Author Archives: MaryAnn Reynolds

About MaryAnn Reynolds

I practice advanced bodywork in Austin, TX, specializing in Craniosacral Biodynamics and TMJ Relief.

Byron Katie’s website and books

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If you’re interested in learning more about Byron Katie and The Work, please check out her website.

She mentioned several times yesterday that she makes her worksheets and other resources available for free on her website. They’re on the Do The Work page.

She also helps people find certified facilitators in The Work, some of whom work for free or on a sliding scale, or use Skype so that location isn’t a problem.

I see that there is also a helpline.

Her first book, Loving What Is: Four Questions that Can Change Your Life, came out in 2002. This book covers applying The Work in all kinds of situations: couples and family life, work and money, self-judgment, underlying beliefs, children, the body and addiction.

There’s even a chapter on trauma, Making Friends with the Worst That Can Happen.

She’s also written:

Most recently, she and Eckhardt Tolle have contributed to a gift book, Peace in the Present Moment, which consists of selected quotations from them with photographs of flowers.

There are also Byron Katie audiobooks available on Amazon.com.

The wit and wisdom of Byron Katie: I’d say “bless your heart, sweetheart,” but it’s too late. You’re already blessed.

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I attended a weekend workshop with Byron Katie. Friday night I didn’t write down anything she said. On Saturday I did.

Here are the sayings I was moved to write down:

I need everything I’ve ever experienced

Velcro!

Mind has to compare to create jealousy.

living out of the “don’t know” mind

My mind got clear, and Haagen-Dazs quit me.

Everyone is a saint.

The mind seeks identification.

Drop the “I guess.” Drop the “I think.” Drop the “we.”

There’s only three kinds of business: yours, mine, and God’s. (I don’t think this is original, but she used it and I like it.)

Our true nature is pure love.

What you believe about anything is what hurts you.

It all happens for your awakening, enlightenment, and joy. There is nothing that is not for us.

We’re born of the “I”, not of the mother’s womb.

The personality is the ego.

The world is a projection of your own mind. It’s your world.

I’m always on time. People don’t agree with me, but I’m always on time.

Enlightenment means there’s no mind at all.

Oh, the mind wants to jump in with its defenses and justifications.

You’ve got this computer running with past and future, and you believe this “I”.

Be co-dependent at home. There’s one person to talk to and listen to: you.

If I could hold you in my arms the rest of my life, I would, but I’d have to go to the toilet sooner or later, or you would.

If my husband told me he’d met someone else, I’d really want to meet her. Because she’d have to be pretty fantastic for him to be attracted to her! And then I’d ask for half the money. And if he said no, I’d let him have it and make my own money.

I’d say “bless your heart, sweetheart,” but it’s too late. You’re already blessed.

Blindness is a state of mind. It’s not physical.

The mind believes the images. It creates images to make me an authority.

It’s about meditation, silence, stillness, and contemplation.

Byron Katie. Life as it is. 5,000 blog views.

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On this 19th day of my 21-day gratitude challenge, I am very grateful that Friday and Saturday, I got to spend hours in an auditorium with Byron Katie and my friends Thomas and Val and a whole bunch of other people, watching Katie, as she’s called, working with several people who were troubled about something.

Katie’s technique is called The Work, and the way we worked was to fill out a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet (available online for free along with a lot of other resources) about a recurring stressful situation, something that reliably pushes our buttons. She encouraged us to be our meanest, pettiest selves when we filled out the worksheet.

Then she asks, or has us ask ourselves, four questions:

  1. Is it true? (yes or no)
  2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true? (yes or no)
  3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
  4. Who would you be without the thought?

Then you turn the thought around three ways and find three specific examples of how each turnaround is true for you in that situation. For example, if my thought is “I hate him,” the turnarounds would work like this:

  1. The first turnaround is to the self. “I hate me.” How do I treat myself hatefully?
  2. The second turnaround is to the other. “He hates me.” List ways he hates me.
  3. The third turnaround is the opposite. “I love him.” How do I love him?

