Awe, Imaginative Creating and Dance
Awe is what happens when we bring fear so sharply into the present that it becomes wonder. Here, now, in this moment inside, we are living in the world we co-create from the sacred wisdom of being consciously alive in our bodies.
- Farah Forest
How the Neuroscience of Reality has Changed Health Care
Health Care has changed. Not is changing or will change. It has already changed. It has already happened. Our intellectual understanding of the body and the nervous system is aligning with universal and ancient wisdom. The intellectual studies began with understanding the processes of the thinking mind and are now understanding the wisdom beyond the thinking mind, deep to it, in embodied experiences and conscious awareness, shared relational embodied presence, playfulness, wonder, awe, the connection between all beings, and the power of love.
Neuroscience shows us that we create our realities through the lens of inner predictions that shape our sensory perceptions of the outer world. This means that everything we're experiencing has already been created from within our sensory body and is being out-pressed or projected outwardly to match our inner predictions. These inner predictions can be based on conditioning rather than who we are. Do you feel called into creating a different prediction for your future that is actually aligned with your sense of vibrant aliveness and your true and loving nature? What do you yearn for right now? Truth? Change? Peace? Joy? Connection? Love? Rest? Authenticity? Vitality? Purpose? Relief from suffering?
Links for Further Exploration
Your Reality Narrows After Trauma - here's how to expand it - Bessel Van der Kolk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMsAmWA7so0
How Our Expectations Shape What We See, Hear and Feel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTZwQOfHMbU
One neuroscientist's deep dive into perception and reality - Christof Kolk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJn2yfCI6pw
Why Your Brain Needs Awe and Wonder with Dr. Dacher Keltner - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UfwM_MB8GI
Awe Reduces Depressive Symptoms and Improves Well-Being - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-96555-w
Realigning or Creating Nourishing Predictive Processes to Shape Your Reality
Predictions stored in our sensory bodies, including our nervous systems and minds, form from ancestral processes and our experiences. Through creating felt sensory embodied experiences from a deep understanding of what it feels like in the body for each part of us to be nourished in exactly the way we have needed, we create more nourishing predictions for our sensory body from within which naturally shape an aligned nourishing outward reality. Therefore, to create a nourished future where we feel alive and aligned with our true nature, we must have a nourishing conscious embodied felt experience of aliveness in the present so our sensory body has nourishing predictions from which to create our outward experience of reality. We can actually have these conscious embodied felt experiences of aliveness in the present (eg. somatic psychotherapies, conscious dancing, psychodrama) or we can imagine them happening or having already happened in the past (hypnosis and meditation, ideal parent visualizations). Or we can both have them and imagine them! Either way, we're creating a different prediction for the future without working towards the future. Instead, we're attuning to the nourishment of our own aliveness already available in the present moment, here and now, through conscious embodied felt experiences of our aliveness. Conscious dancing calls forth and amplifies the aliveness that you already are from within the sensory body and from the very life that you are, consciously creating nourishing embodied felt experiences that meet every part of the body at every stage of the body's physical experience in exactly the way you have needed...as an infant, a younger child, an older child, a teenager, a young adult, adult, and even creating nourishing predictions for the body's physical experience in older age and end of life. We begin remembering who we are by rewriting the false stories of the unconscious fear based conditioning of the mind with words of love and truth. Conscious dancing is one way to fully embody and integrate the loving and true story about who you are.
Create the Felt Experience of a Nourished Reality of Aliveness, from Inside the Body
You are not your grief, fear, anger or shame so there's no need to condemn any part of you for these natural and universal human experiences, including the parts of us that may condemn them. Show up as you are with the wholeness of your human experience, the conditioning, embodied predictions and processes and allow the ceremony to meet you exactly where you are, each part of you exactly as it is here and now in this moment on your path, forever expanding and unfinished. Just by showing up to the ceremony, the quality of the container is immediately available to light up that felt sensory body experience of the aliveness that you already are, remembering, realigning and creating nourishing predictive processes within you that are attuned to this feeling of aliveness. It could be as simple as having the felt sensory body experience of moving with others and realigning or creating a sensory body prediction such as “When I move the body with others, I experience aliveness.” or "The body can meet and process thoughts, emotions and sensory experiences in its own way through dance and grow its capacity for experiencing at any stage of life." Can you see how an experience of feeling your aliveness in your sensory body establishes felt nourishing predictions from which the body can create and attune to in shaping your outward reality and your future?
We have more than enough evidence from intellect and wisdom for the value of being close to nature (eg. forest bathing), being close to each other (eg. collective gatherings and loving-kindness practices) and experiencing awe (eg. connection to something beyond ourselves). These and conscious embodied experiencing practices (eg. somatic psychotherapy or shadow work, meditation, including meditation in motion through conscious dancing) and embodied imaginative creation (eg. ecstatic free form dance, hypnosis and meditation, ideal parent visualizations, psychodrama) lead to powerful shifts in our perception of reality and therefore the physical world of our creation. We have studied enough to do things differently and we have immediate access to these inner and outer resources of aliveness.
Immerse in the Beauty of Who You Are: Breathing, Being, Sacred Life
The conscious dancing ceremony taps into multiple elements shown to shift perception beyond suffering or fear-based unconscious conditioning of the mind, resourcing you from the inside - from your own aliveness - so you can keep meeting the light and dark within you through your own inner work and meeting the light and dark around you in others and the world. Because we are called from within to design our world on the outside, if you're reading this right now, something inside you, even if deep down knows that this sense of life is still in you. This is a container of nourishment for what we already know deep down is true about you: that no matter what is happening inside you or around you right now – your physical body, relationships, health, work or financial circumstances - you are by nature of being life itself, brave, loving and absolutely wonderful in your sacred aliveness, in your breathing and being. You are essential to the ecosystem of this world right now in your embodied wholeness, every part of you exactly as you are in this present moment, unfinished and forever expanding. Pause for just a moment now and perhaps breathe deeply, tap your foot, wiggle your fingers, smile or grimace, and see if just for now you can choose one of these choices to play with. You are the co-creator of this next moment in your reality, here, now, in this present moment inside you. And this moment. And this one.
Nature, awe, shared embodied presence and experiencing, playful love & wonder and conscious imaginative creating are health care.