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My mission is to encourage self-expression through movement in life and body.
Expression is inevitable. Movement is inevitable. Together they shape your life.

You inherently long to express who you are...
Regardless of what your life looks like, you are naturally compelled to share yourself with the world around you.
When you offer yourself, your truth, and your gifts unfiltered in the moment, you feel vital and alive.
When you repress your authenticity repeatedly, over time it festers and creates imbalance in body and mind.

You seek to be validated in your expression in some way, shape or form...
You are a relational being who feels more real and intentional upon contact with others.
Your creations (in love, work, family life, or even in solitude) help you to define who you are.
Witnesses (be they supportive or critical) propel you forward and remind you that your perspective has alliance, contrast, and therefore meaning.

You continually change and evolve in your expression...
The creation of your perfect life will never be a completed project because you are ever-changing.
Your discomfort and disconnection with what you once felt to be enough is a natural part of your evolution.
You evolve by changing and MOVING THROUGH the various challenges/opportunities that come your way...




Move Your Body
Movement is as essential as breathing. A physical outlet is the body’s natural way of literally or metaphorically moving through tensions without need for identification or processing. Whether you appreciate it or not, you are a living and emotive being that requires some movement in order to release and shed stagnancy. Moving your body can take care of a lot of emotional baggage and save you the drama of processing. But it’s not enough in and of itself. Your body can be a metaphor for your progression, but it is no substitute....

Move Your Life
There is a cultural myth that eventually we will get there. Where exactly, we aren’t always certain... but if we just get that one job, that one partner, that one opportunity, everything will fall into place. So we strive to reach our goals, and often we do. And we are satisfied for a time. Then the hunger consumes us once more. Why can’t we just get happy and stay happy? Because we are wired to desire, and the wanting for more is at the core of our evolution as a species. Our lives are meant to continually reach forward. A time of respite is healthy, but when we linger too long stagnancy leaves us feeling restless and dissatisfied. Your life is meant to move through seasons, as long as you live and breathe...

Move Toward What Moves You
And so we learn we must change again and again - ourselves, our circumstances. Reaching again for something that could offer us more. Letting go of something that once was enough. Too often we substitute addictions for the more profound changes that are being asked of us because we are terrified of this natural compulsion to move forward. We are wired to desire experiences that bring about an expression of ourselves that is more than we ever thought we could be. When we stop denying our nature, we will find we enjoy the ride, though bumpy it may be at times. You must allow for the small deaths that birth new experiences. It is the nature of all existence. We must continually move toward that which brings about sensations of aliveness, exhilaration, and the thrill of new life!

Read more. Learn about the 5 Myths of Self-Expression. What beliefs may be coming between you and your uninhibited genius?

Radically Raw & Real
Candice Schutter - theMessenger, April 2011

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
E.E. Cummings

It has been nearly a year since I published an issue of theMessenger. Last spring, I decided to let go of the idea that it was something required of me, and I waited for an impulse to reach out. It is no exaggeration to say that I feel like a different person, writing to you now. The past year shifted me in irrevocable ways, and finding the words to articulate these shifts, still occurring within, will take time. The truth is, I haven't known exactly what to share in recent months. In the past, I would simply wait for experiences to ripen into insight, then find a way to place it in a larger context that others might be able to relate to. But the past year has offered me more questions than answers.

As a life coach in today’s culture, I often felt an implied pressure to offer a formula that promises transformation. I would peruse the shelves of self-help sections and marvel at the titles... each one making a claim towards a different brand of salvation (happiness, abundance, loving connection). I did my best to fit the mold of the perfect coach; even offering workshops featuring principles deemed as 'universal.' Yet, over time, I felt a nagging frustration grow within. While I did my best to encourage self-reliance, I began hearing a new brand of self-deprecating statements from clients who felt shame and frustration at their seeming lack of 'success' with the so-called laws of growth and transformation. I realize now that I was feeling a lack of integrity - pretending to have answers in a world that is a mystery to us. Who was I kidding? While I know that much of what I was sharing was of value... the concrete terms I began to speak in felt foreign to my subjective senses.

Eventually, the sensation of being boxed in by principle became unbearable. I wondered: What if I dared to offend the imaginary new age gods we have erected? What if I abandoned self-righteousness for the sake of freedom? What if I stripped off the bullshit facade and said whatever was on my mind without filter or fear of some invisible consequence? What if was just me, plain and simple... trading positively perky for radically raw and real? What if there was no fear of getting it wrong? What if I actually allowed myself to do everything I claimed I didn't want to do anymore... things like watching whatever I wanted on TV... exploring my sexuality more openly... drinking alcohol or even smoking a cigarette simply for the pleasureful buzz?! In short, what if stopped the great balancing act and took a great big nose dive from the pedestal of pretension and personal growth. While I don’t encourage a mindlessly reckless existence, I can tell you that a courageous season of debauchery can be extraordinarily therapeutic for the perpetually pious.

