I feel soooo much better! I’m still a little stuffed up, but in comparison to how I felt this weekend, I feel amazing!
It always shocks me when I get my energy and happiness back after being ill.
When I’m sick, I’m generally pretty sad and mopey. If I’m not actually sad, then I feel flat and blah where nothing really feels that that good. I’m a pretty terrible patient. I whine, I wallow, I probably drive my husband nuts. I also feel like this is how it’s going to be forever. I can hardly imagine having the energy to do anything other than the basics needed for my survival.
When that energetic fog inevitably lifts, as it did this morning, things are suddenly so much better it’s almost comical.
I suddenly feel like doing the dishes, cleaning the house, firing off a few emails that I’d been procrastinating on.
I did my movement meditation for the first time in a few days (I gave myself permission to do absolutely nothing on my two days off), and I danced for almost two hours! It was such a relief. Whenever I spend a few days being lazy (resting), I fear that I’ll stay that way forever. I always forget to honor the ebb and flow of energy and the cycles our bodies go through.
I started my movement with some slow off body hooping with a mini hoop. My body found some interesting ways of moving I had never experienced before. Then, once I dropped the hoop, my core began to undulate and I was carried away with my hip shimmies! They’ve been a little rusty since it’s been years since I trained in Belly dance, but today they just vibrated right out of me. I was able to move and dance and figure-eight while shimmying effortlessly, like never before.
I could feel all this movement clearing out stagnant energy from my second chakra.
I suddenly felt sexy and confident, infused with a gorgeous, seductive and sultry energy.
I was the embodiment of Shakti, the divine feminine creative power.
As I moved I felt this gorgeous sensual power run through me. I could also feel this energy running through all of creation.
I suddenly understood this cosmic power is mine to play with, to use, to create with anytime and all the time!
In the past, I’ve played with this energy, then put it back in its box.
I think I always felt like I was borrowing the energy and I had to give it back.
Today I realized its my birthright.
Time to own my own power.
I felt my goddess nature in a way that finally felt right. It wasn’t intimidating. In fact, it felt freeing.
I see now that I’ve always been afraid of this energy.
It crackles and sizzles with heat and oozes with sexuality. Sexuality, sensuality and eroticism are all integral parts of the creative divine feminine.
I suddenly felt no shame. No lingering doubt about the validity of sex as a tool for creation and manifestation.
It all clicked into place, and I danced and danced, feeling wild, free and beautiful.
I’ve been a little uninspired and tired the last couple days, as well as frustrated from being in pain.
For the last few months, the talus bone (which anchors to pretty much every other bone, ligament and tendon) in my right foot has been slipping out of alignment. As you can imagine, this makes doing anything on my feet uncomfortable. My chiropractor can pop it back in, and it’ll be great for awhile, but it keeps coming out, and while it’s out, I still have to walk (or dance) on it… It’s not incredibly painful at first, but the more I do, the worse it gets, and sometimes it takes a few days to get in to see my fabulous and heroic chiro.
I don’t have a lot of patience for nagging injuries, and I really dislike resting them. I have things I want to do that involve using my feet! I want to dance, to hoop, to go to yoga, go for walks and go to work (I work as a server, so walking is an essential part of my job).
So, my usual plan is to work though it, and then complain about how much it hurts at the end of the day. I also beg my body to just heal, dammit!
I realize this is a stupid way to approach, especially with the past injuries I’ve had to the same foot (all of which happen around this time of year oddly). There is always a message in the pain. The last real issue I had was about 2 years ago, and I wrote about the lessons I learned last time here: http://wp.me/p12dXx-4v .The biggest lesson was that I need to incorporate the sacred into my life, which I’ve been getting better at doing, but obviously have quite a ways to go.
When I woke up this morning with the start of a head cold I realized that I had been resisting slowing down and resting my foot which it definitely requires. I know for a fact I only get sick when I am tired, out of balance and need to slow down. This is my body’s way of making me chill without me feeling guilty.
