Ceremonies and Healing with Stacy Mitchell Exploring the Seasons of Life

“You are not a drop in the ocean, you are the ocean in a drop”. ~ Rumi
Guest Introduction:  Hello and a warm welcome, friends, to another episode of Exploring the Seasons of Life podcast! I'm your host, Cindy MacMillan, and I hope you're finding inspiration and connection in our new podcast series – Holistic Living: Embracing Wholeness In Everyday Life. And if you happen to be joining us for the first time, a heartfelt welcome to you, new friends.
Holistic living—it's not just a fancy buzzword. Think of it as returning to the very essence of yourself – your body, mind, heart, and soul. Picture a world where you show up for yourself in every way imaginable, like you're your own best friend, chef, and personal cheerleader. It's about nurturing all those beautiful facets of you that make you, well, uniquely you.
But here's where the magic truly begins – wholeness.  It's embracing your stories, your scars, your stumbles, and your soaring moments, and realizing they're all essential brushstrokes that create your masterpiece. You're not a puzzle with pieces missing; you're a tapestry woven from the threads of your experiences.
Grab your favorite cozy beverage, find a comfy spot to sit back and relax, because we're about to dive deep into a truly inspiring conversation.
Stacy Mitchell has been a Life-Cycle Celebrant® since 2005, co-creating and officiating meaningful ceremonies across the life-cycle based on the beliefs and values of her clients. She is also a Reiki Master/Teacher, certified Soul Realignment advanced practitioner and Soul Regression therapist. Her goal is to provide others with the tools and knowledge they need for self-empowerment and self-healing through the weaving together of these offerings.
 Here’s a glimpse of our conversation: Welcome to the podcast, Stacy.
Stacy: “In Hinduism, there is an understanding that the cycles of life are birth, life, death, and rebirth and in the Western world, we tend to stop with just death, right?  Not that rebirth part; but it's not a full cycle if we don't have that fourth.” 
Stacy: “For me, life isn't about exploring cycles. It's about living into each season and cycle.” 
Stacy: “I think as time goes on, we really begin to understand that we are a part of the cycle, and so we are living the cycle, whatever, that cycle that we're in is in that moment.  And really, that’s the key to integration, I guess, is that that ability to just live the cycle rather than  peering in from the outside and say, oh, what's this?”
 Stacy: “In the ceremony co creation process or the healing process, as a practitioner, the most important thing for me is to be an active listener.  Active listening requires you to lay down any preconceived ideas or agendas about the work, or the people that you are speaking with.  And it also requires a presencing in the moment,  to be fully there in that moment, and not  thinking in the before time, thinking into whatever's in the future,  not jumping ahead mentally or even verbally,  but to really just take in what is said  to marinate in those words  and the emotions that the words invoke  and to listen  between the lines  in order to hear what the silence is saying.”
Stacy: “It can really be eye opening to, to see, like your friend, you know, to see how other cultures treat food and treat the sharing of food. And I'm sure you're aware that even in the West, sharing food after a ceremony, especially a funeral, is, like, one of the most important parts of the experience. So, it's not just, what happens within the ceremony itself, but that moment of breaking bread together, that moment of being...In community and feeding each other and in some circles would be called feeding the soul, right?”
 You can find Stacy Mitchell at: Honor Your Voice Holistic Living: Embracing Wholeness In Everyday Life Series
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