Author Archives: MaryAnn Reynolds

About MaryAnn Reynolds

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

Article: Why meditation may help you live longer

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People who meditated for six hours a day (!) for three months were found to have more of an enzyme that can mitigate or perhaps even stop cell aging.

So it’s entirely possible according to scientists that meditation extends people’s life spans. Meditators know it probably does.

I’m pretty sure yoga does too, just judging by the long lives of people who devoted most of their lives to yoga, such as T. Krishnamacharya, K. Pattabhi Jois, Indra Devi, B.K.S. Iyengar (still living). All lived to see 90, some more than 100.

So how does it work?

So how does meditation affect the machinery of cellular reproduction? Probably by reducing stress, research suggests. Severe psychological stress — particularly early in life and in the absence of social support — has been linked with poorer health, increasing risk for heart disease, stroke and some cancers. This is likely due to the negative effects of high levels of stress hormones on the brain and body. By reducing stress hormones, perhaps meditation contributes to healthier telomeres.

Stress is the enemy.

Read the article from Time magazine’s Healthland blog here.

Living through the time of in-between

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I’m feeling some vulnerability in my heart chakra on this morning of the last day of 2011. It feels open and a little bit raw and unprotected.

I’m just moving with it.

Mentally I associate the feeling with the big transition I’m in, from being an employee with a full-time job taking up a huge amount of time, to … something else. The something else is all in the future — selling my house, buying a vintage trailer and getting it set up and moving into it. Those are huge. Then there’s the question of learning and future livelihood.

Emotionally, I’m feeling a charge about future finances, about moving from a steady, predictable, generous paycheck into new ways of earning and relating to money.

Will I need to get another job before my house sells? I don’t know! And if so, doing what? I can expand my yoga teaching and NLP coaching (which I would do for free anyway, except reciprocity is part of it). What else will people pay me to do that I enjoy doing? I don’t know.

So much is unknown! It’s hard for a fear-based Enneagram type like me (5 with a 4 wing) who loves the certainty of “knowing”  to stay centered in the present moment instead of feeling anxiety about the unknown future.

So I’m meeting my karma here, facing it fully.

Yet isn’t it all unknown, really? Haven’t we all been surprised by external events…or by some previously unknown part of ourselves making itself known?

To live in this in-between time as best I can, I’m committing to doing a lot of daily energy work, both moving and still, verbal and nonverbal.

  • Tapping Away Pain (like EFT)
  • yoga
  • sitting
  • Reiki
  • pranayama
  • chi gong

I can do all of these as needed, from morning until bedtime.

Whatever I know to get centered and connected to the Source, I’ll do it as often as I can.

21 days of Reiki self-treatment

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I finished my 21 days on Monday and kept going, but didn’t remember to count until today!

What I got out of it:

  • The preparation is the most fun for me! Anchoring myself to the center of the earth and the center of the cosmos, then bringing earth energy up through the soles of my feet until I’m full and bringing heaven energy down through the crown of my head until I’m full, then letting them swirl and mingle — wow, yummy.
  • My friend Glenda Raver, a Reiki master, gave me some pointers on self-treatment. If what I wrote above differs from what I originally wrote about preparing for a session, it’s because of Glenda’s good advice.
  • Reiki theory has it that no matter where you put your hands, the energy goes where it’s needed most. What I noticed was that when my hands were at a place that seemed to need more energy, I could feel more energy flowing in, mostly through my feet but sometimes through my crown. There’s definitely a current, and it fluctuates.
  • I’ve been sensitive to the energy in my feet for some time. Doing this helped me gain sensitivity in my hands, especially my fingertips and palms.
  • I probably overdid it on my head. Instead of just putting my hands over my eyes, ears, crown, and back of my head, I added in the sides of my head, and one hand on the back and the other on my forehead. It was like I couldn’t get enough energy into my head!
  • I also added places to put my hands where I know my body needs it, like the left sacroiliac joint.
  • I do feel much more detoxed from the stress of my former job.
  • I forget exactly when, but at some point in the 21 days, I began using the distance symbol to share my Reiki treatments with Katherine Daniel, who’s been undergoing chemo and radiation (and felt so good she pulled out her port a day or two early!).
  • I have no idea how I’d be doing if I hadn’t done the Reiki, but I think it’s like meditation and yoga. Reiki adds to my vitality, resilience, and equanimity. Over the 21 days, my house was broken into and laptop and DVD player stolen among other stuff, and unavoidably I ran over something that resulted in my car needing to have work done, all the while having my house shown to prospective buyers, celebrating the holidays, and waiting to hear whether a TV show selected my house for beautifying (they didn’t choose me). Honestly, I think I would feel a lot more nerve-wracked if I hadn’t been doing Reiki.

