Tuesday, April 15, 2025

Matt's spirituality and psychotherapy online group - NEW quarterly open May 1


Dear friends,

My Spirituality & Healing group and community will open for a new quarterly membership, beginning May 1.

You can learn more about the group here:


I’m sure it’s no surprise to any of you that we’re living in unprecedented times. It can feel as if the center is lost and that things are going way too fast, where the ground is slipping away underneath us.

It’s as if there were a slow drip of cortisol and adrenaline emerging out of the collective and falling into our shaky, tender bodies, hearts, and nervous systems. The high levels of arousal on the planet right now will inevitably take up residence in psyche and soma, and it can burn and ache, as we long for connection, safety, and ground.

As difficult and challenging as these times can be, they also offer a unique opportunity to (re)commit to our healing and spiritual paths.

It’s not easy to navigate on our own, and many of us these days feel so alone.

As open, sensitive human beings, we’re wired to tend to the wounds of the heart and turn toward the mystery of Being within a supportive and dynamic relational field, with the help of kind-hearted companions and fellow travelers.

To be together in an empathic, non-judgmental, open, warm circle of friends.

As a way to respond to this deep longing and to the unique liminal times we find ourselves in, I wanted to find a way to open my Spirituality & Healing community so that more of you could participate – with a lesser commitment, of both time and financial resources, in this period of uncertainty.

During our time together, we’ll explore the mysteries of a contemporary path of spiritual discovery, individuation, and personal healing, where together we’ll enter into the aliveness of the relational field itself, a mandala of healing presence in which we can not only transform the wounds of the heart, but open into the direct experience of communion, union, and unity with the Ultimate Mystery itself.

Together, we’ll explore an embodied, grounded, and emotionally-attuned path of the heart that weaves together the wisdom of the psychotherapeutic and meditative traditions, in a way that’s experiential and interactive, an approach to spiritual unfolding that is sensitive to trauma and relational wounding.

***SPECIAL QUARTERLY OPENING – historically, the community has opened only once each year, in February, requiring a yearlong commitment. Due to the uncertainty in our world and the fast-changing transitional times we’re living in, I wanted to make it easier to come into the group for those who are interested.

Between May 1, 2025 and through July 31, 2025, we’ll meet live 9 times, on (most) Thursdays, from 9 to 10:30 a.m. U.S. Pacific Time (5pm in London).

It’s not necessary for you to attend sessions live. You can participate fully in the group and community – and most importantly, in the healing relational field itself – through watching the session videos and engaging the meditations in whatever way feels most natural and resonant for you, at a time that is convenient and fits into your life.

There will also be an optional Facebook group so that you may be in further connection with others around the world who are part of the community.

Each session will include meditation and other experiential exercises, teachings, and live interaction, where you can share your experience, ask questions, and dialogue with me (via video or text). During the sessions, we’ll also be able to support and hold one another as we, too, are being held and contained within the field and the mystery of Being.

I look forward to seeing you inside the community soon and making this journey together. And in this way, we can each prioritize, recommit to, and revision our commitment to our healing and spiritual paths.



Saturday, April 12, 2025

Free online gathering with Matt Licata - April 23rd - When the Center is Lost


FREE ONLINE GATHERING WITH MATT LICATA

WHEN THE CENTER IS LOST: NAVIGATING THE HEALING CYCLE IN TIMES OF HEARTBREAK, UNCERTAINTY, AND GRIEF

Dear friends, I'll be having a free online gathering on Wednesday, April 23, at 9am US Pacific Time/ 5pm in London - When the Center is Lost: Navigating the Healing Cycle in Times of Heartbreak, Uncertainty, and Grief.

You can register here at no cost here - https://mattlicataphd.com/when-the-center-is-lost/.

It’s no secret we’re living in times of profound transition and uncertainty. There’s a lot of restlessness, stress, and groundlessness in the collective, which as open, sensitive relational beings has a way of becoming mirrored within our own bodies, hearts, and souls. It’s a lot to hold.

The path of the heart is not only one of transcendence – ascending and rising above – but also one of descent: into underworld, earth, and shadow, and into relationship with the figures who we find there. Companions on the night sea journey.

These pieces of psyche and soma – personal, collective, cosmic – have something to share with us, that longs to be incarnated, indwelled, and embodied in this time, an element of the mystery that has been forgotten in a world that has (understandably) grown weary.

The lunar way isn’t as clear as its heroic or solar counterpart. It is unclothed: of fixed concept, a precise map, and knowing how it’s all going to turn out. It has a way not of confirming but of dismantling the (spiritual) persona. That disassembling has a way of burning, aching, and also of tenderizing us, at times to our very core.

Inside the temple are the holy images of our broken dreams, disappointments, hopes, and fears – the entirety of our unlived life; the grief of the ancestors, the lamentation of the earth, and the sensitivities of the soma. Along with lost joy, wonder, beauty, and awe.

Here, in the center, the wound is weeping; it is opened and no longer covered over. This is what allows the tincture to enter. In this we may discover that perhaps the heart’s deepest longing isn’t so much to be mended, but permitted to disclose its essence, which reveals a doorway into compassion, aliveness, tenderness, grace.

During our time together, we’ll explore:

- The unique (but difficult) opportunity for soulwork in times of liminality and transition
- How the deep longing in our hearts and aching in our bodies are potential doorways of entry into the Self
- The importance of spending time each day resting the nervous system and attuning to the feeling body
- How it’s not possible to always feel grounded and regulated – and why that’s okay
- A short practice we can do each day to attune to the Center

I look forward to spending some time with everyone on the 23rd



Monday, April 7, 2025

Return to the Center


You might imagine yourself in the very center of a circle, enclosed within a sacred space, an inner courtyard, with all of the aspects of your life circumambulating around the center, pointing inward.

And in the very center with you, you may find a guide or an inner ally, or just a sense of centering, in the Heart.

Deepening into the felt sense of this center, and how this inner guidance, the Self, is always, already here – and always communicating, disclosing – as an ordering principle within you, pointing toward wholeness.

This inner center was never and could never be tainted by anything that has happened to you - relational trauma, emotional wounding, unrepaired attachment circuitries, betrayals in soul; none of that is able to truly affect your essential Nature, which is primordially pure.

It is possible, with attention and devotion, to familiarize ourselves with this centering function, where we live with the Self as an inner partner, who is always here, as our true Spiritual Director, the conductor of the orchestra of the soul.

You can turn to this inner Friend and Guide in times when you feel out of center. And in dialogue and relationship with this One, you may see that even those unwanted, confusing, uncomfortable emotions, are somehow attempts at self-healing, self-realization, guiding you back into that centering, and into a natural wholeness and completion.

This is the reality and invitation into the mandala of the wounded healer, a dynamic and emerging archetypal experience that is alive in somatic, psychic, and collective networks.

A natural ordering within the soul, where each emotion, feeling, sensation, dream image, and piece of psyche, has a purposive quality to it, where each aspect of our lives are circulating around and pointing towards the center.

A peering behind the veil and into the mandala principle.