The Blog
This is where Buffy Owens muses on the threads of curiosity woven throughout her life. She tugs at the threads of body wisdom, follows the rhythms and seasons of being human, and gathers the dreams that keep calling us toward the human we’re becoming in the second half of life.
The Lives That Came Before
During a walk through one of my favorite places, Oakwood Cemetery, I looked up and spotted the moon hanging in a brilliant blue October sky. Surrounded by autumn trees and the lives of people who came before me, I felt an unexpected sense of awe, gratitude, and connection. I began thinking about all the people whose lives helped make my own possible, including people I'll never meet.
From ancestors and teachers to friends and those whose influence continues long after they're gone, we're shaped by people whose gifts we carry forward. This is a reflection on lineage, gratitude, and remembering that we're part of a much longer story than our own.
The Fertile Darkness
Have you ever struggled to learn something, only to discover that it suddenly feels easier after you've stopped trying? I experienced this during my Feldenkrais training, when a movement that had felt nearly impossible one day became surprisingly accessible two weeks later. Something had shifted, even though I hadn't been consciously working on it.
I started thinking about the fertile darkness, those periods when change may be happening beneath the surface, beyond what we can see or measure. Especially in midlife, there's something valuable about learning to trust the process, give ourselves room to integrate, and recognize that growth doesn't always announce itself.
The Tuning Fork Effect
We tend to think of personal healing as something we do for ourselves. But what if its effects reach much further? Just as one tuning fork can set another vibrating, the way we inhabit our own bodies and move through the world can influence the people around us. Our internal state has a ripple effect, often in ways we don't even realize.
What happens when we begin to see our own healing as something that contributes to the well-being of the people we encounter? It changes how we think about our relationships, our presence, and the influence we have in the world.
Worth Wounds Silence Your Inner Knowing
What happens when you know exactly what your body needs, but somehow can't give yourself permission to honor it? For nearly thirty years, I understood the importance of living in harmony with my body's natural rhythms, yet I kept pushing through, taking on too much, and following expectations that didn't feel right for me. Looking back, I can see how much of that was connected to my own worth wounds and the need to prove I was enough.
It took turning fifty for me to finally begin making a different choice. In this post, I share what I've learned about the connection between worth wounds, nervous system patterns, and our ability to trust our bodies. I'll also share a simple practice for recognizing the difference between compulsion and authentic motivation, so you can begin making choices from a place of self-trust rather than pressure.
Why We Heal in Relationship
Have you ever noticed that something shifts in you when you're in the presence of certain people? Maybe you feel more grounded in a meditation group, discover a new freedom of movement in a Feldenkrais class, or find yourself accessing a deeper level of healing simply because someone else is in the room. I've experienced this in ways I still find difficult to explain, and it's led me to wonder about the invisible thread that connects us.
I believe we heal in relationship because that's where many of our wounds happened in the first place. In this post, I share some of my own experiences with collective healing, explore what neuroscience tells us about nervous system co-regulation, and consider how the healing we experience in community can ripple out into every relationship we have.
The Day I Realized the Body Is the Mind
I thought I understood the mind-body connection. I’d studied physiology, neuroscience, and psychology. Heck, I’d even taken a mind-body class in college that dug into the neuroscience and research. I could explain how everything was interconnected, and I believed in working with the whole person.
But it wasn’t until a Zen meditation retreat during my Feldenkrais training that I began to understand something much deeper. I started noticing sensations in my body before the thoughts associated with them even entered my conscious awareness. It was an experience that changed how I understood the union of the body and mind.
When Forgotten Dreams Start Coming True
One morning, just before the autumn equinox, I flipped back through my dream journal to see what I’d written a year earlier. There it was: an entry titled “Triple-Sister Retreat.” Three women holding circle. Autumn grasses. Singing bowls calling us in. I had no memory of writing it. Yet just the day before, two friends and I had finished mapping out a one-day retreat, the three of us.
That moment got me wondering about the bigger dreams. The life dreams we tuck away on a high, dusty shelf, waiting for the right time. What if they’re still growing beneath the surface, too?
Finding Chi
Discover how somatic practices can help you access new realities and reconnect with your body’s innate wisdom. This personal story explores how cultural conditioning dampens our natural sensing abilities, and how embodied movement practices can help midlife women rediscover their capacity to trust what their bodies are telling them.
Learn why feeling disconnected from your body isn’t permanent—and how your search for something more might be the very gift leading you back to yourself.
Feldenkrais Is So Much More Than Movement
I still have the hardback copy of The Elusive Obvious I bought years ago. I love the weight of it in my hands, the dense pages and the simple black-and-white cover. Every time I flip through it, I’m reminded that the Feldenkrais Method is so much more than movement.
For years, my idea of personal growth was to find what was wrong with me and fix it. Gentle, attentive movement changed that. It taught me that learning is healing, that my habits held wisdom, and that I was never broken. And it’s never too late to start.