Image / Austin Barbisch


Recently, I was asked to give a radio interview about some of the work that I do at Dana Wyss Healing Arts, as part of a larger series on holistic health and healing practices. In the interview, I describe how I work with clients who come to see me for my signature sessions blending movement and bodywork.

My goal in these sessions is to assist clients in moving well, inhabiting their bodies more fully, and accessing the wisdom, joy and vitality that arise with embodied mindfulness. I do this by designing individualized programs incorporating mindfulness meditation, yoga and other movement practices, breathwork education, bodywork and energywork as needed to release areas of restriction and retrain movement and breathing habits to support ease and well-being. If you or someone you know would like to know more, please listen, share, and contact me to discuss your needs and goals.

Here's a brief look at some of the unique services I offer, who I work with, and how this all came about it the first place. Hope you enjoy listening to this interview as much as I enjoyed talking about my passion for helping others feel their very best!

Dana Wyss Healing Arts
Breathe deeply, practice often, be well.
http://www.danawyss.com/

Image / Vaclav Volrab



As living beings who are an interconnected part of the natural world, we share an inclination towards balance and well-being with life and the larger cycles around us. Plants, animals, seasons, weather, even the dance and orbit of the universe at large, all reach toward balance. Our natural state is one of health and balance, and when this has been disrupted it is the natural course of the body/mind to seek balance. Our immediate and creative response to wounding is to heal. And generally, we are brilliant self-healers.

Given time and protection and space, our human systems will naturally go right to work on a wound or an illness, intelligently repairing and rebuilding damages, sealing leaks, gathering precious vitality, and taking detailed notes for the future. In most cases, without the interference of continuous damage or noxious influence, our path aims back towards our greatest possible personal health and well-being.

With few exceptions, if we're not healing after an injury, an illness or a crisis, there is a noxious influence actively impairing our natural healing power. The offending influence could be one of many things: an unhealthy relationship or person in our sphere, an environmental toxin or contaminated food/water, substances (medical or otherwise) that don't serve us, a flawed belief system or toxic habits of thought. Often, in order to achieve greater healing, we don't need to do more, add more, or effort more. In many cases, we simply need to remove what's blocking the natural flow of health to us and through us.

While we are our own best healers, at times we need guides to help us see where we're stuck or see what needs to be released. If we've been stuck awhile, we may also need to be taught or reminded how to release, remove, and let go. A set of trained and skillful eyes, a compassionate heart, and the lived experience of one who's repeatedly healed their own wounds can go a long way towards making our healing path one of curiosity, discovery, and connection.

We can save time and energy by using the maps given to us by these guides. We will feel supported, knowing that someone who truly understands this path sees us taking our first steps upon it. By listening to them, we'll learn that we're like countless others, that we're not weird or broken or hopelessly incomplete. We're just like the many before us and among us who got hurt, got stuck, got help, and got well.

As we heal this particular wound with skillful help and guidance, we'll be learning the reusable tools to find and release anything that may impede our vibrant well-being in the future. These tools will be ours for a lifetime, and we'll be more effective and empowered self-healers as a result of this journey with our guide. And, who knows what other ways these tools might serve? We may someday have the opportunity to guide others in need, as they open to the possibility of allowing health and well-being to flow unimpeded throughout their lives. May we all get soaked in the free-flowing currents of vibrant health.



Dana Wyss Healing Arts
Breathe deeply, practice often, be well.
http://www.danawyss.com/

Image / Dmytro Denysov


"So a fish moves through the water and the water moves through the gill and the gill somehow, it extracts the oxygen because we know water is hydrogen and oxygen, and discharges the hydrogen. It lets it stream behind it. So this is an amazing teacher because, this is also why fish need to keep moving through water or they will die. They have to have the water go through their gills in order to breathe. So as we talk about this, I’m not talking about motion or stillness, the way we normally do. The fish are these amazing teachers. They are examples of the endless search that has no destination. They are not moving through the water because they are going somewhere. They don’t have any agendas or appointments—not that we know of! But they need to keep engaging in their element or they will die.