I don’t really want to deal with a full blow cold, so I’m chilling as hard as I can, and consuming as many immune boosting things as I have in my arsenal; Oregano oil, sage tea, Emergen-C, Cold FX, lots of liquids, rest and reading.
The dialogue I had with my body might have been me bargaining:
Ok, Ok, I get the picture. My foot requires rest, so how bout I rest it without having to deal with a stupid cold at the same time? I get the message, I promise. Believe you me, I get it. No need to punish us both my making me sicker than I already am. Do we have a deal?
The deal is, I need to keep it elevated for the next few days, and when I walk, I have to walk slowly. With intention and with proper form. Heel to toe! None of this flopping around, turning this way and that at work like I’m playing basket ball. I think I can do that. I guess it’s a great awareness meditation. The trick is going to be keeping it up when we get busy. No choice but to accept the challenge though. I picked up a few books from the library this morning, so when I’m not working, I’ll just bury my nose in a book, which should make the chillaxing much more pleasurable. Sometimes I feel guilty when I spend days on end reading rather than getting stuff done, but I guess this is my free pass, and I intend to enjoy it!
I was at a hot yoga vitality class on Monday and we were doing a bit of breath work to start. The teacher asked us to set an intention for our practice. As we inhaled we would focus on our intention, expanding it within our core, and contracting the energy as we released anything no longer serving us with our exhale.
I chose to breathe in love, which I visualize as a gold or white light. I began by exhaling that which is not love but that seemed kind of long and clunky. After a few breaths, I began to release resistance to love on the exhale. Breathe in love, breathe out resistance to love. A few more breaths I wound up shortening it to simply breathing out resistance.
I felt tension melt away from my body and I found myself relaxed completely. Once I had let go of all resistance, the pattern spontaneously changed to inhaling love and exhaling love. Once the resistance was gone, love was all that was left. It was beautiful. It’s a feeling of perfect peace, like being home.
Starting the practice was challenging in my bliss-ed out state, but I was able to bring myself back to the breathing pattern often. It was a fairly fast paced and innovative class which made it harder to focus on breath, but the added challenge made it more satisfying to eventually lay back in shivasana, and just breathe in love and breathe out love, dripping with sweat, head swimming, blissed -out on pure love and buzzing on endorphins, what a rush.
Since it was so effective at yoga, I tried incorporating this meditation into my day whenever I feel myself resisting. It was typically a resistance to the present moment, which is an incredibly useless endeavor.
Resistance to whatever happens to be just creates tension, which is felt physically, mentally and emotionally as stress.
Releasing resistance creates acceptance. Acceptance allows us to be perfectly present. If you stop resisting the present moment, you find peace. That doesn’t mean that you sit back and never take action if things aren’t as you’d like them to be. On the contrary, it’s a powerful tool for effecting change.
Accepting the present moment just as it is provides illumination of just exactly what ‘is’ in that moment. This knowledge is powerful. It puts us in direct contact with source energy, (which is the vibration of love) and allows us to work directly with it. Once you start working with this energy, everything becomes easier. Seriously, life just gets better.
Releasing resistance to love means that you stop holding on to anything that is holding you back. It might be a pattern of behavior, beliefs you hold, or perhaps it’s fear; fear of failure, fear of success, fear of being hurt, fear of being wrong, fear of being right. Fear holds all of us back in so many ways…. But as I kept writing out the word fear, it seemed to lose all meaning.
Once you let go of whatever weighs you down, you become limitless! With no resistance, no fear, we are suddenly weightless and free! Love comes rushing in to fill the space once filled by resistance to love and then that’s all there is.
People all over the world are rising up, using the alchemy of dance to affect change on a personal and global level. This is a joyful movement I am 100% behind.
Here is a video that shows the passion and intent behind the movement. This is pretty emotional and may be hard to watch, but please take the time to view it.
I’ve always known that dance is healing. It’s a form of energy medicine… Dance has freed my soul. Let it free the world!
Join us on Thursday and Dance in solidarity! You can find an event near you on their website http://www.onebillionrising.org, on facebook, or just dance where ever you are, where ever you happen to be. I will be extending my morning movement meditation and taking my hula hoops to work with me as well as dancing in my car, walking down the street, basically as much as I can… If I have to be still my soul will still be dancing.
