Listening to the Body and Listening to the Earth with linda hartley

Ailey Jolie (00:00)

So I have started asking every guest the same question at the start of our time together, and I would love to hear from you. What does being in your body mean to you at this stage in your

Linda Hartley (00:13)

Interesting question because I'm in a later stage of my life so it is very different. Being in my elder years it's very different from in my early years where it would do more or less what I wanted it to do.

Being in my body as an elder, there's all sorts of challenges that come up where the body is not as resilient, it's not as flexible.

I think the word intimacy is one I'm using a lot these days and exploring this very intimate way that our consciousness, our body and also the Earth body are intimately connected.

Ailey Jolie (00:41)

Mmm.

And we'll get to the connection with the earth body, because that's one of the reasons why I really wanted to have you here today was to speak about your book that has just come out. But before we get there, I know that you've devoted your life to the body, not just as a structure, but a source of meaning and memory and connection. And your work first came to me when I was doing my master's in depth psychology and somatic studies. We had to read you and there's so much of your work that I loved, but I

would love for the listener who maybe is totally new to you and your work. Just to start right maybe at the beginning, if you can share what drew you first into the movement work and into the body-based practice that you then developed.

Linda Hartley (01:33)

Yes, I mean, of course, as a child movement was very important. I loved nothing more than being outside, running about, playing, swimming. I never considered it as a profession. In my teens, I wanted to be a writer that was playing. And I can't say how it... The idea of following... It was following dance, initially.

It was one of those moments where this idea just dropped in. was in a conversation with a friend who was about to go to art college. I suddenly had this inspiration. I want to be a dancer. It just seemed to come out of nowhere. But over the years, I've I've realised that also it was unconsciously or subconsciously a path of healing for me.

all of us in different ways have suffered some early trauma and I was not in my body, I was not connected to my body in the way that I had been as a young child and needed to be to go forward. So I think there was a subconscious motivation to heal through a practice that would both

bring me back to my body, but also allow me to express through my body. So in the early years, it was the dancing, the expression that was really important and that gradually moved towards more of a healing and therapeutic approach to the body and movement.

Ailey Jolie (03:00)

Could you speak a little bit more about what it gradually moved into as you founded the Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy in 1990? And this, I know, began with a small offering in Berlin, and now has grown into like a multi-country training program. One that I am gonna go do actually the workshop this summer, and maybe it will become a part of the things I explore, because it really has something quite different is what I see on the outside. And I would love to hear about your process of creating that program and

also just like what it is for the listener who doesn't know being from North America. I had never heard of it until I got here and then I was like, my goodness, this is amazing.

Linda Hartley (03:36)

Okay, well I suppose from my first love of dance I very quickly got into what we would now call synaptic dance. The practice that I was being led into was called release work. Mary Fawkeson was my teacher and so I got quite quickly into practices that were more about health and healing and well-being.

and I got very interested in body-mind centering. So when I went to visit New York, I started studying with Bonnie Bainbridge-Cohen, the founder of body-mind centering, moved out of New York into Massachusetts and took training with her. So that became the foundation when I came back to England. That became a main foundation of my practice and teaching and other things.

have come into it. But that was always the base and it became the base of the IBMT program, which as you know, started in 1990 with this workshop in Berlin and these very enthusiastic students who wanted to do more and a year-long introduction to body-mind centering it was in those days was set up by a colleague there.

And that evolved. People wanted to do more. They wanted to continue. More students wanted to come. I'm still grateful to those early students in Germany, in Berlin, who just really went for it, really wanted to do this work. So very much based in body-mind centering, and it still is. But gradually I was integrating authentic movement as I met my other important teacher, Janet Adler.

and that became part of it and I was doing psychotherapy training by then. So the somatic psychology was being woven into it. So the body-mind centering is the somatic foundation, but these other practices have supported it to develop in other ways and the teachers now bring in their own interests and skills of course.

