Why should you listen to me anyway?

For a lot of my clients, their journey with me starts with a story about pain. Chronic pain, aching pain, lightning pain, hot pain, nerve pain, turned-me-into-a-different-person pain. Pain that has created two very distinct phases of their life -- before pain and after pain. Or, their story tells of discomfort, of health issues that are uncomfortable and embarrassing, or of issues that sound "weird" or don't make sense to the medical world.

Sometimes, people come to me because they're seeking clarity or grounding. They find themselves in a rut, feeling scattered and unable to call enough energy together to make change. They feel like they're in a cycle they can't get out of.

And to all of you out there who haven't yet decided to schedule a session with me, I wanted to tell you more about who I am and why I can help to address these issues and all of the day-to-day things that may bring you in for an Intuitive Coaching session.

I've been there.

I've had pain. I've had the chronic pain, the pain that wakes you up in the night, that doesn't cease in any position, that keeps you from doing everything you love until you don't know if you have the capacity to love anymore. I've had the kind that makes you bitchy, makes you snap at waiters and loved ones and makes you feel like a jerk who should have stayed at home. I've had the kind of pain that defined me and became the backdrop for how I knew myself.

I've also been the one with embarrassing, hard to identify health issues that had every doctor starting their prognosis with, "Well, I've never seen anyone with this reaction before...."

For me, pain manifested as a chronic back injury that blew up in my face one day while rock climbing. It wasn't the rock climbing that did it, mind you (although that twisting, manteling move wasn't exactly spine-friendly), it was the 20 years of overuse, of shutting my pain up with Ibuprofen and muscle relaxers, of never seeing pain as a sign but rather an annoyance to my goals. My body had given me plenty of signals throughout the years, signals to slow down, take a day off and mellow out, but I didn't listen. Then one day, BAM! My body didn't give me a choice that time.

So when people come to me with pain, I tend to imagine that they're telling me this story of pain and believing that I may not know how they feel. Trust me, I've been there. And I'm here to tell you that I got out of my pain and you can, too.

At first, I was desperate to get relief. I still saw my pain as an annoyance, like a brush fire that just needs to be stomped out as quickly as possible. So I threw myself to mainstream medicine -- sports medicine doctors, pain relievers, mainstream physical therapy, all the best recommendations I could find. And I failed. Not more than a week after my official care ended, I was re-injured.

I'd received the best care that my medical doctors could give me, so why had it failed?

My treatment failed because I wasn't listening to my inner voice.

Instead of listening to my inner voice, I was listening to the smaller voices inside of fear, telling me to get to a doctor, a real doctor! Telling me to listen and follow their advice because they always know better than you, they're the healers! And those smaller voices told me to question my intuition about my back because intuition isn't medical and can't help you heal.

I had run out of options. So instead of looking outside of myself and my knowledge base, I decided to look inward. When I did, I realized my body was looking for a very deep kind of healing, healing of the connection between body and spirit. This initial realization scared me, because the little voices in me weren't sure I was capable of this kind of healing. But my True Voice, my Inner Voice, was sure. The more I learned to listen to my inner voice, the more it lead me to healers and specialists who were aligned with my true healing path.

Next, I could tell you the story of how I met an amazing group of women who combine yoga with physical therapy to attain fantastic results. And I could tell you how I was one of the most difficult cases they'd ever seen, and how much work and frustration the healing process was. And it was. I found these healers through listening to my inner voice and sticking to what I believed healing could be. Just as important as finding this team of healers was the internal transformation and healing that took place through continuing to listen to my intuition and my inner voice.

One of my first realizations came in a yoga class that I was teaching. I'd said it over and over to my students, "You have to find the balance between ease and effort." I realized then that my whole life I had practiced effort and loathed to practice ease. Effort to attain good grades, effort in relationships, in friendships, in accommodating others. I always worked and created from a place of effort. Effort was everywhere, there was no ease!