Just to be clear, piety is an adherence to virtue in order to win favor - be it the favor of the gods (conventional religion), the positive consequence of spiritual laws believed to govern existence (new agism), or a more general tendency towards conformity in order to avoid the judgment of the masses. It all counts as measuring oneself in reference to something or someone who has set a standard that you feel you must adhere to.

Surrendering to debauchery was easier than I expected. Soon, words and practices that once held meaning for me became empty vessels of inconvenient banter. I found myself attracted to the polar opposite of my status quo, gravitating towards people and experiences that existed without filters I didn’t even know I had. I began living my life without the dictates of someone else's formula and became immune to what had suddenly become spiritual mumbo jumbo to me. I began to marvel at how arrogant we humans can become, thinking we understand so much that is beyond our comprehension. What happened to vulnerability, the honesty of not having the answers? Not to mention, so much emphasis on the intangible seem to leave so many people disengaged from the real guts of life. How many of the delicious nuances of life do we miss while we pretended to be perfecting ourselves?
 
The death of someone I love deeply was the final blow to an already crumbling foundation. All it takes is a wake-up call to change everything we thought we once knew. We have many over the course of our lives. When we listen, we can open our eyes wider than ever before. When we don't, we cling eagerly to what we think will save us from swallowing the bitter-sweet medicine of change. I see now that I spent a decade immersing myself in dogma. At the time, it was exactly what was needed. It was a life vest that kept my head above water when the concept of the uncontrollable was too great an ocean to swim. In my effort to find meaning, I clung to ideas... married myself to practices... and even idolized others in an effort to avoid the powerlessness I felt within. None of this do I look back on with regret. However, I now see that the ideologies I leaned into for comfort eventually boxed me in. The rules that I let dictate my everyday kept me disconnected from the freedom I so longed for. And the people that I sought to be like were mostly mirages... each based on projections of latent parts of me that longed to take flight.

The funny thing is, I didn't even realize that I was holding myself hostage. That's the thing about the truth... it’s a mirror you have to turn and look into. It's for that reason I know that humility is essential to growth. It takes courage to question. It takes strength to say not, "I was wrong," but instead say "what was once right for me is no longer." Sound like the same thing? But it isn't. The first admission implies regret... a sentiment that misses the point altogether.

So now I write to you without answers, without guarantees, and without boundaries. I write because it is what I do... it is like breathing to me, and holding in air never feels good.

I am no longer waiting to exhale.

Diving in the Dark
Candice Schutter - theMessenger, May 2010

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
Carl Jung

It has been months since the last publication of theMessenger. The winter was a time of much needed withdrawal for me, and I couldn't but honor the urge to go within. Then, early spring brought a profound loss that sent me cocooning once more. I have been changed by these seasons more than I can express in words; yet, today I am determined to begin cracking through my shell.
 
In the fall issue, I wrote about my intimate journey of reclaiming debauchery. I encouraged uninhibited self-expression as an honorable and liberating pursuit. While I absolutely stand behind my advocacy for seasons of instinctual surrender, allow me to now expand with greater awareness. The aftermath of such liberation is almost always bitter-sweet, as the abandonment of what we have come to expect from ourselves reveals our hidden layers. Some realizations are delightfully exhilarating as they show us that we are capable of much more than we ever thought possible. Yet surrendering to secret passions can also release latent shadowy forces - sending us careening into caverns where we are left to humbly poke around in the dark. Both experiences are beautiful. Both are necessary. And one cannot exist without the other. Allow me to elaborate...
 
I am writing to you from the rugged Oregon Coast. Just outside my window, the ocean is booming with life. The tide is rolling in and the depths of the sea are being delivered to the shore, carrying endless miles of history with it. Waves tear at the earth, reshaping it with a force whose origin is unseen. The call of the sea is unstoppable, eager, and unrelenting. Eventually, the currents will retreat once more; yet, the shoreline will never be the same. In this way, the sea echoes the perpetual awakening of the soul and its inevitable effect on our day-to-day reality.
 
