Category Archives: compassion

A contract on house, relationship woes, and 1950s housewife takes LSD

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I’m up very early today, which is going to be a long one full of NLP training for master practitioners. It’s metaphor weekend!

Yesterday I gratefully signed a contract on my house! It feels really, really good, seven and a half weeks after listing it. It looks like the couple who saw it Thursday night for the first time and came back Friday to see it in the daytime are offering a backup contract, if the first one falls through.

Also yesterday, several people I care about were experiencing relationship difficulties. Feelings of disappointment, betrayal, anger, hurt, sadness, disrespect; expressing feelings, finding support, creating distance, moving on in some way. (Don’t try to make sense of this — I’m talking about several conflicts and people here. I’m sure you have experienced something similar — a loved one’s pain.)

I’m especially grateful to my Facebook friend Fran who asked this key question:

What is the lesson? Therein lies the silver lining!

Great question! Thank you, Fran!

I thought about it for a while. I got how my energy had gone out into each person’s hurting heart, feeling their pain. I got clear that these difficulties belonged to them (even if some were of their own making — like, “Man, what did you expect would happen? Snap to! You’re hurting someone!”), and that I could just simply extend my heart to them.

The pain is in discovering that the world is not as we believe it to be, that people are not who we believe they are. It is as it is, they behave as they behave.

if you can’t trust ’em, move on with those you can trust. if you betrayed someone’s trust, know it will probably never be the same. forgiveness, compassion, good boundaries solve a lot of problems. i hold them in the light.

And finally, today I am grateful for the wonderful finds on the internet. Here’s an old film from the 1950s where a normal housewife is given LSD and interviewed by a scientist on camera. Back when Technicolor was new. ; ) Enjoy!

Asking for what you need, seeking work, and Integrative Chakra Breathwork

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On day 8 of the 21-day gratitude challenge, I am grateful for two dear friends who have asked me for love and support because they need it now.

I don’t know why, and I don’t need to know why. They will share when they’re ready. That’s beside the point.

These friends are people whom I’ve asked for support from when I’ve needed it, because they have an abundance of love for people.

I feel deeply honored that they can ask me when they need it, and that I have it to give. Blessings on you both, and may angels wrap their soft wings around you, carrying you in love, as I do.

***

I am grateful for my skills and abilities to make myself useful. Today, I will be asking for what I need in terms of a temporary/contract job. I do technical writing, editing, training, and a whole slew of other things.

Please ping me if you hear about anything. I’m also updating my LinkedIn profile. Please feel welcome to link to me if you like!

***

Today I’m grateful that I attended an Integrative Chakra Breathwork session last night. This is the creation of Ed Buresh, whom I just met in person last night, and it is a journey through the chakras with sound, breath, and movement.

Ed created the sound, which is marvelous: a heartbeat, a swirsh, and a tone for each chakra based on the earth’s vibrational frequency. I went into a deep theta trance during the 6th chakra and emerged as the sound was receding. It felt like I was working something out that was mostly unconscious.

I plan to return for more sessions.

(Another friend was teasing me about going to this, saying that “integrative chakra breathwork” hit all the New Age buzz words! Not quite. If you add “channel” and “angels” and “purple” and “bio-energetic”, then you’d be pretty close! That angel photo just makes this post complete, does it not?)

Gratitude for my daughter, women friends, and skilled intuitive healers

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About gratitude journals

From googling “gratitude journal,” the practice apparently began in 1996 when Sarah Ban Breathnach created The Simple Abundance Journal of Gratitude as a companion to her popular book Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy.

Here’s a blurb about the book:

“Gratitude is the most passionate transformative force in the cosmos,” promises author Sarah Ban Breathnach (Simple Abundance) in her introduction.

I believe it, Sister Sarah!

Sarah asked journalers (journalists?) to write five things every day that they felt grateful for and said they would feel their lives shift within a couple of months.

In 1998, Oprah Winfrey had Sarah as a guest on her show, and as we all know, Oprah just knows goodness. The gratitude journal took off.

