Wildness

Fear of disapproval keeps most of us in line from the time we are small children. We notice what is pleasing to the adults in our lives and learn to pretzel ourselves to comply.  We acquire behaviors that insure our survival. We notice what lessens the chances for pain and do what it takes to conform to that. We learn to equate conformity with love and acceptance. We forget who we really are.

We each have an inner wildness that represents our authentic selves. It's who we are and how we act when we feel safe to be ourselves.

 Many people use drugs and alcohol to let out that inner wildness. They say things like, it helps me be less inhibited, it lets me loosen up, chill out, let go, hang loose, and other more modern terms. Substances give us permission to reclaim our inner wildness. Then we think it is the alcohol or the drugs that creates the inner wildness and we need it to be ourselves and have fun.

What if that inner wildness lives inside of us and is waiting for us to let it out of its cage of being who we think we need to be to get approval? 

For me creativity is a way to express inner wildness. When I let myself paint or draw or write or cook that authentic me can rise to the surface. It is easiest for me to be wild by myself. When I am not worried about what someone else will think of me, I can pay attention to what feels right and true and do it with wild abandon. 

This is one reason to cultivate true deep friendships. The more I experiment with saying and doing things I might fear are unacceptable with another person, the easier it is to feel safer and more comfortable being myself. I often say to myself, "You can't say that or you can't ask for that."

My wildness now encourages me to be curious. " Is it really true that I can't? What is my evidence that this person will judge me and turn away from me in horror?" 

One of the joys of getting older is that I care less what people think of me and I trust that my true friends love me enough to be able to be myself. It is freeing to let my wildness out more. Expressing more of who I really am supports my confidence.
 When I teach yoga I sometimes get very self-conscious that my style of teaching is too weird for most people. I could tell myself a story that asking students to laugh or skip around their  mats will make them wildly uncomfortable and they will go away. Maybe it's OK to trust that the people who are drawn to what I do will come to my classes? Maybe people who want to express their inner wildness are willing to be uncomfortable? Maybe being uncomfortable is a signal we are leaving our comfort zone. Maybe part of my calling is to express my inner wildness and invite others to do the same?
Maybe that's why being in nature is so attractive to me? Nature is expressing her inner wildness. Nature is wildness. Maybe that's part of why I feel so free in nature and crave being outside in the city and love being in the mountains? Being in nature allows me to get more in touch with my natural self. Owning my natural self is owning my wildness.
My little girl inside knows a lot about wildness. Listening to her and letting her be expressed, I sing and dance and skip more. Her playfulness is part of my wildness. My inner little girl is my wildness coach. I want to let her out and play. Maybe she and I can have a play date that she plans? She wants
to go to the mountains and walk along a stream. She wants to draw and not care what the drawing looks like. She wants to go run on the dirt path near my house, she wants to be silly with a friend. She wants to cook weird food no one else will like and eat it in the middle of the night and pee in the woods. I honor her wildness. I want to reclaim my authentic self and open to all that I am. Maybe part of squishing who we are to create who we think we need to be to be loved is to recognize that we did that and experiment with unsquishing ourselves. What if we can support each other in knowing we are lovable for all of who we are? What if we could trust that being ourselves isn't necessarily hurtful to other people and that we could learn to express our wildness with kindness toward ourselves and others? Any ideas? Let the unsquishing begin!

overeating

I just wrote a whole blog about overeating which has disappeared. I could take my disappointment about my disappearing blog and go eat instead of feeling my feelings. I got a lot of help from writing about the connection between ignoring my need to express myself creatively and overeating. It is easy to tell the muse to buzz off and stuff myself with food.  I ask for spiritual support in writing instead. I am grateful to be writing. Thank you for reading.
I had a skinny mirror for thirty years. I looked much thinner in it.  I returned from a vacation of eating unlimited food for a week and making pretty healthy choices in the midst of overeating at every meal.  I tripped on my suitcase in my closet and fell into my skinny mirror. I wasn't hurt and my skinny mirror shattered all over my closet. Often in my life when I am moving too fast I'll break glass. I have to slow down long enough to clean up the mess. I spent 30 minutes picking up the shards of the mirror again not hurting myself by getting cut. I thought it meant I was ready to accept myself as I am and buy a new mirror. I thought it would help me to stop the overeating I have been doing for a few months and allow myself to write my blog and paint again. I didn't buy a new mirror. I didn't write my blog or paint and I kept overeating.
 Today I returned home after being with my boyfriend. I felt sad to leave him and I walked into my house and went straight to my refrigerator and began eating. When I wrote my book, Eating my way to God, I learned that asking for spiritual support in feeling my feelings was really helpful. I practiced asking myself, Are you Hungry? If I got a yes, I would eat. If I got a no, I would ask myself, What do I need right now? I am grateful that its' wisdom came through me so I can use it right now. I'm not hungry even though I want to eat. What I really need is to feel my sadness. When I breathe into my sadness I can hold myself in love. I can feel my spiritual support holding me in love. It is OK to feel sad about leaving a lovely time. It is Ok to show up for myself about my sadness and not shame myself. The shame would say, you can't even be by yourself well now that you are in a relationship again. All you can do is eat.
 My intention is to accept that I have been overeating and love and accept myself for my sadness. In addition to leaving my boyfriend,  it is me that I am sad about leaving. I ask for help in showing up for myself now. I ask for spiritual support in holding myself in love no matter what. It's my intention to love myself even for the parts of me that I find unlovable.

