Category Archives: compassion

Reframing trauma recovery as detoxing the whole system

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These days I’m thinking of trauma recovery more and more like detoxing.

We all know people — or even do this ourselves — who do fasts or cleanses to rid their bodies of toxins from too much sugar or alcohol, meat, or junk food, after taking drugs, after food poisoning, and so on. I’ve written about the colon/parasite cleanse and the liver/gallbladder flush on this blog. I’ve also done the Master Cleanse, once.

There’s a lot to be said for cleansing for getting rid of recent toxins as well as those that have accumulated in our systems over the years. The proof is feeling better afterwards. If you don’t feel better after doing a cleanse, don’t do it again. Try something else. Be good to your body. It works hard so that you may live and is taken for granted a lot.

Well, trauma recovery is like detoxing your entire system. It’s not so much getting rid of the toxins in your digestive system as letting the harsh, non-nourishing behavior and events that your whole system took in make their way back out of your system.

It may not be pretty, but it’s actually a good sign — it’s so much healthier than keeping it locked up inside, repressed, frozen.

I’m thinking now that there is a natural period after you are safe when you detox, unless you get stuck in a situation with no support for your detoxing, and that’s another story. You have a basis of comparison — safe versus non-safe — now. Because you are safe, you can start to relax. You might want to think, “Whew, that’s it. I’m safe now and can get on with my life.”

Well, that is true, and you will start to bloom. But you might not be prepared for stuff from the past unpredictably sneaking into the present and biting you on the butt. You might not be prepared for intense emotions that may arise. You might not be prepared for the cognitive reframing that occurs as your identity changes from victim to hero of your own journey.

You may sometimes feel pulled in various directions. It is unsettling.  It’s good to find a physical outlet that grounds you. Yoga, bicycling, and walking were all helpful to me. Those things are healthy to do anyway, but it really helps to feel like you have control of some part of your life (your body) at a time when your mind/heart/spirit are in such flux. Exercise/movement is grounding, and the sweat help you detox. Your system wants to release that stuff.

You may reach equilibrium that feels like a few days of inner peace, and then something else — a memory, a dream, a trigger — may come up for you to experience and integrate, bringing you to a new equilibrium, and that cycle repeats, with the periods of equilibrium getting longer and longer. Actually, it’s life.

You  eventually reach a state where the past pretty much stays in the past unless you decide to delve in.

My advice: Let it arise as it arises, because it will do that anyway. It’s a process; it takes time. Notice and honor it. Document it, even — at least write down your dreams.

And it might be good to let a few people know. Ask for help if you need it, and definitely ask for support. You have mine.

How to make real, lasting, and meaningful changes

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I’ve recommended a very good book to several people recently and thought I’d blog about it as well. My peeps were either frustrated with their own failure to make a desired change in their lives, or they were helping professionals frustrated that their patients/clients were not making the changes they recommended.

The book is called Changing for Good: A Revolutionary Six-Stage Program for Overcoming Bad Habits and Moving Your Life Positively Forward. It has three authors — James Prochaska, John Norcross, and Carlo DiClemente, all Ph.D. psychology professors who did extensive research on the process of change. They modeled people who had successfully quit addictive and other problem behaviors (drinking, smoking, overeating, procrastinating, and many more).

Through this research, they discovered that successful change has six stages:

  1. Pre-contemplation (denial, ignorance, excuses, distancing, projection, blaming others)
  2. Contemplation (taking the problem behavior seriously, understanding consequences)
  3. Preparation (committing, setting a time frame, making a plan, telling people)
  4. Action (making the change, finding healthy ways to cope)
  5. Maintenance (staying motivated, encountering and weathering crises)
  6. Termination (no temptation, new identity)

The book goes into each stage in detail with tips on what you can do when you encounter problems or get stuck.

Since we all generalize, delete, and distort in our maps of reality, I can pretty much guarantee that this book will contain something you didn’t know enough about, never thought of before, or misunderstood about making a desired change.

The beauty is that you can take any change that you’ve tried to make but did not succeed at, identify the step where you fell down, get a better understanding of what it takes to succeed at that step, and come up with some better strategies and behaviors.

