Rosalind Arden Somatic Therapy

23/12/2025

On Grief

One thing I began to notice over time in my clinical work — something that wasn’t clear when I first started — is that no matter what my clients and I were exploring together, in some fundamental way all therapy is grief therapy in the end.

Healing, the care of the soul, requires a touching and holding of the unlived. Not only a midwifing of what we’ve lost, but a compassionate turning toward all that was unable to be lived, for whatever reason.

The selves that had to recede. The needs that couldn’t be named. The possibilities that never found the conditions to come forward.

This material is often too shadowy to reach on our own. It lives at the edge of tolerance, beneath language, beneath story. And so it asks for something relational — a shared field, a shared window of safety — where conscious, embodied presence can slowly gather around it.

In this way, grief is the body’s prayer.

We tend to think of grief as something that arrives after loss. But in a deeper sense, it lives before and beneath the loss itself. Every moment of beauty, every breath of love, every precious experience carries the shadow of impermanence. The mind forgets this. But the heart knows. The body knows.

The body weeps not only because something ended, but because something was ever possible at all.

In this sense, grief is the twin of gratitude. Both arise from the same source — the recognition of how precious this life really is.

23/12/2025

You don’t need an hour on a cushion. You need thirty honest seconds.

Sit. Breathe. Exist.
Exhale like someone who doesn’t owe the world an immediate reply.

Even one mindful breath counts.
You’re not behind — you’re simply arriving.

✨ Congratulations. You’re late to nothing.

If you want to teach from lived experience—not perfection...
👉Visit https://bit.ly/MindfulnessCertify

21/12/2025

“When I simply am, it’s interesting how good I can feel.”
— Diane Musho Hamilton

This isn’t a statement about happiness as an achievement. It’s a recognition of what’s already here when we stop pushing, fixing, or narrating ourselves.

So much of our suffering comes from the belief that something needs to change before we can be at ease. But when we pause long enough to simply be—to feel the body breathing, to notice the room we’re in, to let go of the next improvement project—we often discover a quiet sense of okay-ness underneath the striving.

Practice isn’t about manufacturing a better experience. It’s about noticing how much is already working when we stop interfering so much. This doesn’t mean life becomes perfect. It means we begin meeting life as it is, instead of as a problem to solve.

Sometimes the most radical act is not doing more—but allowing ourselves to rest in what’s already present.

That’s not resignation.
That’s wisdom remembering itself.

21/12/2025

“Through the power of inner transformation, we can nurture the conditions for sustainable peace - within ourselves, within our communities, and within our shared global home.” – United Nations

🌍 Today, we’re celebrating World Meditation Day, proclaimed by the UN General Assembly to raise awareness about meditation and its benefits.

If you’d like to join a global community to practise mindfulness meditation, our weekday live online meditation sessions continue to run twice a day at 13:00 and 19:00 UK Time – including the 24 and 25 December 2025.

Maintain your practice with a warm, welcoming and international community – all are welcome 💛

Find out more and register 👉 https://oxfordmindfulness.org/live-online-meditations

16/12/2025

As long as we have a body, there will be shadow.

The goal is not to get rid of it — or even to fully integrate it — as its expressions are always emerging, shaped by psyche, relationship, and lived experience.

The invitation is to illuminate the shadow and engage it more consciously: as partner, emissary, lover, and friend. At times emphasizing union; at other times honoring separation and personal integrity.

Here, multiplicity is as holy as unity. Differentiation as sacred as oneness. Those distinctions dissolve into the cosmic womb.

It is only through cultivating a conscious, embodied relationship with what has been unfelt, marginalized, or unlived that we come to know the light hidden within the black sun — that region of the heart where shadow and light belong to one another.

The shadow is not a repository of pathology or unenlightened impulses. It is composed of concealed wisdom, creativity, and soul, awaiting a sanctuary in which it can unfold and disclose.

What falls into the shadow will inevitably be evoked, enacted, or somatized. This is its nature.

Not to harm us. Not to take us down. Not as an obstacle to the path — but as the path itself.

The purpose of shadow work is not to eliminate shadow, but to open a space in which it can reveal its multicolored light.

16/12/2025

When your inner guard dog is activated it either barks all the time or cowers in the shed.

It’s very hard to talk to this inner guard dog – it likes to run, jump, fight or shut down. Having a long conversation with your guard dog won’t do much good!

However, you can train your inner guard dog, stroke your guard dog, and nourish your guard dog, so that instead of barking or cowering in the shed, it can play with the kids and only bark in the middle of the night if it needs too.

When we’re in ‘guard dog’ mode, we get stuck in the quick, primitive reflexes that are underneath our cognitive abilities – we can’t think clearly. When this happens, we need to help our physiology shift out of its stuck, protective reflexes first.

Or in other words, we need to interrupt the freeze, flood and dissociation patterns as soon as you can when you’re working to heal trauma. Put the brakes on early and give your system time to settle and integrate.

The gentle, safe, relational, non-doing touch that we teach on the Body College Art of Touch has the potential to switch off protective reflexes and promote learning and growth.

You can find out more about my two-year Art of Touch biodynamic craniosacral therapy (BCST) training by clicking the link in my bio.

16/12/2025

This.

One of the most subtle forms of growth is learning to stay present when we don’t know.

Most of us are trained to move quickly toward certainty — to form an opinion, take a position, decide what something means. Not knowing can feel uncomfortable, even threatening. The mind wants to resolve ambiguity as fast as possible.

Practice gently invites a different capacity. Instead of rushing to understand, we learn how to stay. To feel the uncertainty in the body. To notice the urge to conclude. To allow the moment to remain open a little longer than we normally would.

This kind of not knowing isn’t passive or naive. It’s intelligent. It creates space for more information to emerge — from ourselves, from others, from the situation itself. When we don’t collapse into quick certainty, we listen better. We see more. We respond with greater care.

In relationships, this matters enormously. The ability to stay present without immediately defending, fixing, or explaining is often what allows real understanding to arise. Not knowing becomes a form of respect — for the complexity of the moment and for the humanity of everyone involved.

Growing up doesn’t mean having all the answers. It means being able to stand steadily inside the questions, without needing them to resolve right away.

15/12/2025

Many have experienced trauma that, unknowingly, has manifested as symptoms, behaviors, and actions that aren’t understood to have a root cause. Choose which pathway best describes what you’re currently facing, and access a profound teaching from one of the nation’s leading experts in trauma re...

15/12/2025