So it developed in Berlin for a years, a few years in London, a few years in Hamburg, back to England to a little village in Essex where I was living at the time. And that was the point where it really became kind of consolidated as a diploma program. It was approved by ISMETA as a professional training program.

with the Asmeta professional body. And in 2011, I was invited to teach in Lithuania, in the beautiful city of Vilnius in Lithuania. And it grew from there. We have two programs now running parallel in Lithuania and two of the students were from Moscow.

and they wanted to set programme at Moscow. So it's almost always been that people have asked to do this and have asked to organ. I never intended to set up a school of any sort or institution of any sort. It was never my intention. But people wanted to do this. And my feeling is if people want to do it and there are now a team of faculty who are very experienced.

and to want to teach the work. So there we are.

Ailey Jolie (06:46)

Okay.

Why do you feel so many people are drawn to this specific type of work?

Linda Hartley (06:55)

Well, think, I mean, people are very much drawn to the body-mind-centric. There are programmes all over the world now that, I use the word intimate again, that very intimate way of connecting with our soma, our experience of body. And I think after years of development of movement practices that tend to look a little bit from the outside where the body's...

you know, gym work and all of the aerobics, used to be aerobics and many more things now. I think people were ready for going more deeply into the body. And, you know, that phrase of Thomas Hanna, the body experienced from within. So it's objective sense that comes from within. How do we experience the body? Not just how does it look? And that brings us up so much.

know, what we sense, what we feel, what we remember as we connect to our body and in those ways. So I think there's a need and a counterbalance to a sort of evolution from those more objectively focused body practices to a more subjectly focused. I think there's been a need for that and also these days from people are

especially younger people spending so much time lying on screens and more and more I'm hearing people say I really need to come back into my body and I need to come back into real live connections with people. So I think because our program gives them quite a bit of emphasis to the relationship as well, not just with yourself through your body but with others.

through the authentic movement practice, through the somatic psychology practice. So we perhaps more explicitly address the connection, what is it like to be embodied in relation to others? First one other in perhaps the therapeutic process, but with a group in a training process and that gradually can widen out to what is it like to be

in connection with the whole environment, with nature and so on. So I think all of those things, starting with the great value and appreciation of the Body Mind Centering Foundation and also with the discipline of authentic movement because people know that this is an important support for the programme.

Ailey Jolie (09:15)

For the listener who doesn't know what body-mind centering is, an authentic movement, I would love if you could describe kind of both of those practices for them so that they have a greater sense of what you've been able to really bring together and create for someone and for those who do go through the IBM T-Pro.

Linda Hartley (09:35)

Well, Bonnie Monsendring, founded by Bonnie Remich Cohen, who is in America. Whoa, she's something of a genius. She has a capacity for the deepest, most subtle, most nuanced perception of what's happening in her body. So

Ailey Jolie (09:35)

Bye.

Linda Hartley (09:55)

she has this naturally and she talks about this healing came to her naturally but she then went about learning what it was she was doing when she was with a student or a client and magic seemed to be happening. So she studied all of the anatomical body systems in an embodied way. So we don't just learn theoretically about our bones and our muscles and our organs and so on but we embody them. learn to

experience them from inside. What is it like to feel movement initiating from your bones or to feel the movement through your blood circulation and then allow that to express in the space for example. So bones, muscles, ligaments, organs, endocrine glands, nerves, all the different fluids of the body, we studied all of this.

and then we express, you know, we learn about the different qualities of expression. So there is a kind of a psychological aspect there in that we bring out the shadow aspects of our own embodiment because we all have our preferences. We're more organ oriented or more bone oriented, more muscle, more nervous system. So we bring out the

body systems that we don't normally express through. So this has a psychological counterpart. So the parts of our personality, if you like, that we don't normally express through. And of course, sometimes that can touch on emotional memory and trauma. Of course it does, because you're going deep into body memory as you work through all of these different layers of the...

of embodiment in an experiential way. So we learn about the anatomy and the physiology and then we bring it into our own body and experience it. So I found when I came back to England and started teaching this work, my students here in Europe really wanted to go deep emotionally as well as into the somatic experience.

Ailey Jolie (11:41)

you

Mm.