It's not that effort is bad -- just like yoga says, we need both ease and effort. But when I took a closer look at the motivations behind all my effort, I realized that they were all fear based -- run an extra three miles so you don't get fat, do the extra credit even though you have a perfect score so that the teacher will like you, do everything for your partner because that's what good girlfriends do (even if he doesn't reciprocate), eat a perfect diet because it's "healthy" even though it's not fun.

I also realized, through intuitive insight, that this concept of favoring effort over ease had been programmed into me. I realized that somewhere in my development, I began to associate accomplishment with love. So I worked with a lot of effort in order to achieve love and affection. I also applied that same principle to myself -- only if I accomplished great things during the day was I worthy of my own love.

Ouch.

Low back injuries are often a sign of "lack of support or stability." If I couldn't love myself unless I accomplished, no wonder my body felt a lack of support.

I had to learn to be on my own team. I had to learn to balance effort with ease and to replace the old programming that associated accomplishment with love to something that served me better -- like the promise to myself to always support myself and my decisions when following my inner voice. To always gently guide myself back to my path if I have fallen off, and to not berate myself for any mistakes. To choose, instead, to learn from my mistakes and make the next decision in accordance with my higher voice.

Sometimes, our inner voice asks us to do things that are scary. It might ask us to quit that job that keeps us stressed all night, or to leave a partner that makes us feel undervalued, or to separate from friends who aren't in alignment with our highest goals for love and friendship. These changes and seem big and scary. What I have learned is that the inner voice is persistant and patient. It will continue to ask you to change, to move on, to grow. I've also found that when you do listen, and you take the big leap, it can feel scary and uncomfortable for a while, but the inner voice is tapped into the Ultimate Wisdom of the universe and always has a way to catch your fall, even if you can't yet see where you're landing.

I don't have back pain anymore. I experience some discomfort during certain activities, and I use meditation and physical activities to keep my body healthy. I'm still on a healing journey -- and although it can be uncomfortable at times, I don't think I'd have it any other way. This is how I learn to listen to my inner voice and it is through this path that I am able to connect to my clients.

I can continually use my inner voice to guide me to health and healing, and so can you.

First Tool: Grounding

Those of us following a spiritual path, or taking yoga classes now and then, or even just exposed to spiritual culture in general, might often hear about the concept of grounded. "I was so grounded!" Is a phrase you might hear people exclaim. Or "Wow, I really need to take some time and just ground."

What does grounding mean?

When I first heard about "grounding," I had a vague sense that it meant somehow chilling out for a few hours or days and letting yourself "settle in." Usually, grounding referred to settling in to some new situation, life event, or during or after a long stint of travel.

Trying to get "grounded" without understanding the mechanism was like watching women get pregnant when I was six years old -- both seemed like something you waited around for and then just happened some day. If you don't understand the mechanism for achieving a state of being, either energetic or physical, it's going to be a lot more difficult to get there and to recognize yourself in that state (well, except for pregnancy... I'd imagine you'd notice).

When I started receiving intuitive readings around the age of 20, one of the first feedbacks I almost always received was that I needed to be more grounded. I still had a vague sense of what it meant to attain grounding and what it felt like to be there. Let's talk about being grounded verses being ungrounded and what the two states mean for operation as a spiritual being on the planet.

Grounding means that we are connecting with the earth. A state of groundedness allows us to recognize, own, and utilize our connection to planet earth. The earth provides us with a solid foundation to literally set foot on -- if you've ever experienced vertigo or been in an earthquake, you know how important it is to feel the steady earth underneath you. For a moment, think of the main quality of earth -- that's it's stable or solid. Just like a stable, solid friend will always be with you during hard times, a shoulder to cry on or someone to talk to when things get tough, the earth is always there for us for stability.

The stabilizing quality of the earth provides our foundation for feeling grounded. Grounding to the earth also provides us with a mechanism for releasing energies that aren't ours, or that aren't serving us. Just like we might process our troubles with a stable friend, we can continually release energy to the earth, for it has the energetic ability to absorb our energy, recycle it, and make it available to us again in a form we can better use. We see this ability of the earth scientifically through large old growth forest -- large, old trees sequester carbon from the atmosphere, pulls it into their bodies, and releases oxygen instead. The earth is a great recycler of nutrients and energy. When we are connected to it, we can process energy more effectively.

