The Soft Threshold: Guided Practice For Creativity & Voice

This is a recording of a live session where we walked the tender space between who we’ve been and who we’re becoming. Through grounding, creative prompts, and gentle visualization, you’ll reconnect with your voice and feel your creative spark flicker back to life. Bring your journal.

Transcript

Welcome,

Hello,

Beautiful souls.

Hello,

Hello,

Welcome,

Welcome.

This is The Soft Threshold.

We're going to be working with our voice and creativity today and The Soft Threshold.

If you don't know me,

I'm Jocelyn.

I'm a creative midwife,

Which is a new title for me,

Which is so fun,

And a soul art guide and an Akashic Wisdom Keeper.

So,

As many of you know,

Who've been here with me before,

I have been walking.

.

.

The reason I haven't been live on Insight Timer is because I've been walking through the four-year anniversary of my parents' deaths,

And it has been a very interesting,

Very interesting year for me in this last week.

I've come to so many understandings about my personal grief journey,

But the threshold that we stand at,

And especially as we're walking through grief,

As we're walking to awaken our voice and awaken our creativity,

That beautiful threshold.

So,

I wanted to name this live,

The Soft Threshold,

To bring some of what I've learned through my own grief story in this last week to you,

My friends.

So,

We're going to be working with The Soft Threshold.

It's that space,

That gentle,

Soft space,

Right,

When we have what is behind us,

What's in front of us,

And we're there on the threshold.

It's not a place to worry about what's right or wrong,

Good or bad.

It's not even a place,

That soft threshold isn't even a place for you to know what to do,

Right?

When you're at the threshold,

We don't always know what to do in our lives.

We're the threshold.

Part of being in that threshold is to be present with it,

Right?

So,

That's kind of what we're going to work with today.

We're going to work through a little bit of breathing,

Some nervous system regulation for a minute,

Grounding into our body,

A little bit of somatic,

And then we're going to do a small visualization,

A creative prompt,

A little bit more visualization,

And then some journaling.

So,

If you have a pen or paper,

I have my markers.

I'm just working today on just a journal page.

You guys know I usually work big,

But I'm just working on a small journal page today.

So,

Whatever you have,

If all you have is a pen and all you have is a marker and a piece of paper,

Whatever,

That is beautiful,

Perfect.

So,

It's really just,

It's not about performance.

It's about softening.

It's about softening into that space of in between,

And what's funny is we're kind of at a threshold right now.

We are finishing summer and we're getting ready to begin fall,

And that is a threshold in and of itself.

That is that sacred pause between light and dark,

Right?

That is that threshold of something ending and something beginning.

So,

We're actually at this huge threshold,

All of us right now,

Which I think is just beautiful.

So,

Wherever you are,

Let's just breathe.

Let's just ground,

Get here and present with each other,

With yourself,

Right?

You may want to just put a hand over your heart.

You may not want to.

It's totally good,

Whatever way,

And just start breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth.

So,

You just,

Whatever,

You don't have to make anything longer or shorter.

Just right,

Just in and out through your nose and then your mouth.

Just allowing your breath to come in through your nose and out through your mouth,

And out through your mouth can be a sigh,

Right?

It can be blowing gently through your lips,

But as you're sitting,

Just breathing through your nose in and out through your mouth,

Just notice what your body feels like.

Notice where you feel the inhalation expand and the exhalation contract.

Notice maybe the temperature of the air.

Notice how it feels to fill up and to empty out,

Right?

You're just speaking about thresholds.

There's a threshold between inhales and exhales.

That is a threshold,

Right?

So,

Just allowing yourself to inhale and exhale.

Inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth.

And we're going to start to add a little bit more to this.

So,

If your eyes are closed,

I'd like you to open them,

And keeping your eyes,

I'm going to take my glasses off just so you can see,

Looking up with your head forward,

Keeping your eyes looking up.

Now,

You don't want to,

You know,

Get really,

Really tight here in the forehead.

You just want to try to keep it as relaxed as you can,

But just look up.

And you can look up to the left or the right.

Just look up while we're inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth.

How does it feel different with your eyes looking up,

Right?

Keep your eyes up,

Inhaling through your nose,

Exhaling through your mouth.

We live in a culture where we're constantly looking straight ahead or down on a phone,

On a computer,

Just allowing,

When we allow our muscles to lift our eyes,

Inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth,

What we're doing is we're helping the muscles to hold the eyes up,

The eyeballs,

Right?

All of that really important work that you do when you work with your eyes,

Inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth.

And let's add one more thing to that,

To ground our nervous system,

Keeping your eyes up,

Inhaling through your nose.