For instance, if you or a client has quit smoking numerous times but failed to “stay quit,” you know you or they need help with preparation and maintenance. Some years ago, this book helped me finally “stay quit” after quitting many times, and I’m no longer tempted at all. I prepared differently and put more emphasis on the importance of maintenance rather than action.

The National Cancer Institute found this program more than twice as effective as standard quit-smoking programs for 18 months. The National Association for Drug Abuse and Weight Watchers (or so I’ve heard) now also use this process.

Here’s my favorite customer review from Amazon.com:

It worked, I think. 
I still haven’t finished the book, but I decided to quit drinking and that was four months ago. Did it work? I dunno, but it sure is worth what I paid for the book.

It’s important to note that although the process has six stages, it is seldom linear. People recycle stages and may spiral through all the stages several times before being successful.

It’s also important to point out that you can use this to improve your game, be it golf, tennis, or surfing.

This book can really be helpful to frustrated change agents — therapists, coaches, health care providers. If you can identify where a client or patient is in their change process, you can actually address their needs much more effectively than just by recommending a change to them. They probably already know they “need to” change. Is it information they lack? Motivation? Support? Do they have problems with self-talk? Avoiding temptation?

Ask them about past changes they’ve made, and assess where they are on making this change. You can intervene more effectively if you know where they are stuck.

As my friend Glenda said recently,

I’ve worked hard at attracting and hanging onto heavy energy.

Now that’s someone in the contemplation stage. She’s getting motivated to experience something else.

Toxic stress, school discipline, and unconditional love

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Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA, tries new approach to school discipline — suspensions drop 85% « ACEs Too High.

Thank you, Katie Raver, for sending me this blog post about a principal at a high school for troubled kids who changed the approach to discipline — with amazing results.

Here are the numbers:

2009-2010 (Before new approach)

  • 798 suspensions (days students were out of school)
  • 50 expulsions
  • 600 written referrals

2010-2011 (After new approach)

  • 135 suspensions (days students were out of school)
  • 30 expulsions
  • 320 written referrals

It’s a long article with a lotta good info about chronic trauma and family problems and how they affect learning. It describes a measure of toxic stress called the ACE score.

The two simple rules for creating a school environment that doesn’t retraumatize already-traumatized kids:

Rule No. 1: Take nothing a raging kid says personally. Really. Act like a duck: let the words roll off your back like drops of water.

Rule No. 2: Don’t mirror the kid’s behavior. Take a deep breath. Wait for the storm to pass, and then ask something along the lines of: “Are you okay? Did something happen to you that’s bothering you? Do you want to talk about it?”

I want to learn how to do this.

When the teacher is the teaching: Tom Best.

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I figure I spent a thousand hours with Tom Best between 2007 and April 21, 2012, three days before his death.

I took NLP practitioner training as a student in Austin. Then evolutionary NLP in Dallas. Nightwalking in Wimberley. NLP master practitioner as a student, Austin. evolutionary NLP in Maui. NLP practitioner as a training assistant, Austin. Nightwalking at Buescher State Park, Smithville. NLP master practitioner as a training assistant, Austin. The Tom Best and Steve Daniel workshop using sound, Austin.

Several times I attended the first weekend and last day of practitioner trainings when I wasn’t a student or training assistant, to see him and Bobbi and my friends who also assisted, and to meet the new students and lend my support, and to re-experience “beginner’s mind” with NLP.

On April 21, I took a day of evolutionary NLP at Alma de Mujer, and he died three days later.

He was my teacher, and he was the teaching, my heart realizes now, after he left.


He was not really my friend, in the sense that we didn’t hang out in our off time and let our hair down together. Outside of teaching, he was a private man, a little shy and reserved, already giving a great deal of himself, a world-traveling teacher seriously devoted to spending his non-teaching time at home with his wife Bobbi and their dogs and cats.

But he was friendly from the start, and I felt love for him and from him.

Who knows how he saw me? I don’t think I can even begin to see myself as he saw me in 2007 or how he saw me on April 21. I can tell you that I changed, that his teachings transformed me, and others witnessed that. Among my long-time friends, I am known for having changed.