Linda Hartley (11:55)

And so I started my counselling and psychotherapy training because I needed to explore that aspect. I needed to have tools to feel more confident to hold clients and students when emotional or traumatic material was coming up. And I found authentic movement, the discipline of authentic movement, as taught by Janet Adler. And this...

offers us a beautiful practice both for exploring more deeply our own or our clients somatic experience. essentially in authentic movement one person or a group of people close their eyes, they step into the circle and they allow impulses to move them whatever wants to arise in the moment. So

It's a contemplative and spontaneous practice that allows us to give expression to whatever might be coming. we experience the arising through maybe we feel a movement impulse, maybe it's sensation in the body, maybe we feel energetic flows, movements in the body, perhaps emotional feelings sometimes as an image or a memory.

Ailey Jolie (12:46)

⁓

Linda Hartley (13:07)

So whatever is arising from the subconscious into consciousness, we're allowing it to express in movement. So it's totally directed by the mover. The witness is holding the space, keeping the space safe enough for the mover to enter this process. And the witness is tracking their own experience. What comes up for me? What do I sense? What do I feel?

What do I imagine? We're also trying to be careful to track if we might be projecting onto the mover or interpreting or judging. We try not to impose those things, but to be aware of them. So after the moving time, the mover and the witness of the movers and witnesses, it's done in a group and one-to-one, the movers speaks.

about their experience and the witness will offer back a little bit of their experience. They might offer what they've seen, what they've heard, perhaps something they've felt or something that's been moving in their body. It's a little bit the way in psychotherapy you might be tracking your countertransference for example, it's coming up in your embodied countertransference so it's a real support for

Psychotherapy too actually, it really helps us to train that skill in tracking our own experience as we're being present and paying attention to the person who's moving.

Ailey Jolie (14:30)

I love that you just even touched on there briefly the power of witnessing, because I know for myself the first time I was introduced to that practice was in my masters. And the witnessing aspect, like someone actually watching me was the most challenging and tricky piece for me. And I was like, wow, this feels so deeply uncomfortable, even though I had a background as a dancer, but yet to be seen without that performative mask and actually seen in my body.

authentically want it to move was so unsettling and I would love to hear from you a little bit more. You touched on it though as to why that piece is so potent and actually so healing to be witnessed in that way and why it can be so hard.

Linda Hartley (15:12)

Yes, well I think we all have a longing but also many of us a fear of being really seen in our authenticity and often our vulnerability. So to be seen in your vulnerability not with that performative...

Ailey Jolie (15:20)

you

Linda Hartley (15:29)

expression but you know who you actually are and because many of us have not been seen clearly, compassionately with acceptance as very young children which is when that really needs to happen. We need to be seen clearly, not projected onto, not judged, not dismissed. We need to be seen clearly and accepted as babies and young children. Most of us haven't had enough of that.

some might not have had any of that. And so it's incredibly powerful because healing is really about the relationship. So many of our wounds go back to relationships in our early life that then get repeated through our later life. So healing the relationship through the simple practice of seeing and hearing and also feeling someone.

The witness is paying attention to what they feel in the presence. know, oh, I feel sad when I see you sitting there in the corner. That can be so powerful for the mover to hear that, that the witness is responding. They're not just observing in an analytical way, but they're having a response. Their body's having a response. Their emotions are having a response.

So all of this can be very profoundly healing without even any therapeutic processes taking place. Of course, lots of therapists, dance therapists, psychotherapists, body psychotherapists use authentic movement as one practice in their work. And after an authentic movement session, they might then pull something out and explore it in a therapeutic way.

In the IBMT training, we don't usually do that unless someone's also trained as a psychotherapist, they can in their own practice. But we just allow the witnessing to be there as a tool for those who aren't trained psychotherapists to be able to learn how to be present with their clients or their students when difficult material is coming up.

And I think it's very powerful in that way. And I would say that in somatic work, I think also like what you're describing maybe as a dancer, we don't always give space, you know, it's in a somatic session, we can also kind of hide a little bit behind the the practice, you know, move, move from your bones, explore this exercise, we can hide a little bit. So

Ailey Jolie (17:38)

Mm-hmm.

Linda Hartley (18:02)

Over time, not. People who go through the training eventually, I think everyone comes in to meet their authentic self. But certainly in the beginning, we can get a little bit lost behind the material that we're learning. So the authentic movement does help us to go a little bit deeper there.