I’m going to continue doing Reiki on myself daily and begin doing Reiki on others. I will keep using the distance symbol for Katherine until she tells me not to, and for Lisa Kurtz, a fellow Appamada Zen practitioner who was in a really bad car accident and has much recovery ahead of her.

Now Let’s Play (NLP)

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Some of you know that I have training in NLP (practitioner, master practitioner, and training assistant, to be specific). Over the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to practice NLP on fellow trainees, friends, colleagues, and the occasional client.

I have had so much fun doing NLP that it’s time to let the world know I’m ready to share this amazing work with others!

This post is for those who would like to know more about NLP, which stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming, and which is very popular now in Europe, Asia, and South America even as it continues to grow in the U.S.

What is NLP?

That is a question that no two NLPers will answer alike, mainly because it’s a large body of work with many applications. It was begun in the 1970s when the founders decided to model the excellent performance of three well-known, successful therapists — Virginia Satir, Fritz Perls, and Milton Erickson, who were able to get results that no one else could at that time — and it grew out of what they learned.

Since then many people have studied NLP, applied it, contributed to it, and expanded it — once you learn the basics, it allows for improvisation, which keeps it alive and relevant.

Here are some of the definitions I’ve heard:

  • NLP is the science of subjective experience
  • NLP is the technology of achievement
  • NLP is modern-day shamanism

This is my favorite:

  • NLP is what works

NLP has influenced conscious languaging, EMDR for trauma recovery, EFT and other energy psychology techniques, psychotherapy, sales and marketing, achieving goals, and recovery from phobias, traumas, and allergies.

The whole idea that people are primarily visual, auditory, or kinesthetic? That comes from NLP.

The Key NLP Skill

It is noticing what is, or calibration in NLP lingo.

Noticing what is. Life as it is. Pure Zen.

One of the first NLP skills taught is noticing people’s eye movements when they’re speaking and recognizing that they are showing you something about what their internal experience is. If their eyes are looking up while answering a question or telling a story, it’s highly likely they’re actually seeing an internal image. Ask them for verification.

This can help you deepen your rapport with others, and it can help them access consciously material that previously has been unconscious.

NLP Coaching

When I do an NLP coaching session with someone, I listen to what they want and ask questions. I match their needs to my toolbox, and we work and play together, noticing what gets results.

Since I began training in NLP, I’ve gradually concluded that what NLP does best is help people get unstuck. This generally makes it easier to heal the past, have access to more of their own resources, and have a brighter future with more possibilities.

Sometimes all it takes is one visit.

Contact me if you are feeling stuck in some area of your life! Reasonable, negotiable rates.

Other NLP Resources in Central Texas

The person who I took my practitioner, master practitioner, and evolutionary NLP training with is Tom Best of Best Resources/Texas Institute of NLP.

I’ve also taken both introductory and advanced NLP courses from Keith Fail and Katie Raver at NLP Resources Austin. Keith is also an excellent coach and now assists Tom Best in the practitioner and master practitioner training.

The Austin NLP Meetup meets every fourth Tuesday, with a subgroup interested in hypnosis meeting every second Tuesday. Join the Austin NLP meetup to get information and reminders. (Full disclosure: I’m the program director.)