I missed out on this back then. It was in the early days of the world wide web (remember that?). I was working at a computer all day, and in my free time, the last thing I wanted to do was be on a computer. (My, how Facebook and blogging have changed that!)

I was raising an adolescent girl going through her most difficult period, in an often-strained relationship.

Actually, looking back, keeping gratitude journals would probably have been a fantastically wonderful practice for us to share back then, if she had deigned to share anything with me.

Hmmm. She’s changed, and so have I.

What I feel grateful for today

Today I feel grateful for my whole experience of motherhood. From pregnancy (easy), through childbirth (difficult), to the moment I held my new baby in my arms for the first time and she wrapped her tiny fingers around my little finger (instant love), I have been blessed to have had a child, a daughter, and specifically my daughter, Lela Rose, who is 29 years old now.

Lela at her Dec 2010 graduation from nursing school, with her women friends.

I watched and helped her grow up, even as I grew up more myself, and she has turned out to be a mensch, a true human being. I see her in her young adult years now, a mother herself, starting her nursing career just this week, moving through struggle to accomplishment. I see her self-esteem, her worthiness, her competency, her intelligence, her endearing goofiness, her wisdom, her discipline, her caring, her limits too.

What I am most grateful for about being a mother is the personal growth that raising her brought to my life — the growing up that I had to do, the inner work of exploring my values, learning when to be flexible and when to stand firm, the changes that being her mother brought to my life.

Today I feel grateful for my women friends, in particular Clarita and Linaka, whom I spent time with last night. We go way back to 1995 when we began ecstatically dancing together. That is 16 years of knowing each other, talking, coming together and moving away, seeing each other through difficulties and joys and sharing them, traveling together, cooking and eating together, always laughing together, and lately doing NLP with each other.

I feel blessed to have so many women friends, new and old, near and far. There is something about the friendship of women that is so nurturing. I think we let our hair down when it’s just us, in a way that we don’t or can’t with men, because we share the lifelong experience of being women in this culture. And when we have common interests and affection for each other, the connecting is abundant.

Today I feel grateful for those people I’ve encountered so far in my life who are skilled intuitive healers. I’ve mentioned Patrice, my acupuncturist, and Chandler Collins, my chiropractor, on this blog before.

Yesterday I had a heart-centering bodymind session with Bo Boatwright, who is a chiropractor but who has learned and developed a method that one could do with just a massage license.

Having experienced one session with Bo, I’d say his work with me on the table was a combination of massage, chiropractic, myofascial release, rebirthing, and visualization. He rolled me and moved me to find the stuck places, and he dug into the stuck places, having me breathe all the while, until my body spontaneously began to release stress/tension/stuckness in the manner of rebirthing and trauma releasing exercises.

After my body quieted down, I felt sadness arise in my heart chakra. I cried, and Bo asked me about my relationship with my parents, who died in 1984 and 1997 (but of course one’s relationship with parents doesn’t end with death). I opened my heart to them, forgave them, embraced them, kissed them…

A couple of hours later, in a moment of quiet stillness, I noticed a new space in my heart center, an openness that wasn’t there before.

Thanks, Bo. I’m grateful for you. And heads up, you are teaching me.

Read these books!

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I read a lot.

Let me clarify that. I don’t read as much as a few other people read, or as much as I read in the past, but I am a reader. I’ve been an avid reader from a young age, at times indiscriminate but now much more discerning.

It’s that Buddhist saying: “Don’t waste time.” If a book doesn’t hook me early on, I set it aside and try later. It doesn’t mean it’s not good. It just means it’s not relevant enough to what I need to learn in that moment to make the effort feel alive. Energy flows where attention goes. If there’s no energy there, why bother?

The following is a list of books I read in 2010,  plan to read in 2011 (plan, not commit), read before 2010 (and mentioned on this blog) that have shaped my world, and reference books that I dip into but will probably not read cover to cover. Links are included to the books’ pages on Amazon.com; if you buy a book from clicking a link here, I’ll get a very small financial reward — which I appreciate, because blogging takes time.

