Kate Vosti is a Somatic Movement Facilitator whose mission is to offer a unique, therapeutic experience using non-sexual sensuality to move and repurpose grief, reconnect to joy and pleasure, and claim authentic expression and confidence. And she is also an admirable role model for grief and rebirth. She had spinal fusion surgery for scoliosis when she was 17 years old and continues to have repercussions today, so she is challenged to love her body and accept its limitations every single day. And there is also the time she calls The Apocalypse, when her home in Napa burned down and her father died eleven days later.
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Kate Vosti: Do You Know The Distinction Between Sensuality And Sexuality? The Way Kate Teaches Sensuality Is A Potent Formula To Move And Repurpose Grief
I’m delighted to have this opportunity to introduce all of you to Kate Vosti, a native of San Francisco who will be speaking to us from Kailua, Hawaii. Kate is a somatic movement facilitator whose mission is to offer a unique therapeutic experience using non-sexual sensuality to move and repurpose grief, reconnect to joy and pleasure, and claim authentic expression and confidence. Her work is grounded in a Master’s in Leadership Studies, graduate-level Psychosomatic Education, Dance and Movement Medicine, and Buddhist Philosophy.
Kate is also an admirable role model for grief and rebirth. Even though her life has been filled with support and opportunities, she’s lived through indescribable physical and emotional pain. She had spinal fusion surgery for scoliosis when she was seventeen years old and continues to have repercussions. She is challenged to love her body and accepted limitations every single day. There is also the time she calls the apocalypse when her home in Napa burned down and her father died eleven days later.
Kate’s journey through profound grief has brought her closer to the true essence of love, and it has inspired her to help others. She now firmly believes that we go through challenges to learn how to overcome them so that we can help others who are also suffering. I’m looking forward to talking with Kate about the way somatic therapy is different from talk therapy, why she believes that the way to happiness is through contributing to others’ happiness, how meditation and Buddha have changed the ways she responds to life, how dance and movement therapy provides an effective way to process grief, and so much more for assure to be a fascinating interview. Kate, a warm, heartfelt welcome to the show.
Thank you. It’s always knowing your story reflected back and processing it.
That’s why I’m doing all these things that I’m doing. It’s very admirable what you have been through. You have such a beautiful education and all. Everyone’s going to enjoy reading what you have to say and learn a lot from it. Let’s start. Let’s tell them about Kate as a child. Let’s start with this one. There was a young Kate who struggled with feeling affectionate and caring and was also overwhelmed by rage and aggression. You felt misunderstood by others and by yourself. Who was this Kate? What was this story about?
I love that you start with this question because, with all my clients through talk therapy, I’m like, “We could do a lot of healing if we all just went right back to what was going on in our childhood.” It imprints everything and informs everything in our adult life. To be able to talk about and even hearing those words, I remember writing those and sharing those words with you. There’s that little part of you, your inner child that goes, “I was in so much pain.” That was true. Who was I then?
Sensuality And Sexuality: We could do a lot of healing if we all just went right back to what was going on in our childhood. Because it imprints everything and informs everything in our adult life.
What was going on in your life?
It’s been a bit of a predicament in my own development in the sense that I’ve always had a good life. I’m an only child. I have the most amazing parents. I’ve been best friends with both of my parents my whole life. In most grief interviews, I start with childhood because I say, “Grief is such a range.” Mostly, we think of grief as, “It only happens when someone we love dies. It’s around grief and death.”
Grief is such a huge spectrum. I like to start with childhood and share that. My parents divorced when I was only two years old. A big part of our development or hardwiring happens from the time we’re born up until about three years old. We’re like little sponges. We absorb everything going on around us. What was happening was my mom was grieving a huge loss. My dad blindsided her in the divorce. They were together for twelve years. One day, he decided he didn’t want to be married anymore, and she had this nine-month-old baby, this beautiful life, and it is gone.
It imprinted in me this deep sadness, rage, and grief that I’ve realized as I’ve gotten older are not mine. Maybe it brings up something for you as a reader. This is something that we all experience. We’re all imprinted with what was happening in our parents’ or caretakers’ lives. I’m not fully understanding that experience of myself, but also my mother and my father. That impacted me so much that I was very socially awkward. I had such a hard time with groups. I felt very misunderstood. I would get this rage and impulse. I had all this energy, which we’ll get to of what I repurposed and did with it.