I am going to take walk outside, alone and distraction free for at least 10 minutes a day. I walked for about 20 minutes today and it was glorious. So beautiful outside, with the snow sparkling in piles about 3 feet deep in some places. It was hovering around 0C, so no complaints on the temperatures at all.
The point of this challenge is to get some fresh air, and commune with nature, but also to spend time alone with a quiet mind so I can channel divine inspiration without any distractions. Like I had mentioned in an earlier post, most of my best ideas happen when I’m trying to fall asleep, or when I’m doing the dishes. It’s the only time my mind is really free. At the time of writing that post, I said I was ok with that, but I want to experiment and carve out more time alone with my thoughts and see what happens when I spend some time in the stillness of nature. I think it will help me to delve further into my work with the elements and the wheel of the year…. I love living somewhere with seasons. We just passed Imbolc, often called the beginning of spring, as it’s halfway between the winter solstice and spring equinox. It doesn’t feel anything like spring in Edmonton, but the days are getting longer and I feel so fertile with ideas it seems fitting that spring is close at hand!
I challenged myself to do a movement mediation every morning for a week.
I had no idea when I accepted said challenge I would be taking on something so life changing and monumental! The second day of in, I wrote this post ‘I didn’t expect so much Awesome!’ http://wp.me/p32wA4-3x
Unlike the junk food challenge which ended exactly seven days after it began, this challenge is going to be extended indefinitely.
It transformed almost immediately from a challenge into a practice, and I can’t imagine starting my day without it already.
Every morning practice has been different. Sometimes I spend a lot of time just shimmying, stretching and breathing into any places in my body that are sore. Sometimes I wind up rolling around on the floor and there were a few times I wound up incorporating my hoop.
Whenever I am fully absorbed in the movement, in flow- my mind seems to quiet and open to messages from my inner wisdom and from the universe. I received a lot of affirmations and inspiration. There were also many messages about opening to and embracing the divine feminine. I spent a lot of time sending love and gratitude to my body when I was moving and stretching. I found that when I touched my skin as I danced, gently tracing my body with hands and genuinely appreciating the beauty of my spirit’s earthly container I would fall deeper into a joyful and peaceful ecstatic meditation. It was the kind of blissful union of mind, body and spirit that breaks the heart open and spills love out through the world.
I did notice that it was much harder to have the transcendental meditative experience if anyone else was around. I’m a little too self-conscious and easily distracted. I don’t have a private space yet, but I will in a few months, so it was easy to accept that on mornings when my stepdaughter or husband were around I was going to spend more time stretching and grounding into my body rather than dancing in ecstatic union with the divine. Either way, it was still a fantastic way to start the day!
Going to bed knowing I will have that time to myself in the morning to process whatever I need to process lets me sleep more easily. My body feels better, more open and less stiff. I spend a little time stretching now every day, instead of just thinking “I really should stretch later!”
I also find that I am far happier, more centered and grounded throughout the rest of the day. It’s not like this is shocking, I suppose I expected that, but actually feeling the difference it makes to my mood and to my stability is incredible. I also feel far more creative and excited about life! I am super grateful that I am finally in a place where I am ready to commit to having a daily joyful movement practice ’cause it really is so much awesome. What’s even more exciting is that I know I’m just scratching the surface, and that there will always be more to discover and ways to go deeper and deeper, with more to discover!
This is the story of the circuitous route I’ve taken to be where I am at this present moment and why I’m exactly where I should be.
Growing up, I always assumed I would have a white collar career, probably in academia. So how did I wind up working as a waitress at the age of 30, and why is it exactly what I want to be doing?
I knew I wanted to teach… I’ve always felt like I had a lot to share with the world, but I don’t have the patience for young kids or teenagers so I thought I would wind up as a professor. Since I was fascinated by pretty much everything, I wound up studying Social and Cultural Anthropology (the study of man). Anthropologists study anything and everything to do with mankind through a particularly reflexive and qualitative lens- often through direct participant observation. Modern Anthropologists take care to understand how their personal perspective influences the way they see the world.
