COURSE

Holding It All In Heart: Aliveness, Acceptance & Authenticity

This course is a guide to living more fully, in touch with the tender territories of the heart. We will practice tools and techniques to connect with ourselves and to increase the sense of actually “being here”- present to the preciousness of our lives. We will learn ways to self-soothe and regulate our feelings, so that we can stay open to the world around us and build our abilities at being brave. We will use seated/ moving meditation, heart practices, and mindful breathing to work with our inner experience. We will grow in acceptance, aliveness, and authenticity.

Acceptance Health & Happiness Happiness Mindfulness Secular Confidence Authenticity Insight Meditation Secular Mindfulness

Meet your Teacher

Tess | Being Moved

Santa Cruz, CA, USA

Tess is a Spirit Rock accredited dharma and yoga facilitator and has been practicing insight meditation regularly for 25 years. She is an accredited 5Rhythms moving meditation guide who facilitates events and programs out in nature and assists on Dance & Dharma retreats at Esalen. Tess is also a creativity coach and an art therapist and loves working with the inner world. She enjoys supporting people to embody their own experience and move more mindfully through the world. Her work creates space for people to connect deeply to what matters most. She is currently in training as a Buddhist Eco-Chaplain.

10 Days

2.6k students

4.9 stars

16 min / day

Acceptance

English

Lesson 1

Right Now It’s Like This: Knowing Where We Are Starting From

In this course we are choosing to cultivate our own aliveness, to feel more present, to enjoy more mindful moments. In this first session we will explore behavioral change via the simple map of awareness, acceptance, and intention. Today’s exercise is a simple awareness practice bringing us back into contact with what is happening right here, right now. This session will support us in spotting our habits of disconnection, so that we can then consciously choose to come back into connection with our own heart. We will finish with setting our intentions to live more fully.

Lesson 2

Cultivating Calm: Learning The Science Of Self-Soothing

In this session we will teach ourselves to slow down and befriend whatever it is that we are feeling. We will learn to activate our own parasympathetic nervous systems, so that we have skills in modulating our own emotions. We will do this via practicing a mindfulness of breathing meditation, specifically working with lengthening the outbreath as a way to lower stress hormones and cultivate calm. We will come out of the busy mind and use the breath as a powerful tool for supporting presence.

Lesson 3

Coming To Our Senses – Using The Body As The Bases For Staying Present

Today we will work with using the input from our 5 senses as a key way to come more fully into the present moment. We will develop the skills to stay with ourselves when we are full of feeling. We will practice learning to titrate our feelings by changing the focus between our inner world and the outer world, enabling us to choose coming in and out of contact with our emotions in skillful ways. We will learn to see all the ways that the environment around us can support us, call us to the present, and build up our sense of connection with the world.

Lesson 4

Softening Into Suffering: Cultivating Compassion For Our Human Condition

Today’s session is a self-compassion meditation. We will give ourselves permission to not be perfect, coming into caring contact with all the complexities of having a human heart. We will practice a loving kindness meditation, working with simple phrases of well-wishing. By being gentle with ourselves in this way, we will support opening the heart more fully to all of the different aspects of our lives - whatever they may look like. We will develop kindness, forgiveness, and well-wishing.

Lesson 5

The Serenity In Surrender: Letting Go & Letting Things Be

In today’s session we will give ourselves permission to pause and put down the need to be perfect. We will explore the fact that sometimes change can’t be forced, however hard we try, and look at the Gestalt Theory of Change, which states that it is bizaarely, by actually letting go, that sometimes change comes. We will do a deeply restorative yoga nidra practice whilst lying down – exploring how rest can offer a radical reset. We will see how letting go and letting things be supports our serenity.

Lesson 6

Hearing Our Heart: Truth Telling & The Power Of Permission

In this session we will work with a series of simple written exercises, so that we can tune into the truth of our own heart. There is much wisdom deep within each of us that will serve and guide us, when we dive in deep and let ourselves hear it. We will work with a series of writing prompts to facilitate finding out what is actually really true for each us, beyond the spoken and unspoken expectations of those around us. We will give ourselves permission to hear own heart, supporting us in making more space for what matters most in our lives.

Lesson 7

Fear Is Our Friend: Fear As A Signpost Of Growing & Going Forward

Today we will befriend the sense of fear - and it’s inevitable arising in the human heart as we grow in our lives. Learning to touch into our fear is powerful and permission-giving and lessens the hold that fear has on us. We will practice a gently guided meditation to develop a sense of the witness within us, distinguishing fear as actually being a series of bodily sensations, rather than as a limiting force on ourselves and our lives. We will normalize having a tender human heart and all of the growing pains that we go through as we dare to live and love more.

