we must feel before we can heal.

Healing and feeling go hand in hand. When we hide our feelings, or emotions, we don’t feel them. When we block them out, they dissappear from us. We go day after day in this way, blocking, hiding and running away from these feelings that cause us pain.

What would happen if we finally stopped the running? We would hurt. We would experience the pain we had been running from all these years. It would engulf us like a foggy day and we wouldn’t be able to see around it or through it until we dealt with it. But, what else would happen? We would heal.

Our wounds need to heal. It’s hard because emotional wounds aren’t visible to the naked eye. They are deeper and are ingrained in our body, our muscles, our connective tissue. They are stored, waiting for us to release them. In the meantime they cause us physical pain (tight hips, hamstrings, pelvis) and they only get worse the longer we let them sit and fester. We are all wounded. We are all here to learn, grow and deal with this karma that has overtaken us. We are ready for it, we were made for it, but we are afraid of it. Let’s stop being afraid. I want to heal. I want to grow. I want to remove this pain from my body that keeps pulling on my muscles and bones and I want to stretch deeper into myself and release it.

Healing is amazing. When you let it happen, when you let it release, when you finally let go, then you see…you see clearer than ever before and it all seems so much easier. We are afraid of what we hold on to, but are not afraid of what we let go. When you release something you have been holding onto, most likely you will shed a tear – maybe two – maybe a river’s worth. It is all worth it. You will remove the fog, your tears will be the rain covering the blue sky. Once the rain is gone, the rainbow appears and the pot of gold is you…your open heart.

Release. Let go. Be Free… Just Be. “you”

letting go

We adopted a cat. We saved it from the life it had before and offered it a home. Our cat is getting to know us and we are getting to know her. I can feel her energy and can see the beauty behind her eyes, but something else is also coming out in me.

When I look at her I keep getting flash backs to my past. Images are coming to me that I wish I could forget and that I need to “let go”. When I was younger people I knew from school would do awful things to cats for fun. Our town had a lot of stray cats, but no animal deserves to be abused as those animals were. I wasn’t around to see the abuse, but just hearing it has effected me to this day and is obviously ingrained in my being on a level not yet reached or tapped in to.

Now how do I release this stored energy that is altering my consciousness? How do I let it go? When these feelings or images come up, I listen to my body, or rather I feel it. I open up to the sensations in my muscles to find the area of connective tissue that is harnessing these old feelings and emotions that I never knew I had. Once I am able to feel the area where the emotions are, I then know where I need to open up.

After listening to my body I now know where to focus my energy and to direct my practice. This is just another experience that life is giving me to enable me to let go and move on. When we don’t let go, we get stuck. When we are stuck, we can’t grow. When we can’t grow, we will continue to relive these experiences over and over again until we finally do open our eyes and “see” what has been presented to us. My eyes are opening, are yours?

beer & yoga?

It’s 5:30 in the morning and I’m starting my yoga practice. Blame it on the time of day, mood I was in, or some freaky strange understanding of the universe, but during this yoga practice I found a lot of comfort and understanding in an empty beer bottle on the table.

I was beginning my sun salutations and was sweeping up from uttanasana to tadasana and the green beer bottle caught my eye. It is solid, empty and didn’t have a cap on it. It was open, yet grounded. It reminded me of my spine. I then started watching the bottle as I continued my practice, and gazing at the bottle enabled me to straighten my spine, ground my feet and reminded myself to open my upper chakras to receive – just like the bottle. I then began to imagine the symbols of the chakras lined up on the bottle with the 7th chakra being the top.

This empty beer bottle became representative of my spine, my body, my chakras. Having something to focus on during my practice was a wonderful way to still the mind, and a wonderful way to focus on the properties of my chakras and being stabilized in my postures, yet open to receive also.

When I finished my practiced I imagined myself filling the bottle up with my negative energies and tensions and then taking the bottle outside to smash it on the ground. I felt a strong urge to use this vessel to release my stored tensions and energy that needed released from my body and transfered to the earth. Maybe there is a part of me that needs to be shattered to be woken up, or maybe all of us need a vessel of our own to transfer the “holding” we have be holding on to for too long. Either way, this experience was wonderful and altering to my practice and beer bottles will never be the same for me again Find your bottle, find your vessel and release and restore. OM.