Ailey Jolie (18:22)

Why do you think at this specific kind of moment, somatics and I would say dance, not dance movement therapy, but authentic movement or movement based therapy is kind of having this uprising. And one of the reasons why I created this podcast was because I saw a lot of somatic movement or somatic psychotherapy kind of become this more cognitive performance.

I knew for myself, was like, I could fall into that. And then I'm actually kind of missing the yummy, juicy stuff that this is really intended to give us. And I would love to hear from you if you have any ideas since you've been in this field for four decades, four decades, little five, I love this five decades. If you have any ideas as to why it is kind of gaining this momentum and why people maybe are more drawn to exploring and healing.

Linda Hartley (18:50)

you

Ailey Jolie (19:09)

in relationship in this specific type of relationship.

Linda Hartley (19:12)

Yes, well, one thing I'll say is that these practices have been evolving and I have a little statement about this in the book. What I call nesting, we've been practicing in our studios and our safe circles, beavering away, learning about ourselves as embodied beings quietly.

Ailey Jolie (19:19)

Mmm.

Linda Hartley (19:34)

Meanwhile, organisations like Ismetta have been growing and doing that outward looking outreach as well as the inward work. I love Ismetta, I think they're a fantastic organisation. So, you know, on one hand, it feels like we're ready. Somatics ready, it's grown itself enough. There are people doing research now as well as training.

Ailey Jolie (19:51)

You

Linda Hartley (19:59)

professional training programs. So that's one side of it. And the other side of it is the need, which I think, you know, we touched on a little bit earlier. The need, we live in this world, it's so fast, it's so busy, it's so technologically orientated, it's so screen orientated. And I don't know, but it's my guess that...

People are longing for this kind of being in their body and then since COVID, I think there's been a real surge since COVID, that recognition, oh, I need to not just be in my body, but I need to be in my body with other people nearby. The difference when we were able to come away from our screens and back into the studios again, oh, what a blessing that I could meet my students.

give them a hug. could sit in the space together and we could feel each other's energy. And so I think it's also part of the collective consciousness developing that we are probably through all this groundwork that's been out, not just in somatics and healing and meditation and therapy and all sorts of places, ecology, that we are developing

our consciousness collectively. Janet Adler, my Withending Movement teacher, was the first person I heard the term collective body from. Now lots of people are using it and I don't know if it comes through her or if it was already around but in the 1990s she was teaching the collective body and so I think our collective consciousness, our collective conscious body

Ailey Jolie (21:12)

Mm.

Hmm.

Linda Hartley (21:35)

is growing and this to me is very exciting. I think it's something mysterious that is happening at this period of time. So drawing people to embodied practices, be in collective spaces, to be in relational, more conscious relational spaces.

Ailey Jolie (21:52)

What you're speaking about right now in regards to the collective body, I know ties into your most recent book, Embodied Spirit and Conscious Earth. And I would just love for you to introduce the book and some of the themes within the book to the listener who hasn't heard of the book just yet and hopefully goes and reads it after this.

Linda Hartley (22:11)

Okay, it sort of started coming together over a period of years actually and one of the themes that came together when I was writing an article for another book, from embodiment of spirit, from embryology to embodied relational spiritual practice and so a part of the book

is about the journey of the embryo and the fetus and then the birthing and young infant. So there's a developmental thread. I need to go back first. The first section is a description of integration of my main three practices which I've mentioned the somatic dance release work, body-mind centering, somatic movement.

practice and the discipline of authentic movement. So I look at those three practices and I weave them together a little bit as a one of many because everyone is creating their own integration. But this has been my main integration of the kind of practices and tools that I use for the explorations that I then go on to talk about.

the next section being about embryology and how these practices can help us to embody our embryological journey, which is absolutely fascinating. And for me seems to also embody the roots of our relational patterns. So our tendency to relate in this way or that trauma can originate there, but also

amazing resources and many people find out when they go back to embodying the embryology that they are so resourced by that, that in itself can be very healing. So we're going through the embryology, the fetal development, the birthing and the early infant movement development which has been very central to, I didn't say that when I was talking about body-mind centring and IBM, the developmental movement.

Ailey Jolie (24:01)

you

Mmm.