About halfway through my undergrad, I realized that as much as I loved the idea of academic research, writing and teaching, the politics of academics were not for me. Being a professor was out but I did know that I really wanted to help people in some way and wanted to make a difference in the world. I looked at doing my masters in Social Work, and to accrue the hours I needed to apply, I began to work at The Distress Center in Calgary, first as a crisis line volunteer, then as a supervisor, training volunteers to answer calls. The same month I collected enough hours to apply (450 hours), they changed the requirements to over 2000 hours in a related field, which is basically 2 years of full time employment, so I scrapped that idea. I wasn’t invested enough to devote that much time to it.
Around the time I graduated, I was promoted at the dinner theatre where I worked throughout university from Box Office Manager to Operations Manager. It was amazing experience. I learned so much, including how much I love hosting and entertaining people, and making sure they have a great time, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do forever.
I thought travel writing would be an ideal way to use my degree and I had always had quite the wanderlust, so I started looking at booking an around the world trip. I wanted to go on adventures and blog about it, write travel articles and maybe a book one day. I spend a lot of time researching the logistics and lost myself in reading travel memoirs.
Around the same time, I began having some incredibly deep and inspiring spiritual experiences… The awakening of my Kundalini energy at age 25 seemed to shift quite a few things around in my life and I remembered that my soul work was in holistic healing. I didn’t see myself as a healer, so I figured I would work in administration and support… Funnily enough, I had made plans to found a holistic healing center at age 14 that I called Synergy Wellness, and then promptly forgot about it until then.
My interest in healing lead me to have some healing work done on myself. I began learning how to work with my intuition, and divine guidance. With this work, and some past life exploration the fears that blocked me from wanted to actually be a healer myself were dissolved in light and I began to explore my options.
In October 2008, I decided to enroll in the Holistic Health Practitioner program at Grant MacEwan in Edmonton. It seemed like a fantastic coincidence that the intriguing fellow I had met that summer lived in Edmonton, and I had quite a few friends there as well. I was afraid that he would think I was moving there for him, even though we had just met… When I gave my notice to the theatre, my boss said I was moving to get married and have babies, not to go to school. I was so insulted I fumed for weeks. How dare he accuse me of moving to another city for a man? I really should apologize to him and let him know how right he was. After I moved to Edmonton, I realized the program wasn’t exactly what I was looking for and withdrew. I also realized the program was the universe’s way of moving me here far earlier than I would have otherwise.
I had taken a job as a server, thinking it would suit me well as a student. Then I realized serving was way more fun than managing a restaurant, so I didn’t look for other work. The money and hours suited me and I loved having so much free time to explore my new city… I was meeting so many amazing people and my relationship was going well. I felt a little stuck though… There were so many things I was interested in, I didn’t know where to focus. I started to do my own research into different healing modalities. I learned about crystals, energy medicine, past lives and I read voraciously about any topic that interested me. I considered taking so many different training programs! I thought very hard about becoming a hypnotherapist or life coach… Then I discovered a fascination with pregnancy and birth and trained as a Doula… I loved the holistic approach, but realized the hours (on call 24/7) weren’t for me, even though I came to understand that supporting women through the birth process has an incredible impact on the physical, emotional and mental well being of the whole family!
I went on a soul adventure in Sedona and connected with my own ability to channel divine information and to share it… I came back inspired to write and began my first blog http://bringingyouohm.wordpress.com/ .
Then I broke my foot walking out my front door one February day. I was laid up for 2 months…. It was both the worst and the greatest thing that ever happened to me. There were so many lessons learned, which I have written about here: http://wp.me/p12dXx-4v, but the two biggest ones were 1) I NEED to move and dance to be happy, and the other was I need sacredness in my life. Really, they’re two sides of the same coin, since movement is my favorite way of connecting to the divine.
Once I discovered hoop dance, I had an excuse to dance all the time. The more it danced it seemed, the better my life became. The more I danced, the happier I was. Every time I tuned into guidance from spirit, or my own self the message was he same. Keep dancing!!!