So from an NLP perspective, she’s working at the belief level, and she’s helping people reframe their experiences and emotions and beliefs and even identities. She refers a lot to people’s internal images (but not voices). On an energy level, she’s helping people move from contraction to expansion.

On Saturday, her first guest onstage was an attractive, polished woman who had flown here from San Francisco. Her husband of 30 years cheated on her with “a 27-year-old Brazilian whore” while she (the wronged wife) was undergoing treatment for breast cancer.

Katie took this woman through the process. She realized that she had stopped loving her husband but was willing to live a charade, she knew he was lying to her, et cetera. It took her out of her victim story. She also got huge applause for getting here with her frequent flyer miles since her husband had denied her access to all of their bank accounts. This woman is resourceful!

In the turnaround, Katie asked the woman to say, “I’m a whore,” and the woman couldn’t get the word “whore” out.

The unflappable Katie said, “What the heck. I’m enlightened. I can say it for you. ‘I’m a whore.’ There.” Big laughs and applause.

Later she worked with a woman who was so distraught because her husband, a diabetic, wouldn’t take his meds that she herself was on medication.

Once again, I’m grateful I got to see Byron Katie do The Work in person. If anyone wants to play with me, ping me.

~~~

In this moment, I’m grateful for life as it is. That’s what enlightenment is. That’s what Zen teaches. That’s what we practice when sitting in meditation.

~~~

I’m grateful to those who read my blog. Today it looks like I will cross the threshold of 5,000 views! Thank you for reading my posts. Thanks for connecting. Thanks for commenting.

New findings on how meditation changes the brain

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Peg Syverson, Zen priest and my meditation coach at the Appamada zendo, sent out an email with a link to a New York Times article on meditation, saying “We told you!”

The article, How Meditation May Change the Brain, is by a writer whose husband went on a 10-day vipassana meditation retreat. He came back so energized and enthusiastic that he vowed to meditate for two hours a day through the end of March.

She wrote:

He’s running an experiment to determine whether and how meditation actually improves the quality of his life.

Sound familiar, those of you who followed this blog last year???

The writer admits she’s a skeptic — and then cites studies and researchers on how meditation changes the brain. The latest research shows measurable changes in gray matter that affect memory, learning, anxiety, and stress in a group that meditated for 30 minutes a day for eight weeks, compared to a control group not meditating that had no such changes.

Other studies have shown meditation increasing empathy and compassion.

What the writer believes is that through meditation, her husband became empathetic enough that he now takes out the trash and puts gas in the car because he knows she doesn’t like to do those chores.

She can go with that.

Oh, and here’s a link to the abstract of the findings about gray matter.

Day 18: The Work, moving with Mango, T-Mobile

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Last night I saw a demonstration of Byron Katie doing The Work, which is basically a set of four questions designed to help people move away from the suffering of  the ego and toward openness of life as it is.

I am grateful for the opportunity to witness a master at work, in person.

She worked with two people last night. The first was a man who had driven 12 hours with his younger son because he believed his older son was no good and was destroying the family. He blamed his high blood pressure and other health issues on all the trouble this son had caused.

Yet from the inquiry process, we learn that although this son moved out right before high school graduation, he graduated with honors. We hear that he tells people with no idea it would get back to his dad how great his upbringing was. He kisses his father on the head when his father extends his hand for a shake. This young man is responsible — he works and takes care of his bride.

So this father underwent a transformation, understanding that his thinking distorted reality. He had a fine son. It was him who needed to respect himself and respect his son. That’s the turnaround.

The other demo subject was a woman who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness, ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). She felt afraid and panicky sometimes. Byron Katie just laughed and said, “Haven’t we all? Isn’t life a terminal illness?” She proceeded to illustrate that even being paralyzed and unable to move a muscle, it’s still thoughts that make one unhappy.