I’ve mentioned a few of the 2010 books prominently, namely, The Open-Focus Brain, A Symphony in the Brain, Buddha’s Brain, The Revolutionary Trauma Release Process, and What Really Matters. You can do a search for those posts and read what I wrote if you want.

Books read in 2010

Buddha, by Karen Armstrong

Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom, by Rick Hanson

The Heart of Yoga: Developing a Personal Practice, by T.K.V. Desikachar

Krishnamacharya: His Life and Teachings, by A.G. Mohan with Ganesh Mohan

The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body, by Les Fehmi and Jim Robbins

Relax and Renew: Restful Yoga for Stressful Times, by Judith Lasater, Ph.D., P.T.

The Revolutionary Trauma Release Process: Transcend Your Toughest Times, by David Bercelli

Strengths Finder 2.0, by Tom Rath

A Symphony in the Brain, by Jim Robbins

The Web That Has No Weaver, by Ted J. Kaptchuk

What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America, by Tony Schwartz

Yoga Sutras, translated by Kofi Busia (PDF file)

2011 Reading List

The 4-Hour Body, by Timothy Ferriss

Access Your Brain’s Joy Center: The Free Soul Method, by Pete A. Sanders Jr.

The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, by Leonard Shlain

Beliefs: Pathways to Health & Well-Being, by Robert Dilts, Tim Hallbom, and Suzi Smith

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell

Chants of a Lifetime: Searching for a Heart of Gold, by Krishna Das

The Complete Book of Vinyasa Yoga: The Authoritative Presentation Based on 30 Years of Direct Study Under the Legendary Yoga Teacher Krishnamacharya, by Srivatsa Ramaswami

Effortless Wellbeing: The Missing Ingredients for Authentic Wellness, by Evan Finer

Emotional Intelligence 2.0, by Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves

Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, by Parker J. Palmer

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life, by Byron Katie and Stephen Mitchell

Nourishing Destiny: The Inner Tradition of Chinese Medicine, by Lonny S. Jarrett

Transforming #1, by Ron Smothermon, M.D.

Waking Up to What You Do: A Zen Practice for Meeting Every Situation with Intelligence and Compassion, by Diane Eshin Rizzo

Yoga Body: Origins of Modern Posture Yoga, by Mark Singleton

Influential books from my past

The complete works of Carlos Castaneda, starting with The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge

Dune, by Frank Herbert

Emptiness Dancing, by Adyashanti

The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram: Nine Faces of the Soul, by Sandra Maitri

Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein

My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey, by Jill Bolte Taylor

Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences, by Peter A. Levine

The Healing Triad: Your Liver…Your Lifeline, by Jack Tips

Reference books

Light on Yoga, by B.K.S. Iyengar

Poems New and Collected, by Wislawa Szymborska

The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy, by Cyndi Dale

Yoga: The Path to Holistic Health, by B.K.S. Iyengar

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?

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.

Still liking Santa, and standing up for your heart’s desires

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What a wonderful, busy time of year this is! Many of us have holidays from school and work. We celebrate the winter solstice — the longest night of the year gives birth to the returning of the light. This year the full moon and a total lunar eclipse marked the turn. Whatever solstice means to you, triple it!

Then there’s Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Festivus. We gather with those we love and care about to celebrate our faith and traditions in good cheer.

Then New Year’s, Eve and Day. Have you gotten your calendars yet?

December is a month of bustle, socializing, celebrating, feasting, shopping, partying, getting out into the world. It goes by so quickly. January is quieter, colder, more still, more stay-at-home, more introspective, and is the longest month, in my opinion.

I dub December the extrovert’s favorite month, while January is beloved by introverts.

I love this end-of-year time, the days of Solstice and the New Year and all the days in between, as a time to wrap up the old year and let visions of my future self dance in my head as I prepare for a new year.

I once celebrated Christmas as the major holiday of the year, when I was a child, and later when I had a child living at home. The excitement of Christmas morning, presents under the tree — that rocked!

