Elizabeth Morana

I’ve been exploring WBF since the summer of 2010 in a variety of settings with Kevin and Karen. It was during the first Intensive WBF training at Stony Point that we began to explore HFC in detail.

My personal preference has always been to have a number of partners for both focusing and for heartfelt conversation over the course of any particular week, allowing me to explore many nuances of my own yet-uncharted territory, and also to feel into how different partnerships make certain issues want to come to the fore.

And most recently, I’ve had the privilege of participating in a group of WholeBody focusers in heartfelt conversation on a regular basis for about two years. We came together without formal agenda at the end of the first Intensive WBF training and dedicated ourselves to finding out how HFC works in a group setting, letting our felt sense and our Body Wisdom take us where we need to go.

Without describing our process, which deserves a paper of its own, I will just say that a Wisdom larger than us is always available in any particular partnership of any two of us, and is available in the meetings with the larger group. And it affects all of us in many ways, and is creating both ‘waves’ and ‘particles’ as we wait at the edge of our emerging-knowing until something comes into form in unexpected and diverse ideas that are often—but not always—given language. We find, continually, that the life of the group is always ‘in’ each partnership.

About eight years ago, when I was preparing to leave my work as a Clinical Psychologist, I began to wonder how I wanted to spend the remaining years of my life. Perhaps there were another 10 or 15 physically strong years where I could start new endeavors and follow them through before my energy ebbed. Was there a project that I really wanted to do? Although I’d intended to explore, through writing, my early experiences and the lives of recent generations of my ancestors, I quickly realized that publishing memoir and historical fiction was not the best use of my remaining time.

While it’s hard to put this on paper, because it absolutely never says what it wants to say—and knowing that some things simply don’t live in the language-dimension—I will try to express it: I saw—and still see—that the best use of my time is pursuing the real, direct, sincere, and earnest seeking of Divine Love—as best I can behold it—from my soul, from that place in me that is my true self, the only ‘something’ in me that seems capable of real-knowing.

It comes to mind here that Kevin has often said, “I don’t know how to listen, but something in me knows how to listen.” I frequently apply the wisdom that underlies that statement to anything that the daily ordinary “I” cannot do: I can’t love as I would hope, I can’t listen as I would hope, I can’t ‘pray’ as I would hope, I can’t hold space for myself or anyone else as I would hope—but something in me can!

I’ve begun to call that ‘something in me’ my soul. Others might give it another name.

That place in me—timeless, invisible, alive, in the process of becoming more and more conscious—doesn’t have the blockages, doesn’t have those walls that stop creative ideas and spiritual inspirations that can come to it. I sometimes picture it as the ‘satellite dish’ within me that receives Body Wisdom—inspired ideas from beyond me—which I earnestly invite and to which I gratefully consent.

And while they can and do come when I’m alone, they come more vividly in partnership.

I juxtapose that timeless-alive-place that can receive spiritual inspiration with that other place which we call the ‘small self’—which has accumulated all the foolish, fearful, hurt, and angry beliefs and patterns that have formed in an attempt to avoid further hurt.

I’m sensing that my soul doesn’t hold these beliefs. The soul is that place—that real-me-place—that is untouched by those hurtful things, even while it is aware of those things.

It occurs to me that the ‘soul’ is the place that makes “holding both” a true possibility, where we can be grounded and receptive to that Body Wisdom—what I like to call 'that which is beyond us'—and also be completely aware of and able to directly experience the pain in any particular ‘stuck place’ or blockage that presents itself to us for our attention.

When I write this, I see the image of the painful place—and it really does hurt—and there’s my body alive and aware in all five of the ‘body spaces’ and there’s that energy and ‘something’ that is coming into me from beyond, and is also greatly amplified—made possible, really—by the ‘shared space’ of a partnership with someone who is in grounded presence and who is consenting to this interchange.

I turn to the steps of WBF and HFC to make my seeking of the Divine Love a reality, a directly experienced knowing.

In my partnerships and in our group heartfelt conversations, I may not often talk about this in a direct way—it’s not necessary—but it is always there at the edge.

I welcome heartfelt conversations with any WholeBody Focuser who is interested in exploring the spiritual aspects of this practice, whatever their individual conceptual understanding or languaging might be.

It’s finding the 'more', the 'that-which-is-beyond-us', particularly that which is Divinely Loving, that I seek to apprehend in safe, sacred, heart-felt exploration with others.

I’m a mother of two grown daughters, a retired Clinical Psychologist who worked with children in school settings for about 29 years, an amateur writer and sometime-amateur-musician who loved singing Renaissance Sacred music with a small a capella chorus, and a volunteer chief administrator of a spiritual organization that distributes literature on seeking of Divine Love. The keyboard works of JS Bach have been imprinted on my bones due to endless listenings, even while I still fail to remember their names.

I am a trainer in WBF who has attended many workshops and trainings in WBF and HFC including the two Intensive trainings at Stony Point. I’ve had the joy of regular consultations with Kevin McEvenue over the past four years, and I’ve had the pleasure of working individually with Kye Nelson for almost six years. I also prize the opportunities I’ve had for many rich consultations with Karen Whalen. I am a very fortunate member of a continuing HeartFelt Connection Group for about two years.

I have a special relationship with trees; many of them are my friends and all of them offer me models for living.