What happens when we're not grounded? Many of us spend most of our lives ungrounded. In an ungrounded state, we lose the capability to release outside energies effectively or efficiently, so we often operate in a muddled energetic space. Because grounding helps to connect our energy bodies to the planet, including all of our chakras, being ungrounded can cause excess or outside energy in our chakras to run all over our aura or to spill outside of our aura.

One of the best and most extreme examples of being ungrounded is when you are drunk. After a few drinks, the light and hot qualities of the alcohol release our grounding the planet. We are unable to make stable decisions based on what is best for us, and we feel uninhibited by the heavier parts of life. Another example is when you've worked on the computer or watched TV for too many hours at a time, and when you step away, you feel like you're in "digital world" -- your brain feels foggy, you groggily walk over to the fridge and grab something to sip on unconsciously, or a bag of potato chips to munch on. We also can become ungrounded when we're thinking creatively. Being ungrounded isn't necessarily a bad thing. The space of being ungrounded can be a lot of fun -- we might have great or creative ideas or be really productive on a project.

So why get grounded? Gathering creative ideas is great, but executing them comes from being grounded. When it comes time to sort the good ideas from the messy ones, grounding is what helps us to achieve that. Watching a marathon of Grey's Anatomy can be a great stress release, but grounding is what will bring you back to the real world and allow you to release all the emotional ups and downs you felt while watching it. Grounding brings us back to our very exciting reality on earth so that we can create as spirits exactly what we want to create.

Okay, so how do we do it? Grounding can be simple, and it takes some practice. Sit in a chair with your feet flat on the ground. Close your eyes. Imagine all of your energy gathering around you into your aura, which extends from your skin to about an arms length all around you. Feel your energy centering in the center of your head, which is behind your eyes and between your ears. Simple know that your energy is here. Then, visualize a grounding chord forming from your first chakra (which is at the base of your spine) down into the earth beneath you and extending all the way to the center of the planet.

Make sure the grounding chord is as wide as your hips. You can visualize it in any color or shape you want -- you can build a skyscraper reaching downward, or use a tree with roots, or use a color or shape you like. Have fun with it! It doesn't have to be perfect; imagine that you are in kindergarten as you draw your chord. Once it reaches the center of the earth, let it grow roots and stabilize itself there. Then, give your grounding chord a "release" switch. With your psychic finger, turn your grounding chord to "release," and allow that any energy in your body is heavy and releases from your grounding chord to the center of the earth.

Grounding might feel strange if you haven't done much of it before, but ultimately your body will like it here much more. By being grounded, you now have a better ability to process and remove energy that's not yours, freeing your space up to hold more of your vital energy! Like I said, the earth is a great recycler and will know what to do with the energy you give it. Keep releasing and feeling your connection to this great planet we live on! 

The Need for Spiritual Tools

How do we do work on a spiritual level? How do we make that work fun and effortless?

There are many ways to work on a spiritual level, but just like most work, it's easier done with the right tools. Meditation, when done with the right set of tools, can make creating faster, more fun, and less difficult. Understanding a few concepts about how spiritual bodies work will also aid in the process.

When we work in the garden, we use a hand trowel, or a gloves, or a hoe, or other tools that help us get our work done in an efficient and productive manner. There are concepts we use to understand gardening, like "growing season," and "harvest," or "shade tolerant," and "sun-loving." We use tools and concepts in nearly every facet of our life -- why should spiritual work be any different? 

I've heard so many people complain over the years about how difficult meditation and spiritual work is. "I just couldn't clear my mind, so I stopped," or "I just wasn't doing right." Some dismiss meditation altogether, saying "It's just not for me." By the way, I used to say the exact same things! But similarly, if you showed up to do work in your garden, but didn't have the seeds, the tools, or understand the concepts, you might quit gardening right away too, because it would feel very difficult. We need the right tools for the right work!

