Happy New Year!

The longest night of Winter Solstice is behind us, as is Christmas, followed soon by Kwanzaa and the end of this year. In this Holy Season we celebrate our spiritual roots, treasure the presence of loved ones, and turn inward to contemplate the interplay of darkness and light. This last day of 2021, many of us are celebrating another New Year’s Eve in the safety of our homes.

Several of us recently were at Hui Ho’olana on Molokai in Hawaii at a Somatic IFS Retreat, the first in-person program I have led in over 2 years. Negative covid antigen tests allowed us a week of maskless social freedom. Molokai’s two-year drought ended with our arrival. High winds and torrential rains left us with no electricity or internet for almost a day, but we were cozily ensconced in our yurt, immersed in the practices of Somatic IFS. Our senses awakened. The red earth turned spongey. The plants revived, and many internal bodymind systems unburdened. The clearing sky revealed ocean views with sunrises, rainbows, sunsets, planets lining up alongside a waxing moon, and the vastness of the night sky.

We are hopeful that the Somatic IFS Retreat in Costa Rica scheduled for the end of January will be as safe, given the more transmissible Covid variant. Online programs—both the Series, which is the online equivalent of the SIFS Retreats, and the SIFS Training—begin in February. The in-person retreats and the Series provide the experiential immersion into the Somatic IFS Practices that are the preparation for the Training where we apply these practices clinically with supervised practice and demonstrations.

I began this year not convinced that Somatic IFS practices would be effectively conveyed through an online platform. With encouragement and support from many, including the patience, dedication and expertise of organizers in the UK and Canada, 2021 has seen the completion of a 54 hr training and four 30 hr Series, as well as a few programs of shorter duration.

I am grateful for your interest in Somatic IFS and I will be happy to see some of you at one of the programs in 2022. My wish is for us to embrace all that this coming year brings us with an open heart.