• I breathe deeply into my sadness and bring kindness to myself. I hold my little girl inside in love about her fear that she is only lovable if someone else besides me is loving her? I can feel my chest open up and my breath deepen more. I say to little Andie, I am here for you. She feels comforted and we both begin to relax. I am so grateful to be able to write about my process as I learn to love myself even for the parts of me that I find unlovable. Mindfulness of  Overeating is an opportunity to notice I need my own attention.  My relationship with food has been a spiritual path leading me to trust myself and my inner process in a deeper way. It is my intention to continue learning and growing and to open to continuing to create a kinder and more nurturing relationship with food.

What do you have to learn from your relationship with food? Would you like to do some writing about what it has brought into your life?

The balance of doing and being

Happy New Year! May 2015 be the year of Love and Laughter for us all. This is my first blog post of the year.
I haven't written since before Thanksgiving. In fact, I realized this week that I hadn't written in a while and wasn't sure how long since I last wrote. I have been really preoccupied to not even be aware of not writing.
It makes sense because I went to Chicago right after I last wrote, to visit my daughter son-in law and grandson for a week. Then they all came to Denver for ten days around the holidays. I am so blessed to be able to spend so much time with my family. I taught one year old Colt how to chant AAHH which is the vowel sound to open the heart chakra. It was blissful to chant with him. We have been continuing our chanting conversation on Face Time since they left. Colt is teaching me about how to love as unconditionally as I have ever experienced. My love for him is pure and simple and without judgment or expectation. It is so healing for me to experience this pure love that asks nothing in return. It makes my soul sing.
Loving Colt in this way has allowed me to feel safe enough to enter a  healthy, new relationship with a grown up male. I have been twitterpated (you know excited and scared and obsessive and happy) and doing a pretty good job of showing up for myself in the process of developing our connection.
It is such a challenge for me to honor my own life when I am in a relationship. I am the queen of self care when I am single. I spend time every day doing yoga and meditation and exercising. I prepare and eat healthy meals and get plenty of sleep. I even do artwork. I love to do all of my disciplines every day and sometimes I can get a little rigid and compulsive. So adding a new relationship into my life I have been cutting myself more slack. Sometimes I miss one of my practices and often I do less of all of them. This permission to be a less than stellar spiritual practitioner translates into kindness toward myself. It has helped me to look at how much I identify my self-worth with my doing. Even if what I am doing is really good for me, it doesn't make me a good person because I do it. I know that I am intrinsically a good lovable person just because I am.  Sometimes it is hard to be aware of that because I am so busy proving to myself that I am OK by doing all the things I do. I have noticed that being, especially the doing nothing variety, can be quite uncomfortable for me. I am learning to be a better hanger outer.
Some people have no problem just hanging out. In fact some people are so good at hanging out they need to light a fire under their butts and do less hanging out in order to get stuff done. Some people, myself included, need to learn to relax and let pleasure in more. Which one are you? I think everyone can be a little of both. It is easy for me to do the things I enjoy doing even if most people wouldn't enjoy them. T When it comes to doing the things I don't enjoy I can be a master procrastinator. Doing things on the material plane that I know I should do are very challenging. For instance, I have been thinking about and avoiding remodeling my kitchen for a decade. I finally am meeting with a contractor on Monday. I guess I could say it took me this long to be ready and to find the right person to work with. That would be a lovely dose of self-compassion. Why not? What would be a lovely dose of self-compassion for you right now? Could you give that to yourself? Sometimes it is simply acknowledging what is.  
A new challenge is now presenting itself.  Can I relax and be and get to know this new person and can I have that translate into living a more relaxed happy life? Where is the balance?  I am open and willing to learning more about the being /doing balance. What have you learned? My intention is that I am embracing balancing doing and being in my life. I ask for spiritual support for that process.
Thanks for listening. It is so great to be talking with you again.