Perhaps some of you might be thinking, "Okay, but don't I just, like, focus on my breath or stare at a candle for a while or something, and then peace comes?" Sure! You can do that, too! Mindfulness practices like that are great for reducing stress and tension in the body and mind, and allowing us to focus better at work and school. If I continue my analogy with gardening, I would compare mindfulness practices to sun, water and seeds -- just like sun, water and seeds are the building blocks to growing anything, mindfulness practices are the foundation to building a really great meditation practice.

Good gardeners know that in order to create a really amazing garden, you have to have an understanding of the type of soil. you're using, if the plants you're growing are sun and shade tolerant, which plants like to grow together, on which moon cycle planting or harvesting should take place, and which tools work best for making changes in the garden. These tools can help you create a really amazing garden that brings you a luscious harvest!

Similarly, having more meditation tools and concepts under your belt can allow you to create the bountiful spiritual life you've been looking for. I want to share with you some of the concepts and tools I use to create a beautiful spiritual garden of my own. With these tools, you can:

• Learn how to feel safe in your own body and protect yourself from others
• Learn what grounding really means and how to do it
• Learn how to have more connection with your body and your spirit
• Learn how to create what you want from a space that feels effortless
• Gain more energy and vitality for yourself
• Develop better relationships with others by learning how to have healthy boundaries
• Learn how to validate and love yourself
• Learn how to stop giving your energy away to others 
• Learn how to find amusement with the spiritual process so that the process can move forward
• Gather more understanding about who you are and how amazing you are!

Each of the tools I will share take up quite a bit of space and explanation, so I'll write separate blog posts for each. I want to leave you today with a couple of spiritual concepts about how creating in the spiritual realm is different from creating on the physical realm, and how wonderful that is for us! What we set up on the spiritual level is often what appears on the physical level, so the more we are able to understand spiritual tools and concepts to move forward on the spiritual level, the more likely it is that our body and mind will follow suit. Two concepts to think about today are this:

1. The spirit works in a realm where time and space do not exist. In contrast, our bodies and minds experience time very linearly. But time and space don't exist in the energy realm. This is why I am able to conduct readings and spiritual counseling sessions with people over the phone. Energy does not have to follow the boundaries and limitations of the physical world, so you can create unhindered! 
2. Because of #1, the spirit can create and change instantly. The body and mind take a while to catch up. We call this period between spiritual growth and physical growth a "growth period." Sometimes our growth periods are a bit uncomfortable as the body moves its way through physical time to catch up with the spirit. Sometimes there is work we need to do on the physical level to help the body and mind catch up with the spirit. Understanding this growth period can be comforting as we work to move forward.
3. Because of #1, when we work to create what we want as a spirit, the meditation for the mind is to imagine that we already have it. The spirit creates instantly. The mind and body believe in time. If the mind believes something is in the future, it will always keep us just out of reach of having it. If we can practice, in meditation, already having exactly what we want to create, the mind and body can get on board more quickly.

Try it. What is it that you've been struggling so hard to create? Meditate instead on knowing that, as a spirit, you already have it. Imagine, in meditation, what it feels, sounds, smells, and tastes like to have your creation. Allow yourself to have it. See what happens.

Doing verses Being

How do you feel when there are no mirrors? When there is no portion of your mind judging or criticizing that reflection of you? How do you feel when you move out of the space of doing the ten thousand things we think we need to do and simply allow yourself to be in the world?

Today I took solace in the woods near my house. I woke early, as temperatures are rising quickly in the pacific northwest, and I wanted the cool quiet of morning. The park that I walked to is fairly small but heavily wooded with cedars, maples and shade-growing berries. I took my first lap around the park at a walk-run-skip-walk, training my body back into endurance slowly, in a fun way. The second lap, I walked quietly, watching and listening.

I felt so beautiful to be part of that forest.

