Celebrating Interdependence

Balanced Living & Emie Kay Coaching July Update

Emie Locke

Jul 15, 2025

Hello Beautiful Humans,

In this monthly update you’ll find:

Celebrating the Indomitable Human Spirit & Interdependence
Quote from Tao Te Ching
Wild Women Initiation Circle Discovery Call Invite: Aug 3
Remembering the Resourcer Within Workshop Coming: Oct 4
30 Day Breathe challenge & The Cauldron & The Feast Growth
Personal Share: Turning a Corner, Kids, & Trainings
Song of the Month: Beginnings by Angie McMahon
Book of the Month: Beauty: The Invisible Embrace by John O’Donohue

What I celebrate

I’m writing this update on the evening of July 4th. I’m in my house listening to fireworks and breathing conscious prayerful breaths honoring those who are listening to bombs and gunshots outside their homes instead.

I’m not sure what others are celebrating tonight.

But I am celebrating the indomitable human spirit. Indomitable means “impossible to subdue or defeat.” I am not celebrating a system. I will forever celebrate the beauty of the indomitable human soul and interdependence expressed through loving community care.

I celebrate the beauty of people taking care of each other in the most difficult circumstances and the most horrific scenarios. I celebrate creative Life Force courageously moving through people who are willing to live and speak their truth and use their voice on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves or who are not being heard when they do. I celebrate every human surviving and every human thriving.

I celebrate the upcoming generations that may see with different eyes and hear with different ears and use their hands for something different than war and use their minds for connection rather than domination and disintegration.

I see my four kids and their friends. I know their beauty and their strength and their courage and their determination to find new ways of Being. I see my beautiful, courageous clients. You are doing the work of bringing peace to your inner wars and biases so that your work in the world is full of love, truth, and fire.

I have never been an activist that pounds the pavement. But I have always been a resistor of systems that squash the creativity and uniqueness of the human soul. My work is to support individuals doing the work of finding and living out of their inner freedom. I support my clients in embodying their truth, being empowered to rest, speak, create, move, resist, and serve from soulful expression for the highest good of all.

Do you need support locating your truth? Do you need support embodying your truth? Do you need support being empowered to LIVE your truth even when it’s scary? Do you need support expressing your soulful truth through your body, voice, work, art, activism, love, resistance, service in the world? I would be honored to hold sacred space for you on that path.

This is a time in history for each of us to access our unique Soulful Flame and allow ourselves to shine bright in the darkness. The more we allow ourselves to shine and be heard, seen, and experienced the brighter we will become.

This is a time of intensity. Many of us are struggling to find a groundedness within our own bodies. Many of us are finding it difficult to breathe deep and Trust Life. Many of us are having to lean into our practices to help our nervous system center and our minds clear and our clarity and courage arise.

If you need extra support, here are some suggestions. Pick one.

Breathe. 3x a day, pause and set your timer for 5 minutes. Breathe 5 counts in and 5 counts out. This is called the Therapeutic Breath. It strengthens Heart Rate Variability and supports your health and wellbeing. Do this for at least a week or make it consistent ritual.
Move. At least once a day, dance, walk, bounce, tap, punch your pillow, lay on the floor and press your feet against the wall, do yoga, qi gong, exercise. Use this movement with intention to release emotion and stuck energy and patterns within your body.
Sound. Sing, hum, chant, yell, growl, howl, sigh. USE YOUR VOCAL CORDS.
Go outside first thing upon waking and greet the sun. Feel the Sun energizing your soulful purpose through your body. Honor the setting sun in the evening and commit to rest and resetting. Let go of the day, the past and prepare for sleep as an intentional reset so you can arise the next morning with fresh hope and clarity.
Use water to cleanse, flow and float you. Connect to the oceanic rhythm within your body. Bless the water you drink and imagine it flowing to every cell in your body.
Lay on the ground. Go for a walk barefoot in the grass. Hug a tree. For real. FEEL Earth holding and supporting your body.
Ask a loved one to hug you for a 20 second hug. Let yourself rest into the hug. Breathe 3 breaths together. Feel held.
Reach out to trusted guides and practitioners who will not tell you what to do or who to be or how to act. Find practitioners and guides who will hold sacred space for you to access your own truth and power and wisdom. We don’t need more followers. We need more confident people who know their Soul Truth and are willing to speak it, create with it, move with it, serve with it, rest with it, BE.

Reach out if you need help coming back into your body if you’ve been dysregulated or consistently living stress cycles and patterns.