delightfully quirky

Today I was on a walk with the other two women in my singing group Spirit Song. We get together once a season to meditate, chant and share. Today we added a walk to our time together. All three of us are therapists so we can support each other personally and professionally. We have been meeting for four years. Our little group is nurturing to me in body mind and spirit.
One of the women shared about a person she works with who she likes very much. This person has gone through life feeling like she doesn't fit in and that people don't like her. Val told this person she was delightfully quirky and the woman seemed to open to seeing herself in a different way. As she embraced being delightfully quirky she could see herself as being more lovable.
I instantly resonated with  the idea of being delightfully quirky. I think it could be healing to those of us who see ourselves as different and somehow not enough because of that. I like being delightfully quirky instead of there being something wrong with me or having a fatal flaw.
Embracing my quirkiness as part of me that I can hold in Love and be delighted by has been helpful. Try it on and see if you like it.
I have always been a pioneer in how I practice psychotherapy. Every time I learn something new I incorporate the new learning into my work. Over the years my toolbox has expanded to include yoga poses, singing, deep relaxation techniques and many varied therapeutic tools and methods using mindfulness, body awareness and kindness.  I am really living my dream of supporting the people I work with in being fully expressed beings in body mind life and spirit.
The spiritual dimension of my work is about supporting people in being aware of their spiritual support and asking for help in feeling connected to that support. Spiritual support means different things to different people. Spiritual support is whoever and whatever we feel held in love by for being exactly who we are. Take a moment to imagine your spiritual support circle around you. It can be nature based like a tree or a mountain or a river or the ocean. It could be made up of beings alive or not alive, God or goddesses, ancestors, Colors, sensations, sounds, people you know or don't know,
great teachers, loving grandmother figures and whatever other forms your own spiritual support comes in. Ask to be aware of that support and allow yourself the experience of being held in love for being exactly who you are. Today I worked with a woman who was a strong kinesthetic learner. She said she doesn't see anything and her spiritual support is a buzzing sensation in her torso. Your spiritual support might be something you see or sense or hear or feel.
If nothing comes you can embrace the nothing as spiritual support or simply remember a time you felt really loved. Let yourself feel held in love and bring that holding into your daily life. Let yourself take refuge in that love.
My spiritual support is always with me and I have been asking for their help whenever I think of it.
I have been asking for help from spiritual support at the beginning of every session when I do the mindfulness meditation ritual with the person I am working with. I have noticed since I have been asking for help that the quality of my work is changing. I am more willing to take risks in being vulnerable and the work has deepened. I am more willing to be my delightfully quirky self and the people I work with are also. I want to embrace more of what I held as unacceptable and unlovable as delightfully quirky. I am grateful to have spiritual support cheering me on to being more and more of all that I am and allowing me to support the people I work with in being more and more of all of who they are. I am so grateful to be able to share on this blog and to have all of you read my blog. Thanks and Happy Thanksgiving.

hugging the inner child

I have been taking a yoga teacher training course called Yoga For Healing. I am learning how to use a yoga movement screen to assess a person's strength and flexibility in nine yoga poses. When I know more I will be able to recommend poses and exercises to address a person's healing. The main thing I am learning about is engaging my core. This has enabled me to be stronger and more centered. It is coming in handy because my grandson weighs over 25 pounds now. My stronger core awareness will help me to carry him without injuring myself.
Engaging the core means drawing up on the pelvic floor muscles and lifting the inner abdominal muscles called the transverse abdominis (TA) toward the spine. If you want to know where that deep core muscle is bring your hands to your belly at the level of your hipbones with your fingers pointing toward your belly button and cough, then laugh. Coughing and laughing activate the TA muscle. So I have been walking around practicing breathing into my belly (diaphragmatic breathing)and engaging my core by lifting up my pelvic floor muscles and TA muscle in my daily life. With my new found core strength I have begun running again and that is very exciting. I am more of a conscious inhabitant of my own body. When I notice I am lost in my head I can celebrate that I noticed and begin to breathe more slowly and more deeply into my belly. In that way I can treat myself with kindness and welcome myself home. The abdomen is the chakra of the power center. Engaging my core, I feel more empowered.

