This year has been the year of letting go, from sending the boys to college to releasing old anger to changing how I see everyone I meet. The empty nest and cleaning up my old baggage are topics for other times, today's thoughts are about seeing each person as a gift to be opened. So many sages say be childlike in your appreciation of the world, from Jesus (Matt 19:14 "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.") to Rumi (Chew quietly your sweet sugarcane, God-Love, and stay playfully childish.), but how to find that in my regular life?
I've been given many examples this year, as if this was one of the biggest lessons for me to learn, right now! My current favorite is what a good friend told me this week over coffee. She has a beautiful, pure simplicity of spirit that is such a great antidote for my way too serious approach.
I can't remember what we were talking about, but I asked her how she kept the awareness of God in her everyday life. She said that as she walked the dog or ran errands, she talked to everyone as if they were a person and made them smile. At first I completely dismissed what she said (how embarrassing!). This is way too easy. I do that all the time. It's what I love, surely there must be more?
Just a few minutes later I realized that ease of talking to people is a gift, which means I was given it to better the world around me. I don't have to start a religious organization or a major charitable foundation to make the world a better place, just talk to the bank tellers, the librarians and the baggers at the grocery, all of my favorite people in the world. Now I know I've said this both here and here, but I am a very slow learner of the obvious.
Who knew, just being myself is enough. The picture above is from Easter five years ago. My niece is completely happy with her dress, white shoes and a few Easter eggs. It is the little things we do that creates the big changes we all hope for. I hope you have a great week, just being the divinely created child you already are.
One thing I love about life is that the more observant I am, the more interesting life is. It may be about why the birds are nesting right there in my flowers or why everyone reacts differently to the same occurrence. There is always something to make me question. Like, is the picture at left a self-portrait, or is it just the forest floor?
This act of observation is so important when you are gauging progress. Unlike building a house, baking a cake or making a quilt, self-improvement has few physical, quantifiable results. I do all this "work," sometimes don't feel any different when I finish, but then I start to notice how differently I feel or behave. My mentor calls it "gathering evidence."
I'll give you an example. One of my current "works in progress" is to be internally justified, to look only inward and upward for opinions. To put it bluntly, I cared way too much about what everyone else thought about me and let that care rule my actions. It was high time to take my life back. In a combination of a Brain Gym balance (with homeplay- a daily practice to reinforce the goal) and reiki, I have made great strides.
Here is where it gets curious. Recently I have been to several large gatherings of people I really enjoy and have known for some time. I found myself getting irritated with lots of people, not just one or two. Why was that? I like these people, right?
What I discovered after sitting with the question was, yes, I like these people. Before the work, rather than admitting they were human and did irritating things (which we all do), I had suppressed my feelings and made them perfect. I wanted to get along so much that I wasn't honest with myself.
This being internally justified requires generosity, allowing everyone to be there own crazy self, while staying true to my own crazy self. Being authentic allows others to be so as well. As Rumi said "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."
Let me just start with, I love crazy people! People who go their own way, do their own thing and bring back interesting lessons to us. Colin Wright definitely qualifies. Every four months he moves to a new country that is chosen for him by his blog readers- no kidding, doesn't even choose the place himself. I just love it!
After seeing his TED talk, I was poking around his website and came upon his book Personal Branding, subtitled "The least you need to know." As indicated by the subtitle it is a light, funny overview of personal branding from self assessment to grooming. I just had to share with you his description of the wrong crowd.
"...it can be equally important not to get sucked in to a bad crowd. A bad crowd consists of anyone who will bring you down personally or professionally. This includes business associates with bad reputations, frenemies who like to see others fail so they look better by comparison, significant others with incurable emotional issues, and anyone who has ever stabbed you in the back. Always forgive, never forget and definitely don't let them back into your crowds."
This week my focus has been on organization and personal growth. Both of my boys are off to college and that set off a whole array of changes. I never realized how I used their schedules to orient my life until I started showing up late for everything (aak!). I needed to impose some structure to make all this freedom meaningful.
I started poking around the internet, looking for a few suggestions. My first stop was Lifehacker. It is a great website. They collect 'tips and downloads for getting things done.' The day I looked Bullet Journaling was the first tip, who knew?