So the metaphor, the teaching metaphor here that is just amazing, is that for us, the heart is our gill. And we need to move through the water of experience every day, or inwardly, we will die. And we need to somehow, through first-hand experience, learn how to extract what is essential and discharge the rest. Because when we don’t discharge the rest, when we cling and hold onto what is not essential, it starts to clog up the gill of the heart. And we can no longer breathe from what is essential...

So the way that we extract what is essential is by staying present and not hiding, by trusting over being skeptical...By not rehearsing our way through life, by remembering the quiet courage amid each moment, not only as if it never happened before, because it has never happened before...

I think that the chief way to extract what is essential is having the quiet courage to meet whatever comes our way with an open heart. And if we don’t, which is very understandable because fear and pain make us temporarily shut down—that’s like a natural, almost biological reflex. But the commitment to open our hearts once they’ve been closed, to open our minds once they’ve shut down, to read— just like our eyes blink how many times a day—so when the heart blinks, we have to commit to opening it again." - Poet and Philosopher Mark Nepo, in conversation with Tami Simon for Sounds True


Dana Wyss Healing Arts
Breathe deeply, practice often, be well.
http://www.danawyss.com/

Image / Petar Paunchev



We exist, not only within nature.

We exist, not only alongside nature, as appreciators or observers.

We exist, neither as aberration nor tangential mistake.

We ARE nature.



Because we are nature, within each of us there exists a compass.

Deep within us is the knowledge, a sensing, of how our actions may affect the whole.

At our clear center, we can perceive which actions are most likely to foster harmony and maintain balance.



When we lose touch with this knowing - when we begin to trod roughshod about the world,

pushing others aside and taking more than we need - it causes us distress. All of us.

Anxiety is a natural result of over-consumption.



Because we know on some level that

our grabbing

and taking,

our warring

and wounding,

our conning

and crafting,

our expanding

and expending,

our holding

and our hoarding

create imbalance within the system that we ARE,

we experience an elemental and inescapable unease.



This misgiving can be subtle or wrenching, but in either case it thrums below the surface, deep and constant.

It is a primal demand for the return to harmony, and experiencing relief requires listening.

Listening to this discomfort, to the request, and to the wisdom that lies just underneath it all.



Because when we stop and begin to listen again,

we may discover that an internal map back to balance lies within us.

When we begin listening, it will begin revealing itself to us.

It may lead us to clear messages -

from other people, from living beings all about us,

from art and words and music.

We'll hear whispers and know them to be clues.

We'll see crumbs and know them to be

trail markers leading us home.



As each message is received, we'll have a felt-sense,

a clear glimpse - however fleeting -

of where we'll be living if we keep following the trail.



It feels like vibrant peace.

It feels like communion with everything.

It feels like harmony with ourselves.

It feels enormous, and whole.

It feels like bliss.

It feels like home.

Because it is.



Dana Wyss Healing Arts
Breathe deeply, practice often, be well.
http://www.danawyss.com/

Image / Sergey Nivens


If we're living a life focused on developing our capacity for love, clarity, compassion and kindness, we're going to miss the mark many times. We're going to have lots of moments of confusion, we'll have desires and distractions that diffuse the power and clarity of our intention, we'll speak harshly against ourselves at times, we'll speak about friends in ways that dishonor them at other times. If we're practicing in a committed way, we're going to observe many moments in which our words and actions do not support our ultimate goals or our align with our values.

But we simply cannot see them all.

We can't clean ourselves up all by ourselves - we're always missing or overlooking impediments to our own growth, due to fear or denial, and the myriad blind spots created by our beliefs, assumptions and previous experiences. There are certainly many people in our lives who notice these lapses, those close to us and those merely acquainted. But there are precious few who would extend themselves to hold us accountable to our highest intentions. And that's understandable! These kinds of interactions feel (and are) risky. Relationships can change drastically, even end, based on such episodes. This is complex territory, and there is never a guarantee that the information given will be accepted or appreciated.

If there are few willing to risk the vulnerability inherent in offering course-correcting guidance to us, those who can do so expertly - without creating a new wound within us or igniting an old one - are the rarest gems indeed. Those beings, whatever outward role they play in our lives, are our truest teachers, our deepest spiritual friends. May we cherish them wherever we find them in our lives. May we hear them and grow. May we someday offer the same gift to another.


Dana Wyss Healing Arts
Breathe deeply, practice often, be well.
http://www.danawyss.com/