Is The Crisis The Real Climax of The Story?
In this newsletter:
-Archetypal Crisis as part of the greater cycle
-The Philosopher’s Stone decoded
-One on one coaching - The power of Sacred Connection
-Upcoming Synchrosoma® courses, Yoga classes online and more!
-Read to the end to hear about the new Synchrosoma game of chance - SomaCards
This newsletter is dedicated
to those of us who have experienced
pain, betrayal, and crisis
at the heights
and at unimaginable depths,
and who find our way here,
to this circle,
diving to the bottom
in search of
the path forward.
Welcome
A crossroads appears
Sometimes we wonder if it’s too much, if we are ill equipped, or we may have believed that the situation is impossible. We may wonder if things will get even worse. We may be at the bottom, or headed there.
Or, we may feel ready to step back and get an overview from a new perspective.
We may feel like we are in crisis but willing to decode it from a wider lense. From up here we can see that there are options.
At the crossroads we find we have choice, to move, reflect, take a risk, or start again.
Ending at The Beginning
In my self studies, inner work and liminal journeys, working with recent events, the past, collective ancient pain, and through working with clients with devotional attunement to the journey, I find that each Crisis is part of a deeper story, a fractal of a longer cycle that repeats infinitely. It is the path of our soul journey through decades and lifetimes, with a glowing thread linking all of the moments of valleys and peaks.
Is pain a problem?
The hero returns from The Underworld with parts of self and soul, with wisdom, reclaimed innocence and integrated empowerment, to journey again another day. This is The Way Of The Wound, a continual return to beginning again, to re-memberment of self, the golden sutures gathering the sides of the wound with self care, enhancing awareness and awakening new gifts.
Suffering is Pain in Exclusion.
Pain left alone is suffering, pain with no help or connection is a great pause or regression of growth. Many of us have lived our lives with unattended pain, and as the years pass we might begin to feel as if we had forgotten something, or we might be perpetually in underworld experiences.
Once pain has been companioned, and held, there is no more suffering. Even if the intensity is still peaked. We can tolerate and even be guided by pain. We can transform the pain into gold.
We can reclaim the innocence and willingness to become friends with our pain or inner monster selves, our bottom points, as if our openness is inviting a new friend to play. As when we play with friends, our communication with our pain can be welcoming, and connecting. We can approach pain with open, receptive welcoming and carry the hurting past into consciousness awareness.
Recall, re-member, recapitulate
Our innocence isn’t something we’re supposed to develop out of in order to become more conscious and “grow up”. It is something that is expanded into golden magical abilities as we mature, like an antique teddy bear, our worn and well loved companion who performed hearted miracles just by showing up every day for our pain. This same medicine is available through the maturity of a developed consciousness, our ability to show up for all moments of crisis.
A life becomes a way to learn to love deeper and better with more connection, rather than a series of traumatic hurdles to survive. Clarity and presence contain all hardships as we recognize each challenging part of the path as Initiation, sacred milestones in our development. Our sacred Self is retained, never spoiled or truly lost. Growth is reignited like the sun hitting a seedling after a long winter.
When we re-member our pain with consciousness, we can stitch ourselves back together with true love, free of condition.
Companionship and Initiation
We travel the hero’s journey with the medicine of connection as both the innocent child and also as the monsters who hide under our awareness. We walk the path as the space holder for the pain, and as the symbolic stages of development the journey illicites. We are the underworld, we are the overworld, we are the worlds in between, and as we expand the threshold we are out of the constraints of space and time. This means we can attend to anything that has ever occurred for us, or throughout the span of history forwards and backwards.
At the stage of the classical Hero’s Journey called Apotheosis, The Climax, we come to the powerful portal of Initiation, which is catalyzed by our own readiness, as we drop into the depths, and also standing high at the pinnacle of the journey. Initiation can remind us of our ancient self and how we are meant to progress through stages and ages. Re remember how to grow.
Through Apotheosis we enter the deepest part of our personal material, our primordial matter, which links us to universal mythology, while simultaneously affecting the highest peaks of our daily life to become the organized data that helps us evolve in real time, on earth, through our interactions and regular life. The pivotal moment of climax or Crisis is the transition point to beginning the journey back to conscious awareness with new tools, new power and new abilities. I call this new beginning an Emergence rather than an emergency or crisis, once we have consciously aligned with it, that is when our so-called problem truly becomes our Initiation.
Can we go deeper still with more awareness and more strength, even as we stand in our vulnerability? Does this self companioning ever end? Do I ever get “better”
The Journey
We could inquire each day, and each time we tune in. We could follow our curiosity, question by question, instead of sticking with any answer, we could ask: what is the next question? We could feel, with intent and heart for guidance.