Eventually I realized this was my soul work; to dance and to facilitate dancing and connecting to spirit. It’ a holistic way of helping, healing and teaching just like I imagined.
So I kept on working as a server, where I’ve had the chance to practice spreading love and light in service to others while making as much money as I used to working only 25 hours a week. I’ve had the time I needed to learn about sacred movement and train as a conscious dance facilitator. Every thread of experience and education I’ve had that seemed so unfocused is being woven together as I begin to develop classes and make plans to open a small studio (that wellness centre I dreamed of). I even plan to teach prenatal dance classes, weaving in more of my interests to the tapestry.
Everything is coming together in joyful movement, spinning all these separate ideas and experiences into one.
I’m so grateful for the words of wisdom shared by my parents when I was overwhelmed with choices in University.
They said ‘Do what what you love, and the rest will follow!’
Truth and wisdom right there folks, and that’s how I wound up right here, loving my life and living my dream.
When I woke up this morning I was more than a little annoyed at myself for setting up this movement meditation challenge.
All I wanted to do was settle into my normal day off routine of drinking jasmine green tea and eating breakfast while catching up on whatever happened online while I was sleeping.
As I was turning on the music (Bass Yoga vol. 1 -by HumenNature) to start my half hour practice, I actually said to my husband “I think I’m gonna hate this!”
I was stiff, sore and wanted nothing more than to stay in bed and be lazy. It’s C-41 outside, and I could feel the cold seeping in from the windows. The living room was chilling and seemed unwelcoming.
I stood barefoot in the center of the room, bundled up in sweats and a bunny hug, hood up- shielding me from the sun and the cold. I didn’t feel like moving at all, so I closed my eyes and listened to the music, which opened with a soft and droning synth, and the sound of the ocean. It drew me into myself, and my breath deepened. The first long notes of the flute touched me and I felt a deep yearning… A desire for comfort and connection. The melody lifted me away, out of that feeling and into something more like curiosity. I began to move, almost imperceptibly at first.
My attention was drawn to the cold stiffness in my hips, and I rocked them, swaying in a figure 8 pattern, holding my hands to my heart. The movements were smaller than I have ever made, it almost felt like I was merely imagining the movement, but heat started to gather in my muscles and they began to relax. The figure 8 my hips were drawing with their movement grew larger and my hands began to float upwards, rolling and twisting, gathering energy and bringing it back down to my core.
Everything felt deep, slow and easy. I had dreaded moving vigorously so early in my day and a flood of relief washed over me when I realized I didn’t have to. I could spend the whole time rocking gently side to side if I wanted. My movement meditation had no rules and once I surrendered my expectations of dancing and stretching, I could simply be present in my body and see how it guided me.
I spent quite a bit of time with these quiet, small movements; rolling my shoulders and chest with my feet planted firmly to the ground. As I warmed up, I moved more freely and played close to the ground as well as up on my toes, reaching for the sky. I moved and swayed, stretched and dance. The pace of movement was languid and relaxed. When I looked up at the time, I was amazed half an hour had already passed. I considered continuing on but chose hop in the shower and reflect on the experience. Not to mention, I was getting hungry.
When I stopped I felt energized, grounded and at peace- completely ready to face my day. I was also incredibly excited to try it again tomorrow, because not only did it feel fantastic, but because I had so many flashes of insight- Ideas that are going to guide this project and create new ones as well. The whole thing was inspiring, fun, joyful, uplifting and made my body feel amazing. I felt more present and aware than I ever do that early in the day. Those 30 minutes exceeded my expectations in every way and I’m so grateful and happy it actually brought a tear to my eye.
I’ve spent so much time knowing how important movement is to me personally, and years ago I vowed to cultivate a daily practice, but hadn’t had the courage or discipline to start (or perhaps I just wasn’t ready). I knew intuitively it would be a powerful tool, but I was blown away by its potential today. This is a game changer.
It’s going to change me.
I’m not exactly sure how, but I can feel it coming.
