Bethany Blog — Energetic Warriors

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GOOD AND BAD FATHERING

Here’s a a collection of thoughts on good fathering and how a container of welcome helps … a lot.

First up, good and bad fathering. Something important to consider in this season of the Father God. Good fathering is what gives us the skill to locate our own safety in a sometimes deeply unsettling and capricious world. Bad fathering makes us into predators or victims — because our inner safety and empowerment is shaky, erased, or replaced with a masked identity.

We become sitting ducks or wolves, wise as a dove or harmful as serpents. Sometimes both.

Good fathering makes us into energetic warriors.

Energetic Warriors

So then that begs the question: What are the characteristics of a skilled energetic warrior?

My definition is as follows: The sharpening of the instincts toward neutralization of threat AND creation/protection of authentic pleasure, joy, and goodness!

Unfortunately, while there are many good people in this world, the predators among us are not few either. They also have more influence than they should because there is a shortage of courage in this world. Regardless, what a useful skill! To protect against threat in defense of joy.

Developing These Instincts

How do we begin to develop it?

I would argue, deep inside the instincts of body, soul, and spirit.

Here the Fathering of God affirms and teaches us in developing our own instincts. We start to understand, notice, and trust the signs and signals that our God-given instincts are already giving.

And here we gather a sense of the landscape around us and within us. It is here we also develop self trust, self love, and an inner container of safety that can predictably signal both the presence of friends and of predators in our outside worlds.

As a matter of fact, the more we hone this inner system of trust in our own instinctive bodies, the more we can reliably feel safe in any situation. Even in the presence of our enemies! After all, he prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies. What a way for God to troll those who need self love the absolute most! 😊

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Walking through this in the last few years has brought me to the startling and fascinating conclusion that as God has increased his fathering over me in my instinctive realm, the safer I feel around predators. Ha!

What!?

What Predators Target

Something we should know about predators — They enjoy persons who don’t know who they are. They enjoy those disconnected from their own inner self definitions, from their own knowing, from their own somatic signals, from their own instincts.

My Personal Discovery

Finding myself, usually temporarily, in semi-predatory situations over the last few years has educated me to my own updated responses. And to my absolute delight, I began to realize the alchemical shift in my inner response based on the “rooted and grounded in love” he was building in me!

For instance, predatory attempts to dismantle my self concept started to have the opposite of intended effect. I was surprised and pleased to discover how much respect I immediately lost, with alacrity and immediacy, for anyone trying to disconnect me from my long-developed and deeply tested inner knowing. Instead of being shaken in my self concept by doubt/disrespect/attempts to humiliate and silence, I was immediately turned off, and even repulsed, by person trying to take the reins of my inner self concept!

What?! (This was not always the case.)

The "Wizard of Oz" Types

Also, you know the ones — the wizard of oz God complex people. They have tended to find me. In their own way, they have been used by God as training in my journey.

These folks try to make you doubt your own perception, your value, your self esteem, what they did, what they said, what happened, what did not. These are those who want to be in charge of what YOU THINK OF YOU, not just what you think about any number of topics or things.

They want all the power, not just in their own story but especially in yours! What better way to steer the whole ship and play God with no accountability!

But honestly, the only thing they have on you ever is whether you believe them or not. ☺️

And because I’m now so much more connected to my energetic body, I clock these intentions immediately, even if they are surrounded by “kind”, “nice”, or unassuming words. Sometimes I sit on the energy. I hang around just to see what they decide to do!

The Retreat Connection

It’s all very interesting.

Moving along to the retreat: What does this retreat space have to do with all this?

Besides bringing awareness to the masks we all wear, that leave us disconnected to ourselves and others, that make us either predators or victims, this space is meant to give us ways to anchor into God’s good fathering.

We will be “rooting and grounding in love” and allowing God to start to refine our instincts, to “know the difference between good and evil”.

So that we can immediately clock the outer landscape and then relax in the presence of safety (even in the presence of those who intend us harm “Our enemies”), because the development of inner knowing makes us root into inner safety, even in the diciest situations.

Wow

Practical Application

So, practically, how do we start connecting with ourselves, with God, with others?

One way is through engaging with various movement practices that are easily incorporated with contemplative and worshipful prayer.

One might call these practices:

  • Ways to practice listening energetically, to ourselves, God and others.

  • Ways to practice presence — with ourselves, God and others.

  • Ways to practice rooting and grounding in love.

During the retreat, we will be working with at least 6 modalities of movement. Each of these offers a vocabulary, a ”container of welcome” if you will, a structure, to develop self trust and self love, and most importantly, authenticity.

Coupled with the prayer work, we are excited to see God start to build some amazing containers of self welcome 🙏🏼.

The Modalities

  • Somatic Experiencing: Tools of trauma resolution and resilience.

  • Authentic Movement: Authentic self-awareness and psyche-body integration.

  • Continuum Movement: Awaken fluid intelligence and evolutionary creativity.

  • Contemplative Movement Practice: Embodied presence and spiritual attunement.

  • Contact Improvisation: Exploration of relational improvisation and embodied dialogue.

  • Butoh: Transformation of self and body, embracing shadow and archetypal depth.

These methods are built on these basic principles:

  • Somatic Experiencing: Discharge of survival energy → nervous system regulation.

  • Authentic Movement: Unconscious material embodied → integration.

  • Continuum Movement: Fluid resonance dissolves fixation → adaptability.

  • Contemplative Movement: Intention and slowed awareness → embodied sacred presence.

  • Contact Improv: Shared weight and momentum → discovery and relational trust.

  • Butoh: Transformation through imagery and shadow → existential awareness.

Bonus Butoh Beginner Exercise

As a preview of the retreat itself, here’s a bonus Butoh Beginner Exercise for your preparational pleasure:

Seed Growing into Movement

(For best results, create a live or AI recording for your own “follow along” pleasure. For best best results use binaural beats or similar as background music)

1. Arrival in Stillness

  • Stand or sit quietly. Close the eyes or soften the gaze. 3~ m

  • Sense the body’s weight sinking into the floor. 3~ m

  • Imagine yourself as a seed resting in the dark soil. 3~ m

2. Inner Listening

  • Breathe slowly, as if the soil is breathing you.

  • Let images of darkness, pressure, or moisture arise.

  • Do not move until the movement arises by itself.

3. First Impulses

  • Allow tiny micromovements — a finger twitch, a head tilt, a shift in breath.

  • Sense these as roots or shoots beginning to grow.

  • Follow them without forcing shape or speed.

4. Emergence

  • Let movement gradually expand — curling, spiraling, unfurling.

  • Imagine breaking through soil toward light, yet still carrying the weight of earth.

  • Movement may be slow, distorted, or awkward — all are welcome.

5. Transformation

  • Allow images to shift: from seed to sprout, from root to trunk, from earthbound to sky-reaching.

  • Let body morph with each image, embodying growth, struggle, reaching, or collapse.

6. Return to Stillness

  • Slowly let movement subside back into quiet.

  • Stand or sit as the “plant” fully grown, or as a seed once again.

  • Notice breath, sensation, and the atmosphere around you.

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Email us for anything you need:
znevins@uncorkgenius.com

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God loves the whole you.