“Where am I on the journey, can I locate myself on the path, where have I been?”
We can look back over our lives and find these points, these apotheoses, these high points that are simultaneously low points and notice how we did it, how we grew with those clashes and breaks in the timeline.
“Have I become stuck in adrenaline spurts and freezes?”
We can question not only how we evolved but how it affects this current transition or crisis, we can even explore the old content to inform the new content. We can recapitulate and see the connections. This is where the alchemical process becomes a living practice.
“Have I been trapped without self care or self love?”
We can now transform poisons into medicines, we take the hardest things and make them allies, alchemize them into our greatest strengths.
There are skills waiting for us in these depths, catalyzed by Crisis.
Deep within, I find a cave…
Inside of us is Treasure. Treasure only accessed through the clash of Crisis, or Apotheosis. Through inner work and attending to our journey as Witness, by containing our story with love, the difficulty, pain, problems, challenges, and even abuses and betrayals, allows us to find the golden thread running through all of these low and high points of these crises, these face-to-face combat situations, and we can grow through them.
We can find greater and greater themes like a tapestry depicting famous epochs of history. We can find crystalline clues within our chapters, or the unifying great story, to decode our mission and purpose on earth.
Our entire life is a multitude of journeys within journeys within journeys, and as we come back from every challenge, every difficulty and every opportunity that we have transformed from pain and problems into gifts, like the philosopher's stone, or magical tools, yogic siddhis, we have more of ourselves and more awareness.
Our crises are waiting for us to attend to them and to evolve their heavy magnetism into golden awareness. The key is to learn how to enter these inner caves and retrieve the treasure held there.
A Crisis Offers The Medicine
Over my decades of practice as a yogi, yoga teacher and Somatic Coach I have continually been astounded by the wellspring of transformative growth from engaging with body centric sensing, once we interrupt habitual thinking. When we couple the power of somatic practices with the mirroring found in the symbolic, we create exponent magic.
This is Archetypal Somatics™, where we stop focusing on a result of “healing” or fixing. Instead, we companion all parts of Self, we follow our pain through cobwebbed halls to caves within. This active practic naturally results in the development of skills for creating, manifesting, exploring, engaging with our purpose, no matter our current state. We don’t need healing, we are already whole. What we want is to awaken to that truth.
Somatics, and specifically somatic shadow integration utilizing our symbolic resonance, offers unconditional connection with all of Self, especially parts previously shunned. We can pull the symbolic right into our reality as living tools of transformation, this is the true “philosopher’s stone”, any object (symbol) of contemplation, bringing with it the power to grok it. Imagine knowing your objects and world, with unfiltered clarity, by feeling them.
Soma is our super connector and quantum aware bodymind.
The journey to bring these ancient and universal methods of training consciousness to “think” with Soma, to grok, has brought an ever deepening truth. We walk steadily when we attend to our suffering with open receptivity, in body.
We can journey, create, collaborate, explore, invite, include and evolve, as our symbols come home, inside of our liquidy Soma, our medicinal Waters of Life.
Sacred Connection, Sacred Anatomy, Sacred Space
Do we have a purpose?
Before I created Synchrosoma® I called myself an Underworld Guide. I had been through layers of betrayal and crises on many reconnaissance missions, I was like a ferryman at the river of Self, ushering my own psyche, and clients deeply into their content to find their own soul fragments.
I guide the boat, but it is the practitioner’s inner rivers and streams that we travel, as we navigate together, the personal and universal worlds. We are side by side on the journey, down and through physical and energetic causeways, pausing to vortex within energetic hubs, and settling into pools of Soma.
Now I also like to call myself a Coach, Guide, Mentor, Teacher and Council. And maybe most appropriately I am a Wounded Healer of myself and a Medicine Woman for others. But I do not hold the healing authority over someone, they hold that shamanic power for themselves.
The practices of Archetypal Somatics™ are quickly transformative because we honor, pay attention to, and are guided primarily by Soma, the elixir and liquidy causeway connecting us to self, other, and Source. This is a way of being, not a modality or something we put down after some process is completed in order to go back to old strategies of coping or living in unconscious patterns. The energetic work becomes our pastime and deep avenue of communication, and sacred connection.
We can learn to use an intuitive practice called Somatic Recapitulation to bring back what has been lost. This is a central practice of Archetypal Somatics™ and Shadow Stalking.
Through mastering the techniques of Archetypal Somatics™ and attuning to our subtle systems, we learn to think better with bodymind, re-member better to bring fragmented Self back into balance, make better choices in life, and take Right Action in all matters.
