I haven’t posted since the winter solstice. How interesting the first time I’ve been inspired to write again is the first day of spring! I’ve been spending all my time and energy gestating what will be my most beautiful creation, the little love warrior I’ve been dancing into being.
I’m 39 weeks pregnant today, and I’ve been feeling heavy. Mostly physically, but occasionally mentally and spiritually as well. Growing a person is energetically demanding and incredibly grounding. It feels a little too grounding for me at times. Having to slow down (way, way down) and surrender to stillness is a challenge for my fiery nature. I find myself occasionally getting frustrated with my bodies need for so much rest. I usually use activity, especially dance, to move through my emotions and balance my mood. I was able to dance, move and work with more grace and ease than I expected to, right up until I finished teaching mid February but now seems like the distant past. This last month has been a process of accepting that in order to honor my body and take care of myself and the baby, I need to let go of the need I normally have to sweat it out. I’m trying to remember I can get my dance on it other ways.
This morning, when I awoke and thought about the day ahead, time stretched out in a seemingly endless fashion before me. I’ve finished my to-do list, and the empty time seemed daunting. Then I found in my email inbox the first day of a new 21 day meditation experience with Deepak and Oprah called Shedding The Weight: Mind, Body and Spirit that I had signed up for a few weeks ago. Today’s meditation was called ‘Finding The Lightness In Your Life.’ It was amazing, beautiful and perfect timing as the The sun just moved into Aries and the wheel of the year has just turned to Spring. Personally, I really, really needed the reminder.
I don’t have a daily sitting meditation practice, but I’ve been meditating in some form for about 17 years and it never ceases to amaze me how beautiful it can be. I so often choose movement meditation over one sitting in stillness and I forget how good stillness can be. In today’s meditation, the mantra quickly fell away and I saw myself shedding the heavy, dense energy that had hardened around me over the last while. It cracked off in bits and pieces, revealing the brilliant light body underneath. I was reminded we are all the embodiment of conscious light, radiant stars that come to play and learn in this dense physical realm. I felt connected to all light everywhere in the universe and could feel myself as the rays of the sun shining down on the earth. As this light, I was pure love and compassion, and as I touched the faces of the beings on the planet, my heart overflowed with love for them all. I felt myself as every star in the multiverse, and the unending light of love flowing through every dimension. Back in my body, I could see the light of my daughter glowing within me, a soft golden glow, different in quality from my light, and I was once again reminded she’s coming here to teach me how to love in an even bigger way. I can’t wait to have my heart cracked open to experience these new dimensions of love and to dance with her in my arms.
I’ll be taking a hiatus from teaching until January 2017, but when I return, I will have so much more light and love to share with you all. I can’t wait to dance with you again! Until then, if you want to get your hoop on, there are still classes happening with Infinity Hoopdance.
Another 21 day meditation with Oprah and Deepak, another transcendent experience on the first couple days.This journey is called Manifesting True Success. I think I made it there on the first try.
Seriously guys, it couldn’t have been any crazier. I went on an intense trip, beyond any non-hypnosis meditations I’ve done. I was not quite prepared for the all the awesome, nor did I expect success to look quite like this:
Day one”s mantra was Sheevo Hum, I am Infinity.
Here are the words I wrote immediately after my first meditation, while I was still flying high in an incredibly altered state of consiousness:
As I settled into silently repeating the mantra in my mind, I was immediately transported to a dimension where was consciousness without boundary. I became more fully identified with the infinite than I ever have before. It was…. all that is.
I first felt my being as I have felt it before, as a conduit to direct, focus and channel energy throughout creation. Then, I felt myself as the source of that energy. It was in the shape of a Torus field, constantly replenishing itself.
Then, I felt my consciousnesses outside of creation, outside of time and physical/mental/causal dimensions. Outside of it all. I was, with my cosmic breath, exhaling all of the multi-verse into being, and collapsing it into itself on the inhalation. Each breath cycle was epoch and eons of time. Trillions and trillions of years inside, yet I was outside of time, and experience it all simultaneously. The rise and fall of countless, infinite civilizations happening in an instant. I felt myself divided into each soul having an experience outside myself, and then returning to merge into oneness.