I had all this energy and emotions that I had no idea what to do with. It would come out in these very aggressive ways. I love animals, pink, soft things, people and connection, and all these wonderful things, and yet, there is this polarity that existed within me that was difficult for other people to understand much less myself. I was like, “Kate is so sweet and kind.”
It occurs to me as I’m talking to you. Your father left your mother when you were nine months old. You might have been breastfeeding or whatever. She’s holding you and you’re taking in her emotion, rage, anger, and hurt. You’re porous. You were taking all of that in. It is very confusing for you on an unconscious level.
We’re little sponges and watching facial expressions. We also are such sensorial beings, which is what we will also be talking about. If that is not matching this felt sense of energy, it’s very confusing. It’s if someone’s smiling, but they’re their energy is saying, “I’m devastated. My life is over.” That’s something we get to take into consideration.
I’m sure there’s a whole story about your dad. I’m sure one day he would explain things to you and all of that. It sounds like you were very close to him. When he was dying, you kept repeating to yourself, “Choose love instead of fear.” You had a miracle that woke you up and taught you that love is the foundation for everything. That’s another formative moment in your life. Do you want to tell us about that?
Choose love instead of fear. Love is the foundation for everything. Click To Tweet
That was the most pivotal moment of my life thus far. My dad was the married-and-divorce-four-times kind of guy. That was his path, but he was a good man and supported my mom and me. He was there 100%. He’s a good man. He just couldn’t be married. That was my mom and his process. As a father, he was incredible. We are best friends. He would always say we’re kindred spirits. We were. I ended up being his caretaker. He was diagnosed with melanoma cancer. For those that don’t know, that’s skin cancer. Once it gets underneath the skin, it grows very quickly. The tumors will grow. They start on his brain and they would grow very big and quickly. It’s tough.
It was very heartbreaking.
He started chemo, and I moved home. I had just finished my first Master’s in Leadership Studies in San Diego, and then I moved back home to San Francisco to take care of him. It was about six months of the chemo. You watch this big, powerful, and strong person guide or leader in your life with chemo. It’s awful and see what the tumors were. It was a lot to watch that happening and this pivotal moment. This is where Buddhism has been a big part of my life for eleven years. What I love about Buddhism is it teaches us a lot about death and understanding the transitional process of when the consciousness transitions from the body to this other state called the Bardo, which is this transitional place before reincarnation or rebirth.
Essentially, I had been doing a lot of practices that were all about the preparation of death for yourself, but you can see how you can also apply it to someone you love and how to support them. My dad was not a Buddhist. He called himself an out-of-practice Catholic. He was Irish but not religious yet spiritual. I remember being at his bedside and knowing it was the last day because you start to notice certain things.
This textbook they talk about is interesting how it’s very true. You start to watch certain things happen in the body. You start to see their look. They start looking around the room like they’re not there anymore. Maybe they’re seeing something else. He couldn’t swallow anymore. There was a gurgling. There are these different types of things that the body will go through when it’s starting to be towards the end. He was going through all of them. I remember sitting there next to him. I was listening to a recording of one of my favorite Buddhist conversations.
It was talking about the transition of consciousness out of the body and what happens during that period. What is believed is that the consciousness can see, feel, and hear everything that’s still going on in the room, but they can feel it nine times more than what everyone is experiencing. When other people are in the room, they are feeling rage, terror, or anything like that. Their consciousness is going to feel that extremely more and it’s going to interfere with their transition.
Sensuality And Sexuality: During the transition of consciousness out of the body, it can still see, feel, and hear everything going on in the room, but it can feel it nine times more than what everyone is experiencing.
They’re picking up the vibration from other people in the room around them as they’re dying. Everything is heightened like that.
Once the body is dead and the consciousness has left the body, it’s still feeling because they’re in the room. They’re feeling that. That can risk a bad rebirth. If they’re feeling a lot of anger, rage, or something like that, those are all qualities and frequencies that risk our consciousness, souls, or whatever you believe in to go not have a good rebirth, to a hell realm, or something like that. After I heard that, I said, “The most helpful thing I can do for my father in this moment of transition is to feel as much love as possible. Whether this is true or not, it doesn’t matter. Whether he can feel me or not, he would be feeling loved.”
