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awareness Embodied Beings Retreats somatic movement wellbeing

The Feather of Truth.

goddess maat balance of truth and justice
9 May 2024
awareness Embodied Beings Retreats somatic movement wellbeing

Rightful place of grief & renewal

conscious movement
8 May 2024
awareness Embodied Beings Retreats somatic movement wellbeing

Listen to your body’s stories

conscious movement
4 April 2024
awareness Embodied Beings Retreats somatic movement wellbeing

Embracing the unknown: A journey of Sensing into Being

conscious movement
6 February 2024
awareness Embodied Beings Retreats somatic movement wellbeing

Reflections from time of chaos

death and renewal
11 December 2023
awareness Embodied Beings Retreats somatic movement wellbeing

Embracing Death: a gateway of truth and transformation

death and renewal
17 November 2023
awareness Embodied Beings Retreats somatic movement wellbeing

Expanding the container: Alchemy of peace

meeting colourful self
15 November 2023
awareness Embodied Beings Retreats somatic movement wellbeing

Spell for Grief or Letting Go

grief moving through us and connecting us to our love and heart
13 November 2023
awareness Embodied Beings Retreats somatic movement wellbeing

Being in Our Truth

In the labyrinthine tapestry of human existence, the concept of truth stands as…
12 September 2023
awareness Embodied Beings Retreats somatic movement wellbeing

The winds of change

As the warm embrace of summer envelops us, there's an undeniable sentiment that…
28 August 2023

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embodied.beings

Holding space for sacred transitions & moving through thresholds

A world that needs 1.75 Earths to keep going is no A world that needs 1.75 Earths to keep going is not sustainable.

It is a warning.

In this clip from Start With The Self, Amel asks Bob Bharij what needs to change.

His answer is clear:

Our current form of capitalism.

Not as an abstract idea.
Not as a slogan.
Not as something happening somewhere far away from our bodies and daily lives.

But as a system that asks the Earth to give more than it can give.

Bob names what so many of us feel but are rarely allowed to stay with:

We are consuming far beyond the planet’s capacity.

We are living as if there is another Earth waiting in reserve.

We are being organised by an economy that treats extraction as normal, exhaustion as necessary, and endless growth as common sense.

And this is not only an economic crisis.

It is spiritual.
Relational.
Embodied.
Ecological.

Because when a culture teaches us to take more than can be replenished, that pattern does not stay in the marketplace.

It enters how we work.
How we rest.
How we relate.
How we treat land, bodies, care, time, attention, and each other.

This is part of why Bob speaks about education, and why Foundation for Change teaches feminist theory in their courses.

Because we need ways of seeing that help us name the systems we are living inside.

Ways of seeing extraction.
Domination.
Inequality.
Care.
Power.
Interdependence.

Ways of asking not only, “How do we keep this going?”

But:

What kind of life is this system making possible?
And what kind of life is it making impossible?

Maybe change begins when we stop treating the Earth’s limits as an inconvenience and start receiving them as wisdom.

Listen to Start With The Self with Bob Bharij wherever you find the podcast.

As you listen, ask gently:
What would need to change in us, and around us, to live within the limits of care?

#DreamingOurselvesAlive #StartWithTheSelf #ClimateJustice #FeministTheory #CollectiveChange
Episode 12 of dreaming ourselves alive podcast wit Episode 12 of dreaming ourselves alive podcast with Bob Bharij is out. Start with the self. 

Bob Bharij holds this image of people walking through life with shackles around their ankles.

Balls and chains dragging behind them.

Heavy.
Familiar.
Almost invisible.

And maybe that is the tenderest part.

Not that we carry so much.

But that we can become so used to carrying it that we forget it is there.

We forget that walking through life is hard when something unseen keeps pulling us back.

Old grief.
Old shame.
Old survival patterns.
Inherited pain.
Trauma we had to move around.
Beliefs we absorbed so young they started to feel like truth.