Each soul, my child, my brother and sister, father and mother and own self, expanding and contracting in awareness and essence.
Infinity, I am.
We are all that which is.
The separation between you, I and all that is exists only within time and creation. Outside of time, it is all just me. Just you. Just one singular oneness from which all is birthed and all shall return.
Source is us. We are here to experience creation on a smaller scale, to play, to learn, to live, laugh, love, grow and cry. To separate and return. To experience just for experience’s sake. Infinite truly is all that is, and you are all of that, but it is love’s essence. The love of a mother for all that is.
I should meditate more often, but then again, it’s perfect that I don’t, because each time I return to the practice I becomes far more intense as I bring everything I have experienced into the moment with me.
It is all perfect.
I now know truly, who I am. Who we all are. I am so blessed and grateful to have seen through to this level. To have felt it viscerally. My love for all of creation multiplied an infinite number of times through this experience. Whew. How can I feel anything but love now that I have felt that consuming, abiding love of source (my source, our source).
Damn, that was great Oprah and Deepak. I should send y’all a card.
Today’s mediation was Ahem Prema, I am love. When I closed my eyes this time, I spend a few minutes enjoying a fuzzy warm love bubble that surrounded me, before I slipped again into infinite consciousness. I was once again outside of the multi-verse, breathing it in and out of existence, but this time as I inhaled, and everything in existence contracted and was drawn into me, it was the most gloriously beautiful, ecstatic feeling. I had always imagined the eventual contraction and collapse of the universe as a cold and sad thing, but it was just the opposite. It is a joyous return to oneness! Every piece of matter and mind that was separate felt the yearning and the pull towards source, as it rushed in faster and faster. As we ultimately became one the feeling of wholeness was beyond anything I could possibly ever describe. That pause between breaths is perfection and lasted an eternity.
When I exhaled and birthed all the universes into form once again, it was in an exhilarating rush outwards, towards expansion, exploration and freedom. The overriding feeling behind every breath, every moment was of perfect love. I wasn’t prepared for another mystical experience before my morning coffee, however, I’m always grateful to be blindsided by the light and love of all that is.
So thank you Deepak and Oprah, for creating the space for me to experience Infinite Love As I AM, as we all truly are. It’s definitely redefined the definition of true success for me.
I’m sitting on my bed at the Sugar Loaf Lodge in Sedona, battling my twin urges to go out and explore, or to go to sleep right now (it’s only 7pm here). I’m splitting the difference by staying in, and staying up for another hour or two.
Then I’ll be up with the sun so I can perhaps head out for an early morning hike before my life between lives hypnotherapy session tomorow.
“Your what?” You ask, feeling intrigued and perhaps slightly confused.
It’s exactly what it sounds like.
I’m sure you’ve heard of past-life regression. Well, this is the same thing, but also explores the realm in between lives where our spirits plan for our next incarnation (as well as do some other spirit realm type things.)
I can’t friggin wait. I am so excited I don’t even know how to process it.
The technique is from Dr. Michael Newton, of The Newton Institute.
He was a very skeptical hypnotherapist who accidently found himself regressing his past life patients into that between lives state, which he calls the spirit world or spirit realm.
He has written several fascinating books about his cases; Journey of Souls, Destiny of Souls and Memories of the Afterlife. All of them are full of fascinating information that sparked a deep remembrance within me.
Most people who go for a session are looking for their life purpose, or perhaps they have an issue in their lives they are really struggling with. I’m just going out of sheer curiosity and a deep desire to bring a deeper connection to spirit into my everyday life.
Through meditation, I’ve had a few spontaneous, direct experiences with this realm and each time I have felt an intense healing of my being and infusion of knowledge and understanding. The beauty of our immortal soul in it’s light body is so spectacularly breathtaking that it’s beyond words, and even beyond my full comprehension.
Needless to say, I’m sure much of it will be beyond words but I’ll try to share as much of the experience as I can with you all.
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.
Dancing Into Being 