hours of forgetting
then a flash of sunlight
wind ruffles wet flesh
awash in sensation
heart stills, time stops
and I open myself
to this
falling awake
to sun and bone
wind on water
I am here
all here in
sacred space
☾☽
The Everyday is Sacred
Change Your Mind, Change Your Life
Our beliefs become our thoughts…
Our thoughts become our words…
Our words become our actions…
Our actions become our habits…
Our habits become our values…
Our values become our destiny.
-Author Unknown
I intend to plant a seed in your mind today and encourage it to sprout. And today’s seed is… Change your mind, change your life.
✧✧✧
What if I told you that your biggest block to health and happiness lies in the beliefs you hold; beliefs that shape your every thought and emotion; beliefs that define your every reaction to life? If you are open to the possibility that your beliefs are really that powerful, then read on…
Your beliefs can help you or hold you hostage. Do you realize that your chronic health issues are chronic and difficult to heal because an old belief or emotional pattern is probably getting in your way and keeping you stuck in pain and out of balance? I’ve witnessed this over and over in my healing practice; I will treat two clients of the same age and sex with the same physical issue, but only one of them will heal while the other stays stuck in pain and misery. Why? Because these two clients hold different beliefs about the world and how it works. They hold different beliefs about what kind of healing is possible for them. So one of them heals while the other stays stuck in pain.
Your perceptions and beliefs about the world create your reality. Your perceptions and beliefs can limit you and close off amazing options – or open doors for you and expand what’s possible in your life. Unfortunately, your core beliefs were put in place when you were a very young and vulnerable child. What that means is, some silly idea you formed at the age of 2 about life and how it works may still be pulling your strings and affecting your health and happiness years later when you are an adult. And if you had a traumatic childhood, just imagine what kind of crazy ideas are still mucking up your life today from deep within you!
In my healing practice and in my personal life, I have witnessed the effect people’s beliefs have on their health and happiness for years. And I have found shamanic techniques that can be used to shift beliefs and emotional patterns. No matter what you’ve been taught in the past, I am here to tell you that you truly can release those old outdated thoughts, emotional reactions and beliefs from your system. Yes, you can change your mind! And when you change your mind, you can change your entire life.
☾☽
Change your Mind, Change your Life, Change your World.
Blowing in the Wind
Wow – it’s been almost 3 months since I spouted off here in my Blog.
That’s a LONG time for me to go underground. But I have a very good reason for going all “Turtle” and disappearing from view – I moved cross-country this fall. Moving from one state to another is tough even for a flexible, go with the flow type chick like me. (My husband is laughing hysterically right now about my “go with the flow” description of myself. But hey! This is my Blog and if I want to view myself as easy going, he should just learn to hush up… 🙂
So, more about moving. Any change is tough – most humans do NOT like things in their life to shift around or change much at all. But I have always prided myself on enjoying change. I used to do corporate change management work, for God’s sake! This move cross-country was a change that I pushed for and WANTED. And yet… this move was unsettling to say the least (pun intended).
It always takes me awhile to find ground and establish a new routine whenever I move, even just across town. But, silly me – I thought a much anticipated, much desired change would be easier. Hah! Maybe it’s because I’m an Earth sign (Taurus); I tend to root deeply into each place I live. Or maybe all those therapists are right when they claim that moving is one of the top three stressors in Life for everyone. Even good change is hard and stressful.
After our move, I felt unmoored, ungrounded, unsettled, off-balance. Like the least little breath of trouble might blow me right off my feet. It took me weeks to feel at home and truly relax in this new place. I knew what I needed – I needed to find gound. Hah! So it’s time to practice what I preach all day long to my clients, huh God?! I’m supposed to know how to do this, right?
What finally worked for me? What helped me find ground and settle in this new place? Meditating and consciously grounding my legs and hips helped me immensely And walking in the mountains was a God-send for me. The energy of the Rockies is very grounding (go figure!). And oddly enough, the simple act of unpacking our treasures helped a lot. Having boxes everywhere is very unsettling for me.
Yesterday I came across an essay named Finding Ground that I wrote a few years ago And I laughed to myself as I read it – if only I could have accessed all the wisdom I expressed in it during my “unsettled days” this fall.
My new home is good – I’m the one grinning from ear to ear every time I look outside and see the Rockies. It’s going to be years before this “flatlander” takes living in the mountains for granted.
Life is good here. Probably because I am finally completely HERE.
