Meet Rakel Kieding

We were lucky to catch up with Rakel Kieding recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Rakel , great to have you with us today and excited to have you share your wisdom with our readers. Over the years, after speaking with countless do-ers, makers, builders, entrepreneurs, artists and more we’ve noticed that the ability to take risks is central to almost all stories of triumph and so we’re really interested in hearing about your journey with risk and how you developed your risk-taking ability.

My father taught me. An early memory comes to mind: I’m probably about 3, at home in Sweden.  My father lifts me up on the shed roof, says “turn around, and fall backwards.  I’ll catch you.”  I did, I trusted him.  He was an unusual father, for better and for worse. Growing up with a mentally ill parent is hard and comes with a cost, but I have also received the gifts of his deep soul.  He taught me about beauty and reverence, and planted the seed of an adventurous life, not risk-free, rich in failure and learning about discernment, self-worth, love, grief and acceptance.

I traveled, hitch-hiked and hopped freight trains for years across America, Europe and a bit of elsewhere. Sometimes with companions and sometimes alone, me and a backpack.  For 5 years I lived outside sleeping under bridges, eating from dumpsters and white boxes of leftovers given to me in many cities by restaurant goers, and an occasional treat of a whole meal inside somewhere cooked just for me, gifted by a stranger.  I’m no stranger to strangers.  There is no formal education that can teach what I learned out there.  Some scary times and also some of the most magical moments with people of all and any walk of life. Some of the conversations with random strangers that picked up a hitch-hiker, I’ll never forget.

Some strangers had less than good intentions, but I knew how to bring out the good nature in people, I never showed fear, and didn’t judge or make people wrong.  I looked and smelled pretty homeless,  but my mind was sharp and my heart had love in it.

Getting off the streets was much harder than staying on them.  Cultivating an abundant home is much harder than gliding around the map on magic, luck and leftovers.  For me it was a new type of risk,  I was confronted with fact that I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere, and wasn’t sure of my worth and capability in society.  I was lost and quite hurt, my stories were painful.

I moved into a vehicle, then a room, then an apartment.  It took years and maaaaaany hours of all kinds of therapy, coaching, workshops, family, chosen family, friends, enemies too, angels and …that friendship with something magnificent, both outside and inside, the friend I pray to, cry to, try to listen to, and have no great word for.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

These days I live in Chico California and run a private practice of Compassionate Inquiry.  I was blessed to get to study with Gabor Maté and his team to be able to put my life experience to use, helping others through inner turmoil and finding peace. CI is a somatic-based therapeutic approach that is direct but also profoundly kind, helping people soften their self- judgments, hearing their inner voice, re-connecting with their bodies with safety.

Honestly it is a miracle, I watch people become more of who they are, it’s an unfolding more than anything, and it’s so beautiful. I am in awe and I feel blessed to be present with all the amazing souls, people are like art.

Right now I’m working on a workshop called Play and Enjoy Intimacy for couples, and I’ll probably make a version for singles too.  When it comes down to it, relationships and connection are what keeps us going, and what we value most in the end.  Happiness is shared happiness, and most of us have some re-learning to do as far as playfulness, freedom, safety, enjoyment and intimacy goes.

I am also trained in psychedelic use which is very much a useful addition to many peoples paths, though not for everyone. I’ve seen it transform lives, but never without great integration.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

There is this fine line between confidence and humility. Right there in the middle, it’s open yet focused, we could call it Purely Paying Attention.  In that state you don’t take things for granted, but you are not desperate either, you just are.  I’m not so sure it’s a quality, skill or an area of knowledge,  but it anyway has been and is more than ever the most interesting phenomena in my life. I would call it the sharpening stone of my becoming presence.

It is a state of receptivity, yet it is also active, and this is the core of my personal practice.  For me it is closely correlated with receiving the love of God (or Universe), and the natural abundant giving that is inevitable therewith.

Give and receive, pay attention, relax. Have a mentor or two. Try CI if you want!

Secondary to this I’d say do whatever you have to in order to identify less with the stories of your past.   If you have to tell it 8,000 times then do so, I did, and I find more and more that it doesn’t mean anything.  Not even forgiveness means anything. Villains are heroes and heroes are villains.

What I’ve got now is my love for my father. He was my hero who taught me adventure, and he was my villain who abused me in this way and that.  Now he is more just him, and I love him.  We don’t even have contact and it doesn’t mean anything either.

What I’m saying is that freedom is available and worth the work and the risk of loosing your familiar identity.  Contrary to popular belief I say that who you are has nothing to do with your past, it has to do with the future you project, and the past does not belong in that projection.

Tell us what your ideal client would be like?

I do pride myself in being able to be with any type of person in my office, but if you want to know who gets the most out of their work with me then I’ll say it’s people who do their homework.  Sure, you can sit with me once a week and we will explore your world for an hour until next week and it will likely do you good.  But if you really are committed to have your experience of life transformed, then you are the type of client who tries things, takes with you the gems of our sessions and uses them in your week ahead. You come back with new experiences to share about.

A relatedness to a higher power/source isn’t necessary at all but people that have it may have more in common with my worldview.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://phire.works
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rakel_compassionateinquiry/