I’m looking forward to more today — from 10 to 5.

~~~

I’m grateful to Val at dinner last night for giving me some advice about moving Mango, my cat. He’s accustomed to this neighborhood and the cats on my block. The move will take him from what he knows, except for me and some of my stuff. His world is small and personal. He doesn’t have the internet or a cell phone to stay in touch with his friend Stinky next door (even though they fight).

I’ll need to keep him inside for a while after I move, so he’ll be safe and secure, and I can start now getting him used to being in and sleeping in the cat carrier.

~~~

I am grateful to T-Mobile for letting me change my cell phone plan and apply it retroactively. Because of all the calls from realtors and calls about work and in general an increase in call volume since I have not been working, I had gone way over my allotment of minutes. Snapped to when I saw how much had been drafted from my checking account to auto-pay the bill…

I found it very kind and flexible of them to allow me to switch to a plan with more minutes and to make the change retroactive for this billing period. I was facing a bill of over $400! Now it will be more like $60.

Thank you, T-Mobile.

Ordinary gratitudes: car, house, friends

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Today’s three gratitudes are pretty ordinary. My car, my house, my friends.

I’m grateful to have my car back. It’s been disabled or out of my possession since December 22 and has been at three different mechanic shops.

I took it back once because the dashboard warning light for the electric battery (it’s a Honda Civic Hybrid) was on. It  wasn’t on before the accident.

I did not get that issue resolved satisfactorily. The light is still on. However, the electric battery appears to be working just fine.

All Honda has said is that because of the age and mileage, I need to replace the battery. I get that State Farm really wants it to be my problem, not theirs, because those batteries are expensive.

I feel frustrated because I don’t believe that any of these mechanics actually laid eyes on the wiring and cabling from the engine compartment, which overheated, to the electric battery behind the back seat. All repairs are based on electronic testing and what’s in the database. If it’s not in the database, they’re not going out of their way.

Anyway, I am grateful to have my car back, to have the collision damage fixed, and to (so far) have it running well.

I’m grateful to have learned something about the way insurance companies work, when a car is a hybrid and they don’t have a ton of information in their database about what can go wrong and how to fix it.

This is the dark side of owning a hybrid.

~~~

The option period on my house contract expires today.

Yesterday the buyer tried to get me to come down $10 grand because of a ridiculously high overestimate on foundation work. My realtor told his realtor that I refused.

I’ve had two people express interest in being backup buyers, but they never put it in writing. If this deal had fallen through, I feel certain I could have gotten my asking price.

Today I agreed to come down $2600. That’s reasonable. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush — sometimes. In this process, several people have advised me to take low offers and to cave.

My realtor says we’re about eighty percent of the way to closing. Next, an appraiser has to state that the buyer is not paying more than the house is worth. Once that’s done, we’ll be ninety-five percent ready to close on Feb. 18.

Although I had no idea there would be so much drama involved in selling my house, today I’m grateful for the progress.

~~~

I had lunch today with my friend Katie, and my friend Thomas called and wants to go a weekend workshop that Byron Katie is doing in Austin tonight and tomorrow. I bought a ticket from someone who had an extra one, and it’s even more of a pleasure to be sharing this workshop experience with Thomas.

I’m very grateful for my friends.

Job interview. Insights. Shared dreams.

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Today I am feeling grateful for the job interview I had yesterday. I interviewed for a three-month contract job at a big technology company yesterday.

The feedback I got from the placement agency connection afterward was that (1) I was the last person they talked to (always a good thing when interviewing because you’re fresh in their memory when they are making the hiring decision) and (2) they really liked me and my writing sample, concluding that I was capable of doing the work and would be a pleasure to work with. Apparently others they interviewed had the skills but not the attitude.

I hope to be offered this job.

My strategy during the interview was to understand their point of view and how I can do what they need to have done. I grasped it well: a custom software provider didn’t provide them with a user manual, and they needed this manual three months ago. This happens more often than it should, but that creates nice lucrative short-term job opportunities for technical writers like me.

So I step in, document what they’ve been able to figure out so far, and working with this big company’s IT department and the software developers in California, figure out and write procedures for how to do everything else.