Linda Hartley (24:05)

is the other really essential part of it. I don't know why I forgot that because I love it so much. I've always loved the developmental work. And I'm looking at this development particularly in relation to the embodiment of spirit and how embryology suggests a way in which spiritual consciousness enters the body and

evolves and helps to shape along with physical forces that are acting on the embryo, but that there's a shaping that seems to be inherent to the embodiment of the spirit or consciousness. So this is kind of central to the book. There's a section on trauma. And again, the relationship between

trauma and what we might think of as transpersonal or mystical experience. everyone in the transpersonal psychotherapy field knows very well the kind of ways that we can get a bit lost or get confused the way the experience of early trauma can sometimes look and sound.

quite like a transpersonal experience. The way Janet Adler brought forward some interesting ideas around this, which I found in my studio practice, sometimes the gestures or the movement patterns that were connected with a trauma, the early trauma, and

incompleted movement pattern perhaps. Once we've processed enough of the trauma it reappears as a transpersonal, a mystical, a spiritual, whatever word people want to use, gesture. It takes us into a direct experience of the numinous, of the mystery. So this relationship between trauma and

spiritual practice is important and part of our development because many of us, know, in our childhood we can't process the trauma but coming through in our adult life if we're fortunate and we find practices that help us to do that then this can be part of our developmental arc of the embodiment of spirit as we go as well as the psychological obviously.

And it ends with a section on the connectivity, communication connectivity, the cellular body, so going back to the connectivity within the body between cells, the earth body and our connection, well, in a very similar way. So this expression, whispering between cells, I can't remember at the moment who first said that.

But now we're aware of the whispering between trees and tree roots have this similar networking as our cells, as our brain cells. So, yeah, the earth body, is part of my current interest and the collective body. And the last part is about aging. I needed, because of what was happening in my personal life and my family life, I needed to come back to.

the ageing and the death, the completion of that cycle. So there's an arc of development from conception through to dying. But I didn't know how to finish the book. Well, just got to finish where I am right now. What's happening in my life.

Ailey Jolie (27:07)

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

There are several things that you said that I would love to pull out, but maybe I'll start with just getting you to really describe and elaborate on the importance of honoring the earth body in our own healing process.

Linda Hartley (27:37)

Yes, I think to be truly healthy and well in our bodies, we need to be in a health and well environment. And that's not the only reason we need to take care of the Earth body. But they go together to me. We are part of the Earth. So our healing and...

I felt this especially through COVID and we were all, you know, having to look at illness and healing in new ways and stay at home. because I feel we are so intimately connected, we are part of the Earth body, every step we take towards our personal healing and wellbeing.

It's like a little tiny drop in the ocean, but it's contributing to that. And similarly, every step that we take or takes us away from health is going to have a not so positive impact on the whole. So I look at it this way. We are part of the whole. And so what we do in our own healing and sometimes, you know, if you're very ill, if you're very traumatized, if you're very unwell,

and you can't do much out in the world, working on your own healing and seeing that as part of the collective healing and the earth body healing, that feels to me important. We can at least do that.

Ailey Jolie (28:57)

Why do you feel like or believe that that piece sometimes gets missed? know for myself, it was something I had an awareness of, but then two years ago I got bitten by a mosquito that had a rare variant of West Nile. And so when I, you know, it took me a year and a half is really, really sick for a really long time, a year and a half. And when I went to the infectious disease doctor, he very clearly just laid out, well, this is a result of

climate change and global warming. And yes, you're one of very few humans, but more and more animals are dying of this. And this is probably going to continue to get more common, which means that there will be more treatment for you in the future. But for right now, you we simply have nothing to offer you. And for me, it was this deep moment where I was like, wow, like this is how connected we are. And this is the direct consequence of the neglect of earth body. And even though I had

spent a lot of time in therapy spaces and healing spaces and somatic spaces. It wasn't until I sat with that infectious disease doctor who was so cognitive, not deeply embodied that I was like, I get it now. Like I get this in like such a somatic way, which is why when you're speaking, have little tears starting to form in my eyes. And I would love to hear from you.

why that sometimes gets missed or maybe we just need a really deeply embodied experience of having that. You know, maybe some people, hope that it doesn't always have to come from illness, but I would love to just hear maybe your journey of that and maybe what you've noticed.

