Session 2

The mounting energy that cannot take only showing up partially will take me far: the slut arrives. I do a standing up, moving journey blind folded that is witnessed by Frank. Knowing deep in my bones that this process is extremely powerful for me my mind leaps in trying to break it down to nothing. I continue moving continue pulsing and the energy comes through. The slut arrives and articulates her fullness, her lust for life, her joy her freedom in rhythm, her beauty. My work is witnessed. Frank and I move into the intimacy touching deep space circling there deeper and longer than usually and the block is melting.


Session 3

Kirsten arrives. She is also a student of Frank’s. Turns out we know each other when she walks in the door. We grew up in the same small town in Ohio. We are pulsing through similar spaces and places in our lives. Building frustration of not doing the work that we love. Longing to show up deeper and fuller. Kirsten does a sound and touch energy massage for me. I am naked. I am lying on my back. I am receptive. I do not know what is next. I lay and I trust. I feel like a Goddess being honored in her softness. We are two Goddesses witnessing each other. I feel past trauma of body and sexuality being lifted, floating away in this soft space of honoring. I witness her in her full self. The process feels ancient. This is the work that she is meant to do and it seems so natural.

Frank and Kirsten go into the pool of intimacy rocking and stroking and I explore their bodies through soft touch. I am naked and I am blindfolded. I go on a journey and I speak my journey. I meet Puff the magic dragon after climbing up a rainbow and he talks to me about magic. My journey is witnessed by Frank and Kirsten’s rocking and surrendering to the deep. The three of us are on a magical journey of all the senses. The block is melting.


Session 4

Kirsten returns and we read. My mind swims in the deep of the words of Frank. I cannot hold tight to any of it but experience its truth and a certain kind of genius that feels so familiar. Feels like what I have longed for. The block is melting.

I return to the world without so much of a block, feeling more open within my body. Week’s later pieces of it are flying up and spitting out all over the place. I find a new home to live in that is in the woods. I find more meaning in my job in simple ways. I concentrate on being rather than creating something magnificent. I know that I just have to begin my work. There just isn’t much choice anymore. I cannot tolerate abandoning my soul any longer. The block is melting.


After the Intensive

Pieces of the block are flying up in front of my face as my partner goes through a breaking apart and a search to recover himself, a pulling away and major distancing. My body aches as I continually turn back to the path that is other than feeling abandoned, other than abandoning him and other than ultimately abandoning myself. Pieces of the block that become mirrors so easy to say that it his him that has pulled away when really I must look deeply at myself to see how I defend, distance and abandon. In exploring the defense, distance abandon wall that looks more like a film or a bubble it is how I distance myself from everyone and everything and stepping out of it is stepping out of isolation, stepping away from distancing from everything and everyone. I distance through anger, through blame through emotional upset, through feeling helpless and taking it. In this sadness in feeling that I have lost something I have turned away from the work, taken weeks to write this when in the deep of my being the only way is to step through the film and embrace the Tampanic healing goddess and all that she is.

So after four weeks my body system begins to shout and scream and I can no longer stay in this place that my partner and I are in. I have distanced, he has distanced even more. He is almost unreachable. I am trying to stay open but I’m not fully doing it. I have to show up. Show up like I’ve never shown up before. Showing up means calmly, firmly lovingly I must convey to my partner that we must both begin to return to the relationship or we must leave and that we need to go to therapy to help the process. The pain I must wade through, cry through and clear to be able to show up for this is horrific in the heart and the belly. Old crap, old fear. I stay with it and I show up and he agrees to go to therapy. Now I’m in an unknown land because I showed up and he said yes. It’s so vulnerable in this space, so powerfully vulnerable. Then he doesn’t show up for the therapy and I know then and there that he cannot show up and I must leave because I demand to be matched in showing up.

It is now three months later……..(I have still to send this off to Frank for some reason full of soap or maybe because the intensive hasn’t stopped…..it’s still working me in full) My relationship has ended but the difference this time is that I showed up for myself so for the first time I do not feel abandoned. My partner abandoned himself. I feel much clearer about what I now want in a relationship and I won’t, can’t settle for anything less than showing up, going deep, transforming touching spirit and being creative. The opening for a relationship is deep sometimes such an opening of longing I have never experienced before.

I’m seeing a transpersonal life coach to help get me on course since I am far away from Frank (something I have not reckoned with). I’ve started doing my work……I call it “Moving Journeys: Performing the Dreaming Body.” I’ve done moving/talking journeys with three people so far. Basically I go on the journey with the person while we touch hands/move/and they speak the journey. The moving part is really important as is connecting with someone else while journeying. It has been a delight to get to go on other people’s journeys with them and the process is usually quite effortless and moves a lot of energy for me. The really scary part is that I have committed to doing a Moving Journey Performance at an Earth Fair in about a month. So now I am sitting in all my soap about the part of me that is terrified to be so vulnerable so in the moment and so alive and what seems to represent “me” and oh I’d still like to hide.

So the short of it is that I was blocked really blocked for months, couldn’t make anything happen. I went to see Frank for an intensive and I haven’t stopped transforming. I’ve started doing my work which actually has a name now simple on some level but no small feat actually doing it. I took the next step in going deeper into the space of relationship and intimacy, my partner just did not come with me, but I came with me and I get see the possibility for relationship on a whole different much deeper level. I see how my work and relationship are connected. When I show up fully in my work I will make space for a relationship that will show up fully which will in circle support my work. It’s beautiful and right now really uncomfortable moving out of the familiar.

Erika Shaver-Nelson
July 2003

Tampanic Healing ArtistI am the tampanic healing artist

I am the slut
The one who moves rivers
Of lusty love through my core
The one who vibrates in orange and yellow
Rippling
Safe and in love with life
Safe and in love with life
Touching and licking the atmosphere
I am the one who moves and sways
With my thighs open wide to
The universe
Full with exuberance and connection
Juicy
And transforming
I am the part that is alive
The slut
The love goddess who swims
In the pools of opening desire
Swims through my opening heart
Fills the longing to be fully alive
Fully open
Fully receiving the power of lusty
Juicy vibrating me
At the core, and the center
Spreading out like wings that
Wrap me and hold me and dance
Within me
I am the slut
The juicy one
The creative birthing one
The dancing, flowing
Powerful vibration
That knows my direction
Knows my path, my purpose
Alive with instinct
I am the slut
The running wild, free and singing
Juicy one.

Ulla April 2003