Meet the Author of . . . A Healing Space

Matt Licata —

November 17, 2020

The Author

Matt Licata, PhD, is the author of A Healing Space: Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times, coming out in November, 2020. In addition to being an author, he is a practicing psychotherapist and hosts in-person retreats. His work incorporates developmental, psychoanalytic, and depth psychologies, as well as contemplative, meditative, and mindfulness-based approaches for transformation and healing. He co-facilitates a monthly online membership community called Befriending Yourself, is author of The Path Is Everywhere, and is the creator of the blog A Healing Space. He lives in Boulder, Colorado. For more, visit mattlicataphd.com.

The Book

Is healing a matter of solving a problem, curing a sickness, or making our wounds disappear? “In my experience,” writes depth psychotherapist and meditation teacher Matt Licata, “true healing is not a state where we become liberated from uncomfortable feelings, but one in which we are free and flexible to welcome our complete experience—whether happy or difficult—more fully.” With A Healing Space, Dr. Licata invites us to explore a more vital sense of wellness—one that does not put us in opposition to life’s hardship, but instead welcomes all experience as part of the soul’s majestic vastness.

Are you learning any new tricks or skills during this time (COVID)? Has your book taken on a new meaning in the world’s current circumstances? Is there anything you would have included in your book if you were writing it now?

One thing I’ve been struck by in this time of COVID is just how formative, powerful, and challenging solitude can be for each of us, and how through confronting our aloneness we will inevitably meet parts of ourselves that we had lost contact with in times of status quo. As relational beings, wired to connect and co-regulate with one another, it can be so counter-instinctive to be alone, for there to be an absence of “good others” in our lives, and how much we take this for granted.

What has become a lot clearer to me is how we can call on these “internal others” who, through many moments of kindness, attunement, empathy, and compassion, reside as an “internal network” within us, and how important this can be in times of physical separation—and how truly available they are, even from afar, in ways that might surprise us.

I’m happy that A Healing Space is coming out during this time as it is centered around the art and practice of “befriending” and what that might mean in our contemporary world. Had I known that we would be sheltering in place and social distancing as we are, I would have more explicitly addressed the unique ways that isolation, solitude, and even loneliness can serve as actual allies on the path of awakening and healing, portals or doorways to a more merciful, wise, and compassionate relationship with ourselves and others.

What is one unexpected thing or habit that inspires your writing practice?

So much of my writing comes out of conversations I have with others—friends, family, students, clients, and even strangers. I often find myself deeply curious and even in awe at how others find meaning in their experience, make sense of it, and organize it in ways that are similar—and also at times quite different—to my own.

There’s something about being in conversation that opens me to another person’s heart, to their soul, to their psyche, and I often leave a conversation with new ideas, lenses, or reality tunnels, which I tend to explore via image and language.

It’s sometimes not easy for me to “sit down and write” in a general and abstract way. It requires live interaction with another human being or with the natural world in order to flow. It’s almost like I wait to hear a certain whisper or inner song that arises from conversation and quickly scramble to be the scribe for that to come into the world.

If there is a book that started your spiritual journey, what was it? How old were you, and how did you discover it? How would you describe its impact?

The first overt “spiritual” book I remember reading was in my senior year of high school: The Razor’s Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham. I would have been 17 at the time and had always been a bit of a dreamer with a vivid imagination and deep curiosity and wonder as to whether I really belonged in this place.

It was an identification with the protagonist, Larry Darrell, that catalyzed a certain longing in me, a knowing that there was more to this life than it appeared. To this day, I can return to some of those feelings I felt at the time, an opening or crack in reality, you might say, that invited me into a life of deeper meaning, magic, and aliveness.

I reread the book while traveling in India in my early 20s and continued my connection with Maugham and with Darrell, especially with Larry’s journeys in India himself. I had a kindred spirit out there somewhere and I remember that meaning a lot to me at the time, that there was at least one other person who wondered and wandered in the same way that I did.

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Posted November 17, 2020

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The Simple Magic of a Book

Matt Licata — December 16, 2020

One of the gifts of isolation, solitude, and social distancing is the opportunity to reconnect with pieces of soul and strands of vision that have become lost in the busyness of our ordinary lives.

Reading for many has become a lost art. We can become so used to turning on the news, scrolling through Facebook, becoming lost in hours of YouTube or Netflix, or fused with one electronic device or another. Nothing wrong with any of these, but at times an alternative portal will open.

