Softening the Belly Meditation

/in /by

As the seasons change to either spring or autumn depending upon where you are in the world, it’s time to pause. It’s also a good time to evaluate as to whether you’ve gone into empathetic distress.

There’s plenty to be concerned about in our world. And it’s a good time to rest. Pull back, take a breath. If that suggestion seems out of touch then I’d ask you how does it serve for you or me to be in ongoing empathetic distress? Brain science and neuroscience have proven that focused breathing and consistent rest slows down our trauma and trigger responses.

Take rests as much as you can: even between breaths there’s a rest. The turmoil we are in will last for some time to come so it’s wise to know ourselves and pace ourselves.

The message from the famous Oracle at Delphi is “know thyself” and “nothing in excess”. This is timeless guidance for our world today.

Listen in for 10 minutes.

Knowing Yourself Whole

/in /by

An audio version of this blog post is here.

“Self help books (or videos) are like car repair manuals: you can read them all day but doing so doesn’t repair anything. Working on a car means rolling up your sleeves and getting under the hood, and you have to be willing to get dirt on your hands and grease beneath your fingernails. Overhauling emotional knowledge is no spectator sport; it demands a messy experience of yanking and tinkering that comes from a limbic bond. If someone’s relationships today bear a troubled imprint, they do so because an influential relationship left its mark on a child’s mind. When a limbic connection has established a neural pattern, it takes a limbic connection to revise it.” “A General Theory Of Love” Lewis, Amini & Lannon, MDs

In the past few weeks I’ve received emails, listened to clients or read articles filled with despair: people seeking to be free of suffering. There’s been an uptick in the wish to get free, along with frantic searches. In the process they’ve read every self help book or viewed videos across the internet. And they’ve come up with a painful hodgepodge of self diagnosis. I call it “painful” because the self diagnosis is based on just enough psycho emotional knowledge to deem themselves as insufficient. There’s not a shred of self compassion: after all why else would they still be in psychic or physical pain, they must be failing in their quest!

What propels our quest too often is the assumption we are not enough and that we live in a reward and punishment system.

Once the pain in our lives has reached a crescendo, it often spurs us to begin our search and that is good. What’s also good is that we stop our search somewhere. Just. Stop. It’s good to give ourselves a place to land. It’s good to also appreciate that each method, technique or “life hack” has its strengths and limits. At different times we need different kinds of support but to avoid committing altogether is also a form of suffering. When we recognize that, we could then commit ourselves to going deep rather than going wide. The process of healing remains the same as it always has: “the way through, is in”.

At some point in our healing quest, we need dare to acknowledge the relief of how small, simple steps add up to larger shifts over time. It’s not as sexy, it doesn’t have the same heady buzz and it’s not Instagram worthy.

Simplification requires discernment, letting go of much of the “wellness bling” and accepting that life contains suffering: suffering is not a moral failing, it’s a part of life and it’s an invitation to learn something about ourselves and how to experience agency within constraints. Those of us who have a life that allows us to transform our suffering into wisdom have an obligation to do so. At some point it’s not just our own private little project. We too can help others to navigate the chaos and complexities of our times. If we want a world that reflects wholeness, we need to commit ourselves to knowing ourselves whole.

Self Compassion Once Again

/in /by

You can listen to an audio version of this blog post here.

What is self compassion and what gets in our way of accessing it? It seems like an elusive concept. Most of us have not been raised or educated to appreciate self compassion yet, I’ve found it to be a potent medicine.

In conversations with those whom I work and from my own experience, self compassion gets confused with self pity or self indulgence.

Self Pity Isolates Us

Self pity is part of a reward/punishment system within myself that tells me that I have failed or life has failed, that I deserve to suffer and I am not worthy of compassion. Offering compassion from the point of view of the hardened heart, is seen as weakness and potentially a threat to what little protection I perceive myself as having. And self pity deserves our compassion.

Self Compassion Is Based On Our Shared Humanity

While my circumstances may be unique, the suffering I endure is not. Somewhere across this big wide world others suffer the way I have. That kind of reflection is not to diminish or bypass my experience; it is an opportunity for me to break the trance of isolation. A more subtle idea is that “soft hearted” self compassion might lead me into condoning others’ bad behavior. But the practice of self compassion offers me time and space to sort out my own experience. It protects me from being rushed by others’ expectations or timing. Self compassion reveals I can trust myself.