Some of you need support coming into rest.
Some of you need support living fully in your human body.
Some of you need support being empowered to act and serve.
Some of you need support finding courage to express.
Now is the time to find a community that can encourage your rest, embodiment, empowerment and sovereign expression.

To book a BodyMindSpirit Session at Balanced Living, touch in HERE.

Still wondering what a BodyMindSpirit Session is about? I am a Trauma Informed BodyMindSpirit Therapist. I use the modalities of Certified CranioSacral Therapy, Esalen Massage Therapy, Eco-Somatics Practices, Certified Love, Sex, Spirituality Coaching, and DreamTending to co-create a unique session for each client. I assist you in down regulating an activated nervous system, building new relationship to pain, body, sensation, emotion, breath, and trauma story in ways that support you in coming back to inner wisdom, activating the body’s innate healing capacity, and bringing more balance and peace to your life. In short, I support healing through embodiment, empowerment, & expression of true Soulful Self. Here’s a short video explaining a bit about my work.

Excerpt from Tao Te Ching #10

Can you coax your mind from its wandering
and keep to the original oneness?
Can you let your body become
supple as a newborn child’s?
Can you cleanse your inner vision
until you see nothing but the light?
Can you love people and lead them
without imposing your will?
Can you deal with the most vital matters
by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from you own mind
and thus understand all things?

Giving birth and nourishing,
having without possessing,
acting with no expectations,
leading and not trying to control:
this is the supreme virtue.

- Lao-tzu from the Tao Te Ching

Erin Lindsey and I look forward to seeing who will be drawn to this transformational 9 month sacred space with us! We have held 5 circles to date. We are opening a brand new Circle for those drawn and ready to be initiated into their True Soulful Self.

This is not a typical women’s circle. This is an initiation. What does that mean?

You’ll learn how to be a grown ass woman. Embody your Inner Goddess.
You’ll learn how to stay with your Self and not self abandon in the presence of those you typically cower and hide from, over function for, or fawn, or rescue, or try to fight to be in control.
You’ll learn how to notice your own emotion, reaction, sensation, thoughts, judgments, patterns and hold them with love and compassion instead of self criticism.
You’ll learn how to hold sisters in loving awareness while allowing them to be exactly where they are in their process without needing to fix, change, or give advice.
You’ll learn & practice experiencing true intimacy that is formed not through like minded beliefs, conformity of behavior, thought or expression but through sharing Present Moment Aliveness with love and curiosity and vulnerability.
We follow the cycle of Venus that is connected to Inanna’s myth. This is a life, death, rebirth template.

This circle is not about making friends. You might make friends. But that’s not our goal. Our main focus is to KNOW THYSELF. If you would rather know other women more than you know yourself, this is not the circle for you.

FOR RETURNING WILD WOMEN, we will have a separate meeting on Sunday, Aug 3rd at 11:30 am PST. I’ll be sending that link to all past participants either in The Cauldron or via email (or both).

Upcoming In Person Workshop: Remembering the Resourcer Within

Save the Date: Saturday, October 4, 2025

"There is change happening—not loud, not flashy—but rooted, deep, and real. Women are remembering who they are: not just as caregivers or workers or achievers, but as resourced beings. This remembering is not about adding something new—it’s about reclaiming something ancient, natural, and already within."
— Carin

We are thrilled to invite you to a special in-person workshop designed for women who are ready to reconnect with their inner power and wisdom.

Join me and Carin Barnes, LMFT and Artha Wealth Advisor, for a soulful day of remembering. Together, we’ll explore what it means to be Resourced and to live as the Resourcer—a woman who draws from within to lead, nurture, and create.

This gathering will include:

Grounded embodiment practices
Soulful, heart-centered teaching
Art journaling as integration
A nurturing space for meaningful connection

We’ll be joined by our collaborator Amy Figueroa, a soulful artist and sacred space holder, who will lead a powerful 2-hour art journaling session to help bring the day’s reflections into creative expression.

Details:
Date: Saturday, October 4, 2025
Time: 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Location: 2916 W Main Street, Visalia, CA
Space is limited to 10 women

This is a rare opportunity to gather in an intimate, intentional setting with other women who are ready to reclaim their inner resourcing and deepen into who they already are.

More details and registration coming soon. For now—save the date.

Self Paced 30 Day Build Relationship To Breath Challenge

Join me on this self paced 30 day adventure of deepening your relationship to Breath. We will be creating a sacred space together to practice Breath Awareness and Conscious Breathing practices. You can't get this wrong. This container is bathed in gentleness and loving awareness. Everything you become aware of about your Soulful Self, your body, your relationship to Breath is held with love and curiosity. Start where you are, deepen with ease.