To take a book and find a place within your home or under a tree or out in the park and go on a pilgrimage with it. Ask the stars to help you to find a place to just be for a while and open to revelation.

It need not be a “spiritual” book, though of course those are fine, too. A book of poetry, a novel, a book of art history, or of mythology.

Allow its images to come alive, its metaphors, its characters… step into the poetic landscape with the figures and enter a state of receptivity and play. Sense what they are sensing, feel what they are feeling as these correspond with the internal others dancing within you.

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Not necessarily reading for “information,” but for communion. Allow the language to open you, to uncover a feeling you haven’t felt for a long time, an ache in the heart that longs for tending, a dream you had forgotten, a vision that you sense circling around you.

Read a paragraph or two and close the book. Enter the interactional field – with the natural world, with the visions, figures, moods, feelings, and images that seek your attention, your curiosity, your care, and just a moment of your being-ness.

We can so easily forget the magic of this place, of the imaginal realms, of those liminal places in between the physical world of matter and the transcendental realm of pure spirit. In the liminal we can dance and play and see and perceive and sense and intuit something holy.

A good book can help us do this, can serve as a companion as we step into uncharted territory.

Reading has been such an important part of my life. My books are my friends, lovers, allies, guides, and they also challenge me, break me open, tenderize and marinate me in the Unknown. They reveal how little I know about this world, this soul, this heart, this place, and the unique opportunity to be here. I find this so lifegiving.

I fantasize that perhaps in other worlds there are no books. That is sad to think about. For me, at least.

This blog post originally appeared on Matt Licata’s blog, A Healing Space. Redistributed with permission.

Matt Licata, PhD, is a practicing psychotherapist and hosts in-person retreats. His work incorporates developmental, psychoanalytic, and depth psychologies, as well as contemplative, meditative, and mindfulness-based approaches for transformation and healing. He co-facilitates a monthly online membership community called Befriending Yourself, is author of The Path Is Everywhere, and is the creator of the blog A Healing Space. He lives in Boulder, Colorado. For more, visit mattlicataphd.com.

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Why We Need To Live the Full Spectrum of Human Experie...

Matt Licata — November 24, 2020

Metabolizing Experience

In order to know and befriend ourselves at the deepest levels, one of the core foundations for true healing, we must cultivate a new way of relating with ourselves that allows even our most difficult and challenging experience to disclose its meaning, intelligence, and purpose in our lives. To do this, we have to slow down and shift our relationship from one of thinking about our experience to fully embodying it. We have to allow ourselves to truly touch it and be touched by it rather than merely orbiting around it, where we are sure to continue to feel some degree of disconnection. Just as we must properly digest the food we eat to absorb its nutrients, we must also assimilate our experience to receive the wisdom and sacred data within it. All through the day and night, we are receiving impressions—through our mental, emotional, somatic (i.e., body-based), imaginal, and spiritual bodies. Life is a constant stream of experience—conversations with friends, caring for our kids, cooking a meal, wandering in nature, practicing yoga or meditation, engaging our work and creative projects, reading a book, shopping for groceries, running errands. But to what degree are we experiencing all of this? How present are we to our moment-to-moment experience, embodied and engaged, allowing it to penetrate us, where it can become true experience and not just some passing event? To what degree are we on autopilot as we make our way through the day, only partially connecting with our friends and family and engaging the sensory reality of what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch?

I’m pointing toward a way of “metabolizing” our experience that allows us to touch and engage it at the most subtle levels, where it is able to disclose its qualities, intelligence, and purpose. By evoking “metabolization,” I am making use of a biological process in a metaphorical way to refer to working through and integrating our experience, especially those thoughts, feelings, sensations, and parts of ourselves that historically we have pushed away. Other words from the biological sciences, for example “digestion,” “absorption,” or “assimilation” can be used to point to the same idea, indicating that it requires concentration, attention, and a certain fire or warmth to “make use” of our experience and mine the “nutrients” contained within it.

Just because we “have” an experience does not mean we properly digest and absorb it. If our emotional and sensory experience remain partly processed, they become leaky (a psychic version, if you will, of “leaky gut syndrome”) and unable to provide the fuel required to live a life of intimacy, connection, and spontaneity. This inner psychic situation is analogous to not properly chewing and breaking down the food we eat and thus not being able to mine the energy and nutrients our bodies need to function optimally.