I have had many teachers in this lifetime. Many were teachers who did not even know they were my teacher because I read their books or watched them on video. Many many many more didn’t know they were teachers — they said or did something I learned from, sometimes what to move away from, and sometimes what to move toward.

I signed up for in-person lessons and cracked myself wide open to take in Tom Best along with his teachings more than I have to any other teacher, besides my parents, in this lifetime. I poured myself into the NLP pot, and he cooked me.

He was at the front of the room, talking, waving his long fingers around, drawing the VAKOG face, telling the Lake Conchas story and so many more, demonstrating a technique, explaining concepts, giving instructions, telling us to take an 11 minute and 17 second break, then ringing a bell to bring us back together…

When I started pract training, I quickly figured out that the academic learning style (dissociated, conceptual) that I had experienced so much of in school and college (and done well with) was not going to work. This NLP required experiential learning, and the only way to do it was to learn with my whole self — to take it in as much as I could, ask for help when I needed it, and then just do it. And then do it again, better. And again and again and again. And to later, to offer my help.

I can hear Tom’s voice right now, explaining the journey from unconscious incompetence, to conscious incompetence, to conscious competence, to unconscious competence.

I can hear him saying, “There’s no such thing as failure, only feedback.”

He gave us permission and encouragement to put ourselves out there, on the line, and do the techniques imperfectly. Just do it. I learned to accept doing something imperfectly, to forgive myself for being less than perfect, and to recognize that repetition creates mastery (along with tape editing).

I now see that that’s what made him such a great teacher, putting himself out there, on the line, over and over again, for years, around the world. He just got better at it, so that on Saturday, April 21, he almost seemed to consist more of pure energy (the energies of his intent, presence, attention, clarity, and love) than of matter or ego.

Some of my notes from that day:

Intention is of the tonal. It’s about your desired outcome.

Intent requires no thought. It is gratitude, alignment, participation, connection. (It is of the nagual.)

“Intend to align with realization,” I wrote.

That is so him! He was that teaching. See what I mean about him being the teaching?

Learning NLP the NLP way was exhausting. I went home from each day of practitioner training drained, needing to do something that didn’t require thinking, like watch a funny movie or just veg out.

When I assisted, some other students experienced that too.

I realize now that NLP training required my focused attention for hours at a time in a way that not much else had required. In school, I had learned quickly and then stared out the window, lost in my own private thoughts, while others struggled.

In the NLP pract classroom, I was not an A student. I struggled and was lost sometimes, which challenged me to become a training assistant so I could take it again.

Little did I know that I was building attentive stamina. 

Energy flows where attention goes. — Huna wisdom taught by Tom Best

I was also practicing intent, aligning with realization. Gratitude, alignment, participation, connection.

I’m very grateful that I served as a training assistant so I could take pract training again. It was much lighter and less exhausting, and I got even more out of it the second time around. I integrated the concepts and experiences more deeply. I was both student and training assistant for master practitioner too.

I had wanted to assist at each level one more time.

So for a thousand hours, my attention was on him, watching him speak and move, hearing his voice, taking him in with my whole self. His skinny, graceful, long-fingered, elegant, story-telling, teaching, sly, aligned, humble, gracious, personable, receptive, gently challenging, channeling, funny, quirky, fluid, congruent, trance-inducing, masterful, realizing self.

Wisdom is knowing where to put your attention. — Tom Best

I put my attention on you, Tom, over and over again, and it’s like in the grief process where you bring the person into your heart, instead of feeling their absence. You are in here, man. You are so present in my mind and in my heart as I absorb your life and teachings even more and make meaning of it all.

And then you did something a bit surprising and very human. You died. You lived your life well and fully, and then you slipped away, in your sleep, painlessly, quickly, easily.

So I just need to say this one more time, or a thousand more times:

You modeled love, love, love. Mahalo for showing the way.

Thanks to the Facebook group The Grace of Tom Best for all of the photos except the small blue one where he’s seated (that’s mine from April 21).

