The Urban Barefoot (2026)

10/04/2023

TRUSTING YOUR FEELINGS

For way longer than you could remember, really for your whole life, you’ve had these things called feelings, and nobody to show you the way to be with them.

That’s not entirely true. You’ve had many people give you instructions on what to do about them and they have mostly been about trying your best to ignore them, change them, or get rid of them somehow.

Now, here you are with the same feelings that never went away. They may have become buried so deep in you that you don’t notice them, but you know that they are still there. They explode out of you from time to time and leave you wondering what the heck just happened. You may have recently had an experience where you lashed out at someone faster than you could notice and then felt like you didn’t want to do that.

The way to get a grip on this is to start creating the ability to become aware and that begins with learning.

Let’s get to it.

This space will be a gentle introduction into the territory of the emotional body.

WE WILL COVER:
- Recognizing your feelings
- A new approach to welcome your feelings
- Communicating about your feelings
- Distinguishing what is about now and what is about the past

WHEN/WHERE:
75min call every Thursday @ 11am Eastern time (5p CEST) on ZOOM for 8wks starting May 18
Sessions will be recorded, if you cannot attend please let the group know

CHAT:
Ongoing WhatsApp chat for the group to connect & share

DM me for more details & registration info.

06/04/2023

I think you’ve heard of the fight, flight or freeze principle by now. It is your response to a threat.

When you were young and your parents unconsciously threatened you, there’s a good chance you were not able to fight or flee, so your only option was the ‘freeze’. This was not about your physical body becoming paralyzed, what it meant for you was numbness. It was about putting layer upon layer of ice around your heart to protect it. Your parents' generation, and many generations before them, didn't have the tools to hold space for you to feel what you were feeling, so you had to make so many decisions about your emotions to help you numbingly survive.

Some of these decisions may have been something like:
- it’s not safe to feel
- I have to be quiet and polite to be loved
- Anger is dangerous/violent/out of control
- Boys don’t cry
- Fear is weak
- If someone is mad, they don’t love me
- Etc..

Now in this generation, it's time to undo them.

There is only one way to break through the wall of numbness and learn how to feel the feelings that have always been there, again..

It’s not an intelectual process.

It’s about yelling, crying, screeching, sobbing, ROARINGGG.

Yes, it’s about creating safe spaces within yourself to try it - to ask someone to sit with you while you say all the things you weren’t able to say, make the sounds, the tears, the snot, all of it.

Reclaim your energy. Reclaim your aliveness.

It is for you and it’s not for you. It’s for the seven generations that came before you and the seven generations to come.

🦁

30/03/2023

THE GARBAGE PILES UP

I decided to start reading a very uncomfortable book called My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem. This quote touched me deeply and I’d like to share more about it.

This is a very hard topic to discuss. It has so much to do with deeply held belief systems, and when this part of our beings is touched the defense systems come up really strongly.

So, I’ll start with my definition of ‘healing’. It is a process by which a limiting belief or pattern is irrevocably undone. For instance, the quote in the image attached to this caption comes from a book about racism and white supremacy. Just mentioning these topics might create a reaction in your body - a tension, a contraction, an anger, a fear, etc.. That reaction gives you a limited set of options about how to interact with this caption. You may decide that you love it or that you hate it. These types of visceral reactions tend to reflexively create a very limited set of options to choose from - binary options like “stay or go”, “love or hate”, “yes or no”, “agree or disagree”.

But there are so many more ways to interact with this. Actually, there are unlimited ways to do it. For example, you could choose to become curious about your experience of it. You can ask yourself, why do I react to something like this? You could initiate a conversation with the author or with a friend about it. You could create a group to talk about it.

And into Infiniti.

Or you could choose to do nothing and move on with your life. The discomfort might be too much.

And yet as the quote suggests, this might not be the option that will best serve you.

24/02/2023

(This piece is the result of many conversations I’ve had this week. It is born from the pain of hearing this theme over and over. I hope it lands in someone who needs it.)
CONFUSION

Imagine being financially successful, married, kids, nice house, nice car.. you know the deal.. and all the while feeling totally empty inside. This is the reality for so many - living an empty dream dictated by the majority as what we came to Earth to do.

Then they say something like, “I don’t know what’s wrong” - the confusion card.

Then, come the stories to support the confusion:
“I couldn’t possibly do anything different.”
“I have a family that I need to support.”
“I’m doing everything right. There must be something wrong with me.”

Why?

Because admitting the truth would be so incredibly painful that it would demolish the whole facade.

And the deep pain continues to build.

After this goes on long enough, the disease begins to make itself known. It was already brewing, but now it’s so big that it can’t go unconscious anymore.

The body gets louder and louder until you make a change (death is also a form of change).

