I’m passionate about supporting adults to stop coercing themselves and to stop coercing children.
Coercion is a core part of the domination/colonised paradigm; the use of power-over those who have less physical, economic, political, power by those who have more of these.
Growing up in this culture of coercion means we internalise coercion and tend to them do it to ourselves.
So, just as we were shoulded into taking action as children, we do this to ourselves.
Rather than listening to what our bodies natively know; whether we have a true “YES” or a true “NO” to something, we learn to ignore our innate wisdom, and to coerce ourselves into taking action, through, “I should,” and, “I have to.”
I am passionate about the power of reclaiming our native lovingness and willingness, both in our relationships with ourselves and our children, and also other-than-humans and Gaia.
How can we do that? One way is with our willingness work.
For example, with our self-willingness, we can do The Willingness Practice.
The Willingness Practice is all about listening deeply to what we love and what we need, and then honestly to whether we are willing for that.
If we’re not willing, rather than judging or forcing ourselves (as the domination paradigm teaches), we can listen lovingly to why not.
Why are we not willing to have, do or be what our heart longs for?
As we listen with love, to other needs, feelings and values, we are increasingly likely to come to a true willingness.
This is because we are including ALL of ourselves, not just the single desire.
The more we can love all the parts of ourselves, the more we free up our willingness. And this willingness gives us the life energy to take willing action.
Lovingness leads to willingness. And action taken from willingness is entirely different to action taken from when we ’should’ ourselves or coerce ourselves, or force ourselves, or ignore our body’s “no”.
I imagine you can remember that now; the difference between taking action from forcing yourself to taking action from true willingness.
When we act from willingness, we are connected with all of ourselves and all of Life, and Life is free to support us in this.
We can use exactly these principles if we want our child to cooperate with us.
If we are truly willing to have the outcome of what we are asking of them, we can then tune in to their willingness.
If they’re not willing, rather than coercing or forcing them, we can connect in lovingly with why they aren’t willing. We can lovingly connect in with them, listen, and understand the cause of their not-willingness, so we can support change at that causal level.
This is where I love The Willingness for All Practice – where we can hold an, “I’m willing for us both to get our needs met here.”
When we stay connected with our Love for ourselves and our child and our willingness for us both to get our needs met, magic can happen.
I love that the lovingness and willingness work can create change at so many levels:
Our inner self-relationship;
Our relationships with others (including our children);
The cultural level – as we move away from the domination paradigm to the Love and Sacred Power Paradigm.
If you are familiar with the Love and Will work, it looks like we’re doing to be doing a Marion Method Immersion very soon; keep an eye out if you’re interested, or there’s a poll about it in The Wonder of Willingness Course FB group if you’re a member.