Linda Hartley (30:24)

mean, illness is a great teacher. true. That's very touching to hear that. And I just want to say it's not personal, you know, because we're all collective body. It's not to do with you personally that you're one of the few people who got that. It's not a move done wrong. You're that part of the collective that was impacted by this particular disease.

Ailey Jolie (30:26)

Yes.

Yes.

No. Yeah.

No.

Yes.

Linda Hartley (30:51)

Why? I think we've had centuries of this...

patriarchal view of, I've just been writing about this, I'm stuck, divide and conquer. And it's so prevalent these days. know, this is, we are separate. You know, it's that whole thing, more drilling for oil, because it'll make us richer, you know, all of this sort of mentality, it's everywhere, it's all over. And lots of people obviously,

not buying into it, but it's very powerful. So I think centuries of this, those who still, who benefit from this mindset the most, power and exploitation of the earth, of natural resources and of other people, are the powerful ones, the wealthy ones, they don't want to change.

And so it's very, very difficult. We're up against this. So this whole mindset, it's been entrenched in all of us. But the more individual, individually in our collectives, we can start to question that and challenge it. There is a very big movement of people who are challenging this mindset.

don't yet have the, what can I say, I mean the money, know, the power structures, but I think we, this is what gives me hope at the moment, that we have to keep going with this and trust that there are lots of people in groups working towards dismantling that old mindset.

Why now? Partly because we need. Because as you say, this kind of like the pandemic, you know, probably came from bats or something like that. It was probably manipulated by humans in some form. And look at all the

trouble. So you know we need to wake up and pay attention to this connectivity that you have experienced so directly.

Ailey Jolie (32:43)

Do you

feel like the ecological awareness is just a natural byproduct of semantics? Or do you feel like it is something that kind of needs to be introduced into the psyche? Because as you named, we've all kind of been entrenched with our own internalized, what we call a patriarchy or internalized exploitation or internalized capitalism, whatever you want to call it. We all live in the sea of it. So do you feel like it's something that

it needs explicit attention or somatics kind of naturally starts to challenge it inside of our own minds.

Linda Hartley (33:14)

Well, I think, yes, definitely somatics does challenge it because as we start to really know and respect and love our own embodiment, that naturally and to understand the ways that we're made up of the same elements as the earth and nature. We're not separate, know, the same minerals of the earth, the same...

oxygen in the air and you know it the water of the oceans in us you know we're part of it.

So.

I think somatics definitely helps people to become more attuned to nature and see for so many people a love of nature, a love of what is natural, people start eating healthier, more natural food as well, know, they start spending more time in nature. So definitely that's a path.

I don't think it's the only one because there are people who haven't gone through somatics who are obviously deeply, deeply committed to the healing of the earth and the climate and so on.

Ailey Jolie (34:17)

Something that you touch on in your book, they were kind of touching on right now, is the collective body and the earth body and the relationship that we have to it in regards to grief. And I would love to hear from you a little bit of this reciprocal relationship of how the grief of the earth maybe impacts our wellbeing and how our wellbeing impacts how we treat the earth and how that kind of goes around. Cause you touch on grief in this really beautiful way. If you could say a little bit more about that relationship.

Linda Hartley (34:44)

I think there's a grief for...

all that we've lost and that we've done and grieving is the first step of healing.

Ailey Jolie (34:52)

Hmm.

Linda Hartley (34:53)

So grieving what we've done to the earth is probably a really important part of that in order to step forward. And Joanna Macy writes beautifully about this as well.

But that had come up for me really strongly and it was just before Covid began that these two words, grief and gratitude, were really strongly present for me. The gratitude at the beauty of the world around me. I live in this lovely rural location. I've got beauty all around me. And the grief at what we've been doing to large parts of the earth and the air and the ocean.

and beings that inhabit it. So these two together, and I think we need both in order to come into this path of moving towards healing, moving towards regeneration, moving towards a healthier lifestyle, a healthier body, a healthier environment, all of that. So I think without the grief,

If we're just in the gratitude, we're a little bit out of touch. If we're just in the grief, we can give up and despair. I think, I think, you know, we name different ways, the light and the dark, the beauty and the pain. You know, we need to learn how to hold both sides of this, I think equally.

