CraigJustCraig

Tag: healing

  • Stop Apologizing: The Undoing of Oppression @TheCheshireKink

    –Excerpt from Getting Past the Pain Between Us: Healing and Reconciliation Without Compromise and Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg and
    Compliments and apologies operate in a system of oppression;
    that rewards are as harmful as punishment, that killing is the easy way out. Such statements are typically uttered as expressions of life-alienating communication…

    Notice, how, they reveal little of what’s going on in the speaker; it establishes the speaker as someone who sits in judgment. Judgments—both positive and negative—are life-alienating communication.

    For example, if we find ourselves reacting reproachfully to something we did (“Look, you just messed up again!”), we can quickly stop and ask ourselves, “What unmet need of mine is being expressed through this moralistic judgment?”

    The process of fully connecting with the unmet needs and the feelings that are generated when we have been less than perfect. It is an experience of regret, but regret that helps us learn from what we have done without blaming or hating ourselves. We see how our behavior ran counter to our own needs and values, and we open ourselves to feelings that arise out of that awareness.

    When our consciousness is focused on what we need, we are naturally stimulated toward creative possibilities for how to get that need met. In contrast, the moralistic judgments we use when blaming ourselves tend to obscure such possibilities and to perpetuate a state of self-punishment.

    The second overall step in the healing process is “mourning.”

    In the role of the brother, after the empathy, I mourned. Here’s what that sounded like:

    “Sister, when I see how my actions have contributed to your pain, I feel very sad. It didn’t meet my need to nurture and support you in a way I really would’ve liked.”

    The main thing here is that it requires that we see a big difference between mourning and apology. I see apology as a very violent act. It is violent to the person receiving it and violent to the person giving it.

    And what’s even more tragic is the person receiving it usually likes it, addicted by the culture to want the person to suffer and see them hating themselves. What I find to be true is that nobody will ever apologize or want an apology if they have experienced sincere mourning instead.
    Let’s look at the difference between mourning and apology more closely.

    Apology is based on moralistic judgment—that what I did was wrong and I should suffer for it, even hate myself for what I did.

    That’s radically different than mourning, which is not based on moralistic judgments. Mourning is based on life-serving judgments.

    Did I meet my own needs? No. Then what need didn’t I meet?

    When we are in touch with our unmet need, we never feel shame, guilt, self-anger, or the depression that we feel when we think that what we did was wrong.

    We feel sadness, deep sadness—sometimes frustration—but never depression, guilt, anger, or shame.

    Those four feelings tell us we are making moralistic judgments at the moment we are feeling those feelings. Anger, depression, guilt, and shame are the product of the thinking that is at the base of violence on our planet.

    And I’m glad to have those feelings, because if I’m thinking in a way that I believe supports violence on our planet, I want to as quickly as possible transform that thinking.

    In our second step, then, I mourned; I didn’t apologize, I mourned.

    clearly distinguishes three components in the expression of
    appreciation:

    1. the actions that have contributed to our well-being
    2. the particular needs of ours that have been ful lled
    3. the pleasureful feelings engendered by the ful llment of those needs

    e sequence of these ingredients may vary; sometimes all three can be
    conveyed by a smile or a simple “ank you.” However, if we want to ensure
    that our appreciation has been fully received, it is valuable to develop the
    eloquence to express all three components verbally. e following dialogue
    illustrates how praise may be transformed into an appreciation that
    embraces all three components.
    Saying “thank you” in NVC: “is is what you did; this
    is what I feel; this is the need of mine that was met.

    Apology says: “I’m wrong, punish me.” save that for the bedroom fun times
    Mourning says: “I see where I stepped out of alignment. I feel the ache of that. And I want to return to connection with you, and with my own values.”

    That’s the spell.
    That’s the fucking magic.

    replaces guilt and punishment with shared human needs, center connection over shame, and acknowledges harm without groveling or self-erasure. Shifts the “I was bad” into “my actions didn’t meet my values or your needs”

  • Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg Review

    seriously this book is casting out spirits disguised as a communication manual.

    Marshall Rosenberg didn’t just hand me a tool, he handed me a mirror, and a scalpel. and said get to work.

    This book is not about how to “communicate better.” It’s about how to stop speaking like a colonizer. and how to stop letting the colonizer speak through you.