Although the desire for change and transformation is natural, noble, and worthy of our honor and attention, if we are not careful, it can serve as a powerful reminder and expression of the painful realities of materialism and self-abandonment. One of the shadow sides of spiritual seeking and the (seemingly) endless project of self-improvement is that we never slow down enough to digest what we have already been given, often much more than we consciously realize. In some sense, most of us have been given everything in terms of the basic alchemical prima materia required to live a life of integrity and inner richness, but not the “everything” the mind thinks it needs to be happy and fulfilled, found by way of a journey of internal and external consumerism. And not the “everything” that conforms to our hopes, fears, and dreams of power and control and that keeps us consistently safe and protected from the implications of what it means to have a tender (and breakable) human heart, but the “everything” already here as part of our true nature, the raw materials for a life of inner contentment and abundance, revealed by way of slowness and humility, not unconscious acquisition.

It is important to remember that for most of us, healing happens gradually, slowly, over time when we begin to perceive ourselves and our lives in a new way. Each micro-moment of new insight, understanding, and perspective must be integrated and digested on its own, honored and tended to with curiosity, care, and attention. Before we “move forward” to the next moment, we must fully apprehend and open our hearts to this one; this slow tending (metabolization) is one of the true essences of a lasting, transformative, and deep healing. If we are not able to metabolize even our most intense and disturbing experience, we will remain in opposition to it, at subtle war with it, and not able to be in relationship with it as a healing ally.

In Tibetan tradition, there is an image of the hungry ghost, a figure of the imaginal realms with a large, distended belly and tiny mouth. No matter how much food (experience) is consumed, there is a deep ache and longing for more. Regardless of how much is taken in, the ghost retains an insatiable hunger. Because this one is not able to digest, make use of, or enjoy what is given, a primordial hole is left behind that can never seem to be filled. One invitation, as this image appears in our own lives, is to slow way down and send awareness and compas- sion directly into the hole, infusing it with presence and warmth, and finally tend to what is already here, not what is missing and might come one day in the future by way of further procurement.

Just as with food—choosing wisely, chewing mindfully, allowing ourselves to taste the bounty of what is being offered, and stopping before we are full—we can honor the validity, workability, and intelligence of our inner experience, even if it is difficult or disturbing. The willingness to fully digest our own vulnerability, tenderness, confusion, and suffering is an act of love and fierce, revolutionary kindness. There are soul nutrients buried in the food of our embodied experience that yearn to be integrated, metabolized, and assimilated in the flame of the heart. But this digestion requires the enzymes of presence, embodi- ment, compassion, and curiosity about what is here now.

Let us slow down and become mindful of the ways we seek to fill the empty hole in the center, whether it be with food when we’re not hungry or experience when we are already full. And in this way, we can walk lightly together in this world, on this precious planet, not as hungry ghosts desperate to be fed but as kindred travelers of interior wealth, richness, and meaning.

This is an excerpt from A Healing Space: Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times by Matt Licata, PhD.

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Matt Licata, PhD: The Alchemy of Befriending Ourselves...

Matt Licata — November 17, 2020

Matt Licata is a practicing psychotherapist, a co-facilitator of a monthly online membership community called Befriending Yourself, and the author of The Path Is Everywhere. With Sounds True, he has written a new book titled, A Healing Space: Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Matt about what it is to be a healing space, that is to hold space for ourselves and others, as well as how we can feel held by something greater than ourselves during challenging experiences. They also explore our inner wounds and self-abandonment, spiritual bypassing and the ways in which many practices allow us to gloss over the real healing needed, and how coming into an embodied state can open us to greater inner depths. Finally, Tami and Matt discuss becoming an alchemist of your own life, discovering the inner gold that each of us has within, and befriending all of ourselves.

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Turning to my Filipino Roots to Tend to Womb Loss

Eileen S. Rosete — October 18, 2024

October is a meaningful month for me as it honors two important parts of my identity. It is Filipino American History Month, a time to acknowledge and honor the presence and contributions of Filipino Americans. Although my parents immigrated to the United States from the Philippines in 1980, records show that Filipinos were present here as early as 1587, landing in present-day Morro Bay, California as part of a Spanish galleon. In an interesting moment of alignment, I am writing this to you from Morro Bay, feeling the palpable power of the land and seeing the sacred 600-foot-tall Morro Rock–known as Lisamu’ in the Chumash language and Lesa’mo’ by the Salinan people–standing proudly just outside the window of our Airstream trailer. October is also Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, a time to increase awareness about and honor those of us who have endured such loss- what I often refer to as womb loss.