The rainbow-bridge, huayruro seeds, the long body, and the nagual: a tribute to Tom Best

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Part of Monday’s reading from The American Book of the Dead by E.J. Gold, which I’m reading for my teacher Tom Best, who died this past week, is this:

If my attention is concentrated and clear, I will merge into the heart of the beloved, in a halo of light called the rainbow-bridge, and attain completion in the region known as Endowed-with-Glory.

The heart of the beloved here refers to an unveiled vision of reality. The clear light and the region known as Endowed-with-Glory are metaphors for the sea of the nagual, to my mind.

So much love, and such clear attention. He is still teaching me.

For the past few days, all the readings (and there are readings for 49 days after death) have mentioned the “rainbow bridge” or the “rainbow light.” When I realized that, I got GUS (god-universe-spirit) bumps because of the following story:

For many years, at the end of many of his trainings and workshops, Tom gave out “rainbow seeds” to his students. They are actually the seeds of the huayruro plant, from Peru. They are beautiful hard seeds of shiny red with a black spot. They are believed to bring powerful good luck and are often strung into necklaces and otherwise made into jewelry.

Tom’s instructions were to give these rainbow seeds away, and to give them to either a person or a place that signified excellence or devastation. In other words, a person or place of exceptional excellence, or a person or place in need of healing. (I am hearing his voice speak these words so clearly as I type, as I often do these days.)

I’ve dropped rainbow seeds in areas that have been ugly or devastated, and in spots so beautiful they took my breath away, and I’ve also given them to many people, for one or the other reason. I have also received one, which I mixed in with the others, and I don’t know which one it is now! I will give them all away.

I actually gave one to Tom once, when he was telling my master practitioner class about losing his beloved dog Dakota (whom I met when I first met Tom in the late 1990s), openly weeping as he spoke, sharing his sudden loss with us–and modeling how to let our emotions flow through us.

Tom gave these seeds out at numerous trainings every year all around the world, and the people he gave them to have also distributed them to people and places they’ve encountered. Tom called this “building rainbow bridges.”

We recipients now connect to each other on this planet, through him, the healed and the in-need-of-healing, the beautiful and devastated (because don’t we all–and this planet–have potential for both, and isn’t such a state always fluid?), and this bridge lives on even though he has transcended his earthly life, continuing its transformation in us. It’s almost as if he foresaw this happening.

Now that is wisdom, living through the long body. What a master.

Tom, you have been building rainbow bridges for years before passing. I realize I am doing these readings mostly for me (and with Bobbi Best when she is able to join me), because I don’t think you need my help at all in this transition.

My emotional body finds it hard to say goodbye, although I moved some heavy grief hucha up and out at ecstatic dance on Sunday. My spirit body feels Tom’s presence within and around me.

You were my teacher and also the teaching in how you lived your life. Mahalo for showing me that. You know how to move into the nagual. Love, just love, love, love, Tom.

(Thanks to my friend from Maui, Erich Wolf, for posting the photo of the huayruro seed above, to Istok Pavlovic, Catharine Stuart Lord, and Nikola Jovanovic for the photos and posters of Tom and his words of wisdom and how to save high-resolution versions, and to Luzia Helena Wittman for sharing the photo of the footprints in the sand–taken by Tom of his own footprints in Portugal–on the Facebook group The Grace of Tom Best. Mahalo, my friends.)

For more about Tom, I wrote a later post that you might also like to read: When the teacher is the teaching: Tom Best.

Meeting Tom Best, who became my teacher

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Whew. I can tell this is going to be some blogging that will take a few days to write, as my experience sifts itself into lasting words, and I’ll probably reread and retouch it a few times after posting as the clarifying process continues its magic. I don’t know now how it will come out, but it’s time to start writing.

Someone who has been important in my life, a teacher primarily and also a friend, since 2007 died, shuffled off his mortal coil, transitioned to a higher plane, passed away, left the planet, shed his body, entered the clear light, or however you like to put it.

I like how my friend Katie broke the news to me:

MaryAnn, I have some sad news to share, but not really.