    This was a wake up call to how much of our everyday speech is laced with violence, shame, and guilt. This book really pulled back the veil of socially acceptable manipulation and all the ways we’ve learned to control, manipulate, and people.

    Most of what we call “communication” is a poorly disguised threat without even realizing it.

    Judgement, blame and guilt are expressions of our own unmet needs.””survival stragtegies” we us to avoid facing fact we dont know what we need and hoping someone else can figure it out for us.

    The book said “All criticism, attack, and insult vanish when we listen for feelings and needs.”

    How everytime you hear the word “should” or “I have to,” you’re handing your agency to the abyss. and saying Fuck it. you’re outsourcing your power. you’re kicking your inner child on your way out the door…. again

    When you been taught to that sacrifice = love, when actually… your just neglecting your needs and Wearing your pain like it’s a badge of honor.

    What sucked and was heard to swallow was “Nobody makes you feel anything.” The way I interpret what someone says or does is on me. “Anger isn’t about anyone else. It’s about your unmet needs.” see that one i need a minute ….

    “The difference between a request and a demand is what happens when someone says no.” Ouch. you see what i mean?

    This man said : “Depression is your reward, for being good.” like wtf!!!!!!!

    That we are taught to be good, be obedient, be productive, and above all be quiet your actual needs.

    What the real struggle is: Don’t label. Don’t judge. Just say what’s happening, say what you feel, say what you need, and clearly, concisly, ask. Language is a spell to liberate, not to control. Guilt, shame, blame? Just masks to avoid your needs.

    This book is not gentle. But it will help you grow.

    Rosenberg is calling for a revolution dismantling the internalized systems of domination that keep us distant from ourselves and each other. He teaches you how to get real and get in touch with your needs. He’s asking us to speak in a language of life. A language of need. A language of choice.

    And honestly? That shit slaps.
    Highly recommend

  •  Intentional Kink Modalities For Healing?

    “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate.” — Carl Jung

    Jung’s words ring especially true in the realm of sacred kink. Our unconscious desires—especially the taboo ones—shape our reality, even if we don’t recognize them as “ours.” These disowned parts of ourselves, the ones we repress or ignore, still manage to fulfill themselves. And because we’re disconnected from them, we often misread their arrival in our lives as tragedy rather than fulfillment.

    But what if we could see them? What if we could meet those desires in ritual, in sensation, in play? That’s the heart of intentional kink—a sacred, embodied practice of conscious transformation.

    Seven Axioms of Sacred Kink

    To begin practicing sacred kink intentionally, we start with these seven axioms—guiding truths that reframe sensation, shame, and desire:

    1. Having is evidence of wanting.
    2. We have a choice as to whether we experience sensation as pleasure or pain.
    3. Every happening in life is a “stroke”—and we can get off on all of it.
    4. The degree to which we’re turned on or off is shaped by approval.
    5. Desire evolves through fulfillment—not repression.
    6. Shame is the magic killer.
    7. The truth is sensational.

    These axioms challenge us to stop resisting life, to stop pathologizing desire. They ask us to lean into the body, the breath, the truth of what’s happening right now.

    Intentional kink teaches that our thoughts, like our desires, are tools of creation. The mystical and the neurological meet here. As Urban Tantra reminds us:

    “Every thought you think is creating your future… With self-acceptance and self-love, you can create or change anything in your life.”

    This echoes the neuroscience laid out in The Body Keeps the Score: the only way to access and change the emotional brain is through self-awareness—through interoception, or looking inward. When we engage in kink consciously, we activate this internal gaze. We stop outsourcing our lives and begin witnessing ourselves again

    There’s a darker truth, too. For many, trauma and pleasure have become entangled. As Bessel van der Kolk notes, “fear and aversion can be transformed into pleasure.” Trauma lives in the body and builds patterns that repeat until we interrupt them—through ritual, through embodiment, through sacred play. This is where kink becomes alchemical: it transforms the pain of the past into the power of the present.

    At its deepest, sacred kink is about radical, soul-deep acceptance. When we surrender to what is—when we stop resisting our fears, our shame, our desires—we reclaim the “alarm system” of the body and restore it to its sacred function. The body knows how to care for us. Through intentional kink, it remembers.