What’s love got to do with it?

So many times we close ourselves off to the people that matter the most to us. We shut down, we close up, but why? What are we protecting?

Why is it that we think they (as in those close to us) are the only one’s who can see our “soul”? What we don’t realize is that everyone, strangers included can see our souls, our true colors. We are so afraid of being open and exposing ourselves that we close-up and deny ourselves the ability to love and be loved.

So what are we protecting ourselves from with this fear? We aren’t protecting we are denying. We are so afraid of what may turn out, what may happen, what it may feel like and what others may say, that we are stopping and preventing something that could be the best thing that’s ever happened to us.

Take a deep breath and open the tightness in your heart and shine that open loving space towards everyone you meet today. There are no boundaries, there are no blocks or obstacles when there is love.

With a tear in my eye for the holding I’ve done, I open up to you and love.

time

Time away from everything–family, children, work, internet, bring clarity to what is desired, missed and wanted.

It’s funny how getting away from it all can bring it all into better focus. Sometimes we try too hard, get too close and can’t see what our energy is doing for us.

A break, a pause, a breath can open up the clarity that we need within to bring us back on our path of trueness.

Travel on, take a trip to the coast, mountains, a shaded tree in your backyard or a local tea shop. Take a break and breathe.

shake it up

After just embarking on a major life altering, cross-country move, I am able to reflect on what was learned, experienced and felt. The final days before the move were filled with mixed emotions by all. Getting together with old/new friends and having to say goodbye are always uneasy times. Something that really hit me hard though, was realizing how sad I was not having spent more time with these people before the move.

After hanging out for one last time with these friends I barely knew, I found a deep connection that I never realized was there. I left the gatherings wishing that I had gotten to know them sooner, but then realized that it was the forced action of the move that had spurred our energy together in the first place.

Without something dramatic (like a move) occurring in our lives, we become stagnant and resist change. The move jumbled things up a bit and allowed new energy to flow in and around my situation. It rejuvinated me and created new friendships that are deeper than expected. I guess you could say it “shook things up a bit”, and obviously that’s exactly what I needed.

I will never forget the individuals that were apart of that action. They “shook me up a bit” and left an everlasting impression on me that I will truely never forget. Their energy is radiating out of me now because I was blessed to have been touched by them even if it were for a brief moment in time.

When I look out at nature (which is my inspiration for life), I realize that it “shakes it up” a bit too from time to time. Think of those major storms, catastrophes, beautiful sunsets. Think of all of those moments that take your breath away and make you realize that you are truly breathing and alive. Think of those moments, and the next time it effects you…smile. Smile and realize that you have just been “shaken” and now need to be stirred and enjoyed! Drink up your life It’s a toast from me to you, thank you.

Connection to self

How connected are you to your inner-self?  Would you say that you are very connected, or very little connected?  When you think of your inner-self, do you consider it complete, full, or do you feel that something is missing?  For the most part, I feel pretty good about my connection.  I can usually see when I am acting seperate from my true self and need to connect to make good decisions, but I wish I could dissolve this difference that I feel between the two.  

When I am connected to my true self, the self inside myself, the self that is always there and pure; I feel happier and more content than I have ever felt before. Butterflies come over me and I feel gloriously happy. This feeling may only last one minute (maybe even seconds), but it is what keeps me going. The ego (the mind) keeps us from staying connected. We are distracted continuously and we must work to keep the focus on what is true, instead of the illusion of what is true. The person we are inside of our body is the person that we really are. So why is it so hard to stay connected to it? Meditation can get us there, yoga can get us there, doing what you love and staying true to yourself can also get you there; but we must work on keeping it.  

We are here on planet earth for a reason. We have a body and mind for a reason. Do you know what your reason is? I believe we are here to learn. Learning incompasses so many things. What we are here to learn depends on the individual, but the journey is the same…learning. Making mistakes and learning from them. Making choices and learning from them. Learning that you have concequences for your actions and making the correct choices to avoid those consequences. That is life.  That is what we are all here to do. The closer our connection to our true self, the easier it is…so why do we fight it? 

