Category: Find Center – Ground

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Calming Your Inner Critic

Art by Maartje van Dokkum

Here’s a powerful practice from Ann Weiser Cornell to shift your experience with your inner critics so you feel relaxed instead of undermined. 

Let’s try it…

  1. Pause: Take a moment to settle into your body. Feel your feet. Feel your seat. Allow yourself to arrive in the inner area of your body, throat, chest, stomach, and below. Remember a time when something in you said critical things to you. Maybe something like, “What makes you think you can do this?”
  2. Acknowledge: When you find your inner critic’s words, try saying it like this: “I’m sensing something in me saying __________________.” Mine often sounds like my father because it learned its language from him. So my sentence would be “I’m sensing something in me saying ‘who do you think you are?’”
  3. Say Hello: And then say hello to the one who is saying that. You’re not agreeing or disagreeing with what it says. You’re simply saying “Hello.” Try saying out loud, “I’m sensing something in me saying ____________ and I’m saying hello to it.”
  4. Listen: Because inner critics are often worried, we want to invite them to let us know what they’re worried about. We can do that by saying, “Might you be worried?” And then listen to its response. When I sense the part of me that says “who do you think you are?”, it lets me know that it is worried I’ll get bigger than other people are comfortable with. For it, that means I’ll get attacked or hurt somehow.
  5. Let it Know You Hear It: Gently let your inner critic know you sense what it’s worried about. You’ll get a sense of relief just from IT finally being able to let you know why it is worried.This is just a beginning. As you practice responding to Inner Critics with compassion and confidence, you’re far less likely to get taken over by them and far less likely to feel bad about yourself.

Here’s the powerful truth:

Every inner critic is trying to save you.They’re just so worried something bad will happen to you that they talk to you in a way that leaves you feeling terrible. But you can turn that around when you know how to respond to them. Lasting change comes from how you relate to yourself and everything you feel.

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Slow Down

‘’Turn down the noise. Reduce the speed. Be like the somnolent bears or those other animals that slow down and almost die in the cold season.
Let it be the way it is.
The magic is there in its power.”

~Henry Mitchell

Photo: Lair of the Bear
by Nancy Lankston

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Earthy Full Moon

Photo by Gavin Mackintosh South Molton, United Kingdom

Full moon in earthy Taurus and things are crazy! Everything is stirred up and nothing is as it seems.

Ground, ground, ground.
Get outside and walk, sit or lie on the Earth.
Breathe and ground.

🐝🐝

And the bees have a message for us:

Hush now. The wounds run deep,
but the bees are full of knowing.

They know the hive of your heart,
each crooked curled chamber
each hopeful hidden curve,
each darkened holding cell.

They have come with wings and song and pollen.
They have come to harvest each mistake
each broken vessel, to touch the jagged edges
of betrayal and lost chances,
to collect your failures one by one,
making honey from the bitter
making music in the void
making wings where there were wounds.

Hush now. Sleep well.
The night is alive with forgiveness
and your heart is a hive
made for honey made for love.

~Angi Sullins

🐝🐝

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New Moon of Balance

New moon in airy Libra, the sign of equanimity and balance. A ring of fire solar eclipse also occurs today.

Buckle up. The pace of change appears to be increasing this moon cycle. Make daily self care a priority so that you can maintain some semblance of balance and tranquility.

Breathe. You can do this.

#balance
#tranquility

Artist unknown

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I’m Slowly Learning

“I’m slowly learning that even if I react, it won’t change anything, it won’t make people suddenly love and respect me, it won’t magically change their minds.

Sometimes it’s better to just let things be, let people go, don’t fight for closure, don’t ask for explanations, don’t chase answers and don’t expect people to understand where you’re coming from.

I’m slowly learning that life is better lived when you don’t center it on what’s happening around you and center it on what’s happening inside you instead.”

~Rania Naim

💚

#self
#soul
#grounded

Art: Girl in Earth
by Marta Bevacqua

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On A Clear Day

The way the field
holds the shadow of the cottonwood,
this is how life holds me.

Holds me, no matter my shape.
Holds me with no effort.
Holds my darkness and knows it

as weightless, as transient,
as something that will shift,
disappear, return, and shift again.

It never says no to me.
I am still learning to trust life, to trust
no matter how I show up, I will be held.

Trust that my life is not a problem.
Trust that as much as I am the shadow,
I am also the field.

~Rosemary Wahtola Trommer

Photo by NancyL