This is how a Maximizer thinks:

  • I suggested that the user manual I write could be desirable to the software provider, and that they use that in future negotiations with the software provider.
  • This software provider might consider hiring me to work remotely and produce user manuals for their custom software solutions.
  • I might get a gig at this big technology company teaching lunchtime or after-work yoga. It’s a lot more fun than technical writing!

Will let you know what I hear!

~~~

I am grateful for insights, those little snippets of emerging knowledge that help me evolve. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about my future work, refining my ideas about what I’ll do and the training I need.

Last night two alliterative words came to mind about the work I want to do with people. Blockages and beliefs.

You know the beautiful energy that infants, toddlers, and young children have, so open-hearted, present, playful, engaged, and full of life? We lose that — in essence, life teaches us that it’s not okay to be like that. We make painful trade-offs and then suppress the memories. These unconscious beliefs and blockages keep us in bondage, keep us from REALizing that our true nature is full of light, just like those beaming babies

I would like to help people recover that beautiful life-affirming energy in two ways: by learning the bodywork skills to help people release their blockages (because blockages are in the bodymind and often more accessible via the body) and working with people at the belief level to let go of beliefs that keep them in darkness and help them open up to life itself.

These two words, blockages and beliefs, are helping me identify the training I need to do the bodymindheartspirit work I want to do.

I’m thanking my bodymindheartspirit for letting those two words bubble up into my conscious mind.

~~~

I’m grateful for shared dreams. Yesterday I was introduced by a mutual friend to someone on Facebook who shares my interest in vintage trailers. I have ogled them online for months now. My new friend goes to the same websites I do and ogles the same trailers, plus ones I hadn’t considered!

A couple of days ago, I did an NLP session with a new friend, again someone I met on Facebook and looked forward to meeting in person. We had a nice long session over tea, with my cat curling up with each of us in turn.

From my perspective, we hit it off well. The rapport was good. I like this person and am learning a lot from working with him. I believe that I am helping him refine his thinking and hone his positive energy for moving in a whole new direction career-wise.

Here’s to two new friendships! Salud!

Finding your inner bigness. Jedi master Keith Fail. Awareness.

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Today I’m grateful for finding inner bigness — hope, recovery, resiliency, growth — for those energies that move a contraction into expansion, that move a loss into new possibilities.

If you have experienced a recent contraction — a disappointment or loss, say — know that if you give it some space, some energy within you will find a way to expand. To give it some space means to accept that what you planned has been replaced by the unknown. To allow the unknown to come into awareness — and not fight it or run from it with distractions or denial — is to open to possibility.

That moment may be uncomfortable, though. Breathe into it.

Expansion may come in the form of you learning a new and needed skill that gives you more confidence about managing your life.

Or it may come in the form of a new recognition about who you really are and what your life’s purpose is.

Today I recognize this pattern in my life, and I share it with those who need it.

~~~

Today I’m grateful for people who inspire, and I want to call one out in particular. Keith Fail presented last night at the Austin NLP meetup on the topic Living a Meaningful Life in 2011. Keith has studied NLP for 25 years with some of the best masters available. He coaches, teaches, and trains people with NLP. He is the most widely read person in the field that I’ve met, with a very inclusive yet discerning mindset. NLP is his life’s work.

Plus, he’s secretly a Jedi master. I’m convinced! Meet him and see for yourself.

Basing his presentation on the assumption that people want to be happy, and using current research on what makes people happy, Keith asked key questions to elicit in each attendee more clarity about what gives meaning to their lives and therefore brings happiness.

I recognize that I am undergoing a sea change in my life purpose and values, and my conscious mind is the last to know! These changes start deep within the unconscious, and are really just starting to take shape consciously about living my life’s purpose. I’ll be writing more as it becomes clear to me.

Thank you, Keith, for the value you’ve added to my life, and for being a friend and Jedi master.

~~~

I’m grateful for awareness. The faculty of awareness, and specific instances of awareness. Awareness allows me to recognize gratitude.