It’s like that conviction of like, “This is the moment that matters the most. I have a choice to feel what I’m made of.” As I then see him lying there dead, which everyone reading knows that surreal moment of finality when you’re like, “My gosh,” there’s this choice that I made at that moment. I stepped back while everyone went over and was checking his pulse. We were in a hospital. I remember opening up my heart and feeling the most selfless love I possibly could because Buddhists also talk about attachment a lot.
If we’re sitting there, we’re like, “No. Come back. Please. I miss you. Don’t leave me,” the consciousness that’s already trying to transition is going to be stuck here and not be able to transition. They also talk about the quality of attachment. At that moment, I kept saying, “Calm, heart. It’s okay, dad. I love you. You can go.” I kept repeating that to myself and calming my heart. That was my experience. I remember my mom came out of the room. There were some complications with the way that he died. She’s like, “I am so furious.” I was like, “It’s okay.” I remember just hugging and holding her, and being like, “It’s okay.” I’m calming her and being like, “We’re creating a loving space. It is what it is. This is the reality of the moment. If it helps dad at all, how can we choose love?” That was my moment.
You had peace as your father.
The reason why that then continued to be so powerful is my dad’s home in Napa. Luckily, were supposed to be there that weekend. We weren’t because we would’ve died. It was so quick and happened in the middle of the night. It was the 2017 Napa fires. Our house had burned down. This was eleven days later that my dad died. Two days later, my mom and I went up to the property for the first time. It was covered in rubble. You’re getting another very surreal thing.
You’ve had two losses. You lost your home and dad within thirteen days of each other.
My dad was at home. He built it himself. My parents got married there. This was something that was in our family for so long. I was walking and something caught my eye. It was just like the foundation of the house. My dad built it. Something caught my eye like cement that was left. That was part of the foundation. I brushed some of the ash aside. In the foundation of the cement was the word love carved into the foundation of the house.
I didn’t do that when I was little. I was ten years old when the house was built. I know my dad certainly didn’t do that. He wasn’t the kind of guy that would write love in the cement. I don’t think any of the contractors or cement porters would write that in there. I’m like, “Where does the message come from?” Even if there is some explanation, it felt like at that moment, it was my dad being like, “I hear you, I heard you, and thank you.”
What a beautiful, wonderful and miraculous story. These losses led you to hum to yourself, which is about love. It brought you to the conclusion that the way to happiness is through contributing to others’ happiness. Why did that lead you to that conclusion? How did you find yourself feeling and knowing that?
Buddhism. The Dalai Lama talks a lot about, “If you want to experience happiness, contribute to others’ happiness.” When everything you feel like you’re living in an alternate reality, everything is just fog. Nothing feels meaningful. There’s this meaninglessness. When we’re faced with death and all these things, we’re like, “What is the meaning of life? What’s the point?” I remember asking myself at 27 that so much, I just finished a Master’s program, but I was like, “I don’t know what I want to do.” I’m lost.
In the fog of grief, you feel like you're living in an alternate reality. Everything is just foggy. Nothing makes sense. Click To Tweet
You must have been in such limbo. It was everything that was happening to you.
My dad was such a big part of my life at 27. I know that not necessarily a lot of people had, but I was there for every moment and we were kindred spirits. I felt like a part of myself had gone, and I didn’t understand. This meaninglessness was overcoming me. I remember this voice that, at some point, during the fog saying like, “Find your wound. Find your purpose.” I’m like, “Okay.” Through that, it was this, “You are going through all of these things in like meaning of life, in general, to go through these things and figure out how to overcome them so that you can help others who are also going through it because we are never alone in our suffering. Everyone is suffering.” One of the most poignant things about grief is the isolation and loneliness. The truth is we are all going through this. We all lose people we love.
We think we’re singular, but other people are all going through iterations of what we go through. Some are even a lot worse, God forbid, but it’s a fact. I want to ask you. You say you had a wound of painful judgment and a refusal of self-acceptance. This changed you also. Do you want to tell us about that?