So I remember at the start of Covid, I would wake, I started a little gratitude journal. It didn't last very long because it was the same thing every day. I'm so grateful I've got this beautiful home and I've got a little bit of garden and I know there are people who don't have that during Covid. And I was writing this every morning. But it stays with me, you know, because I'm really aware I haven't always had this privilege, but I do have.

Ailey Jolie (36:30)

you

Linda Hartley (36:42)

have a lot of privilege and one of those now is that I live in a place with a beauty around me and it helps me to be with Roger's Painting, know, seeing what's happening in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, what's happening to the earth when there are floods and fires and all of this damage that we humans have done.

Ailey Jolie (36:50)

you

Linda Hartley (37:07)

to remember that nature, when allowed to return to its own resources, generally heals pretty well when we get out of the way. Sometimes we need to help it a little bit, but often we just get out of the way and it will heal. Wildness will grow again.

Ailey Jolie (37:16)

Hmm.

For listeners who feel some curiosity into some of the topics that we touched on today, but in specific in this idea and this practice of returning to their bodies, but feel unsure of where to begin or where to start, could you offer them maybe a gentle starting place?

Linda Hartley (37:43)

Like as in somatic work generally. Yeah, I would suggest go and have a look on the website of ISMETA. It's the International Somatic Movement Education Therapy Association. ISMETA and you'll see a lot of training programs, a lot of practitioners worldwide. It might feel a bit overwhelming, but go to your little place on the planet and see who might be practicing.

Ailey Jolie (37:45)

Yay!

Linda Hartley (38:09)

near to you. There are people who do online offerings as well if there's nobody near to you, but I really, really recommend in the beginning to have some live contact, know, one-to-one or in groups, but if that's not available for you, there are some people doing some lovely online somatic work as well. So that would be my

first suggestion. There are also books that you know they have a bookshop there, bookshop list and even join as a friend or an associate and then you can become a little bit more connected.

Ailey Jolie (38:42)

I have two final questions for you. The first one being, what do you wish more people knew about being the body or being in their body?

Linda Hartley (38:50)

It doesn't have to be scary, but if it feels like it, find someone to help you to enter that journey carefully and safely, because for a lot of people it can feel scary if there might be some difficult feelings, some trauma, memories. So find someone to help you and they'll take you.

Ailey Jolie (38:53)

Hmm.

Linda Hartley (39:12)

those steps and then you can probably fly a little bit, join groups, find pairs to play with.

Ailey Jolie (39:19)

My final question for you is, is there anything that we haven't touched on today that you wish to leave the listener with? Any seeds you'd like to plant?

Linda Hartley (39:28)

Be gentle with yourself, be kind. just in the same way, a newborn baby needs care and gentleness and kindness and undivided attention now and then. Your body needs all of that. So go slowly, go carefully, go gently.

don't push it. It's not about trying to get better at something. It's just being with and whatever it might be experiencing in this moment.

Ailey Jolie (39:56)

Thank you so much for your time, but also your dedication to this field over the past five decades. Really creating a space and a platform for people like you to share your wisdom is the entire reason why I created this podcast. And it is the work that I originally read at Pacifica that for me, I fell in love with. And I was like, I actually see a path for my future and what I want to offer.

the importance of this work and deepening my embodiment. And it just makes me so excited just being in your presence. was like, yes, this is what develops and ripens and marinates when you're steeped in this type of practice or this type of relationship over decades. So thank you so much. We will have information on the book, IBM T in the show notes. Is there anything that you have upcoming that you would like the listener to know about?

Linda Hartley (40:48)

Well, just that I've just started a Substack page. It's all very new to me, but you can find me on Substack. I'm just about to post my second post.

Ailey Jolie (40:53)

Okay. Yeah.

love

this

Linda Hartley (41:02)

It's called Earth Body Conversations. So some of the things we've been touching on here are part of what's going into that.

Ailey Jolie (41:05)

Mmm, beautiful.

Beautiful. We'll make sure to have those in the show notes and I'll make sure to start on my own sub stack so people can find it with ease. Again, thank you so much and it was such a delight to spend time with you today.

Linda Hartley (41:23)

You too. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. you, Ailey.

Ailey Jolie (41:26)

Thank you.