After I meditate, I get up and then bow to my empty zafu. It serves as a symbol and location for my experience of awareness.

Thank you.

Day 14: Being a mad scientist, having a wise realtor, leaving home

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We’re two-thirds of the way through the 21-day gratitude challenge!

I’m grateful for the “mad scientist” aspect of my personality.

I’m happily dreaming up and promoting the next challenge, a two-month experiment in doing the trauma releasing exercises.

I’m an Aquarius, born Feb. 7. That sign suits me. (If the “new astrology” is real, I’d be a Capricorn, which doesn’t suit me.) I like experimenting and learning!

I have no idea if anyone will follow me, but I’m willing to be the “lone nut”. (Most Aquarians are.)

That lone nut reference is to a video about leadership lessons from dancing, which you can view here. Are you willing to be a first follower?

I’m grateful for the wise advice of my realtor, who told me not to meet with the buyer of my house until closing. Yesterday I did meet him, but we didn’t converse. His realtor, his inspector, a foundation repairman, and he all came by yesterday to move ahead with his plans for buying and remodeling the house.

I wondered about that advice, and then I realized how emotional it is to sell my home in which I’ve lived 10 years of my life.

It’s the end of an era, not just of the house, but in my life.

The buyer and I will close and I hope we’ll spend some time hanging out. I can tell him about the plants and what I would have done if I had remodeled.

I’m grateful for the 10 years in which this house has provided me a home. So much has happened in those 10 years: The jobs I’ve had that paid the mortgage and bills, the times I’ve been unemployed, the people who have lived or stayed here with me at various times, the work I’ve done and have had others do, the heartbreaks and disappointments, the fun, the moments of joy, the moments of incredible stillness and peace and bliss…

The me of 10 years ago didn’t know herself (or like herself) nearly as much as I do now.

This house is where I recovered from my major childhood trauma, and where I got present in my life and truly acknowledged from the depths of my being how lucky I am to have a community of friends and family.

The guests I’ve had!!!

The yoga I’ve done!!!

The meals I’ve cooked!!!

I’ll be blogging more about my gratitude for this house and the past 10 years over the next week.

An open invitation to join an experiment in well-being

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A reader, Martie in South Africa, commented on an older post, Holotropic breathwork compared to trauma releasing exercises, and said:

I first heard about TRE last year Sept. Since then I have bought the book “The Revolutionary Trauma Release Process: Transcend Your Toughest Times” by David Berceli; spend hours and weeks on the internet reading up as much as I can (actually the info is few and far between and quite hard to find!). I have met up with other people who have done the course, and we have swapped some stories and experiences. I would like to learn as much as I can about this process ;-) . Sadly I think the course prices are way over priced (for my budget anyway), so I am going the DIY route.

I invited Martie to participate in the Chronic Stress and Trauma Recovery Challenge that starts Feb. 2, which I announced yesterday on this blog.

And now I’m inviting you. Here are the criteria for participating:

  • you want to enhance your well-being
  • you’ve been under prolonged stress at some point in your life
  • you’ve experienced trauma at some point in your life
  • you like discovering what really works
  • you’d like to contribute to the body of knowledge about a technique designed to help people recover from trauma by releasing it from their bodies
  • you’re interested in finding out if this technique works for releasing chronic stress

If any of those criteria inspire you, please consider participating for any or all of this challenge. You can’t do it wrong! I’m doing it a certain way, but anyone who does these exercises even once is welcome to participate and comment on your experience.

I’m trying to build a body of knowledge here, because as Martie and many others and I have found, there’s not a lot of anecdotal information available in one place about using this technique to release trauma and stress and improve well-being. It holds great promise, if you can imagine a world where no one is overly or chronically stressed or traumatized.

All it costs is the price of the book or video, you doing the exercises at least once (but hopefully several times or even as often as I do) in February and March, and reporting on your experience in the comments on this blog.

When it’s over, I’ll compile all our experiences into one long, organized blog post (or maybe a page) that anyone can find when they google “trauma releasing exercises”.