Nick Werber

Today I'm excited to share that due to popular demand, we have opened up another cohort for the Focalizing Practitioner Program. We will be starting again in May with students interested in learning how to integrate these powerful trauma-informed tools for personal and interpersonal healing. Since the program sold out last time, please be sure to take a look and get in touch if this is something that feels right to you sooner rather than later.... More on this online program: Focalizing is the foundation of all my writing and my practice. The modality was coined by my teacher, Dr. Michael Picucci, and is a synthesis of his life's work and the work of those who sat in circle with him during various phases of his own recovery from addiction, trauma and so much more. Focalizing offers a portal to our innate wisdom and intuition by bringing awareness to our body's signals. By listening to the language of the body, we can connect to a vast evolutionary intelligence and history that knows just what we need and what we're capable of handling in a given moment. This work is gentle and powerful. Meditative and insightful. Expansive and authentic. Those who go through this program and complete the requirements will receive a practitioner certification from The Focalizing Institute 501(c)(3). I've said it before and I'll say it again - this work changed the course of my life and I'm honored to be able to share it with you. Info on the program can be found here: https://nicknwerber.com/focalizing-training-course-spring-21

An energetic view on narcissism and the journey back to yourself. Narcissism, when operating out of balance, leaves a particular mark on those who encounter it, live under it, or live adjacent to it. The mantra of narcissism is this: "engage in the world as I govern it, or suffer consequences."... "Live within the right and wrong I've set forth; Express yourself within the bounds I've set; Agree to my views; Place my needs above your own..." It calls for a precise form of obedience. Depending on how long a person is engaged in this contract of obedience, a mark develops which we notice as a particular type of reflex. It is the reflex to shapeshift. The near instantaneous and usually subconscious instinct for picking and choosing what parts of ourselves must be hidden, and what parts are acceptable. Cutting away what won't do, and amplifying what might be well received. It's the cutting away part that is particularly important... Intervening here is where we begin to heal. The journey back from narcissistic abuse is about gathering up these parts of us once again. Reconnecting to them. Befriending them. Going out dancing with them. Having a good cry with them. Nurturing them, sometimes for the first time. This can get tricky at times because in that reconnecting process, we can find some parts that feel shameful, embarrassing, or uncomfortable and we might feel pulled to cut off again. But with persistence and support, these parts can also be brought into the fold, given a place, loved for what they are. When healing is described as a journey 'back to wholeness,' it never rings more true than for those who know how deep shapeshifting can go and who have experienced the pain of narcissistic abuse. See more

It is true with emotion. It's true in how the body surfaces its wisdom. It's true with intuition. It's true in the connection to family and ancestry. It's both a strange constant and incredibly frustrating right? I'll also add...... When I accept myself as I am, sometimes I realize I never needed to change in the first place. Sometimes putting a more authentic, less hidden version of ourselves out into the world brings back exactly what we had been longing for all along. Trust was all that was called for.

This is the fundamental to all family / intergenerational / ancestral and collective trauma healing work. It is the starting point. It is why mindfulness, meditation, therapy, somatic healing, IFS, Somatic Experiencing, Focalizing, Vipassana, hypnosis, intuition, and every awareness driven modality and tool you can think of serves you. When you lift what happened out of the unconscious into conscious awareness. When you see it head on. When you connect to the humanity in your... lineage; the joy and suffering, the mistakes and triumphs, and the immense resource there... the cycle has already begun to untangle. It's lost a significant piece of of its power over you. The power to operate unnoticed. Awareness is the start. Practice presence. Practice curiosity about your feelings, actions and beliefs. Feeling feelings comes next.

Some support for you all right now: The very same energies you are learning to master, the work you're doing just by making it through each day, the self-care and self-nurturing you are discovering your specific body and mind needs. These are the very same tools and experiences that will allow you to create the life you want. They will enable much more than your healing, they will enable your quality of living.... Forget healing to go back to some old idea of normal. You can heal and step into something you've never touched before. See more

For those who struggle in shame, unworthiness, not-enoughness. For those who live and breathe it, or are experiencing it now more than ever. Here's an exercise I do with myself that I wanted to share with you. Make a little chart that defines exactly who you are and how you behave when you are aligned with shame (unworthiness, feeling not enough). And then make another list of who you are and how you behave when you are aligned with belonging, when you are choosing connection.... You can swipe right on the image to see a short version of my chart. But just know that your items are going to be different from mine. Define your shame. When you're in shame, do you stop calling people? Do you stop showering? Do you put a stop to everything you're passionate about and procrastinate all day? What's it look like when the belief that you're unworthy or uniquely broken is steering the ship? Then, what does connection look like? When you are connected and are *part of* the world. When you belong in the world and have a place, what does that look like? What are you doing? Do you create art? Do you reach out to friends? Do you connect with family? Do you meditate? It's my experience that getting really clear about these two modes of being is enormously helpful. To see it written out on paper. When I do this and it's laid out in front of me, I feel more empowered to make a choice. What would choosing connection look like today? What would choosing belonging look like? What are the ways that I'm choosing shame... choosing to believe I don't belong, or that I'm unworthy? And most importantly, can I face the fears and take the risks needed to connect again? To be seen? To align again? @ New York City