For the first time in days, that part of my mind -- the one that I try so hard to quiet, so hard to turn off -- the one that criticizes me, tells me I'm gaining weight, that I need a hair cut, that I need new clothes or new something, simply shut up. The part of me that tells me that I'm not doing it right and need to do more finally just turned off and all the sudden I wasn't doing anything wrong anymore because I wasn't doing, I was being.

I recently read an article interviewing Eckhart Tolle, in which he discusses the idea of masculine and feminine energies. He says that masculine energy relates more with doing and feminine energy relates more to being.  He really says it best:

"The world is out of balance because it is focused primarily on the doing, and there is a loss of the awareness of being. This is when stress and negativity arise: when people try to get things done and they no longer are centered within that aware space of being. You cannot feel your being anymore; you cannot feel the consciousness behind all the doing. So many women these days have internalized the imbalance and are also out of touch with being more focused on doing." **

He suggests we find a balance between the ability to do and the ability to be. Just like the embracing yin yang symbol, there is a piece of the other within each: within the dark yang is a white dot, and within the white yin is a black dot. This is the ability to have stillness at the center of doing, and a dynamic quality of doing while being still (so that we don't fall asleep!).

I have been feeling out of balance lately because I've been focusing on doing too much without leaving time to cultivate just being. And I've noticed how I've felt guilty for wanting time to just be, because our culture still doesn't value it as much as doing. But I was reminded today of just how important time to be is -- it is what brings me back to my center and reminds of who I am as a spirit in a body, and just how beautiful the human process is.

**Full article here: http://spiritualityhealth.com/articles/eckhart-tolle-easier-path

How do we hear the message of the Spirit?

Our spirit always knows exactly what it needs in order to heal itself. The challenge is cutting through the noise of the mind, our past programming, and outside energies so that we can really hear what the spirit has to say. And even then, sometimes what the spirit wants feels inconvenient, or "too much," or scary, or strange. Sometimes, what our spirit really wants pushes up a belief system that we have that is actually keeping us from healing.

The past few weeks (months, really) have been amazing. Not only have I been working on creating my new business, but I also had the opportunity to cook for an amazing group of people. Then, I got to come home and continue working with my clients, give some free healings, and learn more about what I need to do to make my body stronger. All of this is awesome! All of this has also made my body really, really tired. As I looked toward my first weekend back at home, I had this moment of fear grip my body. I hadn't scheduled time to relax.

I had scheduled a weekend of travel with my boyfriend, attendance at a graduation, time with his family and our friends, and about 10 hours in a car, arriving back home late Sunday night. My brain was frantically searching for what my spirit really wanted -- that space where I got to relax, where I didn't need to "show up" for anyone, where I could veg out and sleep more and spend time in nature and sip tea slowly.

As the week went on, the vision of what my spirit wanted made itself more and more known, so much that it almost became a physical ache in my body. People around me noticed. "You look....tired," they'd say, then add, "But happy." My whole being wanted nothing more than to relax for the weekend. But my mind kept reminding me of a belief I have about what happens when you break commitments. "Breaking commitments is extremely disappointing to the other people involved.You will feel guilty because they will be hurt. Taking time for yourself is selfish."

As I re-read that last sentence, it still rings true to me. This is a belief I have had for years and years! It's a family belief that states simply, "When you say you'll show up, you show up, no matter what happens. You can't change your mind." When I read a person's space, I'm able to identify these types of belief systems -- those originating from someone else that are keeping the person from having their highest vibration of healing. It's not that the belief itself is bad. I would say that most of us want to keep the commitments we make. What I look at is, given the current situation, is the belief system serving the mind, body and spirit or is it actually hindering healing or growth?

Looking at my plans this weekend, my mind did what it does best and started to analyze the situation, create a list of pros and cons, and try to figure out a way to trick myself into feeling better about it. By Friday afternoon, I realized it wasn't working. I needed to have a very honest conversation with my boyfriend, which brought up another belief system of mine, "When you ask your partner for what you need, they will tell you it's silly or crazy and make you feel bad for wanting it." That's a belief system of mine left over from past experience, and the more I navigate this new relationship, the more I realize it's not serving me.

