to the pandemic, and now we are able to discern which are the ways that work best for each of us.

This week we travel to Costa Rica with a group for the Wholebeing Journey that was originally scheduled for May 2020. I am so excited that it is finally here. It’s time when our group will be able to connect with each other and themselves in a magical place.

I’m sending you all the best wishes as you connect this month and complete the year.