Diving in Darkness: The Paradox of the Soul
   
My business brand invites clients to shine - to embrace their brilliance as the guiding light within. I encourage focus on positive potential, and consciously lining up choices with passion and possibilities. I have seen the power of a positive paradigm time and time again, as it is often our vantage point that keeps us stuck in disempowering dynamics. Shifting to a more empowered state of being (and acting!) can be a key to liberation.
 
Nevertheless, the soul's journey is paradoxical; it reveals more of who you are through the contrast that life offers. Growth is all about integration of the whole of you. Fulfillment comes when you close the gap between shine and shadow.
 
When we resist aspects of who we are, they go underground. Ironically, these rejected qualities are meant to be essential and productive contributors to the life we are living! But because we deem them as unworthy, they become the unruly children of our psyche. Denied the vehicle of expression, they spill out into our everyday lives wreaking havoc in subtle, yet powerful ways.
 
You see, there is an inevitability that is certainly universal: the promise of change. The soul - simply a word for our ever-evolving potential - is constantly seeking new landscapes through which to reveal itself as more. New ways of being are inevitably calling to us and, no matter how we resist, we are continually renewed through our life experiences. The most powerful sirens of change catch us off guard. As a result of a natural learning curve, we resist the unknown. Thus, opportunities are resented as 'difficulties' to overcome... ever-evolving desires manifest in 'bad habits' we long to be rid of... or a person meant to birth a new level of awareness in us becomes a 'thorn in our side.' In each instance, it is simply a case of near-sightedness.

Let us return to the ocean analogy. Imagine the tides represent the soul's cyclical calls toward a larger life. When we resist a call to dive deeper, life speaks louder through the currents of circumstance. The tide continues to roll in more and more aggressively until the boom of new life that is stirring can no longer be ignored. It creeps ever closer and, when necessary, it submerges our sense of self until we are paddling around in the dark. The shadowy, underwater portals can be frightening - usually showing up as a circumstance or relationship that reveals us raw. We come face to face with our darker impulses, our vulnerability, and our resulting heartfelt desires. 
 
Yet the more we fight against the current - especially the shadowy stuff that we'd rather deny and project onto others - the more we get beaten and battered. The forcefulness of the riptide is waking us up! True, we can't see clearly now... perhaps we can't even find the ground beneath us; yet, in time, it will find us. If we can relax into the knowing that darkness always offers its counterpart, we become humbly available to the brilliance that is destined for us. Rest assured, the waters will retreat once more... and each time the waters reunite with their source, we are revealed anew. We can gaze around in awe and wonder at the beautiful landscapes left in the wake of our next incarnation. This life is many lives in one; and embracing this wild ride will free you up for boundless joy... again and again and again.
 
Be Willing to Change... everything.
   
Much like the shoreline is carved by the hand of the sea, our character is shaped by the hidden recesses of the soul. We must yield to its revelations, even when we'd rather hold on for dear life or even run for cover. Calls toward expansion will only get louder in our denial of them. And what is denied in us will find its way to us eventually. The magnificent wild tidal waves of the shadow self will come crashing to the shore.
  
Growth is delivered to us via nature's contraction and expansion. Waves cycling in and out. All transformation is contingent upon this coupling: brilliant dreams arise from the shadows of longing... desires launch from unwanted conditions... and new paradigms are born from old complexes. Life is a divine coupling of rip-roaring discomfort and the new potential it births.
 

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Walt Whitman

 
When you get used to the idea of change, you begin to understand that it is the only absolute to be certain of. Therefore, are you willing to contradict yourself in order to expand? Will you allow the awareness of deeper aspects of your being (even those you would rather deny) to propel you forth? Are you willing to change your beliefs when your experience calls for a new vantage point?

Wild waves of freedom result from discontent and are invitations to be at one with your untamed nature. Just like the sea, your soul is never still; it is never unmoved by the life you are living. Yet it is not enough to succumb to the call of the wild indefinitely. It is essential to experience and mine such impulses for the motivation at their core. What essential part of me is fighting to be free? And how can I consciously embrace all the shadowy stuff that is stirred to the surface as an opportunity to mature in my understanding of life? When the wild impulses within are no longer denied - when they become integrated and accepted for the medicine they offer - they become functional contributors to your life experience. You are free to be you. And there is nothing more pleasing to the soul.
 
Never stop etching your visions into sandy shores. Yet curse not the waves that spill forth, wiping your slate clean and transforming the canvas yet again. Your soul cannot be stagnant any more than the sea can be contained. So celebrate the dark and shadowy depths of your being, and use them as fluid platforms that elevate you to meet the sun's rays.