If only you had just admitted to yourself that you felt angry because you’re not living a life in alignment with your being, and then kept listening & making changes.

Change now or change later.. you cannot escape it.

10/02/2023

BEING CENTERED

It’s much harder than you think, yet it’s so simple.

We just never learned to live this way.

Instead, we learned to be adaptive. We learned to worry about what everyone else thinks. We learned to walk on eggshells. We learned to be distracted by fashion trends and movie star drama. We learned to give our authority away to figures like doctors, lawyers, politicians, and large corporations.

You don’t become centered just by saying something like, “from now on I will live my life”.

The process requires deep study and practice

It requires authentic adulthood initiation.
This post is sourced from the world of Possibility Management. I have not found another culture that offers true, accessible initiatory processes like this one does.

31/01/2023

FAIL HARD / LEARN FAST / GO AGAIN

Last night, Charlotte and I created a space for exploring intimacy.

It was a disaster.

I did not show up in a way that allowed for deep intimacy to happen.

As I explored it today in a space with my team of men, I discovered that I was holding on to an image of myself. The first layer was that I was protecting them because I labeled them as fragile and unable to handle my direct feedback. As I was guided deeper into it, I saw that it was really that if I took this step to say what was really going on for me, then I might lose access to this group of people who I enjoy being with.

I lost the authentic connection to myself in the present moment out of an unconscious fear of abandonment.

In this process, I abandoned myself. I did exactly what I was trying to avoid.

This is one of the ways that I destroy the possibility of intimacy. This is how I did it last night.

The process that I described here is how I fail hard and learn fast so that I can keep going.

So, the next Intimacy Journey is coming up next week. Another opportunity to see another layer of my underworld. Because if we don’t create these space to uncover this, who will?

22/01/2023

RELATIONSHIP IS A SKILL

Skills take practice.

We were not taught about this in school. I’m not talking about relationship, I’m talking about the fact that relationship is a skill.

So, we went about our lives thinking that it was about finding the ‘right person’ and every time it didn’t work out, we chalked it up to a ‘bad match’.

Here you are now. You’ve seen a new map about what relationship is and this new map creates new possibilities, but these new possibilities take work - practice. It’s like wanting to become a pro athlete by starting in your 20s or 30s or 40s. You’ll probably never make it.

But this is relationship. It is the core of human existence.

Will you choose to start consciously practicing now even though the day you start is already too late?

The other option is to keep living in the fantasy that it’s about the ‘right match’, keep going on dates, spending time & money, falling in the traps, getting in fights, numbing yourself because it’s all too painful.

Creating intimacy is a skill that takes conscious practice. It is about going into spaces where the context is about learning new skills. It is not something that is generally offered in the normal civilization game. You’ll have to go out to the edge to find it.

PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE

21/01/2023

INTIMACY DIY

I know two people who have built very large, very special houses for themselves recently.

One of them hired all of the right people and let them take care of it so that he could continue living & traveling the way he wanted. He didn’t have to worry about how it was going. He didn’t even have to get any updates because he really trusted the team. They got it done and he showed up to his beautiful new home on move-in day to enjoy his new home base.

As for the other, you could say he has major control issues - extreme neurosis. He hired an architect because he had to and ended up learning how to use the graphic design software to actually design the house himself. He drove around for weeks looking at other houses to get inspired for his design. He was at the site every single day directing every inch of the build. He was involved in every measurement, every angle, every material, every tile, every handle, every.. single.. thing.. He fought with every contractor. He battled it out every step of the way. He might even have some PTSD left over from it.

In our modern, civilized world the goal is to live life like the first person. It’s about making things easier so we can ‘enjoy life’.

But there is a trade off for this way of living.

There is no intimacy.

You see, the first person moves into their house and it’s not even really theirs. The second person has a deep connection with every square inch of their home. They have a story about every little piece of the place. They know what it took to make it happen. They felt the pain of every step. The energy in the their home is so incredibly high. It vibrates with the love it took to make it happen.

We’re in such a rush to get to the next step that we create things that are essentially dead. We create Frankensteins - grabbing bits of different things off the shelf and jamming them together, then plugging a million volts of electricity (money) into it until it comes to ‘life’.

[CONTINUED IN COMMENTS ⬇️]

01/01/2023

CONSEQUENCE

Last night, I whipped out one of my favorite games (taught to me by ) during a small gathering with friends. In this game, each person creates a rule for the group in which there is some sort of action or restriction that the other people need to follow, otherwise there is a consequence. For instance: if you point at someone, you must sing a song for everyone.

This game has an amazing ability to create such a deep level of presence because everyone suddenly becomes very aware of their behavior. Awareness and presence are close relatives.