For $33, you’ll receive:

31 short, guided breath work videos (go at your own pace)
30 written recaps of the daily practices
Daily invitation to deepen the practices on your own
Chat support, celebrations, and loving witness from me and anyone else taking this journey as you desire to share parts of your journey in the comments
Suggested resources to support your continuing relationship to Breath
You will also gain access to the free information, conversation and share space on The Cauldron Community platform, and other upcoming opportunities for workshops and challenges.

Even though this is not a gender, age, or wild woman specific offering, 30 day Build Relationship to Breath challenge is currently available on my online women’s platform, The Cauldron & The Feast. If you would like to have access to the 30 Day Build Relationship to Breathe course but not The Cauldron & The Feast, please contact me and I’ll figure it out. The technology is a steep learning curve for me. There is a way for me to offer this course without requiring you to be connected to The Cauldron, but I’m not exactly sure how yet! Thanks for your patience with my growth edges.

The Cauldron & The Feast: Online Women’s Community

The Cauldron & The Feast is gaining momentum. I’m gathering my team. We are getting excited about the offerings that are simmering within our cauldrons.

So far, my team is comprised of 9 wild, creative, powerful, amazing women. Our life experience and expertise spans a gloriously wide range of skillsets & passions. Within the next 6 months to a year, we will have the most beautiful feast for you to enjoy.

Some of the flavors steeping in our Cauldron include a dreamtender, creatives/artists/makers, herbalist, qi gong master, jungian bent lmft, wealth advisor, two RN’s with different backgrounds, astrologist, mythologist, craniosacral/eco-somatics/bodywork practitioners, love, sex, relationship coaches, birth and death doulas, healers of a variety of flavors, doll makers, beauty consultants. I’ll be introducing my team over the next few months.

We are real people. We are powerful women. We are offering our raw gifts to you. We are not polished. We simply want to share what we love with women who are curious about being more free to be themselves in the world.

I could not be more excited about how this long term dream of creating community is unfolding. If you’re even a tiny bit interested in seeing what unfolds here, please make a free account on The Cauldron & The Feast and peruse. Stick around to see what happens. Invite your friends. Let’s make a big fucking ripple in the fabric of the Universe together as FREE, ALIVE, WILD WOMEN.

Personal Share: Turning a Corner, Kids, and Continuing Education

Turning a Corner

The last 14 months of my life have been the most difficult since my car accident and divorce in 2015/2016. As I committed to moving honestly through seasons, I knew I was being called to surrender to a cycle of rebirthing and repatterning templates I have lived inside of my entire life. I was to alchemize, through my embodied experience, ancestral patterns of scarcity, hopelessness, and fear of being alone.

I continued to put one foot in front of the other when Life would prompt me to hide, move, rest, create, or bury & grieve my dreams. I thought I was walking into sunshine. Instead, I descended into the dark to be reborn.

Fourteen months later, I’m finally feeling nourished and held by Love in the light after the intense contractions of Rebirth. I see the new patterns of abundance emerging from my interconnected community of wild women that cares for one another, hopefulness connected to shared resources, joys and sorrows, and the depth of true intimacy that is not based on thinking, behavior, or conformity but rather, intimacy based on shared present moment soul truth aliveness. We can hold ourselves and hold Other in loving awareness, compassion, and curiosity.

Thank you to my closest soul friends who haven’t been afraid to walk beside me into my deepest, darkest spaces. I have never known such love from humans as I’ve experienced through all of you.

I am full of the Joy of Being Alive. Through the deaths & rebirth & into new life.

Kids: The Locke Experiment

My relationship with my four kiddos and our Locke Experiment is beyond my wildest dreams of what “family” could feel like. My story: get the hell outta Dodge at 18 and never look back.

It’s been a journey for me to learn how to stay in supportive, ever changing connection to young adult children. I am blazing new territory inside myself and my kids with this Locke Experiment. The joys of being committed to connection far outweigh the intensity of struggle to find a path through a gnarly dark forest of dysfunctional familial patterning. I could not be here without the incredible support of our family therapist, Thomas Castro, LMFT, and our community of soul friends who are now our chosen family.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to help Ela (17) attend their 2 week art intensive at Kansas City Art Institute. Before Ela left, we were talking about how the experience would change them. Remember when Gandalf asked Bilbo to be the burglar on the adventure with the dwarves? Bilbo asks, “Can you guarantee that I will make it home alive?” To which Gandalf says, “No. And if you do, you will not be the same.” Ela affirmed that they did come home alive but they are not the same, in the bestest of ways. One more year of high school & COS art classes before finishing their AA and potentially moving on to an art school.
Thank you to everyone who helped Ash (20) finish their Massage Training. The only thing we are waiting on is the paperwork to go through and Ash will be a Certified Massage Therapist! WOOHOO!! Ash will be looking for a job and taking art and philosophy classes at COS this fall. Ash had a fun little run in with a sharp lamp shade that sliced open the top of the left foot. It was a 7 hour ER adventure that ended in 17 stitches! We breathed our way through that one. Here’s our 12:30 am “after the event” photo.

