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Pleased to introduce you to my friend and guest writer today. Uma is a wise woman, and gentle presence in this world. — Helen There is a distinct, breathless kind of quiet that lives at the threshold of a new chapter. Whether it arrives by choice or by storm, the turning of a page can feel intimidating-even frightening. It can look like an empty room, a sudden downsizing, the vast open road of a life reconfigured, or the quiet ache of a family estrangement where the phone stays stubbornly silent. We look at the blank space and our minds whisper stories of isolation: I am starting over. I am alone. Nobody is watching, nobody cares, and everything I thought I knew has shifted beneath my feet. This feeling often rises to the surface around holidays like Thanksgiving, when the cultural script tells us we should be gathered closely with family around a crowded table. For many, though, the season highlights shifting dynamics, broken ties, or the tender, lingering absence of a beloved family member who is no longer here. The empty seat at the table can make the world feel terribly small, and the uncertainty of a new path can feel heavy to carry alone. And yet, autumn teaches us that every great transformation begins in the dark, fertile silence. Just like the earth in October, which draws its energy inward, sheds what it no longer needs, and enters a sacred phase of gestation beneath the soil, our own quiet seasons are not empty-they are underground. Sometimes, the universe aligns even our calendar to mirror this shift-reminding us through repeating portals of potential that a clean slate is calling us forward. Lately, I have been reflecting on how often we carry heavy, balled-up feelings inside of us without realizing they are there-until a piece of them finally begins to soften. We see it in our retreat spaces, too, where people step away from the noise of daily survival to drop the armor of “handling it all.” When the distractions fall away and the silence is no longer something to fill, but something to steep in, something remarkable happens. People realize they don’t need external certainty to find peace. They discover that deep exhale-the sudden, spacious realization that they can return to themselves, even when everything around them is unfigured and unwritten. The Wisdom Beneath the NoiseWhen the old identity is shedding like autumn leaves and the new horizon is unfamiliar, it is natural to brace against the emptiness. But what if the empty page isn’t a void to be feared? What if it is simply the soil? In our classes, we often pause to rest our hands flat against the center of the chest. We press gently, feeling the steady, rhythmic drumbeat of life inside the ribs, and I remind the room of a simple, immutable truth: In your heart, you are the wise one. Everything you actually need-every ounce of resilience, every whisper of guidance, every capacity to begin again-is already breathing inside you, germinating in the dark. When your world shrinks down to a single moment, and you learn to sit with the quiet rather than running from it, you discover a radical kind of wholeness. Connection has a way of meeting us when we least expect it-sometimes in the voice of a long-lost sibling reaching across the gap, sometimes in the shared breath of a community holding space, and sometimes simply in the steady, undeniable beat of your own pulse reminding you that you are here, and you are never truly alone. Writing the Next LineIf you find yourself standing at the edge of an unfamiliar chapter today-or navigating the tender, complicated currents of a holiday weekend-let your shoulders soften, release the grip on your abdomen, warm the expression on your face. Acknowledge the heaviness of what you’ve carried, and trust the invisible work happening beneath the surface of your life. Take a conscious breath. Place your hand on your heart. Feel the depth and presence of your being. The page is blank, yes-but it is rich, fertile ground, and it belongs entirely to you. In the service of the heart and the sacred✨🙏 With Love and Gratitude, Uma Founder & CEO
Sitka and Stillness Collective Ltd. Where Roots Meet Rest.
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Category Archives: The Mind
Utterly Unique
Joyce as a little girl with her mother, Ruth.
Joyce Hawkes was a unique individual with a huge heart and a quiet gentleness. She was devoted to her work. Her gift and ability to help people heal was remarkable and I don’t think any one of us who studied with her will ever be able to measure up to that.
She continued working right up until the day she died. She loved her work.
And she still compels us to do the work. She once told me as I was just starting with a client’s challenging condition to “Trust the work. You are not the work, the work comes through you.”
She taught her students and her clients to “Allow. Allow what is, to be as it is. We are not going backward, we are moving forward to health and wholeness. Joyce know that healing went deep, far beyond even the notion of curing. It went to cells, to DNA, to personal histories, to mental and emotional makeups. And she knew that each one of us is utterly unique, even though our bodies are made up of exactly the same stuff.
Joyce is missed every day, and yet she seems to show up everyday as well, which makes life seem marvelous and mystical by turns.
If you were not fortunately enough to meet Joyce during her lifetime you can see her on YouTube in numerous videos, or here on our video page, or perhaps even in your dream time. She is still doing her work from that great big Office Above and she makes house calls.
As the year comes to a close we wish you peace, health, and happiness.
–Helen
Even if you can’t get to the beach, a few moments of inner beach time can be a tonic to your body and mind. In fact your nervous system literally cannot detect the difference between a ‘real’ walk on your favorite sandy/salty shore and a vividly imagined walk in that very same place.
The key is to use all your senses.