She told me that our teacher, Tom Best, had had a brain hemorrhage on Monday afternoon. He took a nap, and when his wife Bobbi went to wake him up, he was breathing but didn’t wake up. Their dogs licked him, and he still didn’t wake up.

It sort of gets garbled here but he was taken to two hospitals because the first one couldn’t do a brain scan or something like that, and he looked like he was just sleeping and could just wake up at any moment, and with his wife and dearest friends gathered around him, the doctor didn’t hold out much hope but agreed to leave him on a ventilator overnight to see if his condition changed (it didn’t), and on Tuesday afternoon, he left his earthly body surrounded by loved ones.

People who were there said that as they stood around his bed as he was leaving his body, it was as if they sensed someone entering the room, and that energy seemed to be above them, and then it was gone.

I really want to thank Katie for telling me like that. This has been a really different experience of processing a death/absorbing a loss than I’ve experienced before, and much of it has to do with the person who died, and some of it has to do with me.

I first met Tom Best in 1998 or 1999, when I went to visit my friend Linda in Prescott, Arizona. She was close friends with Tom and Bobbi Best. We went to their place to borrow their new adorable white German Shepherd puppy Dakota and take him for a frolic in the forest. Linda introduced me to Tom, and I remember meeting a slight, wiry man with gray hair, kind of average in beauty, greeting me with a gaze that was really different from what I’d experienced before.

His eyes were very blue, a warm blue, and his attention was totally on me for those few moments of introduction with the best eye contact I’d experienced. I felt that he was genuinely interested in me. I felt an openness, a curiosity, a direct energetic connection, and a feeling of caring emanating from him in those few moments of the typical greeting ritual we all know so well in which names are exchanged and hands shaken.

I felt seen. I felt engaged. I felt cared for. Wow, all that in just a few seconds!

As I would later learn from him, I had just experienced news of difference.

I am pretty sure that was the first time I met anyone who transmitted his presence so clearly and directly to me, and I could not have described our first meeting like I just did had I not had him for a teacher later on.

I tucked that memory away, and in 2007, I was dating a man, Norm Sternfeld, who had studied NLP, and I thought of Linda who had studied NLP, and I thought to myself,

Hmm. People who study NLP use their minds well. I want to study NLP.

So I enrolled in practitioner training here in Austin, Texas, and when I showed up the first day, there was that same guy, Tom Best, whom I’d met in Arizona eight or so years earlier, at the front of the classroom, and in a very short time, I knew I was in the right place.

to be continued…

The starfish story: making a difference

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I’ve heard two people tell this story recently. Each told it a little differently. Wanting to share it with you, I googled and learned the original was called The Star Thrower and was published by anthropologist/philosopher/writer Loren Eiseley as part of an essay in 1969.

The story has been adapted and used by motivational speakers ever since and was also made into a children’s DVD, Sara and the Starfish, in 2008. It was adapted again as a beautifully illustrated children’s book, Starfish on the Beach, in 2012.

I found this version on Wikipedia, and apparently it doesn’t violate anyone’s copyright.

Here it is:

An old man had a habit of early morning walks on the beach. One day, after a storm, he saw a human figure in the distance moving like a dancer. As he came closer he saw that it was a young woman and she was not dancing but was reaching down to the sand, picking up a starfish and very gently throwing them into the ocean.

“Young lady,” he asked, “Why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?”

“The sun is up, and the tide is going out, and if I do not throw them in they will die.”

“But young lady, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and starfish all along it? You cannot possibly make a difference.”

The young woman listened politely, paused and then bent down, picked up another starfish and threw it into the sea, past the breaking waves, saying, “It made a difference for that one.”

The old man looked at the young woman inquisitively and thought about what she had done. Inspired, he joined her in throwing starfish back into the sea. Soon others joined, and all the starfish were saved.

If I adapted it, I would probably leave that last paragraph out. Yes, we love happy endings and want all the starfish to be saved, but that’s not why she did it, or why he joined her. Rather than detaching or being overwhelmed by the task, she took action. She threw one back, and then another, and another.