The conversation actually went very well. We talked about what I needed, what he needed, and how we felt about it all. In the end, I decided to stay home and have a weekend to myself to rest, be in nature, cook for myself, get more sleep, sip my coffee slowly and try a new smoothie recipe. Basically, a weekend to be myself with no pressure and the intention to fully find my energy again.

Through Spiritual Counseling sessions, I can help you with this process. I can help you identify the spiritual causes of pain, disease, discomfort or disconnection and communicate to you the healing messages of your spirit. Just yesterday, a client mentioned feeling like they had reached such a healthier level after their session. If you are struggling to make sense of the messages of your spirit, your mind, and your body, please give me a call. Your spirit will thank you! Mine did.

Spirit

Seared, pink flesh is healing on my forearm. My thighs are spotted with mysterious bruises. My low back has the familiar ache that comes from standing in once place for too long. My body is tired and craves sleep and massage. But my spirit feels stronger, nourished, and ready to jump into another phase of growth. I've just returned from the third YogaSlacker Teacher Training.

For the past three years now, I've been delighted to be part of the YogaSlackers Teacher Training. This year and last year, as co-cook, and the first year as a participant. This is the third year I'm blogging about the experience, and as I look back on past entries, I see that in the past I've written about intense physical struggle coupled with tremendous spiritual uplift. This year will be similar, but different.

This year, I am physically and emotionally stronger. While my co-cooks, Laura and Raquel, and I stood on our feet for countless hours over the past ten days and stirred, flipped, chopped and pureed, I lasted so much longer. I was tired, not exhausted. I am sore, not mutilated. Last year, I was at the beginning of a divorce, and the wrong song on the playlist would bring me to tears. This year, I cried tears of joy to be united with my closest friends. I have spent the past year coming into my own, and I am so much more ME,  stronger, still sensitive but thriving, not empty and in need of taking but strong enough to GIVE.

There is so much I could write about in a training like this -- one that brings very authentic people together to create a community of building each other up towards a single goal, to share the art of yoga slackline. I could write about the amazing people, the kitchen dance parties, my physical accomplishments, friendships, physical and mental conditioning, flashlights, water lining, long lining, slacklining and acro yoga. But the thing that permeates all of these, the thing that links every one of these together and connects all the pieces into one cohesive whole is this: SPIRIT.

For the first several nights of the training, the group would meet and a few of us would share our story: how we came to our "a-hah!" moment in slacklining. Telling my story is always interesting, as I came into the group before it was a group, and somehow stayed on through fear and injury because I love the people. But as I prepared to tell my story, I realized it wasn't just the people I loved, but their spirit.

Before I left for teacher training, I was focused (and still am) on turning my authentic self, gifts and training into a healing career. This task -- fully owning who I am and what I do -- has been a struggle for me. But I have found that I simply cannot be happy in any career, relationship, or friendship that doesn't support my highest values, goals and aspirations. The YogaSlackers teach what they love, period. They decided years ago to just do what they were passionate about and believed that they would somehow be supported. Guess what, it worked.  I noticed an interesting pattern in my own life: every time I hung out with them (Sam and Jason, in particular), I would feel a huge sense of unease when they left. Why? Because their presence, conversation and passion reminded me that I wasn't quite living up to my own values and beliefs. It always stirred up a period of intense spiritual growth for me, perhaps quitting a job or moving to a different city, and usually causing conflict in any relationships that weren't allowing me to be authentic. My connection with the YogaSlackers is about spirit, and being encouraged to fulfill my own.

One day during the training, I woke up early and was very tired. My spirit felt disconnected from my body. I'd had very active dreams and simply couldn't get the rest I needed. My thumbs felt injured from a combination of activities and that scared me. My burn was still open on my forearm and needed to be bandaged.  And I had this feeling that I could be doing more physically than I believed. That fear was holding me back. There was not a lot of time or space for me to find alone time; time to contemplate and meditate and find ME again. But this night, right after dinner had been served and everyone else was either eating or showering, I found some.

