Why We Don’t Need More Insight: We Need Places to Practice Being Human

I’ve come to see that most of us don’t actually lack insight. We’ve touched something real in ceremony, therapy, meditation, and moments that shift everything. We’ve come to understand truths about ourselves that feel essential, even life-changing. And still, so often, there’s a sense of being unfinished. Not because the insight wasn’t real. Insight alone doesn’t know how to live in the nervous system. It doesn’t automatically shape our breath, speech, presence, or relationships under pressure.

What’s missing isn’t understanding—it’s accessible spaces to practice being human.

Places where nothing needs to be fixed and we can be ourselves.
Places where the body can arrive at its own pace.
Places where emotions don’t need to be explained, analyzed, or resolved. They can simply be felt and allowed.

Many of us try to integrate everything on our own and in our thinking minds. We try to process experiences that were relational and embodied through sheer effort. When that fails, we assume we’re failing. We’re not. I’ve come to understand that the real issue is the lack of ongoing, supportive places for true integration to unfold.

I often meet people who come to this work after a sacred ceremony and yes, those moments matter deeply. They can open us, soften us, and remind us of something essential. This is true. What is also true is that integration is ongoing and not jsut about latered states of consiousness. We’re integrating the state of the world. The grief and uncertainty that seep in through the news. Family dynamics that haven’t resolved. Transitions in work, love, aging, and identity. The steady accumulation of stress, responsibility, and care.Change. Integration is not a rare event. It’s the daily challenge of staying present in body and life as change happens.

This is where group practice becomes essential. Group practice matters because it offers a steady, shared presence, not performance or forced sharing. It’s about returning regularly to a space where authentic being is practiced.

In a group held with care, the nervous system learns what effort alone cannot. We regulate through resonance. We remember how to be with others without fixing ourselves, explaining, or disappearing when things feel uncertain. Emotions settle naturally when met with enough safety and time. Often, what heals is the quiet, sometimes wordless, recognition that we are not alone in what we carry.

Modern healing culture focuses on breakthrough—catharsis, release, and resolution. Many assume that if nothing shifts dramatically, we haven’t gone far enough. But the body doesn’t heal on demand. The nervous system doesn’t trust what moves too quickly, no matter the intention. Slowing down is how insight begins to become a lived part of us. Regular, supportive, pressure-free spaces let integration unfold naturally, making it a process rather than a task.

This is the orientation behind my new integration support offering, the Embodied Practice Lab.

I didn’t create it as a course to finish or a program to complete. I created it as a steady, in-person space where integration can happen gently, in real time, in the body, and in relationship. It’s for people already doing the work, who sense that what’s needed now is more practice, more presence, not more understanding.

Here we will practice moving our bodies and learning our bodies wisdom. We will:

Practice being present when it would be easier to move away.
Practice being with sensation without rushing to meaning.
Practice staying when things feel tender, unclear, or unfinished.
Practice being fully human, together in genuine presence.

The Lab is a place to slow down.
A place to land.

If this way of working speaks to you, the Embodied Practice Lab is one place where this orientation is held in form. It’s an ongoing, in-person practice space devoted to integration, embodiment, and relational presence — a place to return to regularly, without pressure, and practice living what we already know. You can read more about the Lab and upcoming dates here.