She made a difference to each one she threw back, even though they may have added up to only a tiny percentage of the washed-up, dying starfish. She did what she could.

How often do we look at some problem and feel paralyzed because it seems overwhelming? How often do we detach and think it’s not our problem? Racism, sexism, war, violence, poverty…the list goes on of seemingly intractable problems. It’s so easy to get stuck in helplessness, passivity, cynicism, separation.

And yet it’s our world.

So instead of thinking about what you can’t do, consider what you can do. What is one action you can take? What is the smallest action you can take? It might even be just to think about the problem differently. Maybe it’s a personal challenge that you need to rock yourself out of complacency.

Maybe you can make a bigger difference than you think.

Look at a problem in your life, one that seems intractable, and think of the tiniest action you can take. It doesn’t even matter what it is, as long as it is in the direction of health and resolution.

Then do it. And yes, I am talking to you.

How do you soothe yourself? Here are some of my favorite ways.

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Self-soothing is an activity that nearly anyone can learn and get better at. It encompasses techniques and behaviors that we can use to soothe our emotions when ruffled, disturbed, distressed, overwhelmed — when we encounter difficult situations in life.

Self-soothing means not going to others expecting them to make you feel better. Of course, if we’re lucky, we have healthy loving people in our lives who help us feel better, but what if they’re not around? And…how can you become one of those healthy, loving people?

Self-soothing is a skill that you can cultivate to take better care of yourself.

You start with recognizing when you need soothing. It starts with self-compassion. Maybe you experienced a bad day at the office, an argument with a loved one, an unpleasant bit of news, mistreatment by a clerk, a fender bender, or all of these things.

Can you treat yourself as well as you would treat a friend in these circumstances if you had the resources to treat your friend really well? If you’re not your own best friend, who else is going to be?

You probably already use some self-soothing techniques without thinking about it. What do you do that brings you pleasure? I’m not talking about special techniques like EFT or NLP. This post is about ordinary things that people can do to soothe themselves, by themselves.

Here are some of my favorites –and I believe it’s good to have many self-soothing techniques in your repertoire that you can draw on when you need to. It’s a way of adding richness to your life, and you can share these with others, enhancing their lives as well.

For visual refreshment, I love walking in botanical gardens, especially Japanese gardens. I love looking at landscapes, cityscapes, sunrises, sunsets, and the star-spangled night sky — the big picture.

I buy myself flowers on occasion, and depending on the flowers, the color and shape not only please my sense of sight, the fragrance pleases my sense of smell.

Walking on a scenic trail or kayaking or paddleboarding on water is very pleasant, and the sensations of movement, temperature, and more just add to my pleasure.

Traveling to a beautiful place is awesome! I love Maui and West Texas for the gorgeous — and very different — scenery. Those landscapes feel very friendly to me.

Reading a good story takes my mind off my problems and sweeps me up into some other story.

Music is one of the greatest soothing inventions ever. Hearing a beloved golden oldie, music that you associate with good times and good feelings, or listening to new music that engages and calms — those can shift your comfort level profoundly. A couple of my favorites are Wachuma’s Wave and Chakra Chants.

Listening to a waterfall, rain falling, the ocean — the sounds of water definitely soothe me.

I just love listening to Mango purr. Listening to someone read some good writing aloud is also quite pleasurable.

I adore smelling fragrant flowers, any essential oil, herbs and spices and fresh produce, and teas. I once grew a rose called Souvenir de la Malmaisson that smelled so much like a fine wine, just the fragrance was intoxicating. It was like catnip is to a cat. I wanted to roll in it!

Petrichor is the word for the smell of rain. I wish I could bottle it because it’s always so refreshing!

Soothing touch includes feeling soft, sensual textures in bedding and clothing. Curling up is relaxing. So is tuning into the sensations of just breathing. Of course, you can touch yourself pleasingly, and I need not say more!

To some people, exercise soothes. They love sweating. I love yoga and dance. The movements please me and wake my body up pleasingly.

Be careful about soothing yourself with taste. It is the self-soothing method that many people use to the exclusion of all others, and it can easily result in weight gain and/or an unbalanced diet and dis-ease. Be mindful — take tiny bites, eat slowly, let your taste buds savor — and have lots of other self-soothing techniques.