I still like Santa a lot. My friends Alec and Karan have a Santa figurine that captured my attention this year. It looks like  an intricately branched piece of light gray driftwood with Santa’s face and beard appearing on one side. It’s surprising — Santa as wood spirit. This Santa isn’t jolly or merry, he’s peaceful and content. He comes from nature, not Madison Avenue.

Seeing their driftwood Santa helped me clarify that today I perceive Santa as a spirit of winter, a wise and wintry man, the epitome of generosity and kindness to children — a far cry from my childhood idea of Santa as one whom I could ask for whatever I wanted, with an understanding that he would bring it, if only I was worthy.

Of course, I always got stuff (good little girls like me often mistook compliance for worthiness). There was the build-up and the inevitable let-down. Too much excitement segued into something like a sugar crash by the afternoon of Christmas day, complete with tears. Rebalancing.

I understand now that in the way of the child, I was encouraged to mistake my heart’s desires for material goods, a far inferior substitute. In allowing that substitution, I also unknowingly devalued my own worthiness. Worthiness is not compliance. Worthiness is standing up for your heart’s desire. Those heart’s desires could not be wrapped in a package and tied with a bow. Indeed, often the heart’s desires cannot be articulated, only felt, as yearning.

In the way of the adult, it is the experience of desiring, even more than receiving, that defines us humans so deeply. To experience one’s heart desiring is to experience one’s worthiness.

Does the object of desire really even matter that much? Yes, when you are in the clutches of desiring! No, it’s that feeling of expansion in the heart center, that reaching out of one’s energy to include that someone or something else, that dream of something bigger, that matters.

Enjoy it all! The desiring, the receiving, the gratitude, the letting go, the not receiving, the disappointment, the moving on, the emptiness between desires, the new desire.

The child in me has matured through expectation, hope, delight,disappointment, skepticism, cynicism, to perhaps a faith in something inside all of us. Heart’s desires. For peace in the world and in our own beings. For love to give and to receive. For awareness of life’s gifts and brevity. For this moment here with you.

Best wishes of the season from me to you!

Experiencing loss on a larger scale

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To recap where I left off, I lost my keys on Saturday. I shifted states to find them, first shifting from being upset to playing with Trickster, and also shifting time perception from mainland time to island time. I shifted behavior from frantic, frustrated searching to tossing a ball from hand to hand with eyes looking up.

I then followed an impulse that showed me where my keys were. Problem solved.

On Sunday, I returned from the workshop to discover a bigger loss. My house had been burglarized while I was away, and the thieves took my laptop, wifi router, cable modem, and computer accessories, my DVD/VCR player, my old flute, and (I discovered today) a sports watch.

Other human beings entered my personal living space and took things that belonged to me! It’s Friday, and I still feel a little bit of outrage about that.

Yet I recognize that losing keys, and losing stuff, are minor losses compared to losing one’s health, loved ones, a home or livelihood with no replacement, life. Perspective is important.

They were thoughtless about it, too. For instance, they took the remote to the TV but not the big 27″ Sony TV — too big and heavy. They took the cable modem that I lease from my ISP — useless without an ISP enabling it, and it has an ID. They took the cable to my digital camera, which was dangling out of a USB port — no good to anyone without a camera and software. Stupid, you know?

Mostly they grabbed things that were easy to pawn. I reported it to the police, and they’ll be on the lookout for the items for which I had a serial number.

That’s a lot of inconvenience. Luckily, I have good homeowner’s insurance, albeit with a $500 deductible. I’ll be filling out forms soon and eventually get a check to buy replacements with. But I didn’t have anything backed up, a serious error on my part. I’d been meaning to do that but didn’t have a clear idea of which method to use, so I procrastinated. Now I know — external hard drive, kept separately.