And when you get to the top,

That threshold before you exhale through your mouth,

I want you to swallow.

So inhaling through your nose,

Swallow,

And then blow out through your mouth.

Inhaling through your nose,

Swallow,

And exhale through the mouth.

We're using that swallow to develop the throat muscles,

Right?

So one more time,

Inhaling through the nose,

Swallow,

And exhaling through the mouth.

And then just release that.

Close your eyes and just feel if there's any sensations in your body.

Feel how that felt for you.

It can feel really awkward if you're not used to looking up.

But feel if you can,

Any sensations,

Just noticing,

Just being aware in your body of any sensations,

Any movements,

Any energy that's lingering in your body.

And take a minute to,

If you feel an ache,

If you feel something within you that wants to stretch,

Go ahead and do it.

Like,

Oh,

Just take that stretch,

Take that shake.

Sometimes I like to do a little bit of tapping.

Feels so good.

So I tap on that beautiful round clockwise circle here on the heart chakra.

Whatever you feel like your body needs,

Go ahead and physically give it to it.

Sometimes I like to roll my neck.

And then when you're ready,

Come back to stillness,

Keeping your eyes closed.

Just noticing your breath,

Not changing it,

Just at this point,

Noticing your breath.

Bringing into your awareness behind you a version of you that might be tired,

That might be overly full,

Overwhelmed.

Bring to your awareness the version of you that is,

That you want to be behind you,

The version of you that you want to step out from.

And it might be tired,

Might be anxious.

That version of you might be exhausted,

Might have aches and pains in their body.

Just bring that version of you into your awareness.

Some of you might see it.

Some of you might feel it,

Know it,

Hear it.

You might hear the things that version of you says.

For me,

I'm always saying,

I have to,

I have to.

That version of me is I have to.

So you might just notice different pieces of that version of yourself.

Just notice,

Be with it.

You can even breathe into that version of you.

And from where you are at that version,

Looking forward ahead of you,

Noticing maybe it's a light or a mist or an ounce of possibility ahead of you.

And it might look different for everyone.

That ounce of possibility in front of you,

Of what could be,

Right?

Maybe it looks like a star.

Maybe it's a,

It's a sparkling mist.

Maybe it's a light.

Just that sense of possibility in front of you,

In front of this version of yourself.

And just breathe into that possibility,

That mist,

That light,

That sparkle.

Feel it in front of you.

Again,

You might feel it.

It might have a sound.

You might just know what it is.

You might have a beautiful visualization,

Inner vision.

You might smell it.

And notice that where you are is that in-between,

That threshold between the version of you and the possibility.

And notice here what it feels like to stand on that threshold.

Knowing that you don't have to know what to do.

Breathing in the space of that threshold.

You don't need to know the steps.

You don't have to have the answers.

Possibility is in front of you.

But you are in that space,

That threshold,

Before you take the step in.

Breathe it in and notice in that threshold,

Do you have any sensations,

Any thoughts,

Any visualizations,

Any inner visions?

Do you hear anything?

Or maybe what textures are there in that threshold?

Symbols,

Colors,

Sounds,

Present in that threshold.

And when you're ready,

Bring your awareness back to your body.

You might want to feel a nice,

Deep inhale.

Feel it in your belly.

Feel it in your limbs.

Feel it in your chest,

Your heart.

And sigh it out.

And I want you to go ahead and open your eyes and pick up whatever you're going to work on.

Maybe it's a blank journal like I have.

And maybe it's a pen or maybe it's a marker.

But just allow yourself to,

If this threshold was like an align or maybe a shape or a symbol,

I'm going to take this one.

Allow yourself to express that line or that symbol of the threshold.

Like if my marker was,

I'm going to show you,

My marker was on mine.

My threshold was not straight when I did this.

If I was going to say it was a threshold,

It was very much like going in and out.

It was like,

I feel like it was that tiptoe forward,

Tiptoe back,

Tiptoe forward,

Tiptoe back before going over and past that threshold.

It was very much this kind of feeling.

So if you could take what that threshold felt like to you and put it into a line,

A drawing,

A symbol,

Go ahead and take a minute to do that.

If you have a hard time with just being able to pick up a marker and do something,

Then close your eyes,

Bring yourself back to that threshold.

And while your eyes are closed,

Allow your hand to move while your awareness is on that space of the threshold,

Right?

You can have your eyes closed and just allow,

And I'll do that now just to give some ideas.

So I'm just going to close my eyes,

Go into that place of that threshold,

What remembrances I have.