This Sacred Anatomy of our pain portals, our heart center, our mojo, chakras and energetics, and our “srotas” (in Sanskrit), the sacred paths, streams, highways, rivers and causeways, both physical and anatomically subtle, constitute our inner realm and entire life terrain. All of self and the world of symbols and matter are alive with the energy we cohabit and are in communication with. We are both “local” in our skin, and can learn omnipresence, or the skill of being “non-local”.
Understanding how to do inner work, express or move from these centers and realms, how to show up without condition through the loving skills of attending to self, portal through pain, quiet monkey mind and develop true purpose, gives us the flexibility and gifts to transform anything and everything into the gold of self realization and Right Action. And it can even be fun.
Lila, is Sanskrit for “play” and “pastime”
लीला
Play and creativity are natural states, and the underlying organization of reality. Mature work is meant to be playful. Ask anyone who loves their job and they will say it’s more fun than “work”. The Work, through a maturing psyche is creative, intuitive, surprising, magical, and fun, even when there is challenge and pain.
Living is our “play”, Soma is the river we travel on and The Journey is our sacred game.
🎭
♥️Journey of the Heart
From Heartbreak to The Sacred Heart - Circulate through the four chambers of The Heart Path…
Thawing a heart in fight, flight, freeze or fawn is what we are opening to through the warming of heart medicine. Through heart we can transform toxic shame, envy, jealousy, victimhood, low self esteem, inferiority, entitlement, superiority, resentment, projection, blame, and apathy.
Soma and Heart
The main purpose of this course is to build what we can call Heart Medicine, the energetic flow that nourishes Soma and Soul…
The Medicinal Heart is not only a path but also the seat of the Real Self.
We can take our brokenness and loneliness to sit in the quiet pools of heart as medicine through this deep work of attending to the pain and opening to what is.
Soma is the connected, blessed, mystical flow and elixir our most powerful medicine which is clarified by the hub of heart, like a vortex in a stream bringing gems and precious metals to the surface of our consciousness, our abilities to connect with our largest identity as Witness in connection with Supersoul is “turned on” in a perpetual and sustainable fueling of soul and purpose.
Heart Ecology
Coming to the center through walking The Heart Path has psychospiritual benefits to self, our culture and the natural world. This wholeness could be called our “heart ecology”, and like all systems has flow, elements, components and direction. This ecosystem of the heart can be explored and we can detect where we might be lacking light and nourishment, as well as darkness and decay. We can notice where we feel empty and lack energy in our lives where our system has been out of balance and flow.
Benefits of being on The Heart Path
1. Developing the homing beacon, our “light house”, which guides all actions.
2. A inner map to transforming self, connections and place in the world.
3. Working with physical, mental, and spiritual symptoms through love and centering rather than fixing.
4. Developing an effective method of working with illness, anxiety, and depression and all spiritual sickness.
5. A deep connection to soul and Supersoul in connection to the vast material world, with nature and The NOW .
6. A life that honors natural law, cosmic flows and universal truth.
7. Reconciling The Matrix and our place in it, our use of technology and integrating the challenges from the NOW.
8. A spirituality deeply informed by heart, love, connection and grounded in presence with what is.
9. An ability to attend to lineage shadow, ancestral trauma, epigenetic trauma through understanding Sacred Anatomy and soul’s center.
10. Recognizing self across all of space and time.
11. Maturing into Complex Joy, attending to life as it is and transforming suffering into opportunity.
12. Rewilding our instinctual self, our connection to more human and humane ways of being.
13. An ability to be in the chi flow and abundance to offer talents and abilities to others.
Let me know as soon as you can if you wish to attend The Heart Path and I will be sure to send enrollment info as soon as we launch!
🪬One journey at a time
Join me for One on One Coaching and learn the art and practice of Archetypal Somatics™ where we attend to the peaks together, and transform any Crisis with the skills of beginning again with the right medicine.
The foundation of my practice is this intimate and sacred connection. I steer the boat and hold the torch while we journey together. The heart of our personal practice is enhanced through the art of a collaborative, coaching connection.
Learn the skills to attend to the past, ground firmly in the present, and feel your way forward with Soma informed choice. This work is heart centered and liberating so that new and hidden parts of self can now emerge and open us to new paths forward.
“My coaching sessions with Melissa have helped me so much! She helps me see things in a completely different way, a way that makes so much sense to me, a way that fully resonates with me.“
“Learning about archetypes with Melissa is a transformative process and working with her in one-on-ones has been an incredible experience for me. I have learned more about myself and been able to identify the karmic patterns that I want to shift.”