- Close your eyes
- Feel yourself walking onto the shore
- See that particular shade of ocean blue/turquoise/green
- Smell the salt air, the sea-weedy aroma
- Feel the air on your cheeks, the warmth of the sun on your back
- Let the water touch your toes, the sand shifting as the water retreats
- The sound of the ocean coming and going and birds too
- Soak it all in
The beach? You can go there every day.
Also works for walks in the woods, strolling by a river, jumping over a creek, lying in a sun-lit meadow. The healing you long for is right there within you.
Joyce Said, “Allow”
The founder of Cell-Level Healing, Joyce Whiteley Hawkes PhD, was a profound healer, teacher, protective mother and grandmother, friend, confidant, and neighbor. Before her passing she offered 4 decades of instruction and healing facilitation to hundreds of people. Myself included.
Of late I have been mulling over some of the things Joyce said; her words, her daily prayers, her humorous comments, her teachings. Perhaps here you will see how her words still hold wisdom and guidance for you.
Joyce said, “Allow”.
Joyce used this word with all of us; clients, students, family.
She encouraged people to start by allowing whatever was happening to be, just “Let it be.”
What does the word ‘Allow’ mean to you?
Is allowing the same as giving up?
What is easy to allow in your life?
What is not so easy to allow?
What would your life be like if you met it with the Spirit of Allowing?
Allowing was a general starting point for Joyce whenever she was seeking guidance. Without allowing what is to be as it is, it’s hard to see a way forward. We can get stuck in a mind loop, or flooded with fear, paralyzed or panicked.
If you will, see where the word ‘allow’ takes you today.
Thank you Joyce.
— Helen
Problems? More Than One Way
No problem can stand the assault of sustained thinking.
— Voltaire
What do you think of that approach? In your life have you solved all problems by sheer sustained thinking? Me either. And I suspect that, perhaps later in life, Voltaire ran into a few problems that did not yield to thinking of any kind.
In the realm of energetic healing our experience is that every single person we meet, though physically made up of the same atoms, molecules, and tissues, and almost identical DNA, is in fact utterly unique. And one size never fits all.
We respect the tools that science and modern medicine utilize to rule out and diagnose diseases and maladies. Diagnosing is not our purview. Finding ways to bring healing to a particularly unique individual is what we are moved to pursue.
There is nothing wrong with sustained thinking. It is just not the whole ballgame for us. Here is another approach.
My master teacher once said, “The guru does not solve problems. The guru dissolves the state in which problems exist.”
I’ve been chewing on that one ever since having a direct experience of a problem dissolving as my state changed. Now that happens almost daily. And has for about 34 years.
How is that possible? I have replaced assaulting problems with entering an altered state through meditation, or sometimes dance, or singing. It is almost the opposite of thinking. One could call it ‘allowing’, or ‘letting go’, or ‘stilling the mind’. This is not New Age stuff, it is an ancient science and technology of the mind that has been handed down for ages.
Learning to trust the inner spaciousness as a remedy for even modern problems has helped me become a better person, a more reliable friend, and a stronger support for others.
— Helen
For one of the best books on meditation look for
Meditation for the Love of It
by Sally Kempton.
Sally says, “The meditation that will work is the meditation that you will do.”
So don’t over think it, just do it.
A Walk in the Mist and the Mystery
Yesterday (uncharacteristically) we decided to take a hike before breakfast. The ‘uncharacteristic’ part I refer to was ‘before breakfast.’ Up near the Canadian border we often go hiking on a familiar trail with our dog leading the way. Rama is an excellent trail dog, unless other dogs or people are around. Then he is a run-away, nut job, ever up for a romp with others, a friendly chat, or simply to follow anyone while leaving the ones who feed him behind.
The day was set to be very hot, so getting out ahead of the heat was what drove us up the hill before taking in sustenance. And being out so early meant we also succeeded in avoiding people and doggies, a complete win.
While hiking I noticed how often my mind, just like my dog, runs off with me. Then in a moment my attention is captured by the way the morning light is touching and illuminating the broken trunk of a tree that has upended itself into the river below. The beauty of it touches me wordlessly. I resolve to be still, a wordless observer of the woods, but before long I am planning a project like this one. I will write about “Forest Bathing”, and hold forth with data about how the aromas given off by trees are as healthy for us as the oxygen they produce in such abundance. Ah, the mind – so quick.
At the next lookout spot over our beloved river we note to one another the milky-white color of the water, and tussle with each other about the look and definition of run-off, and snow-melt. The sandy beach below has become more rocky than last we saw it, my hand-carved wooden offerings are still in place, someone has chain-sawed off a small piece of a downed tree.
In this way my mind creates a world, populated by ideas, beliefs, musings, projects, and I become identified with it. ‘I am’ becomes, I am the hiker, the dog-lover, the carver, the notice-er, the river viewer, the one who comes and goes.
All the while a stillness is present and in brief glimpses I apprehend it, and even fall under its sway now and then. I am caught in stillness, even as my ears hear the river, caught in illumination even as the morning light touches the mossy tree ahead, held in the mystery even while swimming in the mist of the mind.