The picture is a capture from the YouTube video about how to bullet journal. It is a very clear technique for capturing events, to dos, ideas and all of the things that make your life run smoothly. Ryder Carroll, the developer of the bullet journal, has given us the fruit of his personal quest for organization.
Pros: I love the use of different shapes and signifiers to designate tasks, events, ideas and urgency.
Cons: He depends on very small handwriting, the black is a bit boring, and I need more emphasis on goals and future planning.
This method is close to what I am looking for, but doesn't quite address all of my needs.
The other system that I really liked was the Women's Success Planner. It is a very well designed system with goal setting, monthly tasks and weekly focuses. Each quarter has a separate planner with loads of features. It is very well made with a woman's challenges in mind.
The only problem for me is how well organized it is. Right now I'm not quite sure what my life looks like, but I'm sure I want more flexibility.
With gratitude to both developers, I created my own system for the time being. It has the features I like from both, a numbered list of daily tasks, weekly and monthly goals, recycled paper and lots of colored pens. It has been fun turning the challenge of an empty nest into an opportunity to consciously invent my life. Here is the current result, can't wait to see what comes next.
For this post, the title says it all. I went to the doctor last week and discovered I am a whole inch taller (can you hear the wild crazy celebration on my end?). It all began a year and a half ago. I attended a workshop with Sianna Sherman that started an amazing transformation, and now I'm a whole inch taller (fireworks and great rejoicing!).
How did I do this, one might ask? It is both easier and harder than you think. Just put your mind on the base of your spine. Sounds easy, but look at Sianna in nataranjasana (lord of the dance pose) at the left. If I were to move into that pose without thinking, I'd put one arm up, one back and grab a foot. That is what it looks like, but not what it is. Nataranjasana is an expression of joy, of hiddenness, of openness that begins deep within the body and ends up looking like the picture.
We're going to explore the spinal focus in a much easier pose, tadasana (mountain pose), more commonly known as standing. If you look to the right, you'll see a spinal column with the different sections color coded. We are interested in the sacrum (yellow) and the coccyx or tailbone (blue).
Come into tadasana (mountain pose). Imagine that you can consciously move the energy in your spine. Notice the base of your spine. Let all of the energy in your sacrum rise up through the body. Allow all of the energy in the tailbone sink down through your legs. That's it. So simple, yet so profound.
What I have noticed is that as I rise the sacral energy (energy from the sacrum, not sacred, or holy energy), sometimes it feels like it gets stuck, or moves more slowly. If this happens for you, just be patient, allow the energy to bloom. Also, the tailbone energy can move more strongly in one leg or another. Usually this means I need to lift the heel of the "stuck" leg and move it out slightly to free things up.
The best thing about this practice is how easy it is to be so thoughtful. This can be done waiting in the checkout line at the grocery, answering emails, or any time you are standing around, as well as adding to your daily yoga practice.
Sianna Sherman
In the first month after the class, people began to remark on how good my posture was. After about seven months I began to notice that I was slumping when I talked to people to try to get my eyes at the level they used to be. After a year, I noticed I was hunching over the lectern to get my mouth back at the level of the microphone. At one year and 9 months from the class I am an inch taller!
Added side benefit: as I was writing this post I had the great idea to check my BMI online. The good news is that adding the inch pushed me from overweight to normal. Now, we all know this is just in my head. I'm the same person who walked into that doctor's office, but let me tell you she feels much better about herself.
If you'd like to learn more from this master teacher in the privacy of your own home, you can purchase her DVD, Pranam
(here's my review). The other big thing I learned in that class is in this post. Add this to your practice and enjoy growing taller with me!
As I mentioned yesterday, I took a wonderful class in July, Brain Gym 101. One of the things that made a deep impression on me was the emphasis on clarity in language. From the beginning of the class, Carolyn emphasised speaking in positive, clear ideas. One of my favorites is how when a student kept tripping up on trying to find a positive spin and just had to state something in a negative, "I can't..." way, Carolyn would add a "yet" to the end of the sentence ( "I can't keep my desk organized... yet").
Another thing she really pointed out was our use of the word "try." If you are "trying to," you are not doing. (Interesting side note, it shocked me listening to my beloved TED talks after I got home. Here are these accomplished people, speaking to other brilliant minds, but almost all of them use the word "try" to either describe their talk or their work. I guess all of us are uncertain and tentative at times.)
