Integration: Key to Healing

22nd May 2024 Written by Dvonne Loring

Pictured here is me in full costume and stage make up for an embodied storytelling performance I did recently

For the last three months I have been journeying in the Eclectica container

My life has been devoted to all things dance, embodiment, raw feminine power, expression, sisterhood and so much more

Last night, me and my fellow 20 sisters shared our last class and officially closed the portal

It was a life changing experience

I can often struggle to describe profound experiences soon after they end

Words at that point simply aren’t ripe yet

As a writer, I struggle with this

I find great discomfort when I can’t find the vocabulary to poignantly punctuate what it is I’m trying to articulate

When it’s all feeling, I’m invited to surrender and to allow words to betray me because they simply do not do justice what it is that is being felt

What this process is now asking of me is the beginning of the integration process

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I’m a big advocate of integration

After a big and profound or even a small yet powerful experience, integration is an important piece

As we traverse new experiences that draw upon different parts of us, it guides our becoming 

What did we learn?

What no longer feels relevant?

What knowing has come through?

Who are we now having had this experience?

Do we want this experience to inspire us?

If so, what might that look like?

Integration is something I often see missed in the healing / spiritual / therapeutic / wellness spaces

Yet it’s such a fundamental part of the picture at large

Notice if you’re someone who jumps from experience to experience, workshop to workshop or course to course

People can easily become addicted to workshops, therapy, festivals, retreats, full day immersions

I’m not denying the value of these spaces; so much learning takes place within them

However, we can unknowingly deny ourselves the deeper, longer term value these spaces and experiences can offer us if we don’t pause and take an intentional moment to allow what was touched within us

What was evoked

What awakened

What was met

To metabolize

It’s in the slow where we can allow the wisdom of such internal meetings to reverberate through us

To weave itself into the fabric of who we now are and inform how we’d like to show up anew

I see it often where people spread themselves thin and sign up for many things simultaneously 

Where they’re engaged in so many things that they aren’t present for any of it

Or they're innocently unaware they've become hooked on the exhilaration of new and intense experiences

So again the nectar that’s tucked within these experiences awaiting them to receive, is missed

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If there’s anything you can do to support the landing after a significant experience in your life

Take a moment to pause

To reflect

To notice

To feel

Allow the fibres in your being and the cells in your body the opportunity absorb the experience

Offer yourself time

Sing

Dance

Journal

Create art

Be with nature

Share with a loved one

Find ways to express yourself to help you digest the experience 

The process of knowledge becoming wisdom

The journey of information entering the mind and descending into the body

That’s true learning

That’s true healing darlings

That's embodiment

If we consider healing to be lifelong, consider integration to be its twin flame to journey with you also

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To the Eclectica experience

Thank you for all that you have bestowed me with

May I honour you by honouring me

Writing this piece has been a reverent gesture to my own integration

xx