My Journey

Rebirthing animacy into the world & awakening the elemental body

Abby is a teacher of body consciousness, intuitive movement, and elemental animism. She offers awareness-based movement practices as doorways into elemental consciousness. Her life work is dedicated to the awakening of all beings - for individuals to return to ease and aliveness in their bodies and to deep interconnection with the animate world.

Abby’s deepest inquiry is how to shift perception and open the sense gates to access awareness beyond the small, isolated sense of self. Abby is interested in the ultimate liberation of unnecessary suffering and residing in a state of nonduality. Her inquiry of the mind involves shifting perceptions from head to heart into the nature of mind. Her inquiry of the body involves how to move from a deep place of spacious stillness, allowing the life force energy of felt sense to move through the individual. She is also actively engaged in deepening relationship with the animate world and all sentient beings deserving of reverence reciprocity.

In the courses she offers, she welcomes you to return to your body consciousness, as doorways to enter into the larger world of animacy.

She currently offers two courses:

  • Elemental Embodiment

  • Moving from the Felt Sense

If you’re interested in learning about Abby’s back story, read on…

My path of seeking unknowingly started at age six with a near-death experience, where I floated out of my body from the hospital bed. It unconsciously opened me to the world of the unseen.

Then the portal closed and normal life took over and I hurried along like everyone else. It wasn’t until age 21 that I was cracked open again from three months of piercing unrelenting sciatica pain that kept me bedridden begging for deliverance. As I laid there with tears and poems pouring out of me, life was awakening me to the more…

This kickstarted a journey of seeking. I quit cold turkey my first job to attend a Vipassana retreat, where my back pain significantly reduced after 10 days as I realized my incessant thoughts both created mental and physical suffering. It offered me the first taste of silence and stillness.

Then I was introduced serendipitously to my teacher Lynn Preston, who led me into the world of Focusing and the felt-sense. This turned my attention from the outer world to the language of the body - a world of metaphors, images, feelings, and process. It was a pivotal point of inner revolution, leading me to a deeper inner knowing.

Then at age 27, my entire world shattered from a psychedelic-induced Kundalini energetic awakening. Numb parts of me awakened to energetic form and a flood of unconscious material surfaced to be met. This was the beginning of a 5 year period of dissolution and cocooning. Life pulled out all previous ground of outer life to center my inner life’s unfolding. Old identities were stripped away and old relationships were decimated. Anything built on a false ground crumbled and I was pinned to the ground to face the dark.

Insomnia, energetic discharge, confusion… over time I gained a sensitivity that opened me to everything and everyone around. I was naked like a snail without a shell, incessantly bombarded and invaded by the outer world with no protection for this newborn flesh. I secluded in my own modern-day hermitage, resourcing with elements and nature as a refuge. With each layer of darkness shed, my perception would shift and I began to see newfound beauty, wonder, awe, and appreciation. The clearer my system became, the more I sensed interconnection, the aliveness of all things around us.

It was a shift into living from not-knowing, entering into deeper trusting and surrender. All the animal’s creature fears of needing to be safe, to know, to belong, to have control surfaced to be met. All the parts wondering where I’m going also asked to be met. In this passage way of not knowing where I’m headed or what was becoming of me, I was comforted by Jeannie Zandi’s poetic words.

Lynn always told me to wait and see what comes… and again I was serendipitously led to the womb-space of Continuum with Susan Harper, which became another refuge and anchor for the transition from the socio-cultural map to soul and wholeness. Susan opened me to the imaginal and animistic realms. She taught perceptual shifts and elemental intelligences. In a desperate attempt to gain footing for my sensitivities, I also entered into studies with Lynda Caesara, who offered universal energetic principles of being in right relations. Then into the 5th year of awakening, a pharmaceutical-induced illness took me to the brink of death. It rebirthed and reorient me to deeper animacy, reverence, and appreciation to all that is. To this journey I have to thank, for deepening into the work I offer now.

This passage reorients, shifting from the mind to the heart, from a purely materialistic view to an expanded and subtle view, from object to process, and from individual self to Soul. This is what my deeper urge was calling forth all along… and the journey continues to unfold.

Guiding inquiries:

  • how to awaken through the sense gates and perceptual shifts to the nature of mind

  • how to move intuitively from stillness and the felt-sense

  • how to map psyche to nature processes

  • how to create rituals and ceremonies to deepen reciprocity in all relations

  • how to embody and resource through elemental animism

Background

There are 3 stages of personal transformation: hurting, healing, and helping.

A practitioner offers gifts from the path they’ve traveled themselves. I stand on the shoulders of giants and my offerings root in places where I’ve gained the most healing while walking the path towards wholeness. I learned somatic and meditative inquiry practices initially to heal myself and to access the more. They’ve slowly become part of my being. I now pay it forward in my offering.

Trainings: