Happy Holidays?!?Or are they? For many people this time of year can be stressful and or challenging on many fronts. What would it take for you to have a truly happy holiday that you enjoy and that works for you? Here are some tips and tools for helping you truly have a Happy Holiday:1Stop taking on other people's stuffHow much of the stress, anxiety, discomfort etc. that you are aware of during the holidays is actually yours? Could you [...]
Why Loving Yourself Isn't EnoughDo you get told when relationships are challenging, or you're not exactly receiving the love that you desire that you just need to love yourself more? And that somehow, self-love is the magic ticket that will solve all your relationship (and life!) problems? I've been hearing for a long time, and maybe you have too, that in order to have love you just need to love yourself... more. While I DO believe that loving yourself is [...]
Re-writing your love story You might not realize it, but you have a love story. I'm not talking about your fairytale-princess version of love, your knight-in-shining-armor kind of story- what I'm talking about is a whole lot more personal and a whole lot closer to you and your life. The love story I'm talking about is the story that has been written into your subconscious through your lived-experiences in life, starting with your family. Our childhood experiences of [...]
Subconscious Family Patterning Have you ever noticed that family relationships can be some of the most challenging? This is often because there is a lifetime of history we are bringing into each interaction, history that often includes painful experiences of not having our needs met from people who we have an evolutionary expectation to meet them... history that often includes struggles for power in one way or another, struggles to meet those needs, or get the people we [...]
Lessons from Depression Lesson Number Two: There's some part of me that I'm denying Another discovery I'm having around depression is that when it is mine, it usually means that I'm cutting myself off from some part of myself- that I am engaging in some form of self-denial. This could be something I don't want to be aware of- like how angry I am- or having lots of judgment and wrongness toward myself rather than space and acceptance. How [...]
Lessons from Depression I'm no stranger to depression. It's something that has been part of my reality, probably since I was about 11 when my beloved teacher of four years died of cancer and I was moving away from childhood into puberty. Dealing with hormonal changes and confronting the realities of life and death at 11 on my own were way too much for my 11-year-old self to handle. So I just kind of cut myself off from [...]
What do YOU know about YOU? What If somewhere deep down inside of you you KNOW what is true for you, YOU know what is going on for you and what you need to do to shift the places you are stuck or that you feel aren't working in your life? What if no-one, no matter how educated, smart, perceptive, intuitive, or magical knows better than you what is right and true for you? Yet, how often do [...]
Lessons from Depression: Lesson Three: Your Body Might Need Some Support From You As much as I see depression as a symptom- often of something going on in the psyche, some place we are cutting ourselves off from ourselves and our awareness- I know for me it was also important to address the condition of my physical body. Your body also might desire and require additional support and help to balance that it hasn't been getting. I started feeling [...]
Bars! What the heck are Bars? They are points on the head where you hold the electromagnetic charges of your thoughts and beliefs, and when you "have your Bars run" you can discharge and re-set these charges to create more space, peace and possibility. Sound like a whole lot of hocus-pocus? Yeah, that's what I thought too... until I got off the table and experienced such a deep sense of space, peace, calm and self-connection that I'd been [...]
Positivity and its Unintended Consequences I have noticed a trend in the world I live in toward extreme positivity and optimism. There are even many teachers and leaders and celebrity advocates in the world of positive thinking. While I do see great value on accentuating the positive, and that it can be a powerful tool to transform our experiences, I think it also has its unintended consequences. One of these consequences is to be in denial about the [...]
"GOOD Relationships" "It only takes one person to have a good relationship..." I heard that piece of information from Byron Katie a while back, but it has taken me a quite a while to really get its meaning. What does that mean? How can that be? My friend was there to listen and make this a good relationship... even if I wasn't having it. So often we blame our partner for how the relationship is [...]
Being in Acceptance I've been writing a lot about choosing, about honoring your YES and Your NO, on being intolerant, essentially on truly listening to yourself, knowing what's true for you and honoring that. Though it may at first appear contradictory, today I want to write about acceptance You may have heard the statement “what you resist persists.” Maybe you've even found it to be true... As long as we are resisting something, in opposition to something, we [...]
Learn to trust your YES and your NO Do you remember what it was like to be five years old? To trust yourself and to clearly know what you did and didn’t want?… To go for what you wanted without hesitation?… To freely share your love and your joy and your aliveness with the world? So what happened to that? What happened to your confidence in knowing what you do or don't want and what's true for you? [...]
Moving past Judgements Have you noticed that a lot of what takes you out of being present are judgements and conclusions? Have you noticed that a lot of the feeling crappy that we experience actually has to do with judgements? What If You Stopped Judging You? What would your life be like if you could let yourself just be? What would it be like if you spent one whole day not judging you? Have you ever spent time [...]
BECOME DEEPLY PRESENT WITH LIFE So much of our suffering has to do with some story we tell ourselves either about the past or future, conclusions we draw about life and how things are or aren't happening, what has happened that we didn't like or that we miss about what happened, what will happen and how much better or worse than this moment it will be. In the midst of great uncertainty in my life to the point [...]