Linaka Joy provides NLP coaching services from her home base in San Antonio and also runs the new San Antonio NLP Meetup. Her website is called JoyTech.

When meditating triggers presence, like Pavlov’s dog #reverb10

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Brene Brown, whose TED Talk I blogged about the other day after discovering Alan Steinborn’s recommendation on Facebook, does this thing on Twitter that she explains here on her blog. She calls it #Reverb10 and describes it as:

an online initiative that encourages participants to reflect on this year and manifest what’s next. It’s an opportunity to retreat and consider the reverberations of your year past, and those that you’d like to create in the year ahead.

As I understand it, it’s a group initiative. Thirty-one writers post prompts for writing and reflection on Twitter using the hashtag #reverb10. Brene is one of the writers. Anyone can get on Twitter, search for #reverb10, and respond.

Because not everyone is on Twitter, Brene has graciously made space on her blog where people can respond in the comments (with more than 140 characters!) to any or all prompts, and/or leave a link to their blog.

This is social networking at its most awesome!

Here is Brene Brown’s prompt for Dec. 27:

Our most profound joy is often experienced during ordinary moments. What was one of your most joyful ordinary moments this year?

Click the link above to check out Brene’s response to her own question, and those of many others.

And here is my response.

My most joyful ordinary moment is about something that I became aware of recently, and to understand it, I need to share a little background for new readers.

I started this blog as a year-long project to help myself develop the habit of meditating for 30 minutes daily. I’d meditated for several years, but not consistently. I’d do okay for a couple of weeks, then get derailed (sometimes for another couple of weeks).

I knew meditation had all kinds of beneficial side effects, and I wondered:

If I could put a little (or a lot) more effort into meditating every day, how would my life change?

Well, I failed. I did not meditate every day. I could not meditate with a stuffy nose (mouth breathing just doesn’t get it for me).

I also went through a period of rebellion a few months into the year. I was laying this demand on myself, and it felt burdensome. I rebelled, took a break, plunged inward with questions, and came back wanting to do it, recommitted.

I also had a sort of breakdown/spiritual awakening in November that resulted in me quitting my day job after six years. I was so distressed, I couldn’t sit. A lot of things in my life came to a head. I had planned to leave my job at the end of May in order to start acupuncture school in July, but circumstances actually made it the perfect time to leave (and my gut said I had to, besides).

Other than that, oh, and la-di-dah, a few days of just pure laziness, I have meditated daily in 2010.

End of background.

My most joyful ordinary moment came a week or so ago when I realized that as soon as I sat down on my meditation cushion and took a breath, that I was there. In the present moment. It felt like all considerations of the past and future just dropped away, leaving just the moment and the breath and the quiet bliss.

I am now like Pavlov’s dog, only instead of a bell triggering salivation, sitting on a meditation cushion triggers presence.

I created that in 2010.

This will go to Twitter, and I’ll comment on her blog as well. She’s giving away copies of both of her books and her DVD! I wouldn’t mind having those at all!

I love this project!

10 ways to be more present

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We all experience not being present — spacing out during a conversation, not remembering the drive home, thinking about work problems during dinner, eating mindlessly, worrying about something that hasn’t happened yet, bashing ourselves over some mistake.

To be present is to be aware of the present moment, to be here now, in Ram Dass’ words. This is where life really happens. The past is over, and the future never arrives. The present is all we really have.

Unclouded by the baggage of the past and clear of worry about the future, the present moment has sparkle to it, life. You have more fun. You feel more grateful. You listen more deeply, and your conversations are better. By doing one thing at a time and doing it well, you get more satisfaction from your work. You enjoy life more.

Being present is a skill that most anyone can learn, practice, and master. I’ve definitely gotten better at it, and as with any skill, there’s room for refinement.

I’ve practiced yoga, NLP, the 12 states of attention, peripheral walking, and meditation over the last few years. All of these practices have helped bring me more into the present moment, and over time, I’ve gotten better at it. Not coincidentally, I have more joy in my life.