I want to long line more than I want to do any other thing on a slackline. I love the meditation of moving forward, one step at a time, and teaching myself with every step to be okay with where I am now, rather than focusing on the end or the finish. Sound like a familiar parody with life. It is. That's why I love it so much. For me, the block to walking long lines is the mount and the fall. In the past, I've been injured enough where both were either impossible or just really, really scary. A 100 foot line has to be set about 7 feet in the air so that you're not touching the ground when you reach the center. The YogaSlackers teach a sit to stand mount that still tweaks my back. There was a new mount called the Chongo that looks super scary but shouldn't hurt me. And I want to long line. And, for some reason, at this point in the training, I'm ready to try.

What is it that takes someone like me, who is afraid of moving forward for fear of injury, and suddenly gives them the courage to take the next step? I was alone in the slackline park, so I took the bouldering pad and placed it under the 80 foot line, set maybe 5 feet high. I set up for the chongo mount. I fell face first into the mat. I did that about six times before I took the mat to a lower line and repeated the process, then lay there, crying, not about the mount but about something I couldn't identify. The old, fearful me would have given up then. But I didn't. Why?

I operate in a world of constant feeling, intuitive picture, and moving of energy. As I lay in the slackline park, releasing energy in the form of tears, I was suddenly energized. For the past several days, students had been pushing themselves, creating and reaching goals and cheering each other on. All of the sudden, alone in the park, I realized I was also a part of that and could feed off that energy. I got back up and really concentrated on the mount again. Opposite foot and hand on the line, balance with the other, set the hips back and match foot to hand....and.....I'm up! I walk a few steps and then do it again, and again, four times. I move back to the long line and....I'm up! I walk half way across, realize what I've just done (woot!), which makes me fall, and then do it again.

I lifted myself up on the spirit of community, positivity, authenticity that was being shared. It was beautiful.

As I start to focus more on Integrative Health Coaching, particularly the intuitive side of things, I'll be sharing more here about the spiritual mechanics related to feeling good. In a nutshell, the more we fill ourselves up with US, the better we feel. Generally, when other people's energies or goals move into our auric field (or our "space," as I like to call it), we start to feel muddled, unsure, unconfident and disconnected from ourselves. However, when a group of people come together with the goal of holding space for each other to achieve their own goals, community spirit is created and can be shared by all. It's the same type of energy that pumps up fans cheering for the same team, or what is created when a group of people meditate together. This is what I felt while in the slackline park and this was the feeling that permeated the training.

The only problem with group spirit is the withdrawal that comes from suddenly being separated from it. Our own spirit seeks the high that was created and ends up scattering itself around the country, trying to find it. The solution is to remember the vibration and hold it close, but to call your energy back to yourself and bring it into present time under the vibration you want to hold. That's what makes you powerful again. That's what makes you your authentic self, and that's how you continue to hold Spirit.

For more information on spiritual mechanics, or to schedule a free 20 minute intuitive consultation, please email me!

Learning to Un-Do

Friday, I found myself driving to work at 7:00 am, wearing my standard yoga garb and sipping on green juice in my Prius. I laughed out loud at the crunchy stereotype I was fulfilling, but less because of how it looked and more because of how good it felt to be myself, crunch and all.  For months now, I feel like I've been fighting an internal battle between my employment reality and cries of my soul, unfulfilled. To be more specific, I've been accommodating a professional role -- fitting myself into tight spaces and keeping parts of me outside the door when they don't fit.

Guess what? It isn't working.

Given my broad background of diverse employment and my multitude of degrees and certifications, it should be evident that I grow tired in positions that aren't quite right for me, or that I feel stifle me, or that undermine my core values.  But, alas, my juicer doesn't turn kale leaves into currency, and so I find myself in an undesirable albeit temporary employment situation while I take the next steps to move forward.

The impatient person in me wants to shout, "This sucks!" Then retreat into my creative cocoon overnight where, using black magic (and purple, and turquoise magic, too) I come up with a way to launch my Ayurvedic Health Coaching and Intuitive Counseling business overnight. The next morning, I would arise gracefully into My New Life. Ta-freakin-da.