At the same time I have been doing some reading and thinking, listening to a tape and talking to a friend about the inner child.
I am learning that my ego is my inner child. When she gets angry with me because she wants my attention and I don't listen, I do things that are hurtful to myself like overeating and staying up too late. When I am moving too fast and ignoring my soul what I need is to slow down and pay attention. The soul, the inner child and the ego are all one. Together they are calling us home to the stillness within. None of them are the enemy and all they want is loving attention. When I notice anxiety or unskillful behavior I treat myself with kindness, celebrating that I've noticed. I imagine a loving grandmother saying "of course" and holding me in Love. I ask for support from my spiritual support. That spiritual support can be beings, people in your life, ancestors, animals, mountains, rivers or whatever you feel held in Love by for being exactly who you are.
I draw my circle around myself in the air as a ritual to remind myself of my own sacred space- the space that gets made sacred by bringing myself my own attention. I imagine my spiritual support group in a circle around that circle cheering me on and offering guidance and support about honoring my soul.

 I came to the realization that engaging my core is like hugging my inner child. Bringing my awareness to slow deep breaths, I engage my core and imagine hugging the little girl inside me. I say" I love you" to myself. Bringing together body mind and spirit in this way has been really healing for me. I am grateful to be hugging my inner child. Slowing down and engaging my core and hugging the inner child brings me to the stillness inside where inner peace is waiting. Experiment with this and let me know what you notice. I just figured out how to read comments.

meditation practice

It is so good to be writing again. I needed an evening to myself with nothing planned so I could devote myself to writing my blog. Recently I have had some issues with my password to enter the blog which I finally figured out. I notice if I am patient and keep going and ask for help I am learning my way through basic use of technology. It takes practice.

I wasn't encouraged to problem solve about fixing things when I was growing up. My friends who were encouraged, face technical or mechanical problems with curiosity and confidence. I once asked a male friend how he figured something out that I was stymied by. He said he just kept trying things and he knew he would eventually figure it out, which he did. It takes practice, he said.
 
I have begun to be less timid about trusting my instincts and resisting my impulse to throw my hands up in frustration and defeat especially about technological issues. In addition I was able to figure out which position of my car light would allow it to shut off automatically and get myself to a kirtan or chanting circle without taking one wrong turn. I notice if I keep breathing and let my fear of doing things wrong just be there I seem to know what to do more easily. I have a long history of getting very lost and being really upset with myself. If I can stay present and be kind to myself I have more access to my pre-frontal cortex or the part of my brain that does reasoning.
If I clamp down in self-judgment when I am being self-critical that is a double whammy of being mean to myself about being mean to myself. The key is to practice allowing what I am feeling to be there and being kind to myself. I am continuing to practice mothering myself with love.

I am noticing the more I practice being mindful, which is awareness with acceptance, the easier it is to think clearly. That means allowing what is to be there whatever it is. That is the kind thing to do. So, what I notice about my meditation practice is that the more I practice the easier it is to be mindful in my daily life. I have been listening to an audio tape in my car called Mindfulness and the Brain. In it the anatomy of the brain is explored and the specific benefits of mindfulness meditation according to research are celebrated.
This blog is my pitch about starting or continuing a regular meditation practice.

I was introduced to meditation in my early twenties in a course I took called Silva Mind Control.  I enjoyed learning the techniques and played around with them for a while after the course was over and then stopped. 
When I first returned to meditation and starting practicing regularly, I was motivated by a challenging and destructive relationship with overeating. The intense anxiety I experienced had worsened to the point where I knew I needed attention. In the beginning my mind would go careening off hundreds of times in the few minutes I was attempting to focus on my breath. My anxiety made it hard to breathe let alone focus on my breath. I had a very scary experience with food where I knew I was threatening my life with my behavior and I let go of my relationship with the punishing God I had been brought up with and felt held  by a loving God for the first time. I cried out for help to this new loving god. I cried deeply feeling the pain of my life and I began  to feel my heart open.  In about three weeks of making myself sit every day I could sit still long enough to take a somewhat relaxing bath. This makes it sound like I was a very dirty girl until then. My apartment had only a bathtub with a sprayer. In time I learned to hang out in the tub and relax.  I had also started doing yoga poses every day that I learned from a book by Richard Hittleman.  Gradually my anxiety lessened and I could more easily follow my heart in my ongoing spiritual life journey. Yoga and meditation helped me to save my life. I will always be grateful.