Here are some of my favorite ways to live in the present moment. For many of these ways, it doesn’t matter where you are. You could be on hold, in line, at a red light, in an elevator, sitting at your desk, or exercising.

  1. When you wake up in the morning, really check in with your body. How does it feel? Stretch, wiggle, move, and get centered.
  2. Notice your breath. Which parts of your body move when you breathe? How does inhaling feel different from exhaling?
  3. Close your eyes and reopen them. What do you see? Close your eyes and reopen them again. What do you notice now that you didn’t notice before?
  4. Notice how many sounds you can hear. Include the sounds you usually filter out.
  5. Feel a part of your body. Could be the soles of your feet, the palms of your hands, the top of your head. Just give it your full attention for 30 seconds.
  6. Eat slowly and mindfully. Don’t do anything else. Just eat and pay attention to the chewing, the tastes and textures, the swallowing.
  7. Notice whether you have an internal dialogue going on. Listen in! What are they/you saying?
  8. When you walk, notice your walking. Do your right and left legs feel the same? What about your feet? Are you holding yourself stiffly anywhere? Just notice.
  9. If an emotion arises, notice it. Where in your body do you feel it? Does it move around or change? How long does it last? What’s the name of this emotion?
  10. Notice when your attention has moved to the past or the future. Does the past or future feel different from the present? Is it useful at this moment to be in the past or future? When you’re ready, kindly and gently bring yourself back to the present moment.

Notice that these exercises are based on simple curiosity about what your actual experience is.

When you’ve done each one of these several times, you can begin to create new habits to help you be more present.

  • When you hear a phone ring, bring your attention to your breath.
  • When you walk through a doorway, notice you’re walking into a new space.
  • When you see a flower, really see it. (Smell it too.)

Try being more present for a day, week, month, a season, or a year. What might that do for your life?

If you like this post, please click Like. Thanks!

My heroes of 2010

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I want to acknowledge some people who are heroes of mine in 2010.

My daughter Lela Reynolds graduated from nursing school earlier this month. She is a single mom raising a child with some special needs. That child is now 10. Since Hannah was very young, Lela has been working and going to college. She went to school full-time the last two years. Nursing school is tough, people. She hit the books, did the work, learned the knowledge.

Soon she will take her licensing exam to become an RN. This career suits her well. She likes being useful, is resourceful in a crisis, and is fascinated by humans and health. I think she will work well in settings like hospitals, and she has a couple of employers interested in hiring her. They’ll be lucky to have her.

I am very proud of her, and she did it mostly by herself, with just a little help from me. Way to go, Lela!

Anna Carroll is an amazingly resilient woman I know who discovered she had breast cancer this year. She combined Western and alternative medicine and is nearly done with treatment. I saw her last weekend, and she’s looking good. Anna has a well-developed and creative ability to tap into whatever resources she needs.

Katherine Daniel is another friend undergoing cancer treatment. She kept quiet about it at first and then created a healing circle of friends to provide a supportive community. She’s nearly done with Phase 1, the radiation and chemo.

Both of you, blessings on your journeys. Cancer is a tough one, and you’ve risen to the occasion. Kudos on creating what you need, and I send you my wishes for full and complete well-being.

Abby Lentz is a nationally recognized yoga teacher who lives here in Austin. She created Heavyweight Yoga (aka Heartfelt Yoga) and has made two videos, Yoga for the Body You Have Today and Change the Image of Yoga.

If you have ever considered that large-bodied people couldn’t possibly do yoga, I invite you to watch her videos.

I appreciate Abby for getting the word out — yoga is not just for the young and already fit. It is beneficial for everyone.

I also have great admiration for my cousin Heather and her husband Michael Mazza. They are the parents of six children. They provide an inexhaustible supply of love and direction and leadership for their brood. Watching them with their children in a restaurant is amazing. The kids are well-behaved and friendly, and Heather and Michael enjoy themselves as well. Well done.