The need to prove.
The fear of being too much.
The habit of bracing before anything has happened.
The quiet conviction that ease is for other people.
The ways we learned to shrink, perform, protect, disappear, keep going.

At some point, the weight can start to feel like us.

Not something we are dragging.
Something we are.

In Start With The Self, Bob invites us into another kind of noticing.

Not the harsh kind.
Not the kind that turns healing into another task.
Not the kind that asks us to be free before we have understood what bound us.

A slower noticing.
A kinder one.

The moment where we look back and realise:

No wonder this has felt hard.
No wonder I am tired.
No wonder moving forward has not been simple.

There has been weight here.
There has been history here.
There has been something asking to be seen before it can be softened.

Maybe starting with the self begins there.

Not with fixing.
Not with forcing.
Not with rushing toward the next version of who we should become.

But with turning gently toward what we have normalised carrying.

The old burdens.
The protections that once helped us survive.
The pain that was never only ours.
The chain we stopped hearing because it had been with us for so long.

And maybe, in the noticing, something begins to loosen.

Listen to Start With The Self with Bob Bharij wherever you find the podcast.

What have you become so used to carrying that you forgot it was heavy?

#DreamingOurselvesAlive #StartWithTheSelf #InnerWork #EmbodiedHealing #TraumaHealing
Bob Bharij injured himself chasing a yoga pose. Th Bob Bharij injured himself chasing a yoga pose. The lesson wasn’t about yoga.

It was about the way a body tells the truth.

In Start With The Self, Bob speaks about 26 years of yoga practice, not as exercise alone, but as a metaphorical practice for being in the world.

A place to meet discomfort.
A place to breathe when the body wants to brace.
A place to notice the difference between striving and listening.
A place to practice kindness with the self before carrying it into life.

Some poses challenge the breath.
Some ask the nervous system to stay present when fear rises.
Some reveal where we are pushing, performing, gripping, proving.

And then the question arrives quietly:

What can I let go of that doesn’t need to be here?

Not only in this pose.
In this conversation.
In this grief.
In this work of change.
In this old pattern I keep dragging behind me.
In this place where I’m trying to force life to move faster than it can.

Bob names the difference between forcing a pose and allowing a pose.

It feels like a teaching for more than the mat.

Because so much of this moment trains us to push harder, know faster, fix sooner, override the body, and call it resilience.

But the body may be asking for another way.

Breath.
Regulation.
Play.
Joy.
Discomfort held with care.
Effort without violence.
Movement without abandoning ourselves.

Maybe change does not always begin by forcing the next shape.

Maybe sometimes it begins by listening closely enough to allow what is ready to open.

Listen to Start With The Self with Bob Bharij wherever you find the podcast.

As you listen, ask gently:
Where in your life are you forcing, and where might you be invited to allow?

#DreamingOurselvesAlive #StartWithTheSelf #EmbodiedAwareness #InnerWork #BodyWisdom
22 years in addiction recovery taught Bob Bharij t 22 years in addiction recovery taught Bob Bharij this: removing the substance is not the same as rebuilding a life.

In Start With The Self, Bob speaks about the deeper work Foundation for Change has been carrying for more than 2 decades.

Many of the people they work with have lived through trauma, marginalisation, mental health struggles, and painful experiences of school.

Not because they were incapable of learning.

Because survival often makes learning hard.

Then, after drugs and alcohol are no longer at the centre, another question begins to rise:

Who am I now?

This is where education becomes something more than information.

Foundation for Change teaches psychology, philosophy, and feminist theory as tools for waking up.

Tools for understanding the self.
Tools for understanding the world.
Tools for seeing how personal suffering is connected to social inequality, trauma, mental health, addiction, and the systems people have been asked to survive.

Bob names it plainly:

Knowledge is power.

Not power over.
Power with.
Power to locate pain inside a wider story.
Power to understand the past without being trapped by it.
Power to rebuild identity, purpose, meaning, hope, and self-esteem.

