
Therapeutic Astrology Podcast
#166 - Philip Shepherd: Ground and Heighten Your Sensitivity to Live More Intelligently AND: How to Feel SAFE When Sensitive (p.2.)
"The more sensitive someone is, the more crucial it is that they embody this other quality if their sensitivity is to inform their wholeness rather than disrupt it." & "If our sensitivities open us to the resonances of the world, it is another capacity that enables us to "gather" what is gleaned rather that being overwhelmed or knocked off balance by it: a capacity that enables us to be "collected"—to deepen into our wholeness and assimilate What Is. We might call this integrative quality 'groundedness'. (Radical Wholeness, 2017, Philip Shepherd - it makes even more sense when read in full context of the book, I just wanted to introduce you to his perspective a little when it comes to sensitivity) Welcome to the second part of my conversation with Philip Shepherd, who is an Embodiment expert, author and co-director of The Embodied Present Process. In this episode we continue to talk about his book RADICAL WHOLENESS, but this time with an emphasis on SENSITIVITY. Basically we learn how sensitivity is a form of intelligence! I begin the interview by quoting him: "When your heart yearns to surrender to the freedom of your wholeness, the journey that beckons is one that has never been made before: no one has ever stepped into your wholeness, and no one can predict where it will take you. You are treading into the unknown. You are opening the body's sensitivities to the thriving wakefulness of the Present living through your being." THEN here is some of the places we go: -Sensitivity to hearing and understanding what you are here to do/your service -Feeling the necessity rather than being pulled away by society -Feel the earth to bring coherence to the sensitivity, and how we learned not to trust the earth and how that will help us join something larger than ourselves -Sensitivity in the education system - I am here thinking of this quote: "Imagine, for a moment, how radically different an education system would be if 1) its aim were to foster intelligence rather than mere learning; 2) it understood intelligence to be 'grounded sensitivity'; and 3) it recognized that the attunement of each child's intelligence to the world is unique." -Reward and punishment, is that the best education? or could we ignite students fire? -Philip shares WHY he cares about sensitivity in the school system -This desensitized realm that seeks to dominate through a top-down relationship -Some ideas on why more people are being diagnosed as autistic -Can we trust the senses? Or the logic more? -Walking in the woods can be while remaining in the head, rather than being in the present, we need to learn from nature -Sexuality and the embodied present process -The wound is reinforced by the school system. Our being and thinking are in fact ONE -Bodyworld,the unity of the self: I am inseparable from the world -Responsebility over idependence -What happens when we shut down sensitivity -Being held by the Present -Reality rather than over ideas about reality -Rather than organizing ourselves and the bind of self-consciousness, we can be organized and guided by the present -My body knows...there is a belonging -Coming back to the body is coming back to sensitivity -A Surrender that EMPOWERS you -Your fluidity -Question what has shaped you, so that you have a choice -Philip - on a listeners request- shares a bit about his bike journey at 17 from England to Japan where he found the limitations of his own culture -HEAR THIS: I knew that if I stayed within my culture, my aliveness would be diminished!!! (Philip is so quotable!) -The pelvic bowl...drop your center of your thinking there -WHEN sensitivity gets dangerous! ...and when it can be SAFE to FEEL Hope you love it. I'll keep reading Philip Shepherd, and I hope to speak with him more in the future. I feel he has some urgently important things to say to our time, and that his work can be therapeutic even through the way it is written, in a more poetic language that I feel engages more of me than usual. LINKS find this episode on youtube: https://youtu.be/NCF4_wQJ458 Find Philip Shepherd here: https://embodiedpresent.com/ the embodied practises: https://embodiedpresent.com/pages/embodiment-practices-for-uncertain-times Philips books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B003VO31LC Mannah: https://www.therapeuticastrologer.com/