Above all else, self compassion is a wellspring of inclusivity we carry within ourselves and for those of us who can work in this way, we learn, with time, to include more of the rejected, neglected, denied parts of ourselves into our hearts. The more of ourselves we are able to invite back into our hearts, the more contentment we experience: we are not waiting for the world to be different. We can free ourselves and free others.

I’ll end with a simple practice of embodied self compassion inspired by an excerpt from Antonio Mercado’s poem called “Last Night As I Was Sleeping”

“Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.”

Take a moment to let that image land in your heart and body. Imagine offering “white combs and sweet honey” to yourself.

Change and Beauty

/in /by

“The world is as beautiful as it ever was. It is changing, but then it always has. This is a good time to change and remain beautiful with it.”

This quote from Alice Walker has been lying on my desk for about a week. Reading her book “We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness” is worth your time. And I love her invitation here to allow ourselves “to change and remain beautiful with the world.” What is it to allow yourself “to change and remain beautiful with the world”?

I’ll leave you with that contemplation.

“We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness”, Alice Walker, The New Press (11/06)

True Contentment

/in /by

These are challenging times and here’s the test of these times: Do we allow our contentment, our joy, to be determined by outer circumstances only?

On a recent trip which took me through Los Angeles International Airport, the Pharrell Williams’ song “Happy” played while I was at the boarding gate. It is a contagious piece of music and a group of us broke into spontaneous dance. It was the medicine of the moment. During the flight I thought about what it is to experience happiness or contentment in harsh times.

Your contentment and mine is an inside job. It is an inside job because we already carry on the inside what we keep seeking outwardly. What appears as obstacles to our contentment is at the heart of all inner work and just happens to be what I love to explore with people.

The” Logical” Client

One person I work with is a scientist. She tells me that according to her “evidence based” approach to life, she is unloveable. I gently let her know that I only work with lovable people: this caught her by tearful surprise as she realized she was one of those people!

One of the aspirations of supported inner work is to assist people in discovering or rediscovering their own goodness. When we reclaim or discover our inherent worthiness what naturally follows is responsibility for our own contentment.

Yes, there is plenty to be concerned about these days. And recognizing that our inner peace is not dependent upon the ever changing tides of life, is freedom from unnecessary suffering.

It is possible to be deeply touched by the aches and pains of the world and not be upended by the chaos. This is a necessary skill for these times.

Authenticity

/in /by

It’s the beginning of a new year, at least according to the Gregorian calendar and with that comes an almost compulsive need to make “resolutions”.

I do not engage in resolutions nor do I work with the usual intention setting, mind maps, vision boards, or other similar processes because they interfere with the natural flow of my creativity. To those who benefit from these practices I say: “Wonderful!” To those who do not I say: “Trust yourself!”

It’s taken time for me to understand and appreciate my own creative process and I write about it because I know from my own experience that it’s easy to succumb to cultural norms and leave ourselves behind.

To “be ourselves no matter what they say”, marks a defining and defying moment into adulthood but younger parts of ourselves may be left behind in an unnamable anxious tug between belonging and authenticity.

“If I am myself, will I be all alone? “Will people still love me?” “Will I be safe?” These are universal concerns and if these concerns are not skillfully brought up to conscious awareness and transformed, we will find ourselves in an ongoing struggle with what feels like an irreconcilable task.

Recently in a talk I heard from Gabor Mate, MD, known for his expertise in trauma, said that so much of our “small-t trauma” is the result of our perception that we are caught between the need for attachment and our wish to be authentic. Authenticity and attachment are basic human needs. When we allow ourselves to be emotionally honest with where we stand in relationship to our attachment needs, our relationship to authenticity becomes clear.

Ideally we discover that we can be authentically attached. In the journey, is the revelation.

Transitions

/in /by

Times of transition are upon us and they will be for some time to come. Times of transition such as we are experiencing are not meant to be comfortable; they are chaotic, dangerous and workable.

These times are workable. What do I mean by that?

I used to think “workable” meant a happy ending, everyone gets what they want and everything is resolved. Workability for me now is more about self compassion, being humble enough to acknowledge my need for support and accepting that some things are never “resolved”.

In childbirth, there is a phase called “transition”. It is an experience of heightened sensitivity and demand. A skilled midwife must know how to support a woman in a time of chaos through the urges to push or give up.

The comparison to what we are going through in our world at this time is unmistakable and the urge to push through or give up is habitual. We need our inner and outer midwives to guide us with fierce compassion.

What makes situations workable in times of transition is an invitation to notice how do we meet uncertainty? How do we find freedom within limitations? Do we ignore uncertainty? Is our style to try to control what’s happening? Is our habit to catastrophize?

