This is Part III in a four-part series exploring how I am regaining my soul’s proprioception – a sense of where I am within the liminal space. My goal with this mini-series is to begin to distill what I’m learning during 100 Liminal Days into actionable guidance for myself and others in an in-between season of life.

First, I introduced the analogical term, soul proprioception, a potent way to describe how our sense of time collapses when we are no longer who we were but not quite who we are becoming either. Then in Part II, I shared the four stabilizers helping me improve my soul-level balance, making it possible to safely and effectively add in heavy soul work – another necessary step for navigating within, through, and out of a liminal space.

Today’s post will focus on the heavy work that has been instrumental for my journey through this transitory territory.

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100 Liminal Days is an experimental project of embracing my current transitional season after exiting my business by sharing an honest, real-time account of my self-initiation experience in daily posts. I’m using The Artist’s Way as a guiding tool, and sending shorter weekly recaps only via my newsletter. Visit Day 1/100 to learn more and sign up to get the weekly recaps delivered to your inbox.

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A Reminder To Practice Balance Work Before Adding in Heavy Work

As demonstrated by my interpretation of my dream of diving into a body of water, deep and heavy soul work – just like intense physical exercise – is not meant to be constant, and it can be overdone. When I first started this experiment, that was a lesson yet to be learned, and I pushed myself too hard. Not only did I become emotionally drained within just a few weeks, I also began to feel even more disoriented and lost, unsure of why I was doing any of this.

And research on proprioception confirms this: intense physical exercise can temporarily disrupt the very sense it’s meant to improve. The same is true for soul work – heavy processing can initially make you feel more disoriented, not less. It was important for me to realize that my reaction to my deep dives wasn’t failure. It was simply the natural response to the weighty load. Just as physical training requires rest for muscles to rebuild stronger, heavy soul work demands integration time. The insights don’t fully land while you’re still in the dive – they crystallize during the breathing space afterward.

So, in practical terms, if we haven’t sufficiently stabilized our emotions, daily rhythms, and personal boundaries, adding intense, deep inner work will most likely lead to further injury of our inner compass. That’s why the balance work is so crucial for us when we are in the midst of a big life transition. Practicing daily habits like journaling, meditation, and dharma sprints (time blocks designated for distraction-free, focused work) are not luxurious things we do when we don’t have a job or other external commitments – they are foundational to our ability to take a patiently active role in living a life aligned with our highest calling.

With the steadiness of a daily rhythm of balance work, we create safety for ourselves to begin taking intentional, calculated dives into the transformative, heavy work with clear start and stop points, and built in recovery time. This approach creates a reasonable, yet still powerful experience of exploring our inner world to discover and align our lives with our purpose.

Over the past week of this experiment, I’ve identified four types of heavy work that have proven both transformative and sustainable when practiced with proper timing and recovery.

Four Types of Heavy Work

1. Grief Inventory and Blessing Ritual

One of the most powerful forms of heavy work I’ve returned to time and time again is the process of systematically naming losses – both obvious and hidden ones – then creating ritual space to honor what’s gone before releasing it.

In Day 1/100, The Artist’s Way book suggested “time-traveling” to list three old enemies of my creative self-worth and to acknowledge and grieve past creative injuries. This was when I named several hidden losses, including a deep sadness for art I created in my early twenties that I tossed into a dumpster behind the church during an act of religious compliance meant to somehow magically make me straight instead of gay. Bringing my awareness back to these significant losses was the grief inventory.

The second part of that exercise was to write a letter in my defense. This was the blessing ritual. It’s not helpful to bring up old grief and loss if we leave it open and exposed, unsettled. Anytime we perform a grief inventory, it is absolutely crucial to take a moment to honor that old version of ourselves that experienced the loss, love her, and bless her. One of the active ways I honored my 12-year-old self and blessed her was to recreate one of the artworks I had lost. It is through this step that I experienced true healing. Thinking about the loss doesn’t bring up the same stressful somatic feelings it did before.

Last year, I worked with a coach who taught me how to use Internal Family Systems (IFS or parts work) to get in touch with those old wounds and bless and love that younger version of myself. In one session, I uncovered that I was still carrying grief over my parents’ divorce more than 35 years ago.

Another example of something seemingly insignificant was when I recalled when I was maybe 10 or 12 years old and I knocked my dad’s cowboy hat off over the edge of Buchanan Dam. He caught it before it tumbled out of reach, but he smashed it in the process. Later, when he was trying to restore the shape using steam from a kettle on the stove in the kitchen, he frustratingly gave up, threw the hat on the ground and jumped on it with both feet. This was one small moment in my life, but for me it held a lot of weight that I have carried with me for decades. Releasing the belief that I caused my dad pain was key in a bigger healing process of seeing my own self-worth.

Grief work isn’t just about big obvious losses. It’s about systematically uncovering all the small deaths that got glossed over, and taking the time to bless ourselves before moving on.