I’ve asked friends on Facebook about their heroes for 2010. Glenda says her sister Annie got off her cancer medicine, and that is really GREAT! Yay, Annie!

Katie mentions Linaka Joy for all her explorations and triumphs with health this year. I second that! (My friend Linaka has been a quiet hero, not tooting her own horn but showing us her changed self.) She has changed the way she relates to food, lost weight, and along with the pounds, become lighter in spirit! This year she founded the San Antonio NLP meetup, taking more of a leadership role in the central Texas NLP community. You rock, Linaka! This work will go far.

Katie also considers her cousin Madison a real hero “for the fantastic way she has handled her best friend (who’s also a teenager) having a baby. She stayed upbeat and supportive and used it as a way to strengthen their friendship, despite lots of criticism all around.”

I also want to recognize Barbara Diane Beeler, a fellow blogger and friend, who lost over 60 pounds and is no longer considered obese. She wrote about it in her post Letting Go of Obesity and Regaining a Life. Diane, good going.

Last but not least, I want to mention Gretchen Wegner’s mother, who taught her two-and-a-half-year-old grandson two yoga poses to make diaper changes go well: downward facing dog and bridge pose. Yogis, you get it. Gretchen posted this on Facebook; I haven’t met her mother. I must say, Gretchen, your mom is brilliant! I love that kind of resourcefulness!

Now, who did I omit?

Repost: Shoveling Snow with Buddha, by Billy Collins

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Just for the fun of it, because of the big east coast blizzard, I’m reposting a poem by Billy Collins, from his book Picnic, Lightning.

Shoveling Snow with Buddha

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok you would never see him doing such a thin … Read More

Living with wholeheartedness takes courage, compassion, connection, and vulnerability

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Often when someone asks me to use my NLP training to help them move through a problem state to one of resourcefulness, I have just read or seen or heard something that applies in their situation.

I bring that new information in, and it helps them expand. (I dislike the term “solving problems,” because it seems so linear. Instead we dance with problems, move with them, do the tango, maybe even a little jitterbug, and always end up with new possibilities.)

I do not know how this works, that I find information and inspiration just in time, but I am grateful for these synchronicities. I feel plugged in to the cosmos when this happens. Thank you for taking care of me, cosmos, since I’m meeting up with someone later to play with NLP.

This morning I encountered a wonderful TED Talks video that Alan Steinborn posted on Facebook. (Alan walks with beauty and resourcefulness.)

I can tell this video is going to be a huge resource for me and for those I work/play NLP with.

It’s also incredibly apt for year’s end, when many of us search for the core issue to acknowledge and attend to and dance with during the coming year.

Dear blog readers, read this post or watch the video. Which area of your life can benefit most from your loving attention in 2011?

In the 20-minute video, the gifted and funny Ph.D. social worker Brene Brown discusses her research findings about shame and worthiness. Click the link and watch it if you have time; if not, read on for a synopsis.

Brown says there is only one variable between the people who have a sense of love and belonging and those who struggle for it and are always wondering if they’re good enough:

The people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they’re worthy of love and belonging.

That’s it. That’s what separates the people who live their lives feeling worthy from those who don’t. A belief in their own worthiness.

(NLP works with beliefs.)

To break this sense of worthiness down even more, Brown reviewed her research and found that those who feel worthy share these characteristics:

  • Courage. It’s not the same as bravery. It means to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.
  • Compassion. They are kind to themselves first, and then to others.
  • Connection. They are willing to let go of who they think they should be in order to be who they actually are.
  • Vulnerability. They are willing to do something first, to do something where there are no guarantees.

Brown then went to a therapist to work on her own vulnerability issues. She noted that this single characteristic is at the root of shame and fear and the struggle with worthiness, and also of joy, creativity, belonging, and love.

With a humorous display of her own worthiness, she relates how she told the therapist she didn’t want to deal with family or childhood issues, she just needed some strategies!

She spent a year in therapy struggling with her vulnerability, knowing it’s a huge issue for so many others, and then spent two more years on this research.