This October is particularly meaningful with my book, To Tend and To Hold: Honoring Our Bodies, Our Needs, and Our Grief Through Pregnancy and Infant Loss, officially launching on October 22. In it I share how my identities as a Filipina American and bereaved mother intertwine, and how valuable it can be for survivors of womb loss to turn to their cultural traditions for support as they grieve and as their postpartum bodies return to a non-pregnant state. How I came across this online essay and found solace in the language of my ancestors who use terms to describe miscarriage as “someone from whom something was taken away” rather than placing blame with the prefix mis- which means wrongly or badly. I did not carry my pregnancies wrongly or badly. Loss was something that my body experienced.

The following is an excerpt from To Tend and To Hold that I hold dear as it shares a traditional Filipino dish I grew up eating and that I share now as a postpartum doula to offer comfort and nourishment to those who are postpartum, both with living children and after loss. I hope it may offer you comfort as well, no matter if your experience of womb loss was recent, in the past weeks, months or even many years ago. My heart is with you and please know that you are not alone as you grieve and as you heal- at your own pace and in your own way.

I recently cooked this recipe for champorado, a Filipino rice porridge, for my beloved friend Katrina on a very tender anniversary, the due date of one of her children and the death date of another. Her child, Zeo Thomas, would have been born that day had he not died in the womb at five months gestation. It was within the same year of his death that her second child, Solis Vida, died in the womb in the first trimester. In truth, Katrina had been bleeding for over a week to release her second pregnancy, but as she bled through Zeo’s due date, she felt an intuitive pull to honor this same date as Solis’s death date. I thought of my friend as I made my way slowly through the grocery store. Though it was crowded and busy, I felt cocooned in my thoughts and intentions for her—how I wanted to help her feel seen and held during this difficult time—and I found myself gathering each of the ingredients in a mindful way that felt like the beginning of a bigger ritual. Knowing I was going to cook for her to honor her, her babies, her grief, and also her longings added a layer of reverence to what would otherwise be a standard grocery run. Later as I cooked the porridge in her home, I channeled my love and condolences into each step. And when I finally brought the warm bowl of champorado to her and saw her reaction, it was my turn to feel honored. Honored to be there with her. Honored to tend to her. And with a dish we both knew from our childhoods. She dubbed it “postpartum champorado,” and so it shall be known.

Warm and soft, rice porridge is one of the best postpartum foods as it is easy to eat, warming to the body, and gentle on the digestive system. Its very nature is to offer comfort. In my opinion, champorado, a Filipino chocolate rice porridge I grew up savoring, is one of the most heartwarming dishes, with the cacao tending as much to the emotional heart as to the physical body. It can be offered any time of day for both a filling meal and a gentle reminder that there is still sweetness in life even amidst grief.

In this nourishing version, cacao powder is used in place of cocoa so that we may benefit from all that this superfood has to offer, including iron to help rebuild red blood cells, flavonoids to improve blood flow, and magnesium to ease anxiety and depression. In addition to being nutrient-rich, cacao is also known to lift the mood. If the thought of preparing food feels beyond your current capacity at this moment, consider sharing this recipe with a partner, postpartum doula, or other support person and asking them to cook it for you. Additionally, if you are currently pregnant, please consult your health-care provider before consuming cacao as it contains caffeine.

Champorado: Filipino chocolate rice porridge

1 cup sweet rice (also called glutinous or sticky rice) or sushi rice
5 cups water
1/4 cup cacao powder
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon unflavored protein powder (optional)
Condensed coconut milk for topping
Cacao nibs (optional)

Rinse the sweet rice several times until the water runs clear when drained.

Combine rice and water in a pot over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium and continue to cook until the rice is soft and the porridge thickens (about 20 minutes), stirring often to keep from sticking to the bottom of the pot.

Add cacao powder, brown sugar, and unflavored protein powder. Stir to combine, then remove from heat.

Drizzle condensed coconut milk (or other milk of choice) and top with cacao nibs. Serve hot.