During the almost 36 years since then I have practiced yoga and meditation most days. I have had many benefits. I want to share some of them with you to encourage you to allow yourself to reap these benefits or continue to reap these benefits if you already practice meditation regularly.
I am less reactive and more responsive when I am triggered by something. When I am upset it is easier to soothe myself, feel my feelings and allow them to be experienced and released.  My meditation practice has allowed me to build the muscle of bringing myself back to the present in the midst of whatever, in my daily life. Therefore it is easier to notice when I am focused on worrying about the future sooner and return to right here and right now. Underneath my worry is fear. When I can feel the sensation of the fear in my body and breathe into it mindfully, with awareness and acceptance, I can then feel calmer and ask myself "what do I need?" In this way I am learning to be curious and confident about problem solving. Meditation has given me the confidence to be more patient with myself and trust in my own pace. Therefore it is easier to learn new things.
I am so grateful for my meditation practice. It is the foundation of my life.  If you are new to meditation or to sitting regularly would you be willing to begin with one minute? Sit in a comfortable position and draw a circle around yourself in the air. This circle is a symbol of sacred space that's made sacred by you bringing yourself your own attention. It symbolizes being openhearted and having healthy boundaries at the same time.
Let your eyes close and focus on breathing into your belly for a minute.  You can use a timer or count twelve full deep breaths which is about a minute. When your mind wanders off  as minds do, kindly bring yourself back by refocusing on your breath and welcoming yourself back to your circle. The blessings of a regular meditation practice will eventually lead you to sitting longer. You don't have to push it.

If you already have a regular practice, good for you and congratulations on giving yourself this great gift. Keep up the good work even when you don't feel like it. That doesn't mean not to cut yourself some slack, it means to allow yourself to sit and be with not wanting to sit, sometimes even for a short while. That's why its called a practice because we practice. If you already have a meditation practice consider adding in a time of gratitude at the end. Acknowledge yourself for sitting and being in stillness with yourself. Let yourself feel gratefulness in your heart for whatever you feel grateful for.
Thank you for reading my blog. It is my deep pleasure to share my writing with you. Keep practicing.

Complete Attention

I was attending my regular deeksha blessing group last week. Deeksha blessings are an opportunity to either send  or receive the awareness of the oneness of the universe. I place my hands on another"s head and ask for the oneness of my universe to move through me into the other person's being. I was initiated to be a blessing giver by my friend Ginger who is a oneness trainer. I have found deeksha blessings to be a powerful healing tool during the five years I have been practicing with it.
In the group  before we give each other deeksha blessings we do a guided meditation or chant and then hear the quote of the day. This quote is provided by Shri Amma Bagavan who is the leader of Oneness University in India. His vision is for all people to connect with their inner divine to become aware of the oneness of all beings.

On this day the quote was: Incomplete attention is the root of dissatisfaction. This quote rang very true for me. My mind can go all over the place and I end up having a challenging time focusing on the present. One reason I love my work is because it is easy for me to focus on the person I am working with and not be distracted. I often feel a grat deal of satisfaction from my work. The scattered feeling I get from being lost in my mind chatter, planning or comparing or judging is uncomfortable. I long to be more focused in the present and less dissatisfied. So, I thought, if incomplete attention is the root of dissatisfaction then a way to be more satisfied would be to bring complete attention to whatever was in my experience in the moment.
Complete attention is a path to satisfaction.

So, a practice was born. In meditation, when I inhale I say to myself complete and when I exhale I say to myself attention. When I notice my mind has wandered off I kindly say to myself complete attention and bring myself back to my breath. The structure is lovely and helpful and I have been starting my sessions  and yoga classes with teaching this tool. In my daily life when I remember, I say to myself complete attention to bring my mind back to being present right here and right now. It is a way to mindfully notice I have wandered off without scolding myself. It is helping me to be more willing to completely experience whatever is in my experience without judging it as good or bad or positive or negative. Everything in my experience is worthy of complete attention.

See if complete attention could be a useful tool for you. I notice  as I practice this tool I am feeling less distracted and scattered and more centered. This creates more space for me to feel gratitude.
In this moment I am feeling gratitude for the expansiveness I experience from writing this blog. I am also very grateful to you for reading it. It is so satisfying to be bringing complete attention to your attention. Many blessings, Andrea