She states plainly:

We are the most in debt, obese, addicted, and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history.

We numb ourselves to avoid our vulnerability.

You cannot selectively numb emotion.

When we numb, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness.

To paraphrase, “and then we’re miserable and feel vulnerable, and we numb it, and the vicious cycle starts over.”

Besides addiction, we use certainty to numb — certainty about religion, certainty about politics, certainty about our opinions.

We also use perfection to numb. We perfect our bodies. We perfect our children. Brown notes that children are wired for struggle. If we can let them struggle and also believe they are worthy of love and belonging, wow, what a world that would be to live in!

We also numb by pretending that what we do doesn’t have an effect on people. Oil spills, recalls, global warming, and so on. We avoid taking responsibility and making amends.

To change this direction, she recommends that we…

  • Let ourselves be seen.
  • Love with our whole hearts, even though there are no guarantees.
  • Practice gratitude and joy.
  • Believe that you are enough.

I hope this helps you strengthen your wholeheartedness and believe in your worthiness for love and belonging.

Celebrating the luminosity of Christmas

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We rarely all gather, my two brothers, their wives, their children, my daughter, my granddaughter (at her dad’s), and me. Even though we all live in the Austin area, each family has its own lives and interests. But on Christmas eve, we gather, and it’s very sweet.

We come together, catch up on each person’s news, enjoy a feast we prepare and share, give and receive gifts, and play games, then we separate back into our separate lives, staying in touch about important stuff, until we gather again the next Christmas eve.

We see each other not quite enough — enough to feel deep pleasure when we do gather, but not so much that we get entangled in differences in values about politics, lifestyle, and whatever else may sometimes seem to accentuate our differences from others.

Most enlightening for me last night: watching my brother Will and my other brother Frank’s daughter Grace, age 13, take turns doing silly card tricks.

Oh, and by the way, I got the best white elephant gift of all, a package of “Party Rats, colorful rodent lights for your fingers –Ideal for NIGHT BLOGGING. Whether you’re dancing at a rave with a few hundred of your closest friends, or plugging in for some night blogging, Party Rats are the fun way to have fun!” You slip them on your fingers, flip the switch, and voila! Colored lights shine forth from your fingers.

Watch out, y’all, for some wild and crazy night blogging!

The other funny white elephant gift was a beautiful basket filled with canned ham, Spam, Velveeta, Cheez Whiz, and other highly processed nonfood items. Will put that together, and Frank ended up with it. He’s planning to regift it to someone at work. Ha!

The night before I also gathered with relatives, at Artz Rib House. My daughter and I met up with (I need a list for this roll call):

  • my third cousin John (the instigator — our great-grandparents were siblings), age 77
  • my late mother’s first cousin Wren (my second cousin and the last of that generation in my family), age 93 (still quite lucid and driving)
  • John’s daughter Heather and her husband Michael
  • their six children Elena, Peter, Lidia, Mark, Nina, and Luke Rocco, who range in age from 11 to 2 months

Most fun for me Thursday night: watching my daughter interact with those adorable children, watching them hang all over her, making silly faces for the camera! She needed that.

Since my daughter grew up and left home, I love having absolutely no obligations on Christmas day. It makes it truly a holy day. I get to do all the family stuff before Christmas and have this day to myself (or not, if I choose).

Christmas is a fantastic day to get out in nature and go for a long, leisurely walk, if the weather permits. Crunch on leaves, see bare trees, hear the birds, feel the cold rocks, experience the earth laid bare in winter. Today, with temps still in the 30s and very gusty winds, probably not.

Christmas is also a good day for going out to a movie, an increasingly rare occurrence with Netflix. What would you go see? I’m up for True Grit, The King’s Speech, or The Social Network, if anyone else is up for going out.

If not, I could be perfectly content to stay in, snuggle with my cat, cook, eat, and read. Throw in some reiki, yoga, meditation, Facebook, and it adds up to sweet serenity.

Wishing you peace, moments of stillness, being centered, and delight.