It also has a way of bringing out some deep programs/patterns in all of us. A common ‘complaint’ about the game is that it is very restrictive. I especially hear this from people who like to consider themselves ‘spiritual’ because there is this desire to always be ‘in flow’. However, it is clear that boundaries create a strong platform for awareness, as explored in the paragraph above.

Another common remark during this game is calling the consequences, ‘punishment’. There is a big distinction between a consequence and a punishment, although to some people they both sound the same.

Why?

A consequence is simply the result of what you do. Punishment is the western culture program for what happens when you mess up. You are told that “you did something wrong”, that “you are a bad boy/girl”, that “the parents know better and you should just listen to us”, that “you are stupid”, [insert your childhood beatdown]..

It has a lot to do with the way humans are raised in this western world where the context is about avoiding responsibility.

Instead, you could do something totally unthinkable and choose to neutrally study the result of each action you take and be open to the feedback that comes with it.

Because responsibility means that you accept that every single action has a consequence. Taking a very high level of responsibility means that you value that every action has a consequence, and you seek to understand/learn from them.

[CONTINUED IN COMMENTS ⬇️]

29/12/2022

I’m taking these final days of the year to recap this insane year.

Going back through everything has sparked conversations with people with whom I’ve journeyed. These people that I’ve had the privilege of surrounding myself with have reflected back to me how powerful it is to feel it all.

You know who you are.

We are the future elders. Our pain awakens our wisdom.

This new year brings new intentions, but there is one that will continue..

FEEL IT ALL

19/12/2022

SA TA NA MA

is a Kundalini Yoga mantra that calls in the cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth.

How is this related to the words in the image?

It’s quite simple..

In the natural birthing process, you are pushed through a narrow doorway that is just big enough to fit YOU. It is as if the world created it this way to make sure you didn’t bring any possessions or attachments from the past with you.

Then, life ensues and through childhood you start to take on a lot. It’s the unspoken contract that children have with their caretakers. ‘You keep me safe & alive; I take on your beliefs, stories, patterns, etc..’ It’s not good or bad, it just is because a child is not capable of taking care of themselves.

In an ideal world, the caretakers would have developed healthy beliefs, stories, and patterns that are in alignment with the natural world and consciousness, and passed those on to the children. That’s not the way it is these days, in modern culture.

It gets quite interesting from here..

One of the healthy, natural beliefs that we could’ve adopted is that around the age of 18, a child’s consciousness expands into a space that can hold an adult context. At this point, the child must go through an initiation into adulthood in order to take radical responsibility - a death of the old and rebirthing through the doorway of their own beliefs, stories, patterns, etc. This is a practice that is common amongst all ancient tribes prior to the emergence of our modern world.

The interesting part is that the belief systems adopted for caretakers don’t actually matter because the initiatory process strips all of it away. The difference is that when a child is prepared through their upbringing, they welcome the process with a different perspective and preparedness.

Now, here you are reading this. You are probably quite a bit older than 18. You might be thinking it’s too late.

It might be.

Or you might just be reading this at the exact moment that you needed a shift in your being to happen, and that makes you stand up wherever you are and state (out loud for all to hear), “I commit to starting my initiatory process into adulthood”.

[Continued in comments ⬇️]

15/12/2022

(I wrote this piece two weeks ago after a process and I left it in the back burner thinking I would not post it, but since the topic has just surfaced through social media, in a big way, I’m choosing to share it. Before going further, it’s important to note that this (and all of my writing) comes from a context of radical responsibility - I work to take responsibility for all the messes that I see in my life.. period. It is very different from the usual perspective where people give their power away to outside forces, throw their hands in the air, and say ‘this is how it is and there’s nothing I can do abut it’. We definitely need help from others, but we have to initiate and ask for what we need.)

MIXED FEELINGS

Earlier today, I went through an Emotional Healing Process where I noticed that there are still layers deep within me where my Anger & Sadness are still mixed together. I did this when I was a baby in order to make sense of the world, in order to survive.

This has nothing to do with what my parents did or didn’t do. It is about how I perceived the world and the decisions I made in order to stay in connection with my life givers. I adapted to the world in which I lived.

I handed my power over to my parents to make decisions for me. I let them decide because although I was angry about the way things were being done, I was also sad about the possibility of losing connection to them. So, I mixed them together and have lived with a subtle level of depression ever since.

This doesn’t mean that all depression is now suddenly gone from my body, but at least one more layer of this mixed, messy, confused energy has been worked through and I have offered myself access to more of the power of my pure anger and pure sadness again.

This process offers me the possibility to be in connection without being adaptive, speak up without destroying the intimacy, be clear about my desires in a way that fosters more closeness (I use the word “possibility” because it’s still my responsibility to actually make it happen - this is not a magic spell).

[Continued in comments ⬇️]

The Urban Barefoot