    As Dossie Easton describes in The New Topping Book:

    “Play directed to the purpose of attaining altered states of consciousness… becomes a quest for vision, guidance, personal truth, or spiritual communion.”

    Kink becomes a ritual container for trance, surrender, and revelation. It isn’t just play—it’s pilgrimage.

    There are many ways into this sacred terrain. Here are eight powerful modalities—erotic gateways into transformation:

    1. Rhythm – Dance and movement as portals into ecstasy.
    2. Ordeal – Challenge and intensity (rope, balance, endurance) to confront fear and awaken strength.
    3. Flesh – Pain as revelation, skin as scripture.
    4. Ritual – Daily devotion, service, worship, and structure as spiritual discipline.
    5. Breath – Erotic breathwork, connecting energy circuits and expanding presence.
    6. Horse – Roleplay and possession, invoking archetypes and the divine.
    7. Asceticism – Erotic monasticism, obedience, simplicity, and quietude.
    8. Sacred Plants – Entheogenic tools to expand consciousness and dismantle ego.

    Each path opens a different door in the psyche—offering catharsis, communion, clarity, or collapse. And each one, when practiced with intention, brings us home to ourselves.

    Here’s the truth: we are always doing magic, whether we know it or not. Intentional kink simply teaches us how to do it well. When we repress our truth, when we deny what we feel, we don’t stop creating—we just create chaos. As Erich Fromm warns:

    “Avoid the company of zombies—people whose soul is dead although their body is alive.”

    To dissociate is to disappear. But to feel fully—to accept and embody desire, sensation, pain, pleasure—is to come alive again. Magic works either way. Sacred kink lets us choose how.

    To truly heal, we must also confront the stories we live inside. Our ideologies, our fantasies, our inherited myths—these shape our consciousness just as much as our actions do. Until we understand what divides us—internally and culturally—we cannot complete the alchemical journey. This final step, often referred to as “meeting Yurugu,” is the confrontation with the colonial, fragmenting force within us and our society.

    But that’s a whole blog post on its own.

    Sacred kink is not about performance or preference—it’s about presence. It’s about confronting ourselves in the mirror of eroticism and asking: what do I really want? What is my truth? What am I ready to feel, love, and integrate?

    If you’re practicing kink without intention, you’re still doing magic—but you’re blindfolded, spellbound, and chasing shadows. Sacred kink removes the blindfold and hands you the wand.

    The work is deep. The stakes are real. But so is the transformation.

    Welcome to the path.

  • What is Remembered, is Restored

    In a recent session, we focused on decompression and fascia release.

    In a world that trains us to split, divide, and dominate,
    this work moves us gently: allowing tension to soften and giving space for something deeper to emerge.

    An undoing of all the ways we’ve been trained, controlled, and fragmented.

    This is woven into our everyday experience. It lives in the body, pressed into the breath, curled around the spine, locked into the tissues. Unintegrated it becomes part of us.

    We are taught this is normal; to see the world in split pieces. Strong vs weak. Good vs bad. Mind vs body. Spirit vs reason. These splits are reinforced again and again, until the natural unity of self is broken and compete. This shapes our behavior. It shapes our beliefs, our imagination, and our body itself.

    In rope, we begin to reverse the fragmentation. We invite the Self to slow.
    That slowing creates an opening to shift.

    Seekers come to this work carrying chronic pain and a long history of discomfort, often managed through medication, endurance, and bracing.

    They’ve learned to survive it.

    But, many experience significant relief even after the first session. The pain doesn’t vanish: it moves, shifts, softens.

    With each session, The pain lessens.
    And slowly, the body begins to feel like home again.
    This kind of healing moves beyond treating symptoms. It invites the body to participate in its own restoration. Through intentional effort, we help the body learn safety from the inside.

    Rope offers a return, a experience, felt beyond the skin. The body is fully present. And within that learns that safety is possible. That holding does not have to hurt. That surrender can be healing. That rest is spiritual.

    The goal is not to conquer or control. It is to listen, and to reconnect with what’s been split. To allow meaning again, not another problem to solve, but a story to be told.

    When we treat with rope, we step out of logic. We return to knowing—that knowledge comes from immersion, and not distance.

    This is sacred .