This is an adapted excerpt from To Tend and to Hold: Honoring Our Bodies, Our Needs, and Our Grief Through Pregnancy and Infant Loss by Eileen S. Rosete.

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Five Tips for Postpartum Bliss

Pānquetzani — September 11, 2024

Bliss out on baby, mi amor. Love your chichis. Admire your soft curves, your delicate belly, and the way you require intentional care. Everything deep comes to the surface as you pour sweat, milk, blood, and tears onto your sheets. I want your postpartum to feel blissful, so here are five tips to help you make that happen.

1. Make a postpartum plan.

You can’t plan exactly the way the birth will pan out, but you can plan the details of your postpartum support. Bodywork, meals, laundry, and childcare for your other children are some things to consider. Use this book as a guide to feel into what nonnegotiables you’ll need in place during la cuarentena.

2. Don’t DIY postpartum.

There’s a time and place for self-reliance. Postpartum ain’t the time. Postpartum traditions are community centered. Once you know that you’re pregnant, surrender to other folks holding you. Waddle that ass to circles with like-minded familias who you know would be down for mutual support. This is why we have the Indigemama community and so many other comunidades who are dedicated to saving our lives.

3. Shift your mindset.

One of the biggest internal challenges I see postpartum people go through is the mental chatter that puts a wall up, barring any chance for outside support. When we’re socialized into struggling and then rewarded for doing things on our own, it’s easy to feel guilty asking for help. You might be distrustful of other people’s capacity to fulfill your needs. How many times have you heard women say, “If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself”? This belief sets postpartum people up for anxiety, stress, depression, and overwhelm. If you want postpartum done right, you have to feel in your body that you are worthy of being venerated; you must feel that you are deserving of being held.

Paying homage to you is paying homage to nature itself. Give your potential supporters that opportunity to connect with creation.

4. Repeat after me: affirmations, affirmations.

It’s easy to feel ashamed to ask for what you need. It’s normal to feel guilty when you see how hard people are working for you. Give yourself a pep talk: I allow myself to be cared for. I accept this help. I trust that I can be held without lifting a finger. I surrender myself to the love and labor of others. I soften and allow myself to be carried. I want you to do this every moment that you need it. When you affirm that you’re doing the right thing over and over, then eventually it becomes second nature.

5. Support your romantic relationship.

Postpartum is stressful AF! Those of us with multiple children can tell you that the little ones tend to take precedent over romantic relationships. But after a while, that really weighs down a union. Plan relationship goals. When will you start to date again? What’s the plan for one-on-one time? Who are the people who hold you and your partner(s) up as a sacred union? What baggage can you each decide to let go of now? What support can each of you get individually from healthy older couples who are content with each other? What can you appreciate about each other during la cuarentena? What words do you need to say to each other when the going gets tough? Nurturing a healthy, loving relationship with each other when you’re parenting children is a practice of discipline.

This excerpt is from Thriving Postpartum: Embracing the Indigenous Wisdom of La Cuarentena by Pānquetzani

Pānquetzani

Pānquetzani comes from a matriarchal family of folk healers from the valley of Mexico (Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlaxcala), La Comarca Lagunera (Durango and Coahuila), and Zacatecas. As a traditional herbalist, healer, and birth keeper, Pānquetzani has touched over 3,000 wombs and bellies. Through her platform, Indigemama: Ancestral Healing, she has taught over 100 live, in-person intensives and trainings on womb wellness. She lives in California. For more, visit indigemama.com.

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Amy B. Scher: Releasing Emotional Blockages

Amy Scher — August 27, 2024

How do we effectively devote ourselves to our own health and healing? Whether it’s a physical challenge, a mental health concern, or some combination, how do we take responsibility for the things we should and free ourselves from the burden of what we’re not really accountable for? For Amy B. Scher, it all starts with removing the emotional, energetic blockages that prevent our truest self-expression. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Amy about her own journey, her life-saving books, and her latest offering, the How to Heal Yourself Oracle Deck.

Enjoy this experiential conversation exploring: how to identify the ways in which we hold ourselves back from our authenticity, relieving the unnecessary pressure we put on ourselves, perfectionism, the debilitating consequences of unresolved emotional blocks, energy psychology and EFT, using your intuition, the tapping technique, the role of the thymus gland, releasing stored nervousness, installing positive emotions as an adjunct to self-healing, avoiding the pitfall of toxic positivity, having patience with the process, the power of levity on the healing journey, and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.