In Western culture, we prize a “superhuman ideal.” From a young age, many of us are indoctrinated by cultural and social pressures to reach our highest potential and “hit our life out of the park,” even at the expense of our own authentic desires, health, and emotional well-being.

To be human is to traverse a lifetime of micro and macro initiations. Each one of us is a hero or heroine on a mysterious journey of pleasure, love, and connection, as well as states of fear, anxiety, separation, darkness, loss and heartbreak. Initiations are the path of evolution. They crack us open, break us down, leave us breathless and eventually, through their alchemy and transmutation, present us with our personal light and power.

As more conscious leaders find one another, networks of change agents and heart warriors expand. Together, we are birthing a new world. And given the chaotic and destabilizing times, we’re in globally, this revolutionary movement is imperative. In this article, we will review power as a form of energy and unpack the paradigm shift of power-over to power-with in more detail.

The matrix of social and cultural conditioning is the most pervasive form of trauma on the planet. It’s a system of mind control that manipulates us to think, feel, and behave in specific ways. Without realizing what’s happening, we become drugged by a fabricated and conditioned reality. One that recklessly distorts our feelings of wholeness and creates a sense of painful separation and aloneness.

What exactly is trauma? How does it impact our sense of self, well-being, and relationship to life? How does trauma influence our levels of stress, hyper-vigilance, patterns of control, and fear-based behaviors on a daily basis? And how do we heal from it? In this article, I’ll explore these questions and provide a conceptual framework of trauma.

Trauma changes our relationship to ourselves. It changes our relationship to the world, and our experience self-trust and feeling safety within our own being. Let’s look at a few common impacts of trauma.

To investigate the heart of personal trauma is to gaze through three influencing factors: physical and psychological trauma; attachment and developmental trauma; and expanded cosmologies of trauma. In this article, we explore them one-by-one

In this article, we investigate three main categories within ancestral and inherited trauma: DNA and epigenetics, family and social conditioning, and eco-psychology.

Trauma that affects a community or a whole society is called a collective trauma. In this article, we will make a distinction between two aspects of collective trauma: cultural traumatic events and the disempowering and persistent psychological trauma that is a result of the matrix of social and cultural conditioning.

Your brain is the mapmaker of your belief system. While our subconscious beliefs serve us to an extent, they also leave us with blind spots, such as outdated protection mechanisms. Becoming an integrated human being isn’t about erasing our adaptive strategies, but about expanding and updating responses that reflect who we are now.

Embracing your adult relationship patterns is a journey of power reclamation. You have the power to interrupt what no longer serves you and to make conscious relationship choices that fulfill, heal, and uplift you into greater levels of growth and intimacy.

Going down the rabbit hole of personal and collective trauma can invoke what some refer to as a dark night of the soul. The phrase “dark night of the soul” is used to describe what happens when the conceptual frameworks of our life, and the associated meaning we have attributed to it, fall apart. This collapse of “normal” can occur suddenly, or slowly over time, creating a dark and disorienting space inside.

Our greatest challenges are the medicine we are here to transmute from bitter into sweet healing for ourselves and others. The way to heal abusive cycles born from our past is to find safe, loving, and attuned support to help unravel the trauma of misunderstanding ourselves as bad or wrong because of other people’s projections, fears, and defended hearts. We need new and more accurate mirrors.

Boundaries are a form of power. They empower us to express our needs in relationship, whether that’s in our relationship to ourselves or others. Boundaries also offer us a forum to negotiate, using our authentic voice to stand in solidarity with our inner value system.

To dig into the conditioned mind is to unwind the ways in which we try to control and plan every aspect of our lives, and instead learn to surrender and sink into befriending the unknown. The practice takes discipline, self-acceptance, trusted allies, and humility.

There are times in life when we are maxed out, brain-fogged, and spinning like a top with anxiety. This is the grit of being a primal animal wired with safety and threat signals. We share a universal, basic need to belong and to know we’re loved and that we matter. Any threat to these basic needs can cause stress and overwhelm.

For much of my life, I was caught in the web of what I call ‘The Self-Improvement Campaign’. This ‘campaign’ is the false notion that somehow we are deficient. Therefore, in order to be happy, successful, and belong we have to constantly improve ourselves.

Have you ever stayed in a relationship (romantic, work-related or friendship) that didn’t match what you desire in partnership, hoping that it would change because you saw the potential? What happens when we fall in love with the ‘potential’ of someone and forget to pay attention to the reality of the relationship dynamic?

We are in a pivotal time of awakening, change, and growth on this planet. This is the time to reclaim your power, integrity, and authentic sexual expression. Unlocking the cage starts with being aware of the beliefs, thoughts, emotional patterns, and behaviors that create shame or “stuckness.”

As primal creatures, we are bound to be reactive. So how can we develop presence, leadership, and deeply fulfilling intimate relationships when we’re innately equipped with animalistic wiring?