One of the most poignant things about grief is the isolation and loneliness. But the truth is we are all going through this. We all lose people we love. We think we're singular, but we're not. Click To Tweet
Let’s do it. I’m going to be honest and say like, “Who doesn’t have a lot of self-judgment?”
Is this taking place before you found love in the foundation? Is finding love in that foundation start to shift your perception of yourself? Were you starting to give yourself self-love and self-acceptance? Was that a pivotal moment with that?
My self-love journey didn’t happen at that moment. That was a little bit more of bigger love that there’s spirit, matter, death, life, and rebirth. That was the big universal of like, “Love is the highest frequency. Love governs everything. The only thing that matters at the end of this life is love.” How can we cultivate that vibrational frequency through us in many different ways but then recognize a few years after that, it was during quarantine?
When I was in my Master’s in Leadership Program in San Diego, I was also working with a compassion education program, teaching people about compassion, which includes self-compassion. I was doing a lot of compassion and self-compassion work both corporately. I was infused into the academic world because I was teaching as well as being a student. There was a lot of compassion. The real self-love that I referred to in the questionnaire happened in quarantine when I recognized how to complete myself. It was inspired by the grief of exiting a relationship. It was the first relationship I had gone through after my father’s death.
It brought up a lot of this archetypal masculine of safety, security, and protection. My father being the big security, protection, and guidance in my life has left then noticing how it shows up in romantic partnership after that and going, “Oh,” then that not working out and noticing within ourselves, “How am I going to do this? How am I going to be with this? What is it going to take to truly love, take care, and show up for myself and not depend on someone else?”
Not only that but if you’re going to become a healer, were you conscious of that yet? You can’t become a healer to others unless you have self-love for yourself.
Self-love is a journey. It’s not a destination. We are constantly working at self-love as a practice. Even the Dalai Lama, the pope, or whomever you want to put on a pedestal, everyone’s working on loving themselves because there are just days we’re like, “Uh.”
Self-love is a journey. It's not a destination. We are constantly working at self-love. It is a practice. Click To Tweet
We are the biggest critics in our own heads.
To be a leader, teacher, educator, healer, therapist, or whatever you are, number one is to be able to admit that these things are our practice, but we have to embody them and be committed to them, or else if we’re talking and sharing this and telling our clients to it and we’re not living it ourselves.
You have to be a role model. I have a question. Please educate me. You’ve got a graduate-level Psychosomatic Education. Please define that. What issues does Psychosomatic Education help to address? You’re also a specialist in somatic therapy, so how is that different from talk therapy?
I’m excited about the somatic field because even though it’s been around forever and once I describe it, you’re going to go, “Okay.” It’s just a fancy word for it. The word soma is a Greek word for body. I’ll answer both of those questions in one. When you think of a talk therapy session, you’re sitting there and talking, “Tell me about your feelings. Tell me about your childhood. How does that make you feel?” You’re talking it out. When we experience something traumatic or painful, and when I say traumatic, it doesn’t necessarily have to be something horrific like what you’ve endured, Irene. That’s on the high end of trauma. It can also be something like divorce or breakup.
Depending on who you’re divorcing, that could be traumatic.
It all makes these imprints. Our nervous system is all around our body. With talk therapy, we’re addressing it from a very cognitive cerebral standpoint when the whole rest of the body went through that experience. The gut evolved before the brain. The body is very intelligent. We’ve only scratched the surface of the intelligence of the body. The body has many systems going on and many different things that hold so much different types of energy.
We’re in a very cognitive and celebrated society now. We definitely used to not be because when we were out being hunters and gatherers, we had to rely on very different senses. Now, we’re living in a society where this is rewarded and celebrated. We’re forgetting this whole extraordinarily intelligent evolutionary aspect of our entire holistic being.
You’re talking about the body and mind connection.
That psychosomatic is mind and body connection essentially. We’re bringing the body into the therapeutic conversation. In talk therapy sessions, they go, “How do you feel about that?” In a somatic therapy session, they go, “Let’s close our eyes. Breathe in. When you bring up this memory, notice where in your body you feel it.” Most people go, “Maybe I have tension in my chest or tightness in my stomach. I have pain back here.”
We would go into that part of the body and start to explore it a bit more. With sensation, the body speaks. The body’s language is sensation, so the body speaks through sensation. Maybe there’s some symbology, colors, and texture. We’re using a different type of language system. I end up calling it accelerated healing even though we’re not going any faster.