Being aware with self compassion…

…of how we meet such times opens us to more choices in our capacity to respond. Or as somatic teacher Moshe Feldenkrais put it: “When you know what you are doing, you can do what you want.”

To know we can learn how to be at choice in our responses is true freedom.

The Light You Carry

/in /by

Recently I was prompted to reflect upon something that I was passionate about as a child. The memory that immediately surfaced was a young one who loved to be outside in the warm summer sun cracking stones open.

I was endlessly fascinated by what was on the “inside”: what sparkled in the sunlight as I turned each stone this way and that in my small hands.

As I trace through the decades now I realize what has always mattered most to me is the light on the inside of us as well as what illuminates all life: what blocks it, what invites it, what nurtures it. Little did I know all those years ago that I was getting a glimpse into my life’s work!

Here’s what’s most important for you to know: In times of outer darkness, the light you carry, remains. It is always there, even when you think it isn’t.

Just like the sparkling flecks inside those warm stones, the light you carry is there inside you. The guidance of ancient wisdom texts says that the most important thing we can do right now is nurture our inner light: to disengage from what frustrates us and persevere.

For those of us in the northern hemisphere, this inner awareness aligns with autumn and winter: the seasonal round of faith that the light will return, that spring will come once again.

The Art of Failing

/in /by

There’s a Japanese proverb that says “Fall down seven times, get up eight”.

Between “failing” and “falling” there is only one letter difference. From my audio book “Freedom From Habits of Body & Mind(c)”  I write:

“We live in times of great instability. For many there is not much consistency. There are both inner and outer circumstances that can knock us off our feet, literally or figuratively. There is no such thing as always being stable or ‘in balance’…there is no once and for all. We experience balance because we learn how to make friends with change…inner or outer.”

To Fail is a Creative Act

One of the teachings I’ve gleaned from my partner who is an engineer is that he spends many of his days experimenting and failing. I’ve learned that when I am terrified of failing, there’s no room for much else to happen: the insight, the glimmer of “ah ha!”, or humor has vanished, there’s just me in my frustration.

Perfectionism is not a big part of my personality but when it strikes I know it is where creativity goes to die!

The secret to vitality and creativity is being willing to experiment, being willing and able to slow down and to be aware. These little moments illuminate what’s actually happening. These are skills we can acquire and apply anytime.

In Japanese culture there’s the “nobility of failure”.

This idea says that when we are failing we are most vividly alive. It’s a kind of Zen compliment: “Look how many times that person has failed, they must be truly alive!” Implied in the failure is a willingness to learn.

There’s a corresponding idea in the world of bodily movement: with each step we take we are falling. In between one foot leaving the ground and the next one arriving, we are in midair.

Our brains compensate for the perception of falling. If we slow down we see how we embody the constant experience of shifting from instability to stability and back again in every step.

“We experience balance because we make friends with change inner or outer.”

Safety

/in /by

“The most important thing for you to know is this: There is nothing that has ever happened to you that damages, weakens, or stains the essence of who you are. No negative experience great or small can harm your true nature. To rest into the truth of that offers both safety and possibilities.”

When we are aware of our body sensation, we know when we feel safe, we know when we don’t, and we know when we override our need for safety. There’s the kind of physical safety that comes from an obvious act like locking a door and there’s the kind of subtle safety that is about felt sense.

What do we become aware of when we turn toward that felt sense? How do we meet those sensations?

It’s complex this need for safety but the bottom line is there’s no real inner or outer changes without safety. Noticing this tells us much about ourselves and our relationship to safety.

There’s no “life hack” that substitutes for a well developed sense of safety.

We are complex beings. There’s no one solution for the challenges we face in life. If we buy into the idea that there is one theory or method that is going to solve all our troubles then we shift from wholism to reductionism.

True safety provides the trust our nervous systems require to open to the nourishment offered. The non verbal connection that flows back and forth between people is called “limbic resonance”. (I do not believe that this kind of resonance is limited to humans but for the sake of brevity, I’ll let it be.)

“If someone’s relationships today bear a troubled imprint, they do so because an influential relationship left its mark…when a limbic relationship has left its mark, it takes a limbic connection to revise it.”
(“A General Theory of Love”, Lewis, Amini, & Lannon)

I think of it as two nervous systems dancing with one another and it is a practice. It requires time and awareness for these revisions in our nervous systems to take hold and reveal new options, to reveal what’s possible.