“Working with Melissa has been much more effective for me than talk therapy. I feel seen by her as a dynamic, multi dimensional and whole person. Melissa was able to walk with me through some of my most frightening inner territory when I was in cancer treatment. Not being alone in such unknown places was healing in itself. Through Melissa’s courses in Archetypal Somatics™ I’ve learned so much more about myself.”
I have a sliding scale $125 - 175 for a one hour session
We can schedule a free 20 minute consultation to get started
🐯Journey to The Center of The Self
Initiation and Integration
Autumn 2023
A Synchrosoma course in Archetypal Somatics™ and a Liminal Embodiment for beginner to advanced students.
In this course we will primarily focus on direct journeying, our conscious decision to enter the underworld.
Guided audio practices and skills development for liminal journeys sample:
-The Four cornerstones of Archetypal Somatics™
-Liminal Embodiment
-Panther Passes
-Journey with liminal allies
-Dismemberment practice
-Understanding “Re-enactments”
-Rolling Hills Meditation
And more…
Get on the list for this course! Respond to this email to be notified when this course is launched!
🧘🏻Yoga Journey - online!
Autumn 2023
Synchrosoma® Yoga Studio classes deeply informed by Soma and intuition - weekly online, launching Autumn 2023!
Trauma informed, adaptive, wild, and intuitive. We will explore chi flow, chakra balance, dharma, mediation, home practice support, Somatics, Shadow, and lots more yoga magic.
I began practicing yoga while still in high school in 1984, teaching in1999, and I’m delighted to bring my unique form of Synchrosoma® Yoga to an online and in-person community. This class will be limited in size so give me a heads up if you want to join these weekly classes.
Get on the list for yoga synchrosoma@gmail.com
Journey of Individuation
❤️🔥Freeing The Sacred Self: Sleigh Your Dragons and Guardians of Manifestation, a two part course exploring Archetypes and transformation.
Start your solo journey guided by me anytime. Group classes annually in Spring.
“I felt somehow safe, yet at my edge, as Melissa facilitated this journey.”
Walk through 10 gates with your archetypal allies. This journey is the foundational, personal work which deeply informs self study and a lifetime of exploration. These courses come highly recommended for everyone ready to harness exponential resources.
We will find our pantheon of personal archetypes in part one, and in part two we will explore a powerful path of growth and individuation offered through initiatory powers with the four guardians, The Guardians of Maturity, The Guardian of The True Self, The Guardian of True Connection and The Guardian of The True Path.
"All of my work with you has been enpowering me to take responsibility for my spiritual maturity and this class was a deepening of that work. I’m becoming more aware of the education I received growing up, for living in a Materialistic world, where the values are winning, success, money and status; and how that emphasis stunted the growth of my whole authentic self. This course is the antidote, the homeschooling my soul has been longing for! Thank you for sharing the wisdom you found doing your own work of Individuation. You’re illuminating a map that’s guiding me home to my whole self. Thank you for the maps of the inner journey to connection with self and our inner nature and for the maps of the outward journey connecting with others and sharing our gifts with the collective!
“I now have a much better understanding of my personal Archetypes and Shadows. I learned how to identify and explore these parts of myself by sinking into Soma. I am better able now to be a witness of my own consciousness instead of reacting to triggers.”
“Thank you so much for the Sleigh Your Dragons course. Working with density spirals has been a total game-changer in my thinking and I am grateful for the world opening.”
“Sleigh Your Dragons felt like a magical roadmap through the labyrinth of my psyche.”
“I am so glad that I took a chance on Melissa’s self-paced Guardians of Manifestation course. I was kind of amazed that I experienced an equally powerful transformation through working with these materials as I have had working with Melissa in one-on-one, live coaching calls. The coursework is strategically organized to invoke an archetypal process that once started, takes on a life of its own. This path is not for the faint of heart, but for those who are serious about soul evolution, Melissa’s work is the real deal.”
This course is prerequisite for The Wounded Healer Archetypal Somatics Advanced Studies and Coach Training.
Journey through your professional life
🌟Life Path Mentoring - The Star
Decoding Purpose
Life Path and Professional Mentoring. This one on one mentoring opportunity will inform your calling, purpose, and development of your Star. The Star is like a guiding beacon drawing you forward on your path. In this way Life becomes our stage for taking Right Action and having the impact of global proportions. This opportunity is for those who want to take their calling or vocation to its deepest, broadest potential.
The mentoring path is for professionals to advance their own vocation through the power of Archetypal Somatics™ and find the next part of that journey and explore and expand their purpose through the framework of their profession. I also Stalk Shadow as a consultant for established business practices and help people to “smoke out the snakes” to transform hidden energies of shadow into gold and bring the enterprise to the next level of possibilities.