My clients always go, “I have worked through more in an hour of therapy with you than I have in a year’s worth of talk therapy,” because the body has so much. It stores our emotions and our memories. With this energy, which is emotion is energy, these memories get trapped in our bodies. It causes all these other ailments, physical pain, hormonal imbalances, disease disorder, and all of these things. Most of them can be traced back to repressed emotions in the body.
I’m not a physician in any way, but I would imagine that a lot of people who perhaps have autoimmune diseases or different things going on in their bodies could be from repressed trauma at an earlier stage in their lives. The body remembers.
Sensuality And Sexuality: A lot of people who have autoimmune diseases or different things going on in their bodies could have had repressed trauma at an earlier stage in their lives.
In addition to working with people with grief, I’ve worked a lot, especially in my grad program with women who are survivors of sexual assault. A lot of my focus is on the pelvic bowl, the womb, the cervix, the hip flexors, and all these areas. We store so many emotions in there, especially if the boundary has been violated. It’s a total type of grief.
It’s fascinating how we can start using the body in these conversations with grief. What led me to my a-ha moment was after my father’s passing. I was in talk therapy for it, and I had a great counselor. There was this workshop, and it said, “Come move for a day. Do some art therapy and move to a live cellist.” I’ve been a dancer my whole life. I’ve only done technical dance. I’ve never done any type of improvisational dance. I was like, “This sounds cool.” I went to it. I processed more of my grief that day just moving to a live cellist than I did in all my talk therapy sessions. That’s when I said, “What I want to do for the rest of my life is help people to move through grief.”
Is that what you call the distinction between sensuality and sexuality? Explain that to us because I know that you help people to heal through sensuality. Define that. Tell us about that. You have an offering called sensual self-love. Now everybody’s perking up to read.
These are so great, and I love talking about this because it’s such an important distinction. In my grieving period, father, health issues, and even after a breakup, there have been times in my life when I wasn’t sexually available. I had no desire to engage that way. When I was working and going through a two-year celibacy when I was in grad school and I was working with these women who were survivor survivors of sexual assault and seeing their unavailability based on what they had endured, I was thinking, “Being sexually available is a privilege.”
If we go through phases of our life where we’re not available for this and we’re not talking about that enough. Especially if you’re on Instagram and all these things, there’s a lot of sexual empowerment coach or influencer type thing going on. I remember being flooded with that in my community and being like, “That’s not where I’m at in life right now.” I don’t connect with being a sexual being. At the same time, I still was like, “I still want to experience pleasure in a non-sexual way. I still feel very connected to myself sensorially. How can I still practice a sensuality, a sensorial healing of-type experience for myself that isn’t anything inherently sexual?”
Especially because sensually, if you talk about the somatic piece, you’re having those feelings are signposts as you start to express yourself.
These are ways that we get to express and love ourselves. One of the biggest things we’re not asked is, “How do you like to be touched?” even simply just like this, nothing sexual. How often do we get this invitation to place our hand over here and comfort ourselves in these types of ways of like, “Okay?” Also, adding this layer on top, which is moving from the somatic, which is sensorial to the kinetic. Kinetic means the movement of energy through the body as we move our bodies. The area or the graduation of this that I am moving into now is kinetic body alchemy.
It started as non-sexual sensuality, but I’ve been able to find more language for it because people associate sensuality so much with sex when it’s about liberating ourselves from having to be under this performative pressure of being sexual and just being like, “How can I breathe? How can I make a sound? How can I touch my body? How can I move my hips and spine in this way that has nothing to do with sex or performance?” This is about moving stuck energy through the body. What helped me so much with all my different types of grief is being like, “I need to move the stuck through my body and out to be able to help myself to feel love, pleasure, and safe like I can trust myself because I know how to take care of myself.”
People associate sensuality so much with sex when it's really about liberating ourselves and moving stuck energy through the body. Click To Tweet
When we know how to create pleasure for ourselves, then our body feels trusting and safe. Now we can go into those more painful points of like, “Oh,” because we’re not going to get stuck in there. We don’t do the deep work because we’re afraid, “If I go into that deep dark hole, what if I never get out?” That’s why a lot of people just don’t even start, but if we know how to relate, take care, and regulate ourselves, then we can go in and get that garbage out there.