Another fine thing you can do is to take a happy memory and relive it as fully as you can, re-experiencing the sensations and emotions.

Finally, laughter soothes jangled nerves, aching hearts, hurt feelings, failures, and disappointments. At some point, you’re ready to laugh again.

In that case, watch a good, funny video, listen to a funny audiotape, or read a funny book. To each his or her own. Steve Martin, David Sedaris, George Carlin, Saturday Night Live, Christopher Guest, Ellen deGeneres, Monty Python — there are lots of funny, funny performers, films, and books available that you can bust a gut enjoying.

If you have any favorites not listed here, I welcome you sharing!

The universal language of babies

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Okay, so this is unrelated to most of the posts on this blog, except for me wanting to be of service by providing new-to-me (and I hope to you) information to improve your quality of life.

It turns out that those little noises that babies make before they really start crying actually have meaning. Babies have been signaling us when they’re hungry, sleepy, feeling general discomfort such as needing a diaper change, feeling lower GI distress like gas, and needing to burp.

Each of these has its own distinct sound.

If we can attend to their needs before they start crying, well, then they cry less! This seems revolutionary. What could it do to a population’s quality of life if all infants had their needs tended to quickly?

This was discovered by a brilliant woman gifted in auditory memory who became a mother, figured this out, and tested it around the world.

Watch this segment from Oprah:

The woman is Priscilla Dunstan. Here’s her website, in case you want to order the DVD: http://dunstanbaby.com/

I find it amazing that this has been right under our noses for millennia, and only now can it be discovered, tested, and widely taught.

It’s also amazing to think about how different the world might be if all parents learned these 5 signals and could tend to their infants’ needs better. Less frustration = more happiness.

It could be revolutionary.

Healing and personal growth: knowing when you’re ready for commitment

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Carolyn Hax is a columnist for the Washington Post. She’s sort of like Dear Abby: people write to her with their problems, and she responds.

She has a gift for identifying the key issues for making decisions that lead to healthy, whole lives. I have been reading her for years and often feel awe for her advice. She doesn’t gloss over how difficult life can be, and she helps people wake up and grow up.

Because I’ve been writing here about recovering from trauma, this particular Q&A really seems worth sharing.

Dear Carolyn:

I had a lot of problems stemming from a very hard childhood. If I had entered into a relationship right away, then I would have been a “hot mess.” However, after years of therapy and some serious soul-searching (including very lonely moments of realizing how much I needed help), I am now about to get married.

I worry, because I am not completely healed from my childhood — but I am getting there. Is it okay to get married and move on while healing at the same time? My gut tells me to go with it — and take it one step at a time.

To Be or Not to Be … Insecure

I can’t know whether you’re ready for marriage, but I also don’t believe there’s a magic point where people become “well” or “fully healed” or whatever else we shoot for. Growth is lifelong if you’re doing it right.

That said, here are two things to look for before committing to anyone: the strength to live honestly, and the ability to take good care of yourself and the people you love.

The latter is straightforward, since a “hot mess” by definition can barely manage one or the other, much less both — and, too, meeting your needs and your partner’s tends to be mutually exclusive in unhealthy relationships. Very useful as a DON’T DO IT alarm.

Living honestly is more complicated: If it were easy to spot when we lie to ourselves, we wouldn’t do it so much, right? But, generally, we’re excellent at identifying in hindsight the ways we rationalized doing stupid things (admitting it . . . different story).

So we can take the memory of those rationalizations — the constant explaining and justifying — and compare that sensation to what we’re feeling now.

Since the whole point of rationalizations is to avoid an unwelcome truth, discarding them is no fun. But it still beats the slow agony of living with choices that don’t fit.

Why just honesty and good care? They’re key to preserving your sense of yourself within a relationship — allowing you to maintain good relationships and escape bad ones. That’s really all anyone needs.

Write to Carolyn Hax, Style, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071, ortellme@washpost.com. Subscribe at www.facebook.com/carolynhax.