Avi (26) graduated from University of Oregon with an insane amount of honors and experience to set them up for their next goal of being accepted into an MD/PHD program. It was my deepest joy to celebrate Avi and meet their incredible community of world changing humans at the beginning of the summer. [Graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor’s of Science in Biological Anthropology & Multidisciplinary Science (with emphases in chemistry and biology) and three minors in Arabic Studies, Chemistry, & Global Health. Inducted into Phi Beta Kappa Society with a 4.05 GPA.]
Judah (23) is happily finishing up COS while working as a Keeper at the Fresno Chaffee Zoo for the last 4 years. He is currently in the Reptile house and caring for the Tapirs and Babirusas. His plan is to attend UC Davis and then on to Vet School.
Twenty six years ago, I birthed Avi. Twenty years ago, I began homeschooling. Fifteen years ago, I found Eleanor Roosevelt Community Learning Center, a public charter school that supports homeschool families. The blend of 2 days of in person class and 3 days of at home exploration was perfect for my kids to develop into their wildly unique, brilliant selves. I can’t count the number of times I thought I might die from the weight of single parenting, homeschooling, and running my own business. But in this moment, on this side of the story, it was entirely worth it.

Continuing Education

In order to renew my CranioSacral Certification, I needed to take an Upledger class this year. I had an extraordinary experience learning with Chas Perry and Natalie Bledstein. My love and passion for CranioSacral Therapy continues to deepen. I am solidly confident in the modality and my ability to support a wide variety of physical and emotional pain & dysfunction finding resolution, and guiding people in their process of soulful evolution. If it’s been awhile since you’ve had a CranioSacral Session or maybe you’ve never had one, now is a great time to explore this gentle, yet powerful healing modality.

In August, I will attend an 8 day Eco-Somatics training in Ashville, NC with Dr. Azra Bertrand and his team. I’ve been studying with Dr. Bertrand for over 2 years in the Biomancy and Eco-Somatics program. This training will bring to life the teachings I’ve been steeping in and the practices I’ve been rebirthed through. I cannot wait to bring all kinds of goodness back to share with you!

Song of the Month: Beginner by Angie McMahon

There are some artists that capture the human felt sense of living through the Life, Death, Rebirth cycles. Angie McMahon is one of those artists for me. I’ve highlighted songs of hers before. This is the one I have on repeat at the moment. The last 14 months have been the most difficult I’ve experienced since my car accident and divorce in 2015. It has been a year of “reaching the bottom, begging at the door, praying it would open to who I was before.” But instead of opening to who I was before, I was just being born. . . and my new world is out in front of me to be explored.

I hope you enjoy her soulful artistry.

I had to reach the bottom
Begging at the door
Praying it would open
To who I was before

[Pre-Chorus]
I reached the peak of the mountain
When I was crying on the floor
Felt like I was dying
But I was just being born

[Chorus]
Some are wild
Some are blessed
Some are kind
Some are restless
Some will take to be the winner
I am always a beginner

[Verse 2]
I was always dressed to fight
Wrapped in armor, terrified
Of being piеrced straight through the heart
Until it hurt, thеn I, I fell apart

[Pre-Chorus]
I smashed the blade and I opened the gate
To a pain where I was called
I felt like I was dying
But I was just being born

[Chorus]
Some are wild
Some are blessed
Some are kind
Some are restless
Some will take to be the winner
I am always a beginner

[Bridge]
Some arrive
When some are leaving
Some are crying
Some are freedom
Then some are cold
Some are courageous
Summer comes and season's changing

[Outro]
Some are wild
Some are blessed
Some are cursed
Some are restless
Some will take to be the winner
I am always a beginner

Book of the Month: Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

This book was a balm for my wounded and weary soul the years following my divorce. Through the upheaval of everything I knew of my life to that point, I found solace in the Invisible Embrace of Beauty. In the tumultuous times we find ourselves in, may this poetic work be a balm for your weary soul as well.