How do you process it? Do you process that garbage because it’s leaving? Do you process it with talk therapy with people?
There’s a whole technique that I do that I created myself. Essentially, it’s taking different parts of Buddhist practices and visualization. I work a lot with colors, light, and visualization processes, allowing people to color, texture, and things like that, and helping it to imagine it leaving the body or moving the body in a certain way that allows it to release. It is so effective.
How do you work with them virtually? I know you also have a rebirth retreat. Tell us how you work with people online with that.
A lot of my work isn’t hands-on. I don’t consider myself an energy healer. I don’t work with Reiki. I’m not working with other energy. What I’m doing is I’m helping you to understand how to move energy through your own body because I truly believe in the power of self-healing.
You’re a facilitator.
It’s like the proverb, “Teach a man to fish.” I’m there holding and guiding you through this process. That’s why it works virtually effectively. The only thing that I prefer in person that’s the added fun but is not like, “In person is more effective than virtual,” which is the exact same work, but I like to do some hands-on sensorial experience for clients in person, which is an added bonus. It’s not necessarily a more effective thing. It’s more of a bigger experience. The way I do it is about guiding you through this experience. I play all different types of music to match the mood. I facilitate and take you on a journey.
You do a lot of preparation, and it’s probably different for whoever you’re helping depending on what’s going on.
My methodology is fluid enough that we’re not just doing the same thing for each person. It’s very personalized. That’s what I appreciate about this healing. It gets to be creative.
Tell us about your rebirth retreat.
I realize I didn’t even address you. My program, Sensual Self-Love, is a program for women. I will say this particular one, sensual self-love, isn’t focused on grief. It’s more focused on movement and the integration of being able to take care of yourself, your inner masculine and feminine. There’s a lot of movement and sensuality. We even address sexuality and all that stuff. It’s a community of women. This is in person because I moved to Oahu. There’s a beautiful retreat center here and I am so excited to start welcoming people to the retreats that I have designed. This one particularly is for women, but I will open it up probably to both men and women eventually.
Sensuality And Sexuality: Sensual Self-Love isn’t focused on grief. It’s more focused on movement and being able to take care of yourself.
This is called the Rebirth of Venus. The Venus part is the four women part. The ones for men and women would probably just be rebirth. It’s everything, grief, sensuality, and movement. We’re going to be working with the elements. We’re going to be connecting with each other, learning how to move energy through the body. It’s for any woman that is ready to learn how to become the most powerful self-healer that she can be in the most beautiful part of the world.
I also know that you have programs that you offer for people preparing for the death of a loved one and moving forward without them, which fascinates me. I bet you there are people now perking up and saying, “What’s that about?” Tell us about that.
This is my newest offering. This is Calm Heart inspired by the experience that I shared earlier with my father about calm heart and how to use this as a mantra and a way to help in that moment. I recognize that some people will have the opportunity to prepare. For others, like your experience, sometimes they’re sudden and there’s no preparation. They’re here and then they’re not.
It’s a six-month container, and it’s for both. I was thinking about having them the preparation and the after, but then I decided, “Everyone’s journey is so valuable, and can inform each other and be able to learn from each other.” Everything that I shared with you here, bringing in spirituality, is not just Buddhism. It’s any type of spirituality. I’m familiar with Buddhist practices that are super helpful, but I’ve also worked a lot with secular mindfulness and compassion education.
You probably get forms in all different kinds of religions.
Everyone’s welcome.
When my husband is dying or, God forbid, whatever’s going on, I will probably be in that hospital room or whatever. Can you help me? What do I do to enhance my experience?
I created a program of everything that I wish I had had. I wish I had had a community of people that get it. Especially at 27, I remember finding this thing called the Death Café. The people were mostly older and had lost spouses. I personally quite connect to it in the same way. I was like, “I wish there was just somewhere I could connect to it for me more personally.” There’s a community. We meet every week for a 90-minute session.
Is it a singular thing or a group of people that meet?