Today I'm excited to announce that I will be teaching a 10-week certification course on how to use Focalizing for both self healing and the support of others. After an extended break from teaching, I'm returning to share the body of work that quite literally changed the course of my life and led me to the work I do today. In practice, Focalizing is a modality that offers a trauma safe container to do powerful personal work. It's body based, which means that as practitioners a...nd participants engage with these tools, they develop an ever deepening, more nuanced relationship to not only their physical body, but the innate intelligence and evolutionary wisdom contained within it. One of the reasons I'm excited to share this work because of it's relevance to the present moment. We are living in a time where our bodies and minds are experiencing incredible strain. Strain that on one hand might be new and unique feeling... but for those of us who are trauma-survivors, is most likely a deeply familiar and re-activating experience. I'm excited to be co-teaching this program with sound therapist and Focalizing practitioner Jo Miller (@solastasounds) Want to read more? Click here: https://nicknwerber.com/focalizing-training-course And I'll be sharing more in the coming weeks.

My free Embodiment Conference workshop is live until midnight tonight here: https://portal.theembodimentconference.org/sess/tbc-2da39j I believe there’s also a half-off discount for the lifetime access to all the conference workshops and materials so check that out if you’re interested. Lots of huge names in the field so it’s a great opportunity. Loved doing this workshop and had a lot of great feedback. Enjoy!

Writing to announce that I've been asked to present at this year’s Embodiment Conference. The 1-hour workshop I'm presenting is available for 48 hours afterward to those who are interested which means you can watch tomorrow and Monday for free (I’ll share a link when I have). The live presentation is intended for participants in Australia and Singapore (4am UK GMT time Sunday 10/25). So if you’re awake then, feel free to drop in.... The conference itself is a who's-who of somatic and trauma informed practitioners including Peter Levine, Bessel van der Kolk, and Gabor Mate amongst many others. So it's an honor to be participating along with these giants in the field. If you're interested in embodiment practices and trauma work, you might get a lot from watching these programs as they are unfolding or by purchasing lifetime access to all the content. The class I'm teaching is called "The Body as a Portal to Ancestral History." In it, I'll talk about how we can tap into the innate intelligence of the body to not only know ourselves more deeply, but to better understand our role and connection to those who came before us. Our body is our direct connection to our ancestry. Every cell contains thousands of years of evolutionary and experiential wisdom. What we discover in that internal space is not as personal as we may think. In fact, much of it did not start with us at all. As we go through the workshop we'll be using practices to help tap into our felt senses to make new connections, unearth new insights, and integrate what we find. I've updated the link in my bio as the conference link for those who are interested. For transparency sake, if you do purchase lifetime ownership of the conference content by using that link I get a little affiliate commission. #embodimentconference2020 #embodimentconference #somatic #traumahealing #familyconstellations #familyconstellation

When you feel a creeping feeling that your desire for self-care is a form of neediness, know that this is an inherited script that comes from generations past. That tradition comes from generations who experienced so much trauma and hardship there was no time for emotions or caring for oneself. It was not a better way, it was simply the only way available at the time. It was a coping mechanism for trauma. In this generation, in this present time, if you have the ability to ca...re for yourself and receive the support of others in a healthy manner, seize on that immediately. You are allowed to live better than the past generation. This is that generation's gift to you. Receive that gift. I promise you, your ancestors want to see you do that. Every cell in your body wants to see you do that. Every gene longs for that expression of you. Your ancestors survived so that you can do more than simply survive. Give yourself permission to live better than they could. Do it now. Do it tomorrow. Make it a practice every single day of your life that you can be more than your parents, your grandparents and all those who came before. By contrast, do you know who the most needy people are? They are the people that most strongly reject their own needs. Because when a person deeply and consistently rejects their own needs, it oozes out in every direction. Here's what that looks like: Needing your children to take care of you. Needing your partner to read your mind and know how to meet your needs. Needing to center yourself in every conversation. Needing your parents to be perfect into old age and holding onto anger towards them when they aren't. The number of ways this looks is endless. The only way to avoid neediness is to get your needs met. Express your needs now, consciously. This way you won't seek them from people and things that aren't capable and aren't responsible for fulfilling them.