And my eyes are closed,

My hand has the marker,

And I'm just going to allow it to move across the page.

So this is what I did,

Which is different,

But the same.

It's interesting.

It's kind of different,

But the same.

And this is the movement of my threshold here.

It's almost like I'm taking pauses.

Really,

They're like sacred pauses,

Right?

That's what a threshold is,

Sacred pauses in between.

And I'm going to work a little bit on it just for a minute.

So whatever you are creating from that space of your threshold,

And remember that threshold is a place where you do not need to know the action to take.

You don't need to know anything.

Just be present in that threshold,

Right?

Be present in that space where you haven't yet taken a step forward,

And yet you're still just being there with this,

Wow,

There's a movement that's maybe going to happen.

But what does it feel like here?

There's no right or wrong.

Allow it to breathe in your creation.

And I am just going to finish this.

So it's so interesting.

While we're doing this,

I'll talk a bit about my,

I just went through,

I wasn't on Insight Timer for a few,

About a week,

Week and a half,

Except for something small,

Because I was doing the,

It was the four-year anniversary of my parents' death.

And so I felt it different this year.

It was really interesting.

In the past,

I felt anxious,

And I felt like I had to move through it,

Or I had to move into it.

And this year,

The reason why I'm doing the threshold work right now is because it really felt like a softening,

Like a softening into the moments that were brought to me four years ago,

And softening into the idea and the movement of moving through that week.

And so this has been a huge piece of my work recently,

Especially after the last week.

I just really felt this idea that,

You know what,

I can just be in this week.

I can just be in this week.

I don't have to take actions.

I don't have to move.

I can notice the presence of this week.

So this idea of a threshold being soft,

Like not needing to know what to do,

Not needing to know the answers in a threshold,

Like,

Yeah,

I want to be there.

That's the version of me that I want.

I want that possibility,

Right?

That's what I want.

But take a moment and be in the threshold before that movement,

Knowing that,

Like the pressure of being in the threshold and not knowing quite how to get there,

That's like,

That's not easy,

Right?

So allowing just the unknowing,

I'm going to say the unknowing,

The not knowing,

Allowing the not knowing to happen.

Does that make sense to everyone?

See,

Now I started and I just,

Basically what I did was I started with,

I basically,

Yeah,

This is where it started.

I mean,

I need to add color because to me,

It needs another layer in here.

So for mine to be realistically what my threshold felt like,

I definitely need to add a bit of brightness to it.

So I'm going to be doing that now.

And then we're going to move into another small visualization.

So just finishing up for yourself,

Your expression of your threshold,

Right?

And it doesn't have to be a picture.

It can literally be a line.

It doesn't have to be anything artistic.

This is not about performance and putting something on a museum wall somewhere.

It's about getting honest and reflective about where we are,

Where we want to be.

So I'll show you,

This is just what I added,

That feel.

Oh,

I missed one.

I missed one.

There we go.

There we go.

So this is my threshold.

It feels right.

And actually,

As I'm looking at it,

I chose the colors like before,

But now I see the ocean,

The shore and the ocean,

Which is so interesting because I was talking about my threshold being grief also right now,

But moving through it in a different way.

And I've always connected the ocean with my grief.

And then I have this almost like shoreline that's like being pulled into the rhythm.

So this is my expression of my threshold today.

And we're going to go back into a bit more of a visualization.

We first visualize just that version of ourselves that we're ready to move forward from,

Right?

That tired,

The achy,

Whatever it be,

Maybe you are moving through grief.

Maybe you feel there's a part of you that's tight and controlled,

Or you want to move into freedom or the opposite.

Who knows?

And then we kind of saw the possibility on the other side,

Right?

We visualized possibility,

But we didn't name it.

We didn't name it,

Just possibility.

It might've been a sparkle.

It might've been a light.

It might've been a mist,

Right?

It could have been a spiral even.

And then we sat in that center between the version of us and the possibility and just experienced that threshold,

Right?

And then what we did was we brought it down into an expression.

Now,

If you wanted to go further before we visualize this in your own space,

You can take that movement,

Like so you can put it into your body.

So I can embody this,

Right?

I can totally embody this movement.

I feel like I would need to be standing,

But I could totally like,

I could embody this movement.

There's a flow to my threshold.

There's a flow that like maybe when I in,

I need to sway a little bit with it,

Right?

I can embody it if I want to.

So know that after this,

If you're ready and want to go to it,

You can embody your threshold at any time.

So let's go into a little bit more visualization.

Let's move past the possibility into what's really on that other side.

So closing your eyes again,

Closing your eyes,

Getting yourself back into that place of the threshold,

Right?