Why do so many of us(and myself included at times) fight connecting to our inner-self? What are we afraid of? Maybe our inner-self, the knowing self, already knows what we are here to do and we are subconsciously afraid of that. Maybe our mission isn’t easy (how could you learn if it was) and maybe we are afraid to know what we are about to put ourselves through. Maybe the learning we are here to do is to get through all of life’s challenges and come out finding our true self. Maybe that is the experience after all?  Is that it?  Is that all? That sounds easy enough…right? Meditate for hours on end and find inner and outer peace  - right? If it was that easy we would all be doing it, but it’s not. And I think that’s how it’s supposed to be. If it was easy, would we do it? No, the ego would take it for granted and would assume “been there, done that!” and we would move on to the next thing, the next challenge. 

So life is a challenge. It is hard. I wish it was easy, but if climbing a mountain was easy you wouldn’t feel so great when you reached the top. I am striving to reach the top of my mountain. I want to climb it and find my inner peace and hold on to it for as long as I can, but when I lose it, I want to take the journey and find it again. I will continue to do this as long as it takes to shorten up the length of time between finding me and me. I will keep working, because I’m living and I wouldn’t have it any other way Love to you!

What love language are you speaking?

At the airport I was approached by a beautiful, older woman who gave me a wonderful (much needed) compliment on my parenting with my children.  She was so warm and inviting and it was wonderful to have a stranger come up and give me such a warm compliment.  It made my day! We began talking and she asked, “Do you know your love language?”.  I was flabbergasted–what is that? She then told me about the book “The Five Love Languages” by Dr. Chapman, and told me that I needed to read it for my relationship with my husband and my children. Being the person I am, I immediately got out my phone and put a note to remind me to get that book.  This was obviously something I needed to read.  To have this stranger come out of the blue to tell me this, was just the sign I needed.  

About 2 weeks later I was able to get the book and I read it in one sitting!  It was fascinating and powerful!  It explained why I feel the way I do and why I relate to people the way I do. Learning the way that you respond to love allows you to love easier.  Now that I know my husband’s love language, it is easier to communicate with him.  Before I was using my love language to talk to him, and he is different than me.  Now I understand, and can appreciate that we are different and need different things.  It’s very powerful to think of the world in this way.  If everyone read this book and learned the love languages of the people around them, then we would all be able to relate easier and better to each other.  Now that I understand what language is best with my kids, I can understand why they feel the way they do and also why they react the way they do when they are not getting their love language spoken to them. 

This book will forever change the way I look at my life. It will also help me work with people around me because it creates another level of understanding when you know how to connect with people on a deeper level.  Thank you Dr. Chapman for your valuable research and thank you dear woman from the airport!  I will never forget your kind words, beautiful aura and wonderful recommendation.  It has changed my life, and I hope it helps all of you too.

Ready to see.

Picture this…you are seventeen and you are out with your friends doing something you know you shouldn’t be doing. It’s the end of the night, and you are getting ready to arrive at home. You know what’s going to happen. You know you are going to have to face your parents…and you really don’t want to.  

That feeling, that feeling of knowing what is coming next, and also knowing it is good for you, but maybe you just aren’t ready for it. It’s a feeling of nervousness, uneasiness and uncomfortablness all in one. Augh.

Now you aren’t seventeen anymore (well some of you may be), but has this feeling ever overcome you before? I have noticed this feeling coming up in regards to meditation and my yoga practice. I practice daily, but at times in my practice I find it is hard to endure silence. I know it’s what I need, and I know it’s good for me, but I try and find any way not to do it. I’m nervous, uneasy and uncomfortable with it…I’m afraid too. But why? Why would this come up for me. I’ve meditated for years, not the most stable practice at times, but I’ve done it one way or another. But for some reason at certain times in my life I fight it. Instead of sitting on my mat in peace, I will sit down with the tv on…I know!! – That is not yoga!! Augh! I’ve admitted it though, here and now for all of you to read. I don’t know what it is, but sometimes I feel like I “can’t” do yoga in silence. I guess I’m afraid of what I will see or learn about myself. So, what am I afraid of? What am I dreading to learn about myself. What issue do I not want to deal with? It’s like I’m seventeen again. I’m afraid to go home. I’m afraid to go inside myself and hear what my soul wants to tell me. That’s sad. That’s scary and what’s scarier is that is normal for most people in this world. We must inherantly know that our souls are there and are wiser than our physical being. We must know deep down that we have a soul, and also have an ego(our mind). We must already know that we are not the ego, but yet are afraid to face who we really are, our soul.  

