Methods and Maps to the Mother Well #2
Three Levels of Awareness and Response
Dear Ones,
from my own TLAP archive (not related to client-work)
If you haven’t read the previous emails about The Mother Well process, I encourage you to do so. If that is a barrier for whatever reason, please just read on!
Over the next two months, along with my lunar newsletters, I will be writing nine newsletters about my journey with two mothers last Spring. These are in service to reflection and documentation of the project. They are also in service to a group-form offering of The Mother Well happening in April and May of this year on the land, at the river, and at Atrium Wellness at the Breathe Building.
During these first three of nine newsletters, I will be engaging with theory and map-making.
The middle three will focus on the project's meat— the participants' and my experience last Spring.
And the final three will be focused on what happens next— the eight-week group offering of Mother Well in April-May.
More on Methods and Maps
Three Levels of Awareness and Response
In their book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle (2019), researchers Emily and Amelia Nagoski introduce the harm that stress does to our bodies as women. They explain that chronic stressors (cue mothers!) stay in our bodies when we do not have helpful ways of moving through them.
Actions like shaking, crying, running, breathing, screaming, and dancing help the stressors move out of our bodies so that we can be free to feel other things like… joy.
When we do not complete the stress cycle, we get sick, eternally exhausted, and depressed.
Connected to this, Daria Halprin writes, “The ability to live fully and expressively in the present, to develop a mature relationship with the past and to ‘dance with’ the pull of opposite forces within and around us, is essential to the art and craft of life” (2022, p 78).
The Life Art Process, developed by Halprin and her mother— dance pioneer Anna Halprin— uses three levels of awareness and response— physical, mental, and emotional— to help participants explore their bodies, minds, and emotions. Through this practice, we learn how to discern what is happening in different parts of ourselves, and how these parts interweave and support or work against each other.
If you are a longtime newsletter reader, you can see how this connects with astrological seeking and chart reading as well. There are different players, layers, textures, planets, parts to each of us. Being able to access these layers is part of the work of somatic practice in general, but most definitely a large piece of the work that Anna and Daria Halprin have developed inside of TLAP.
Relating this to burnout and exhaustion…
Being aware of ourselves is in itself a resource.
Awareness leads to compassion, and compassion might lead to action.
Action could be giving ourselves the space to lie down under a tree for 20 minutes with no interruptions.
This is the cycle of awareness and response.
Here is an example from my work in the Mother Well:
from my own TLAP archive (not related to client-work)
One of the artist-mothers I worked with began with the practice of sifting through her old artwork. Pretty quickly we were able to identify the metaphor of “going back in”, of returning to self through returning to art.
As she began to move, some beginning metaphors were uncovered on the three layers of awareness:
Physical:
The movements connected to her physical experience were heavy, an elephantine sway. So much weight. She wondered how to unlock the places of holding.
Mental:
On the mental layer, her hands covered her head. She described this as having a “tight head.”
Emotional:
The emotional layer of movement was very animated and this mother connected it to a need to slow down, a feeling of moving way too fast.
These three, physical, mental, and emotional were then named as…
The One Who Drives
The One Who Flows
The One Who Chops
… and then merged into one drawing named The One Who Is Unfinished.
This frame— of her being unfinished, letting go of some control, and finding peace with that messiness— became a theme for the rest of our work together.
UPCOMING OFFERINGS:
1- April-May— GROUP FORM MOTHER WELL: Fridays late afternoon-evening
On land at the confluence of the Columbia and Willamette Rivers at Kelly Point Park for two afternoon rituals
In studio at Atrium at the Breathe Building in SE Portland
Online orientation and 2 individual sessions online or home visit
2- April 13— COSMIC CORPUS: Monthly In-Person Astro-Explorations with collaborator Gina James! Sunday afternoons starting April 13
At Atrium Movement at the Breathe Building in SE PDX
Somatic, interpretative, exploratory, experiential community astrology
3- October 2-5, 2025— LIVING ASTROLOGIES CONFERENCE IN SANTA FE, NM:
Hosted by Jason Holley and the Hermes/Hestia Center for Living Astrologies
My workshop— The Artemesian Well: Exploring Lunar Depth through Movement Ritual and the Tamalpa Life Art Process
Other experiential workshops to experience astrology through a relational, imaginal, and embodied lens
References:
Brown, B. (2021). Atlas of the heart: Mapping meaningful connection and the language of human experience. Random House. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Atlas_of_the_Heart/ZvwyEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=atlas+of+the+heart&pg=PR11&printsec=frontcover
Halprin, D. (2002). The expressive body in life, art, and therapy: Working with movement, metaphor and meaning. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Expressive_Body_in_Life_Art_and_Ther/BkKBGP-2PHcC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=maps+and+methods+of+the+practice+daria+halprin&pg=PA3&printsec=frontcover
Nagoski, E., & Amelia Nagoski, D. M. A. (2020). Burnout: The secret to unlocking the stress cycle. Ballangne Books. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Burnout/DlnDDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=burnout+and+nagoski&pg=PR9&printsec=frontcover
Olsen, A. (2020). Body and earth: An experiential guide. Wesleyan University Press. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Body_and_Earth/dd7QDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=body+and+earth&pg=PP1&printsec=frontcover