Once calm, our gifted brain can come back full-force and finally work its magic—take us with full presence to the heights and depths of life experience. With anxieties quieted through calming practices and resolved negative patterns, we can start to expand our identity, set boundaries, establish visions that make sense, feel at one with the Universe, or tackle any personal or therapy goal we’ve set.

Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., has referred to this type of depth therapy as “soulcraft.” He differentiates between spirit, a masculine concept, and soul, a feminine ideal. Masculine energy is action-oriented and reaches upward. Feminine energy is nurturing and reaches inward. As in shamanic traditions, Plotkin refers to things of the spirit as "upperworld aspects” and soul as “underworld aspects.” The “middleworld” is where we live out our lives physically on the planet. Our culture has been inundated with upperworld programming.