2. Identity Eulogy

This one is probably the most important type of heavy work anyone can do in the liminal space. When we are no longer who we were, this can feel like grief, too. We may wish for time to reverse. We may try to recreate the past circumstances. But formally acknowledging and releasing these identities or roles – often ones we have built our life around – can help us process that grief and open up space in our hearts to receive new and better things.

I’ve shared a lot about releasing my identity as CEO and founder. Leaving my company also meant leaving behind that identity, and I had to take time to grieve that loss. At the point I made the decision to close out that chapter, there was no going back to the old version of myself, and I needed to let myself feel sad, mad, regret, etc., and once again, to honor who that version of me was for so many years.

Thanks again to The Artist’s Way, I also began to reclaim a piece of my identity as an artist. Julia Cameron writes about how so many blocked creatives become shadow artists – that is, someone who supports someone else in their creative endeavors instead of pursuing their own. I did this with one of my exes by paying for her to go to art school. Now acknowledging that I am to be an artist, not a shadow artist, is another way I said goodbye to an old identity as a fixer to make room for something better.

In the example of my dumpster story, this was a quite literal example of releasing an old identity. Only in that case, it was by coercion not through an aligned and intentional choice. Church leaders had me purge my life of all the gayness – but it was rooted in legalistic positions on sin (better said as human interpretation of right vs. wrong, not by faith-fueled conviction.) This type of identity eulogy is not okay and will cause much more harm than good.

Identity eulogies only work when you decide what needs to die, not when external forces demand it.

3. Values Audit and Consequential Action

Another type of heavy work that has helped me get in touch with my own authentic taste and desires for my life is to spend time reviewing my values, and taking action to step into undeniable alignment with those values.

A couple of years ago, Emily and I spent an afternoon drafting a set of family values – written out statements of what values we will use to filter every decision we make.

In February last year, I didn’t name it but I was already entering into my liminal space, and I began a systematic approach to evaluating my decision about whether to stay in my business or exit. I wrote out those family values again and created two columns below with headings: Life If I Stay, Life If I Exit. Viewed through the prism of my values, I journaled about what it required of me, what it afforded me, how it aligned with my values, and how I would feel in either decision. This intentional heavy work helped me feel more stable while taking action to align with the best option for my life.

I chose to exit and the consequences of that decision put me into some of the most difficult times of my life, but because I had made the decision through the lens of my values, I remained unwavering in my actions to lead myself toward greater alignment with who I want to be.

More recently in this process, I began evaluating my beliefs about money, and this work allowed me to redefine what abundance means to me. Gaining a clearer understanding of my own version of abundance allowed me to release the people-pleasing drive to choose a traditional way of earning money. I’m still working through this part, but just like when deciding to exit my business, I can move forward with confidence because I know what I value.

Values audits only become heavy work when they lead to consequential action – decisions that cost you something or change how you live. Once again, this is why our balance work is so important. Choosing to be more authentically ourselves will create pockets of loss and difficulty. We need those four stabilizers when we start taking action toward our truth.

4. Two Hard Hours Weekly

To put some guardrails up for myself, it has been helpful to engage in time-bound, intensive soul excavation with a clear start time, stop time, and integration period. Soul work is only safe when we acknowledge that we need these guardrails.

My coach taught me this cadence – we met weekly for about an hour for IFS sessions and meditations. On my own time, I’d spend about an hour journaling as homework. After IFS sessions, I’d often lay down and sometimes even take a nap, because some time to rest and integrate was crucial after putting my soul through some intense work.

This is a big reason why I love IFS so much. The intensity is clearly confined to a specific block of time, but the power of the work continues in rest. Just like with exercise recovery, we need lighter days to soak up the benefits from the work session.

So, the container matters as much as the content – having clear time boundaries prevents getting lost in the intensity.

To summarize on all four types, heavy work is most effective when it’s chosen rather than forced, has clear boundaries, and includes integration time afterward. Just like with my diving dream “survival” through this requires coming up for air.

When Heavy Work Works

The goal of heavy work is to help us build the capacity to choose our path rather than react to our circumstances. When done with proper boundaries and recovery time, these four practices gradually restore what I’ve named soul proprioception: the soul’s ability to sense who you are, what you want, and where you’re going.

I know the work is effective because as I’ve practiced balance work and heavy work, I feel that subtle shift of inner orientation returning. Decisions are becoming less overwhelming because I can sense which direction is authentic for me. I no longer resist grief when it visits, because I know how to honor it and release it without drowning in it. Identity shifts do involve loss, but just like in nature how seasons change, even shedding the old can feel like growth when we learn to recognize the signs to release what’s ready to die.

That diving dream taught me the rhythm: dive deep, then surface. Rest, integrate, then choose the next dive. Heavy work without balance work is just retraumatization. Balance work without heavy work never builds the clarity and strength that make authentic living possible.

In Part IV, I’ll share the qigong-informed framework that weaves both together. I’m excited to share a simple daily practice that integrates the stabilizers and the deep work into something you can actually sustain. Because the goal isn’t just to survive the liminal space. It’s to use it to become who you’ve always been meant to be.

Balance to sense. Load to strengthen. Then choose.

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