Episode 132: Secure Attachment as a Spiritual Path with Melissa Benintendi
Today on the Everything Belongs Podcast, Madison is in conversation with Melissa Benintendi.
Melissa Benintendi is an owner and the Director of Clinical Embodiment at Beyond Healing Institute in Springfield, MO. Melissa began her career as a trauma therapist primarily practicing EMDR. She is now an international EMDR consultant and trainer and specifically focuses on practicing therapy with the body in mind. She is a coauthor and trainer of Somatic Integration and Processing, which is a case conceptualization model that teaches therapists to understand their work through the lenses of somatic psychology, interpersonal neurobiology and adaptive information processing models. She is also a cohost and creator of ‘Notice That – An EMDR Podcast’ which reaches an international audience of over 40,000 listeners monthly. She is currently pursuing her doctorate in Transpersonal and Somatic Psychology through the California Institute of Integral Studies. Melissa has also been trained in CranioSacral Therapy and Reiki Energy Healing and utilizes both in her private practice.
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In this episode we talk about:
Why the path of the body leads us to Spirit
The stimuli-response cycle & how our somatic state determines our experience
Our response to stimuli is organized relationally. This is biological.
Following familiar templates is efficient for survival, so opening to new learning takes energy
Rigid/fixed states vs supple, responsive and resonant states of being determine our health.
Rigidity as a response to threat & is a holding of the energy that wants to be released
We find inner safety through telling ourselves the truth of our old experience & creating a container for the expression
The less we are in our bodies, the less we can tolerate the big expression of others
The nuances of anger expression and abuse, and navigating power dynamics
The definition of secure attachment
The gift of conflict, and how the conflict-repair cycle creates safety and security
What is repair, and how can we repair with a body-first orientation?
How to build capacity for your own clear expression, so that you might have capacity for others’ expression
Developing attachment to the More Than Human World & how to be mirrored, held and witnessed by nature
The importance of both people’s experience existing in conflict
Cell to cell resonance with others
How nature can show us the truth of who we are being
Why genuine spirituality asks something of us