Much love and hugs from the mountains.
I encourage you to also read “Finding Ground”, with the hope that it might help you
face the chaos of change in your life.
The Solution to the Problem
It does not take a genius to know that this country is in a deep financial mess; billion dollar bank bail-outs, massive numbers of mortgage foreclosures, record debt levels for both individual Americans and our government as a whole – we have dug quite a deep hole for ourselves. And it’s not just America, the crisis is worldwide.
And it is not just financial news. Add to that my worries about the sickening state of this country’s food supply and healthcare system, and oh yes, let’s not forget global warming and the state of the world’s oceans. Just 15 minutes with the news and I may decide to curl up fetal and never leave my bed again.
How does a reasonable adult deal with the state of our world today? What can I possible do that will help turn this mess around? Anyone with a firm grasp of reality would look around and be very worried. But spending my days in a stressed out, worried state is NOT going help me or anyone else. And I don’t want to ignore the problems either. That would be like Nero fiddling while Rome burns. So, what’s a woman to do?
Well, my solution is mostly spiritual; I spend way more time in prayer and meditation. I increase my connection time to God. That might seem to some people like running away from the world and our problems. But I think it’s just the opposite. Connecting with God or Spirit calms me and keeps me grounded in a reality beyond all the horrible news. It reminds me that I never see the entire picture and that God has got this. God has got this under control, even when it looks like everything is going to Hell.
The other thing that happens when I take time to meditate or prayer is that my mind clears; I stop pinging from one problem to the next. And I find that I can calmly get out of bed and happily go out into the world and face our global problems without panicking. But if I don’t stay “prayed up”, I am constantly freaking out about the future and predicting gloom and doom. Connection time with God is key.
One of the thoughts that keeps coming to me in meditation is that the solution to our problems will not be logical at all. The solution to this mess will NOT come from logical, linear thinking. A right-brained, holistic view of this mess is needed before the solution will become apparent. My left brain looks at the mess we’ve created and screams in panic because the hole we’ve dug is so deep that my logical brain cannot conceive of a solution. But my right brain intuitively KNOWS that there is a solution to every problem – even this one. My right brain also knows that the Universe is a helpful place, not a malicious torture chamber. We will figure a way out of this mess. And the solution will holistic, global, non-linear.
I look around at my kids and their friends and I see the PERFECT minds to tackle these global problems. Please don’t send the straight-jacket, I am totally serious. This is a generation that excels at right-brained thinking. They may lack in the linear thinking department, but right-brained networked thinking is their forte. Attention Deficit Disorder gets a bum rap, in my opinion. ADD should be called Extraordinary Right-brained Thinking! It is a strength, not a weakness. Unfortunately our schools are using 19th century methods to teach 21st century thinkers.
This generation surfs the internet and intuitively knows that there are no national boundaries. They know that we are all in this mess together. My suburban kids have friends from every ethnic group and sexual persuasion. A global economy makes complete sense to them. A global solution will come naturally to them.
So, I read the news and still I am filled with hope. I cannot WAIT to see what happens next. God (and my kids) have got this one under control.
The Coming Storm
Last week I went for a walk in the woods. There is a path near my house that I love. It winds through the woods next to an untamed year-round creek. I’m wandering down the creek path and I know a big thunderstorm is coming. I saw the storm brewing before I left home, but I love my time on this trail, so I risk a walk in the woods anyway.
I am walking and keeping an eye on the storm clouds that are rapidly building in the north sky. But I’m enjoying my walk so much that I extend it a bit, and then a bit more. I get cocky and misjudge how fast the storm is rolling in. And for my cockiness I ended up getting rained on. Not drenched, just a little damp. Just a gentle schooling from Mother Nature, thank God!
That’s how I hope to weather all the storms in my life; maybe just a little damp but not drenched and no permanent structural damage. I don’t want to end up in chaos at the epicenter of any storm – I have no desire to end up like those Japanese fishermen downwind from a broken nuclear power plant, or those folks in Joplin with no basements where the tornados decided to touch down a few weeks ago. Most of us really cannot handle being at the epicenter, can we? Most of us have no urge to fly right through the eye of the hurricane in a small metal plane. Oh yes, the epicenter is exciting and enticing. Some people love hanging out there. It whispers a siren song that I definitely hear. I’m the one walking in the woods with a thunderstorm brewing on the horizon.
