Adriene Cobcroft, Somatic Relationship Therapist

22/01/2023

Happy lunar new year! This year I have some new things to offer up to nourish and support our island community 🥰 I’m playing with new ways of holding space that will hopefully be more fun and reach more people than I can with client sessions ✨

25/11/2021

Oh wow! This is the most marvellous Christmas ad ❤️

In a recent short film titled When Harry Met Santa, the dapper man named Harry stole the moment with Santa Claus when he visited him on Christmas Eve. The video has been published on YouTube, and it shows Harry and Santa’s relationship developing. However, Harry is devastated having to wait for Sa...

29/07/2021

Everything we need to know contained inside of us…

02/06/2020

21/04/2020

Yesterday I was listening to the hilariously endearing podcast Staying in with Emily and Kumail, episode 4 ‘In the Weirds’, where Kumail shares about his internal rules. He was recounting the strict rules he imposed on himself in childhood for no apparent reason, while he and Emily mused that that trait is still so powerful for him.

This morning in the shower I was thinking about Kumail’s self-imposed rules, reflecting on my own inner rules, and I realised that my ‘inner manager’ is a part of me that I haven’t really explored properly.

If you have worked with me in somatic coaching, you will be aware of the parts of self identity work… where we map out the various characters and aspects of personality to better understand ourselves. Powerful stuff.

I sat down after this morning’s shower with my dedicated Parts of Self notebook, and mapped out my manager.

I have recently been joking with my partner about this part of me, how wonderful she is, how much she understands me and supports me.

This morning I realised that much of the way I have been able to transition with minimal angst from working for an agency to solo business, and also from pre-Coronavirus to isolation is thanks to my inner manager.

She is in parts made up of previous managers I have worked with (shout out to the amazing Robin Black), and partly a reaction away from some not-so-wonderful managers I have worked with in the past.

She understands that I am not a morning person, that I need to take it slowly and come fully into myself before I put on my professional self to hold space for others.

She knows that I do my best work when I feel spacious enough to come back to myself between client sessions.

She is compassionate and understanding while also putting guidelines in place for how to stay creatively focused and productive.

She gets that if I don’t have these things my procrastinator will take over and sabotage my productivity.

Getting clear on my manager & other parts of me has helped me to understand who I am and why I can be so organised in some ways and so self sabotaging in others.

Shout out also to Emily and Kumail for being such great ‘companions’ through isolation times.

09/04/2020

It feels really good right now to focus on things that keep me and my people safe and healthy.

I am also enjoying turning my focus back to home crafts that I have neglected over the past years.

This morning I made some Master Tonic AKA Fire Water, which is a great tonic for warding off cold & flu viruses and generally maintaining good health.

There’s something magical about taking these ingredients and putting them all together…

This morning’s brew contains:
a large chunk of ginger, grated
6 ‘fingers’ of turmeric, grated
2 large green chillies, chopped
5 small red chillies, chopped
A head of garlic, peeled and rough chopped
1 medium brown onion, sliced
A dessert spoon of peppercorns
Thyme from the garden
Approximately 500 mls apple cider vinegar

I’ll shake the jar at least once daily for the next couple of weeks, then start drinking a spoonful here and there when we need it.

It’s great to use for salad dressings or anytime you would normally use vinegar.

04/04/2020

A few days ago a recently homeless guy pitched his tent on a vacant block near my house.
We went over and had a chat with him. He had moved to Tasmania a few months ago to escape the ratbags in Melbourne, and to make a new life for himself. He was living in a short-term rental somewhere nearby until the coronavirus came and his landlord kicked him out.

Of course we don’t know the full story, but the sad truth of it is that at this time when we should all be isolating in our homes, this guy doesn’t have one.

He really wanted us to know that he wasn’t a ratbag himself and that we didn’t need to worry about him living here. We gave him a sleeping bag and mat and hoped that his tent didn’t leak in the torrential rain that fell down that day.

We heard from neighbours through the day that the police and the owners of the land came by to chat with him. I hope they gave him some leads about where to go for more stable shelter. In the talks I had with a homelessness service that day, I realised that we are sadly ill-equipped as a community to manage homelessness.