Some of the topics we cover in Life Path:
-“Currency” and the energetics of “money”
-The Means to do what we want
-Life purpose updating, The “Now you”
-The Heart and Soul of work
-Retaining joy in our vocation
-Innovation and navigating life with The Star
-Encountering shadow in professional settings and relationships
-Chi Burning, Chi Hoarding, Chi Donation, and Chi Flow
“Melissa saved me from giving away half my company - at least a million dollar mistake. She challenged me to push past superficial excitement and to identify what my body’s wisdom was trying to tell me. Thanks to her I have been able to navigate troubled waters in my business and beyond.”
Journey at your own pace
Ongoing enrollment
🌚🌝Join Shadow Stalking 101, Exploring The Overworld, The Underworld and The Worlds In Between.
Shadow Stalking 101 is available right now, and in this course there is a practice called Debt Dragon, which illustrates the main mission of underworld work. The dragon holds treasure and he is willing to trade for it. Ferry across a liminal river to meet this important aspect of our psyche and exchange for a part that holds immense gold for our consciousness and Star.
This self paced foundational audio course is a tool kit for reclaiming your lost soul energy so that you can master all of the worlds.
Reflections from Shadow Stalkers:
“I wanted to let you know that the course truly is incredible. I love the length of everything, how it gives you the essence of what to work with and doesn't overwhelm. The writings in 'from the claudron' each include a little seed that keeps growing in the background!”
“I loved the couch potato practice, this experience, in this particular way was new to me and very rich.”
“The Witness meditation was interesting. I have been working to drop from mind for a long time, the place felt very familiar. I loved the way to access this, so straight forward!”
Go here to enroll right away.
This course is also a prerequisite for The Wounded Healer Archetypal Somatics Advanced Studies and Coach Training.
🎧Journey anywhere, anytime with
The Synchrosoma Podcast
Keep up with The Synchrosoma Podcast every Tuesday. Like free mini sessions or journal prompts, these 15 minute audio journeys are meant to evoke self study, and companion your spiritual path. This link will take you to your preferred platform.
Journey as Tribe! Sacred Sites
🌴Synchrosoma Retreat Autumn 2024!
Join me and small group of beginner to advanced Archetypal Somatics™ practitioners, for a week of deep self exploration, Soul Evolution and Renewal on a nourishing vacation. Sacred Location TBA, Synchrosoma Yoga and Somatics, Journeys with our personal allies, sacred geography, pilgrimage, renewal in a magical place with our tribe! If you are interested in hearing more about our first retreat, respond to this email.
Our first Synchrosoma game is almost here! Ready to play? Kickstarter coming soon…
SomaCards™
SomaCards™ A Synchrosoma® Deck of Chance, Imagination and Inspiration! Journey with Symbols and Soma and inspire your self study, journaling and liminal adventure.
…Enter your liminal awareness through these portals of perception to explore your personal myth and universal themes. Practices and games of chance allow you to uncover hidden doorways to your path and purpose. The 108 symbols on the SomaCards™ open us to the Worlds In Between, quickly bringing a special awareness that allows us to evolve Body, Heart and Soul. Companion the energetics of Soma, decode the Outer world, and open to unlimited possibilities of inner guidance!
As a personal use tool these cards will provide wisdom, inspiration, creativity, self awareness, self study, while assisting the development of your intuitive skills. Calm the active overworking mind, welcome the subtle underworld emergence, and take the heroic journey of The Self.
Somacards.com
web shop coming soon, be one of the first to play!
***
The journey is a circle
As we peer over the landscapes of each Great Crisis, like shared events that involve the global collective, the crimes against nature like warfare and poverty, I want to invite us all to stay connected, we can re-member our freedoms to learn, go deep within our resonance in this network, and explore our reality in all ways. As we stitch the separation back together with the golden threads of consciousness and love, may we resonate through our interconnectedness and drink Soma, the water of immortal truth.
The most joyful among us sense that a lot of the fun is at the beginning of every journey, the challenge and excitement, the curiosity and newness. Like the beauty and innocence of childhood play, we can begin our journey again each day, no matter what that day offers in the way of peaks or valleys.
I invite you to join the circle, be initiated into these ancient and innovative teachings, and to become the creator of your own practice, I look forward to our journey together.
Stay in touch and stay attuned…
Many Belssings,
Melissa Meader
Archetypal Somatics™ Coach and Coach Trainer
Founder of Synchrosoma®
(Note: nothing in this newsletter was generated by AI, it is all authentically me 🐝)