Lesson 8

The Body Of Bravery: Finding Strength, Taking Space, Stepping In

Our muscles have memory and we can build our ability to change our inner feeling state via basic embodied exercises. In this session we will explore a series of simple standing meditations, bringing awareness to our body and to the bone structure that we have within us, seeing how we can actively build a sense of our own inner-strength. We will practice feeling what is possible, cultivating a sense of competency and stepping towards our future with a strong back body and an open heart.

Lesson 9

Radical Resourcing: Opening To It All & Choosing To Live Well

In this session we will focus on resourcing ourselves with what is good, so that we can feel energized, inspired, and uplifted enough to fully engage with our lives. Today’s practice will focus on gratitude and noticing what is going well, training our mind to orientate toward what lifts us up in life and widens the horizons of the heart. We will honor what has been gained in the journey we have walked and give thanks for all that is: the delightful, the difficult, and the million shades in between; developing the equanimity to be with it all.

Lesson 10

Allowing Our Aliveness: Impermanence As An Imperative To Live Fully

In this final session we will look at ways in which we can increase the sense of aliveness in our day-to-day existence. We will gently explore the concept of impermanence as a wake-up call to share our love and our talents; and to dare to do more of the things that are important to us. We will use breath work and mindful movement to explore and expand the physical sensations of aliveness in our body. We will see that our time here is limited and build our resolves to be fully here-now, as best we can; heart-full, mind-full, and present to the preciousness of it all.

Ask your teacher

This course includes 26 community questions and 11 audio replies from Tess | Being Moved. The community classroom and teacher audio replies are only available via the app.

4.9 (123)

Recent Reviews

Michelle

January 12, 2026

Really lovely experience. I like your lightness and joy at guiding us through this work. An uplifting program.

Heather

January 3, 2025

Beautiful course! I feel inspired and a shift in perspective. Thank you. 🙏🏻 🤍✨

Torie

December 2, 2024

Bravo brilliant course. As usual it fits perfectly in my spiritual growth

Julie

June 26, 2024

really beautiful and divinely timed

Lora

June 17, 2024

Thank you, Tess. This is a beautiful course that showed up right when I needed it. Thank you for developing it and delivering it with such compassion and gentleness. It all feels like a warm hug from a wise and loving friend. Thank you. 🙏🏾 Namaste.

Emily

March 28, 2024

Comforting words

Ana

February 15, 2024

I loved this course. I keep coming back and repeating sessions because I really want to apply these ideas and principles in my every day life. Thank you 🙏🏽 I enjoyed your tone and voice very much. 🌈✨

Margarete

December 17, 2023

Thank you Tess ! I thoroughly enjoyed this course and i know I will return and refresh myself on a few different practices! This was amazing and timely ! Blessings 🙏🙏🙏

Michelle

October 31, 2023

What a beautiful journey this has been! Thank you for sharing your gifts 🎁 Your voice, your message, the perfect questions, the space within the meditations to sit and be with my thoughts ❤️ May you be well, may you have peace, may you have love, may you be free from pain and suffering! Thank uou!

Michelle

October 12, 2023

Thank you for your teachings, your open heart and wonderful questions to ponder. I felt inspired and I enjoyed every day of this course. Thank you 🙏

Liv

October 5, 2023

Wonderful lessons on how to just be in every day and every moment. So grateful for this course.

Maggie

September 27, 2023

Tess does a fantastic job creating a comprehensive journey into the self. I can’t believe how powerful just 15 minutes a day can be. I would recommend this course to anyone! Thank you so much Tess!

Chrissie

August 24, 2023

Incredible course! Day 5’s session is helping me thru a very crucial time in my life. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, your strength, your guidance. 🙏🏼

Emmanuelle

August 3, 2023

Beautiful and insightful thanks hanks Tess

Kathy

July 22, 2023

Best course yet

Kelley

June 26, 2023

Tess was exceptional at delivering potent and grounded messages about the heart of living well. She was a great guide, encouraging the practices of embracing and riding through all of it, the difficult and the sublime.

Dorothy

April 14, 2023

Excellent everyday expiraring...your voice so soothing like a big hug...thank you!

Maria

March 21, 2023

Loved the course!

Amy

October 10, 2022

This whole course was the loveliest soul surprise! Thank you, thank you. 🙏🏼💕 So many noted thoughts and journal prompts beckoning a multi-round return with pen in hand- heart, mind, and soul- open and connected. Love and light. xx

Domenic

August 23, 2022

Great course

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