He stayed all through the night, and emerged the next morning when the rain eased up. I caught a glimpse of him when I woke, and by the time I had had my morning shower, he had packed up his tent and was gone.

It’s got me thinking about everything that is happening now, about how things are changing for all of us, and about how things are shifting in our communities.

How quickly things can change.
- money can be allocated to bailing out those in need
- Airbnb houses can switch to rentals
- our habitual activities can pause and adapt
- certain professions emerge as ‘essential’
- air and water quality improves - almost immediately…

There is a power in knowing all this.

We CAN change. We can make new choices and adapt to new situations.

Moving forward we will all be making new choices.

I really hope we work together to find ways that work for all of us.

I hope that we can find ways to share our resources so none are left without, and none have too much.

I hope that that homeless guy finds a place to stay safe and warm out of the way of coronavirus.

08/03/2020

What changed?

How is it that this system, which by its own definition, as ‘governed by the people’, is no longer serving the vast majority of us, the people?

It’s a curious question to be sure.

The system of democracy itself hasn’t changed much. We still have the same structures of governance, in more or less the same form as they first appeared back a few thousand years ago.

If you google Democracy you will find some really great descriptions of a people-led system that originated in ancient Greece. The demos (translated as ‘people’) was at that time a space where the people met to discuss the issues and rules (kratos) of the community.

Sounds pretty good, yeah? Kind of like the parliamentary systems we still have today.

You know, when we think of democracy, we usually think of values such as fairness, equality, honesty, freedom and basic human rights.

We believe that this system is the best choice because the alternatives all seem to have failed, or they offer less of the above-mentioned values.

And yet, as with everything, the devil is in the details…

To get a clear picture of what democracy has been to us in the recent past, and what it is currently, we need to think about who ‘we’ are as a community, and who we have been.

Obviously people and communities change over time in response to the conditions of the world.

Democracy has more or less stood the tests of time, weathering the changes in communities throughout the eras of written history. Until now.

That means that we have been continually maintaining our communities in a conscious form for thousands of years.

That’s pretty cool if you ask me, and gives us a clue as to what we need to do to change what isn’t working any more.

Recently, times have been changing at an ever-increasing speed, thanks to the development of incredible interwebs of connectivity AKA the information superhighway.

We the people, now have a platform to host our ‘democratic’ voice that allows us to raise issues that were invisible in politics prior to this era.

Visit medium to continue reading:

https://medium.com//why-democracy-isnt-working-and-what-we-can-do-about-it-6a02423ae358

15/01/2020

Fifteen days into 2020, I have decided on my word for the year.

RESILIENCE

This is the energy I want to create, both in myself and together with my clients as we move into a new world.

It’s impossible to avoid the impact of change on this precious planet we live on when the skies are full of smoke and the great Aussie summer has become a time of threat and anxiety.

This, added to the fast pace of change we are experiencing in the collective consciousness make personal and cultural resilience a vital element in all our lives.

This year I will be diving head-first into solopreneurship without the buffer of side-employment to lean on.

I feel a heady mix of excitement and fear when I think about the opportunity I have gifted myself...

Excited about three extra days each week to spend co-creating with clients, family, friends and my garden!

Fearful of stepping out into the vast territory of being an entrepreneur without a safety net.

Here I go, walking forward with my eyes and heart wide open into a year of creating resilience ❤️

06/01/2020

What is safety in the context of crisis?

I hear a lot of people talking about how to create external safety

How to survive a bush fire...

How to leave an abusive relationship…

How to stay out of danger…

How to rally for the future…

But how do we care for our internal safety?

How do we manage our thoughts when the world is burning?

What do we do with our feelings?

Anger
Grief
Sorrow
Fear

How do we find hope in the face of an apocalyptic future?

We need to rely on our inner resilience and trust in ourselves.

We need to understand that our inner safety relies on our ability to create an internal ecology of robust resilience and flexibility…

So that we can sit with our feelings and thoughts and still be okay no matter what happens in the world around us.

When we are resilient and flexible our feelings become a source of strength instead of weakness.