I feel open and ready to receive all the wisdom and gifts this practice is going to bring, and I’m so excited. I never thought I’d be jazzed about getting up early, but I’m looking forward to tomorrow already. Just thinking about it has all the cells in my body literally radiating with joyful excitement. It’s a crazy buzz and this is going to be a crazy ride.
Since No Junk Week went so well, I thought I would challenge myself to another experiment.
I want to spend a half hour at the beginning of each day doing some movement meditation. I love to dance/stretch to music… It’s my own intuitive mash-up blend of yoga and dance together. It basically involves putting on some tunes and moving my body to them in whatever way it wants. It usually results in some dancing, some swaying and some stretching at various intervals. It also tends to be a fusion of belly dance with some weird modern lyrical thrown in. I keep a rhythmic movement going, even when I’m holding a stretch. It’s fun, random, satisfying and I always feel amazing when I spend some time like that. I don’t normally do it often enough! Usually when I’m at home, I’ll hoop dance as opposed to any other physical activity and while that’s great for my hoop skills, it leaves my body wanting more.
Since I’m not a morning person typically, this will be a challenge in and of itself. I would say that I could do it anytime of day, but I recently read a blog post on Elephant Journal (which I can’t seem to find now that I’m searching for it) that made some fantastic points about practicing in the morning rather than in the evening. While an evening practice is fantastic to unwind from the stress of the day, a morning practice is a way to prepare for it. The premise is that if you start your day with some exercise, centering and grounding your day will have the foundation in place to handle anything that life throws your way. It makes sense to me, but as someone who has always thought getting up any earlier than I had to was a waste of precious sleep time it’s going to be a big leap of faith.
A half hour at home seems far more do-able than getting up 2 hours early for a yoga class anyway, not to mention I can groove as well and just hop in the shower. It might be a great way to wake up… We’ll see how it goes.
I did it. I went a week without any real junk food. No candy, chocolate, ice cream, cookies… I actually at about 90% whole foods. It was a great clean eating week for the most part. I did eat more granola with dried fruit than I normally would, but it was healthy granola. Amazing that when you’re not eating much sugar dried fruit tastes like candy! Even the bit of no sugar added jam on my peanut butter in the morning tasted incredibly sweet.
This is the update I wrote on Thursday:
At Midweek, I’m feeling fine. Great actually! More than fine… It hasn’t been excessively hard, even when buying treats like a giant bag of Peanut Butter M & M’s for my husband and watching him and a friend demolish it over the course of an hour. Actually, that kind of grossed me out, hehe. It was a huge bag and both of them stated they just couldn’t stop. It was kind of empowering to not be right in there with them, stuffing candy in my mouth, feeling slightly ill and regretting it.
Resisting candy hasn’t ever really been an issue for me though. I’ve never really been a candy person. Sweet things always do make me feel ill pretty much immediately. I feel nauseous and thirsty, and basically feel like I’m getting diabetes. To avoid any cravings for the junk I do love, I’ve been trying to eat more real food so I just don’t have room. It’s usually when I’m hungry but don’t feel like eating a real meal that I reach for cookies or ice cream. The last couple nights, I’ve had a bowl with some milk, granola, nuts and dried fruit instead. Probably not the greatest choice in the entire world, but definitely better than others.
The only downside is, I didn’t really notice anything about how I felt other than I didn’t have any moments of feeling slightly ill because of eating sugar. I mean, I felt great, but was it worth it? I think so, but it’s not going to turn into a NO JUNK month. I know that if I deny myself things I start to fetishize them and then stuff gets weird. I might find myself zoning out, going into a trance, and devouring a whole bag of chips or something. What I was really hoping to accomplish was two-fold:
1- See if I could do it… How much willpower do I actually have, and how hard will it be? 2- Break my habit of eating a treat (or two) every day.
It really wasn’t that bad, and they say it takes 7 days to make a habit, so I think the challenge was a resounding success. Considering it’s already past noon (1:32pm) and I haven’t had any junk yet, even though it’s legal now, I’m feeling pretty good!
Dancing Into Being 