This is one lesson that I have learned the hard way when doing energetic healing work. How close do I want to be to the center of the action, the center of the storm? Through years of trial and error, I have learned that I cannot stay healthy and alive if I hang out in the epicenter of a client’s healing storm. My job is to be an anchor point of calm, on the edge of the action rather than trying to ride the wild energies at the epicenter. I stay healthy and my clients do amazing healing work when I anchor and hold the edges of their dance floor. A client who is emotionally or mentally thrashing through a traumatic release or change needs a calm, deep anchor NOT a dance partner. I picture a giant old sycamore tree anchored in the earth next to this path I love. She’s a calm anchor!
I go visit Grandma Sycamore every time I walk the Mill Creek path. She’s a very cool tree. But on this particular walk, on this particular day, I notice a big chunk of bark lying behind her trunk. When I stop to examine the trunk, I see that the core of Grandma Sycamore is now decaying, rotting away. She has a huge hole at her center. Her time is almost finished here at the edge of the path. Soon she will fall and make way for new trees. I am sad to see this – I have grown to love this tree – I will miss her. She had many years here; wide and tall, majestically anchoring this piece of earth. Now her time is ending.
The same organic cycle of birth, growth and decay happens with everything in Nature. EVERY living thing – including the civilizations that man builds – springs up from the decaying earth left behind from those who came before. We are born, we grow and flourish, then decay and die out. Life on Earth is all about cycles.
Change is inevitable. And change can be very scary, like a huge thunderstorm brewing on the horizon. But If I get still and watch and listen – if I use my senses to really observe, I begin to notice that change is coming before it gets here and I can protect myself. When I slow down and look, I notice that the core of the tree is rotting long before it gets so unstable that it falls on me. In stillness I can see the change coming just like a big storm building on the horizon.
I see a storm coming for my country. I am troubled by the chaos that the US seems to be spiraling into. A US dollar with no gold behind it, massive debt, medical treatments that make people poorer and sicker, grocery stores full of food that isn’t really food, politicians that pontificate and never really change anything – it is so easy to turn into a completely paranoid pessimist. Yet even my more rational optimistic self cannot deny the growing rot at the core of our economy, of our food supply, of our healthcare and our political structures. Beautiful proud strong Grandma Sycamore weakens with age and eventually rots at the core and falls to make way for new life. And our proud beautiful strong US culture seems ready to do the same just like the Mayans and the Romans and the European empires of earlier times. I try to remember that it’s not a good thing or a bad thing, it just is; cultures grow and flourish and then die out just like trees.
I stop and look around and see a world that has swung so far into the yang, active, doing energies. We are too active, too busy, too focused on owning and controlling everything we see. America has spent so much energy trying to conquer and master everything. Straightening rivers, digging holes in the earth to pull out energy to burn, building more and more of the biggest vehicles and buildings in the world even though they consume energy like some giant ravenous beasts, processing the fruits of nature until they don’t even resemble fruit anymore… I could rant on and on. This country is so deep in Yang energy, it cannot seem to stop to even catch a breath!
US cities like Chicago and LA and New York feel like Yang energy on steroids to me; busy little ant humans running here and there on foot – or even more Yang yet, zooming from place to place in little metal cars and big metal planes. We get instant news and entertainment 24/7 on our TV’s and computers and iPod’s and Blackberries. Could we be less still, less receptive??
It is the nature of all organic systems to pendulum back and forth between yin and yang states, constantly seeking a balance point somewhere in the middle. And Western civilization is an organic system; civilizations seek balance and homeostasis just like our own body systems do. So a pendulum shift in this country away from yang seems obvious and inevitable to me. The obvious correction for this organic system is to pendulum back toward yin receptive quiet energies, qualities or ways of being. And the pendulum swing is inevitable; ALL organic systems do it. So I look around and know a shift is coming our way. And I also sense that this cultural shift could get quite chaotic and messy. I want to spiritually embrace and encourage this worldwide natural shift back into receptive mother yin energy. And I also want to protect my family in what could be a wild chaotic storm.
So I close with the questions that my husband and I find ourselves wrestling with this year; What can I do to help my family prepare for this storm? What can I do NOW, before the storm gets here, so that my family can emerge from storm just a little damp? How do I best help my friends and neighbors do the same?
And just as important to me; what do I want to shift towards? Even in the worst storm I have choices about what’s best for me, my family, my country. What is the new vision I want to anchor in and hold for my family, for everyone I love, for America? What seeds can I plant now so that they will sprout into life and flourish after this storm passes?