I wanted to spend Sunday night away from home, due to feeling discomfort in my own home, but didn’t. I’d already been away Saturday night, and I missed my kitty Mango. He was my first clue that something was amiss. I had asked my daughter to let him in Saturday night because of the cold. When I pulled into the driveway on Sunday, he was outside. The burglars must have let him out.

Monday morning, I smudged my house with palo santo (fragrant holy wood), brought to me recently from Peru, to clear the negative energy. Moving on through this experience, shifting states.

The burglar of my imagination is a young man between 17 and 21 whose frontal lobes are not finished developing, who therefore lacks the ability to foresee consequences. His ability to empathize with others is also lacking. I imagine, but do not know, that he will eventually get caught and spend time in prison. Not many people who engage in this kind of behavior turn their lives around before going to prison. It would take exceptional awareness of consequences and strong intent to change one’s path. It could happen, though. Those frontal lobes will kick in at some point.

I feel sad and disappointed that humans behave like this and that someone did this to me. It’s personal, yet I know it happens to a lot of people. It’s not the first time I’ve had things taken. Last year in Maui, thieves broke into the car and took my large duffel bag crammed full of stuff.

Because I was on Maui, how upset could I be? Who wants to ruin a perfectly blissful vacation getting bent out of shape over some stuff? I was on Maui, with friends. Perspective.

There’s also recognizing the reality of economic disparity. People judge themselves to be poor or rich in comparison to others and have stories about that. I don’t actually know that I am poorer or richer than these burglars. I am a freelance yoga teacher at present. They probably are freelance burglars, who wouldn’t do this if they had a job.

Like the Kathy Bates character in Fried Green Tomatoes, I’m older and have good insurance!

On a different note, I have seriously been downsizing my possessions, taking stuff to Goodwill, selling it to Half Price Books and on Craigslist, and giving it away. My house has become clean, spare, and spacious, and I like that.

This burglary was an extension of downsizing energy, even though it came from someone else liberating me from my stuff. I’ve decided to donate the remoteless TV to Goodwill and go without. I can watch DVDs, movies, and TV shows on my replacement laptop (and will get a backup system at the same time). I’ll rebuild iTunes and can recreate documents as needed.

So. It’s not something I’m moping about. I secured the window and use the alarm consistently. Just one of those things, a more serious contraction than losing the keys, but still, a momentary blip in the big picture.

Universe, if you’re listening, please hold off on the downsizing and boundary violations for a bit, okay?

The three centers of intelligence: working with my gut, heart, and head

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Have you ever noticed that sometimes life seems fairly uneventful, day after day being more of the same?

And then there are those times when a lot of shifts, planned and unplanned, occur?

It’s as if you aren’t even consciously looking for new doors to open. (The unconscious is something else, always working for you, always aware, and it will get your attention when necessary.)

Then you decide to open a new door, and other new doors open unexpectedly.

Yesterday I got a voice mail from my realtor that a buyer may make an offer on my house today and a cable TV show, Sell This House, is interested in the possibility of staging my house, which could increase the value and definitely help the house sell.

Rich choices, huh?

I have never seen this show! I’m looking for someone with cable TV so I can watch it on Saturday morning before agreeing to anything.

And then there’s this: For a long time (actually for most of my adult life), I had a job, and it was my source of income.

Then I became a yoga teacher, which added another source of income.

Here lately, I’ve been selling stuff on Craigslist, stuff that I don’t want to take with me into my downsized, radically simplified life. There’s another (temporary) source of income.

I also recently studied with a Reiki master. I would love to do Reiki treatments on others when I’m ready, and that could also bring in income — although an inner voice tells me to offer Reiki on a donation basis until I hear otherwise, and to do Reiki on myself for 21 days before offering it to others.

In my first week of not being employed (having had a clear NO response to continuing to work where I worked), I’ve felt insecure and looked at classified ads for jobs.

I learned that I have a strong NO response to doing anything technical or long-term and a strong YES response to working with healing, health, food, and writing. Healthy grocery stores, garden centers, supplements, and so on. Even if part-time, temporary, seasonal!

It has been said that we humans have three centers of intelligence in our bodies: our heads, hearts, and guts.