It’s a group. It’s a community. It’s open enrollment, which means you can join at any time. You get a six-month container. It’s the community aspect, but you also get access to me one-on-one because that was the other thing. In between the sessions, I remember with my grief counselor that I would have to wait a week, but as we know with grief, it comes on spontaneously. Sometimes there are moments where you’re like, “I need support in this moment. I’m available in between these sessions.” That felt important to me. It’s going to accumulate into an optional in-person retreat on Oahu because. It is all those things.
Another thing I did want to specify is when we are in this early stage of grief, even the work that I do with sensuality does feel a little bit too much. We’re not going to be dancing and moving quite that much on the weekly calls. You do have access to my monthly virtual drop-in called Moving Emotion. If you do want to do that, you can drop in once a month and do some movement practices. For most people, it’s more about the somatic experience and processing versus doing the sensuality and the moving. People aren’t quite there yet. I wanted to make that distinction. This is also open for both women and men.
We’re talking about doing so much healing on a somatic level of trauma. Why is it important for people to heal that? Why shouldn’t people just stay with all that trauma stuck in their bodies for the rest of their lives? The whole purpose of this show is to encourage people to do their healing work. What is Kate’s reason that people should do their healing work?
What it comes down to is there’s life after grief and with grief. The frequency of grief, most people think grief is a yucky, horrible, heavy thing. That can be the experience, but if we think about it, what’s underneath grief is love. We wouldn’t be feeling grief if we didn’t feel love. Grief is different than depression. Certainly, grief can turn into depression, but depression doesn’t turn into grief. It is either different experiences. The thing about grief that’s so unique is that it’s such a powerful energy because of its source in love. We can never get rid of grief. We just learn how to package, play and repurpose it into something else.
Underneath grief is love. Grief is love. We wouldn't be feeling grief if we didn't feel love. Click To Tweet
Look at you and me. Look what you’re doing and look what I’m doing.
We are repurposing it by helping others. That is the only thing at the end of this life. We think that the end of life is all about love. I hope if you take anything from this interview, remember that the only thing that matters is love. If we can work every day to find how to match our frequency to the vibration of love, the energy in our body, the quality of our mind, all about love and all of its different forms, then we’re going to live a happy life. When we carry these things like trauma and these painful emotions in our body, it’s affecting our frequency of love. There is a thing that’s going to heal those parts and the parts of us that are holding onto rage.
Rage is a little kid or whatever that is holding onto rage, jealousy, sadness, sorrow, and all of these different uncomfortable emotions. The thing that’s going to heal all of those is self-love and taking care of ourselves, knowing how to meet our needs that weren’t met when we were young or needs that we can’t expect others to meet that we have to learn how to meet on our own and also to find and surround us with people that know how to love us so that we can truly open, soften, and receive love.
Would you say that healing removes the blockages to love?
Yes. The only thing that’s blocking us from love are the barriers that we’ve created somatically.
How does your mantra, “Find your wound and purpose,” lead to finding joy?
Not much else makes sense in this life but finding love, helping others, and becoming an alchemist, transforming our wounds into wisdom. We’re all looking for purpose. There’s no one on this planet exempt from wanting to know we matter and that we have a purpose. If we can’t find out what that is, this mantra of finding our wound is checking in where they always ask these big Apple and all these big companies like, “What’s the problem?”
We start with like, “What’s the problem in the world, and how can we fix it?” We’re trying to think of it. If you want to think of it from a logical mind, like, “What’s the problem and how do we fix it?” we can tune in with ourselves and go, “What’s the problem? How do we fix it?” Knowing that’s going to make all the difference is when we are able to be free and to alchemize that. That’s going to help us connect to our purpose.
It sounds like the bottom line of everything is to free yourself so that you can love.
To bring it full circle, that moment when I saw love in the foundation of the burnt house was that love is always there no matter what. No matter the disasters that happen, love is the foundation of everything.
Thank you so much for encouraging people through dance, movement, and through who you are truly to heal and find the unshakable love at the core of their beings. Thank you for being the incredible role model that you are for grief and rebirth. I thank you from my heart for this insightful, fascinating, wonderful, and heartwarming interview. Here’s a loving reminder to everyone to make sure to follow us and like us on social apps at @IreneSWeinberg on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Be sure to click subscribe so you’ll never miss an episode. I want to give you a real heartfelt thank you so much, Kate. As I like to say, to be continued. Many blessings and bye for now.
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