For leaders, facilitators, educators, recovery workers, and social change practitioners, this matters.

Because hope without context can become pressure.
Resilience without understanding can become another demand.
Wellbeing without systems awareness can leave people carrying what was never only personal.

To move into the future, we may need to look back first.

Not to stay there.

To understand what has shaped us, what has hurt us, what has protected us, and what is now ready to change.

Listen to Start With The Self with Bob Bharij wherever you find the podcast.

What would change in your leadership or practice if education was treated as awakening, not information transfer?

#DreamingOurselvesAlive #StartWithTheSelf #Recovery #TraumaInformed #SocialChange #systemicoppression #addiction #grief #anger #aliveness #remembering
Before Imagination, Grief Maybe we are not failin Before Imagination, Grief

Maybe we are not failing to imagine the future.

Maybe we are being asked to feel the present first.

In Start With The Self, Amel asks Bob Bharij a question many of us are carrying:

How do we reclaim embodied imagination for a different future?

Not imagination as wishful thinking.
Not imagination as a pretty idea.
But imagination we can feel, inhabit, and live toward.

Bob’s response is tender and bracing:

Maybe people are not ready to reimagine yet.

Because there is still grief that needs space.
There is still despair that needs to be felt.
There is still anger that has not been allowed to move.
There is still rage that has been made too frightening, too inconvenient, too unacceptable, too much.

Bob reminds us that grief, fear, and rage are not lesser emotions. They are part of being awake. Part of the body’s intelligence. Part of what may need expression before imagination can return as something honest.

So perhaps the invitation is not to rush toward hope.

Perhaps it is to slow down.
To stay with discomfort.
To make room for the pain we keep trying to outrun.
To ask what wants to be felt before we ask what wants to be born.

Listen to Start With The Self with Bob Bharij wherever you find the podcast.

As you listen, ask gently:
What feeling needs space before imagination can return?

#DreamingOurselvesAlive #StartWithTheSelf #GriefWork #EmbodiedAwareness #CollectiveChange
What if the first step toward changing the world i What if the first step toward changing the world is learning to feel where you are frozen?

In this episode of Dreaming Ourselves Alive, Amel is joined by Bob Bharij, co-founder of Foundation for Change, for a conversation about waking up in a world that can feel almost too much to bear.

Bob begins with the question many of us are carrying:

How the hell did we get here?
And what is our way out?

After returning from a retreat in the Italian Alps, where phones, watches, and time itself were taken away for a while, Bob speaks about coming back into London during a heatwave and seeing people moving through the city, eyes fixed on their screens.

The contrast opened something.

Grief.
Rage.
Fear.
Wonder.
The strange and sacred ache of being alive on this planet at this time.

Together, Bob and Amel explore the freeze response so many of us know in the body. The paralysis that can come when we see what is happening, but don't yet know how to move.

Bob reminds us that before action, there may need to be awareness.
Before imagination, there may need to be grief.
Before outer change, there may need to be a deeper relationship with the self.

Through Foundation for Change, Bob has spent more than 22 years working with people in addiction recovery, many of whom have lived through trauma, marginalisation, and painful experiences of education.

Their work uses psychology, philosophy, and feminist theory to help people understand themselves and the world around them.

This conversation is about the body as a place of wisdom.
About education as a form of awakening.
About making room for anger without rushing toward false hope.
About awe and wonder as practices that keep us connected to life.

And it returns, again and again, to Bob’s quiet invitation:

Start with the self.

May this episode meet you in the places that feel overwhelmed, awake, grieving, curious, or ready to pause.

Listen to Start With The Self with Bob Bharij wherever you find the podcast.

As you listen, you might ask gently:
What is my body asking me to notice before I take the next step?

#DreamingOurselvesAlive #StartWithTheSelf #InnerWork #CollectiveChange #EmbodiedAwareness #aliveness #anger #grief
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