These YES and NO responses come from my gut and not my brain.

NO is a definite contraction, a feeling/sensation close to fear, in my gut/second chakra/hara/dan tien.

YES is an expansion in my heart center.

My head center questions, witnesses, records, informs, integrates. It’s the least powerful center at this time in my life, which is strange.

I have mostly been a head- and heart-oriented person. Having my gut tell me what to do — and override my head — is new. Sometimes my head and heart disagree with my gut, and I experience inner conflict.

Gut feelings are strong and not to be overridden, I have learned.

Sometimes it feels as if I am being steered in a certain direction, and that I don’t have a lot of choice about it. I can just “let go and let God.” I can fight and struggle with it, or I can surrender.

I can only have faith that whatever is steering me is the Universe leading me to my highest purpose. I don’t know right now. That’s the kind of clarity that’s much easier to find in hindsight!

I need a true break from work, even though it is good to learn about the job market. All my centers are okay with this.

And I realized yesterday that instead of one, I may have several income streams all helping to support me financially, all doing things I love to do anyway.

How sweet is that!

I’d love to hear from you about using your head, heart, and gut centers. Which one predominates, and how has this changed?

Grounding, facing fear, Reiki with cats

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Fear

I woke up today and decided to give myself Reiki before I even got out of bed.

This transition from a full-time serious stressful but secure job to a state of limbo — and eventual return to school to study integrative medicine — has included some moments of feeling fear in my gut.

So much is uncertain — when will my house sell? Will I get what I’m asking? Should I go back to work, and if so, when, doing what, working full-time or part-time, or cobbling together several different income streams? Will my plans to buy a vintage trailer to make my new home come to fruition?

That feeling of fear in my gut is old conditioning. I am aware of the situation. There is no emergency. I don’t enjoy the feeling, and I don’t get that it’s helping me in any way.

I intend to explore my fear. Instead of tapping it away, I can inquire within:

  • What am I thinking when it arises?
  • What unconscious beliefs am I holding that I can bring to light, review, and consciously decide to keep, modify, or put up on the dusty shelf in the Museum of Old Beliefs?
  • Can I sponsor a dialog to build empathy, communication, and congruency between my head, heart, and gut?
  • Can I dive into the fear with awareness?
  • Can I breathe into it?
  • Can I go beneath it to discover the essence?

Reiki

Back to doing Reiki in bed. My cat kept wanting to lie on me, like he just couldn’t get close enough. I did Reiki on him first.

My preparation for the session (see yesterday’s post) really energized my feet. I did my session, noticing that my body received energy from my hands strongly at my second chakra, the location of fear, the center of gut intelligence.

Being Grounded

Then I got up, made tea, sat down at the computer, and read an email from Bill Hornback:

Please tell me what “grounded” means to you – I’m doing a little research project for work, where they don’t understand this concept. Thanks!

I emailed Bill this:

Bill–

Grounding used to be a more intellectual concept for me that meant someone was practical, i.e., grounded in reality instead of head up in the clouds.
Now I get that those are metaphors for an actual state of existence.
My acupuncturist gave me some foot exercises to open up the meridians in my feet (so many start or end in the feet), and after a few days, I felt like I was walking around with big balls of light/energy on my feet, like huge houseshoes! I FEEL the energetic connection between my feet and the earth. It’s like magnetism. It’s like every step I take, I’m dancing with the planet.
Hope this helps. I’m blogging about this today!
Mary Ann Reynolds
Yoga Teacher and NLP Coach
512-507-4184
blog: zafureport.wordpress.com
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ~ Howard Thurman

My current wisdom is that I need to take some precious, precious time to work on myself. Doing Reiki self-treatments at this time is pure genius, if I do say so myself.

The work will come, and I will clearly recognize the work that’s right for me, and I will be truly ready to greet it when it does.

The house will sell to loving new owners at good value for us both.

I will land on my feet in a new smaller abode to make my home.

And all will be well, and all will be well, and all will be well.