I realized something uncomfortable this week:

In trying to become more professional, I had become less alive.

I have spent years developing as a clinician.

I became licensed. Trained in Somatic Experiencing. Developed the RIFRA Method. Wrote a book. Presented at professional conferences. Learned how to explain complex psychological and nervous-system processes with increasing precision.

None of that was false.

But somewhere inside that development, I had begun quietly editing out other parts of myself.

The dancer.
The singer.
The artist.
The woman who creates ritual, follows desire, moves her body, plays, and makes things simply because they feel alive.

Some very old beliefs had attached themselves to the idea of being “professional”:

Serious people are restrained.

Credibility comes from being cerebral.

A woman visibly at home in her body will be sexualized or taken less seriously.

Art is lovely, but it isn’t real work.

Embodiment is something I can teach, as long as I don’t become too embodied in public.

No wonder I had begun feeling dry.

I wasn’t only tired from working.

I was trying to build a professional life while leaving some of my most vital parts outside the room.

The realization has brought me back to something essential about RIFRA.

RIFRA does not end with understanding.

It ends with Action.

We can understand the Root of a pattern. We can recognize its Impact, contact the Feelings it carries, and Reflect on the beliefs and meanings that formed around it.

But eventually, something has to become different in the living.

We say no.

We tell the truth.

We rest instead of performing competence.

We let someone see what we have made.

We ask for the fee.

We take the class.

We use our voice.

We move toward something we desire, even while the old organization tells us to remain safely where we are.

This week, my Action looked like contacting a voice teacher, reaching out to a belly dance teacher, and making plans to try flamenco and castañuelas.

These may sound like small things.

But they are not random hobbies or distractions from my “real” professional work.

They are reparative actions toward a life in which I no longer have to exile the artist to experience myself as a credible clinician.

One action does not erase the old gravitational pull.

But repeated actions begin to build another pull.

A life increasingly organized not only around protection, but around aliveness, congruence, pleasure, meaning, expression, and truth.

In the Somatic Experiencing world we call this Counter-Vortex.

Not bypassing what hurt.

Not dancing over grief.

But refusing to let healing remain permanently organized around the wound.

The reparative Action will be different for each of us.

For one person, it may be dancing.

For another, it may be resting.

It might be becoming visible, allowing disappointment, mourning something fully, making art, changing a relationship, asking for help, or finally admitting what you want.

The question I am sitting with is:

What do I already know to be true that I am not yet fully living?

And then:

What is one Action that would make that truth slightly more real?

For the clinicians and practitioners here, this realization is also shaping the next RIFRA training.

On October 14, I’ll begin a small six-week live pilot of RIFRA Foundations: From Insight to Embodied Action.

We will learn the clinical framework while also exploring it from inside: learning the map, locating it in ourselves, practicing it, and applying it with others.

Because we cannot ask our clients to inhabit their voices, bodies, boundaries, desires, and lives while remaining entirely outside that practice ourselves.

If this is speaking to you, reply with RIFRA. I’ll send you the details before I share them more widely. Early enrollment will be available through September 13.

With aliveness,

Tanya

P.S. What part of you might be asking to come back? I would genuinely love to hear.