This message about language is so important to me, but also it seemed like one I might forget without teacher there to correct me. I had to figure out how to bring teacher home with me, but in a light hearted way. The picture below is of the wall opposite my favorite chair in my reiki room. I'm thinking I might remember.
Last week I took an amazing class! I can't recommend Brain Gym 101 with Carolyn Nyland enough. It was one of those things that arrived at the right time, with the right instructor and the right students. I was ready to hear and use all that was taught. What a gift.
As I saw my first client after the class, I was careful. I had played around with the material a lot, but didn't want to use it before I was ready, so I left all of the materials far away from my office (so I couldn't just slip it in). Let's just say that didn't work at all. It is such a great tool, that I had to go get the book and we spent most of the session using the Brain Gym movements to complement the other things that I use all the time. It was so much fun!
So what is this Brain Gym? There are lots of involved descriptions, with loads of jargon, all necessary for research, but for our purposes here is my favorite- "to live is to move." If I were to go on a bit longer, it is "a movement- based educational experience centered around twenty-six simple activities that recall the movements children naturally do during their first years of life as they learn to coordinate their eyes, ears, hands, and whole body."
What is so wonderful is the way adding Brain Gym exercises moves my sessions into "Pam territory." I had a major realization over 2012. I had been running someone else's practice, don't know who, but so much of what I was doing was not serving my clients. One day last winter I spent a few hours trying to define why my clients choose me, what they are looking for. The adjectives that I came up with are "playful, fun, generous, open, love and adorable." Darn it! I want to be serious and studious and all of those other words that garner respect. After spending the last 8 months with them on the wall of my office, I've come to realize that I love them, and this is where I am meant to be. Can you see why Brain Gym (or any other method of playing your way to health) is such a good fit?
I've looked for YouTube videos, but most seem geared toward children. Here is an adult version (word and pictures, with a Mozart selection from YouTube to play in the background as you awaken your brain.
With only one course under my belt, I am not certified (though perhaps, I'm certifiable...), and have no idea where the road leads but I'm loving skipping down it. That being said, I have a gift for you. Wouldn't it be wonderful if, any time you wanted it, your brain was working in tip top condition? Here is a great start from Brain Gym:
1. Energize: Have a sip of water
(Warning: Science Content- water supplies electrolytes that carry electrical potential across cell membranes, and this electrical exchange is essential to the functioning of the new neural networks being created as we learn)
2. Clear: Brain Buttons Place one hand over your navel. Make a "U" shape with the other hand and place your thumb and index finger in the small depressions just below your collarbone, about one inch to each side of your breastbone. Rub the points at your collarbone for about 30 seconds as you move your eyes slowly to the left and right along a horizontal line. Continue with the other hand.
(Warning: Science Content- by moving our eyes right and left into the periphery while holding points in the kinesthetic midfield, we restore our centralized vision as we satisfy the scanning- reflex impulse to look away from the midline.)
3. Active: Cross Crawl
Cross the midline of your body as you alternately move one arm and its opposite leg, then the other arm and its opposite leg. There are lots of variations, have some fun!
(Warning: Science Content- this exercise activates both sides of the body, firing the neural pathways in the left and right cerebral hemispheres. It also stabilizes the pelvis, while also mobilizing and stabilizing the shoulders. And hey, it feels great.)
4. Positive- Hook- ups
Cross your ankles. Next, extend your arms in front of you and cross one wrist (on the same side as your top ankle) over the other; then interlace the fingers and draw your clasped hands up toward your chest. Hold like this for a minute or more, breathing slowly, with your eyes closed and the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth as you inhale.
When ready, uncross your arms and legs. Put your fingertips together in front of your chest.
(You guessed it: Science Content- activates the vestibular system and balance- related muscles, supporting us in restoring equilibrium after emotional or environmental stress. It draws blood and attention away from the body's periphery and the fight or flight reflexes and back to the body's midfield, inhibiting reflexive behavior and supporting higher-order thinking and decision making.)
I hope you are still here with me. I know that was a lot of information (actually, my fingers are a bit tired from typing). Trust me, it is much easier to do than to read about. So, give it a try. Put on some instrumental music that you love and let your body move. Let me know how it works for you or if you have any questions.
(here's my 