I’m getting butterflies in my heart center as I type this. I have made the connection to the real issue I have been dealing with off and on for a year now. I have been afraid to listen to my soul, my own self, for far too long. I hear myself in bits and pieces because up until now I have been afraid to listen completely and fulily. I can’t wait to listen now. I want to hear what I’ve been afraid of all this time. I want to know what i’ve been hiding from. I want to know what i’ve been missing for too long. Our parents were right, we did always know what we did wrong. We did always know why we did it, but we were afraid to listen to ourselves. We were afraid to not listen to our ego’s and our friends’ egos. We were afraid, and it takes a long time and a lot of mistakes to wake us up. Rub your eyes and allow them to open. You are now awake and are ready to see.

the right place at “someone’s” right time

When you look at life do you do it through open eyes or through narrow-minded eyes?  Are you opening yourself up to see everything around you or are you only looking right in front of you – through goggles (foggy, unfocused, prescription goggles).  Life has a “funny” way of always working out, doesn’t it?  

Sometimes you can be living your life for some reason or goal, and then “bam” you realize that goal or reason had nothing to do with your advancement…but it did get you on your journey.  It got you started, but it wasn’t what helped you finish.  Confused?? I sure was, but I think I understand it more now.  

I look at life like a book.  You have heard the statement “life is an open book”, well I agree.  I believe that this life we are living right now is our novel we are creating.  We create chapters along the way and if you listen to yourself, you can hear when you have finished a chapter  and a new one is ready to begin.  It’s liberating to think that we are learning at all times, and these learning experiences are here to build us and make us stronger or wiser so that we can have the most interesting, fulfilling chapter in our lives.  

Speaking from experience now, I was pushed into moving across the country for my husband’s job.  Initially I delt with many different emotions (fear, sadness, excitement, nervousness, anger).  Moving to a place you didn’t necessarily want to be and being taken there not for yourself, but for the dreams of someone else can be quite hard to find your own place – at least it was for me.  I understand how life works, and I knew there was something that I was supposed to do in this new place too, but I was searching too hard in narrow-minded foggy goggles to accurately “see” what I was here for.  

It has now been over a year and I know why I was here.  I woke up one day and had a feeling that my book had just shut.  I had just finished a chapter.  For some reason I felt “done” here and I didn’t quite know why.  I hadn’t done anything remarkable.  I was still dealing with many different emotions in this place that I am in.  We had made no plans to leave and I wasn’t starting anything new…so what happened?  

While I was here I reconnected to an old friend. It was wonderful to rekindle an old relationship, and even better to see how wonderful this relationship was.  Shortly after we reconnected she began to go through a very hard time in her life.  I was her “rock” and I was there for her whenever she needed me.  I did nothing more than any other great friend would have done.  I listened and offered the advice that naturally flowed through my system.  It was nothing I had to strive to do, or even think about…I just felt it.  It felt amazing to help her, but it also just felt natural.  Since all of this began, she has now found herself again and is once again happy.  It was a long road, but she is excited again about her life and her future and will continue to follow her heart and allow herself to grow and love.  I’m so proud of my friend!  I feel so lucky to have been there for her and to see her evolve into this amazing being that follows her heart and lives true to herself….and that’s it!  That was my chapter…strange.  

So I spent so much time trying to figure out what I was supposed to do here…and what happened?  I did it.  It just wasn’t to benefit me necessarily.  I did benefit, but most of all I helped her.  I was drawn here by means outside myself to help her.  We reconnected right at the moment that she needed.  We are not alone on this earth.  We are all connected for some reason we may not know right now, and maybe we will never know (maybe we don’t need to always know why).  This is an amazing realization for me.  It reaffirms the idea of following your instincts. Follow your path, even though it may not be straight.  It may curve, wind and roll up and down hills for what seems like an eternity, but in the end…peace.  I was drawn to this location not for myself, but for her.  I grew and am now more aware of life and it’s ability to act “funny” sometimes.  What I am drawn to I will follow.  I will let the world lead me on my path because I know it will end up for the greater good of the world and I am completely ok with that.  I will follow my heart and open it to new experiences and life.  I love. I be. I’m me and that’s good.