Life doesn't work that way. Even if you read, "The Secret." Life requires more patience and a bit more planning. **BIG SIGH**

So I continue to do what I do and in my free time* continue the ever-present task of fulfilling my curiosity about life, about how I relate to the world, and about how I can thrive as the sensitive being that I am. And that, right there, has helped tremendously. I've been reading about how emotions change our molecular structure. I've been reading about how the psoas is the seat of our soul and has so much to say about how we process and release fear in our bodies. I've been ingesting Ane Axford's Sensitive Sunday's like they're the coffee and bacon I've been missing since I switched to green juice. (Oh, just kidding about the getting ridding of bacon. That would be crazy).

The past month or so, I've been working hard at something that doesn't fulfill me, beating myself up about not liking it, beating myself up about not being brave enough to move forward, becoming stressed out about the whole situation and, BAM! My body says, "That's enough, thankyouverymuch" and takes me to the InstaCare where I become a regular for a few weeks and wrack about about a $1K in medical expenses, down two courses of antibiotics, and end up with a systemic Candida infection that was worse then the UTI that started the whole mess.  "Fine!" I shout to the Universe. "Message received! I'll change something, damnit!"

Here is where I would like to say that I took my regular stroll through the woods, where the trees whispered secret messages of healing and promise, and where all my problems melted away into solutions, just like the drizzle that turns to stream in the deep crevice that is Ravenna Park. Because that happens to me sometimes. But not this time. This time, there wasn't much that I could DO to find the answers. Instead, I had to UNDO.

It was like my own words hit me smack in the forehead. How many times in a yoga class do I talk about "un-doing," letting something go, finding more ease? Uh, a lot, I talk about it a lot. Especially when it comes to students who have been injured through activity and especially for those sensitive bodies that respond like thermometers to stress and tension.  So I knew I needed to undo.

Then, I was listening to Sensitive Sunday Live about how highly sensitive people (HSP's) have a tendency to feel like they are broken and need to be "fixed." In that mode, HSP's tend to make more rash decisions about treatment. Because HSP's can be more prone to "disorders" or body issues than hardy folks since their bodies are those sensitive thermometers I was talking about, HSP's really need to learn to UNDO -- to retreat and go within and allow themselves to relax, unwind, and figure out what is going on before they react.

React = InstaCare Super Bill.
Relax = Body communication, honest self-assessment leading to, oh, I don't know, all of that healing information I have in my proverbial healing suitcase?

So I scheduled some time for myself to undo. To relax. To allow myself to just BE. And to be creative -- to create things, to knit and draw and color and create, without thinking about my body at all. I meditated and received the images of what it was my body was craving and what it needed me to let go of. (At which point I said, "Really, body? You really want me to get rid of yummy coffee? Well,....shit.") I received a few healings from classmates that confirmed what I had already seen in meditation and so I moved forward in healing my body.

A funny thing about life is that often when you create movement in one area of your life, movement in another area can open up, too. So as I started taking the steps I needed to build back a healthy body, I found the next step to moving forward with my employment situation and the courage to ask for what I needed. I set up a meeting with my boss and told him (in a very diplomatic way, of course) which thing sucked and where I'd like to move forward.

As I regained communication with my body, learned to undo and find ease, I also released some fear that I've been holding. Not all of it yet, but some. I have this fear that I will not be good enough. That I won't be able to make a healing practice work. But in this time that I've been working with my body, I realize that I DO have tools to aid in healing and that they are valuable and will be valuable to those who seek them out.

Things aren't moving as quickly as I'd like, but they are moving. I have some decisions to make about how I want to shape my future. Luckily, I know that I can take some extra time to undo, to relax, to move within, and to be patient so that I can begin to shape the professional future that my mind, body and spirit are in agreement with.



*Free Time -- Time so limited and scarce I have to pinch myself to make sure it's real and I'm not having wet dreams again.