Meet Sara Feley

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sara Feley a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sara, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

I got my resilience from life experience. I learned early on, that life and death are closely intertwined. At 13, my father completed suicide after struggling with a misunderstood and not talked about mental illness. My mother, sisters and cousin got into a car accident while on a family vacation four years later. Only one of my siblings survived and made it home. I have called off a wedding, got married and am currently going through IVF. I’ve had a beautiful path full of trials, tribulations and great exaltation. I am eternally grateful for my connection with the Universe, with my Self and with Service to my Community. I have trust that life is happening for me and that every experience I am currently having is for a deeper purpose. I have gotten to feel, and transmute all feelings within grief sometimes daily. I have learned to alchemize the process of external experiences into rich golden wisdom of soul nourishing experience. I am a licensed marriage family therapist who does nature based therapy, trained in CranioSacral therapy through the Upledger Institute. I work from, a transpersonal and polyvagal lense who uses Internal Family Systems to deepen my self awareness so that I can offer self-led spaces for my clients to learn love all parts of themself as I learn to do the same. I am deeply grateful and full of life.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

As a creative entrepreneur who leads nervous system regulation yoga classes, a Marriage and Family Therapist, Craniosacral therapist and spirit developer, I have a passion for relationships and building community. I find joy in my yoga practice and internal family systems spiritual practice. I mediate regularly and I offer my clients and those I work with a space to love themselves more deeply. I am forever grateful to my work, past selves, and for setting myself up for an inspiring future.

I am currently leading a workshop in December, a four part series of yin and nervous system regulation, in January and February and leading Female Pelvic Bowl creative embodied movement groups. I am also working on a curriculum for therapists to learn to regulate their nervous system to better be with their clients.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Control is a misnomer and exhausting when I attempt. Relationships are quintessential to growth and the juice to soften any hard places within. My job is to soften all places that are not love within. When I turn inward after overwhelm, frustration or exhaustion and lead with curiosity, I see places within that have not been loved by me or another. It is then my job to love and open to those parts of myself that have shut down. Curiosity has become my spiritual practice.

As you travel along your spiritual path, remember that the journey is part of the fun and that the destination is unknown despite our plans. If you keep your goal of increasing internal awareness and acceptance by utilizing curiosity you can enjoy every single experience. Life is growing you. We are here to expand beyond the stressors, the stories and the limiting beliefs. We can be bigger than our emotions, thoughts and sensations. They are all trailheads to take us on a ride deeper into introspection. And remember that relationships are essential for your growth and will guide you along the way. You can’t do it all alone.

What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?

My parents were kind, gerneous and they loved the outdoors. There was mental illness on both sides of my family, however I always knew I was loved. They introduced me to nature and the power of parasympathetic intimate connection. My mom was a single mother for the majority of my high school years. Some of my fondest memories took place on our living room floor. She would gather my two sisters and I after school, and we’d lay on the living room floor together, sometimes laughing, and sometimes talking about hard things from our days. She knew the value of pro social, rest and digest connection. She always made my friends feel welcome via her welcoming them to her kitchen table and hosting piles of delicious and home cooked food while she asked them all about their lives, who they are and what makes them them.

My father was an avid lover of movement and nature. He would take us on nature walks daily, and press leaves in our ginormous dictionary held on one of our many bookshelves. He would walk slowly with our short legs and patiently explain all of the things I didn’t understand, from why trees change color to how the acorns got to the ground. I felt loved and through his admiration for nature, I was imbued with his wealth of love for my nature also.

They each loved me in their own way and because I knew I was loved, I am able to persevere with a foundation of love to build upon. I have been able to traverse some of the most difficult experiences far before I was ready and am now more resilient than ever before.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sarabethfeley.com
• Instagram: @sbfeley
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarabeth5142

Image Credits

Jennifer Alyse Kryder