Breathing in.

We've just worked with it,

So it should be right there,

Right?

Just breathing in and out,

Expanding.

I like to think when I inhale through my nose,

I'm expanding that threshold in my awareness.

And as I exhale through my mouth,

I'm beginning to crystallize it,

Right?

And right now I'm almost feeling like I want to be pulled to my gut.

That's where my threshold is right now,

Right?

My solar plexus or my sacral are right in between those two,

Right?

Just inhaling and really expanding that threshold within you and exhaling and crystallizing.

And one more time,

Inhaling through your nose,

Exhaling through the mouth,

Crystallizing that place of the threshold.

And just imagine yourself in your mind's eye,

Stepping one foot forward from that threshold.

One breath forward.

You're not running.

Just one movement,

One breath,

One step forward.

Seeing the flicker of possibility.

And notice as you step forward,

Maybe you notice a piece of your truth or a spark of your creativity or the whisper of your voice.

Just noticing,

Taking it in.

And he or she is there in front of you.

Maybe it's a part of yourself.

Maybe it is your creativity.

Maybe it is your voice.

Maybe it is a piece of your wisdom right there in front of you.

Just leaving your awareness there,

Breathe it in and notice.

Notice this part of you in front of you.

She says,

I've been waiting all along.

Or he says,

I've been here all along.

And as you stand face to face with this part of yourself,

What do you notice?

What do you hear?

What are the sensations in your body?

What does he or she look like?

And what do they want you to know?

And again,

It might not be what you expected to visualize.

It might not be you staring back at you.

It might just be a part.

The part that holds the wisdom that you need.

It might be a whisper in the wind.

It might be written in the sand on the beach.

And breathe it in.

And just notice the sensations.

Notice any feelings that arise.

Notice your body talking back to you.

You might say thank you.

You might ask a question.

And when you're ready,

You might put a hand on your heart.

Inhale through your nose.

Feel your body here.

And sigh it out through your mouth.

Feel the air leaving your mouth.

One more time.

Inhaling through your nose.

And sighing out through your mouth.

And going back when you're ready to open your eyes to your page,

You might write on the same page that you doodled on or drew on or expressed on.

Or you might turn the page.

But thinking about,

I'll give you some ideas for journaling with.

But maybe what did you see that you were beyond the threshold?

What did you see beyond the threshold when you took that step,

That breath forward?

It might have been a mirror image of you.

It might have been something else.

You can ask,

What did that version of me,

That part of me want me to know?

What does that part of me want me to remember?

So it was a beautiful thing to journal about.

One small act to honor that part of yourself that showed up for you.

I suggest when I write after a visualization,

I do stream of consciousness writing.

Because I'm just coming out of that state of visualizing,

Right?

And so a stream of consciousness writing is putting your pen to the page and not letting your pen stop.

So even if you're writing silliness,

Whatever it be,

Or it doesn't make sense,

You just let it go.

You're not judging it.

You're just allowing your pen to write.

And I find that that is a beautiful way of writing when you're coming out of a visualization.

Another thing to also journal about too,

Is how it felt to be present in the threshold.

Was it uncomfortable to not know?

Was it uncomfortable to be present there?

It's always a good thing for you to know about yourself.

So those are questions you can ask in your journal.

And you have all the time that you want to give to this.

I prefer stream of consciousness,

But come up with at the end one act to honor that part of you on the other side of your threshold.

And you can always go back and move toward being in this threshold again.

You can always move forward.

You can call in different things.

But my main,

I feel like the one thing I really want to give to you today is that you can just be in the threshold.

We don't have to have all the answers.

We don't have to know.

There are parts of ourselves that will help us remember.

There are parts of ourselves that will sit with us in the not knowing.

There are parts of ourselves that will give us the courage and inspiration to move when it's ready.

But sometimes we just honor that threshold.

Sometimes we just become present with the place that we're at.

And that helps us to move even faster in a lot of ways towards what we want to move toward.

Does that make sense to everyone?

I hope that does.

So this is a brand new life for me.

I'm still kind of moving through this.

And like I said,

The 17th was the day,

The 10th was when my mother died and the 17th was when my father died.

And it's what?

Yeah,

It's the 19th today.

So we're still kind of moving out of that.

I'm really sitting in the threshold of the equinox right now.

Like just being there,

Waiting for the entryway of the fall to come in.

So I haven't been super physical or active right now.

Just sitting in this threshold that the equinox holds for us.

So thank you so much for coming along.

And I hope that you have a beautiful rest of your day.

And you honor the thresholds that you are at.