At the start of the year I set an intention for heart expansion, and yet what kept coming in as my deepest paths of learning were breath and balance. It wasn’t totally out of left field because breath and balance are foundational to my work and personal practice, but these Read more…
Yesterday I mentioned how a student got to the bottom of a chronic headache. She’d been noticing that every time she sat down for her daily meditation her head would start to hurt. I casually mentioned, “Have you asked it what it wants to tell you?” Within 24 hours she Read more…
When I first started working with the Akashic Records, they used to tell me that even “outside” the Records I was being sent guidance in the form of signs. This literally brought me to tears of great frustration because at that point in my life I couldn’t discern any of it. Was this Read more…
As human beings, we have a lot of ways of knowing, and it can make life a whole lot easier when we can figure out how we know what we know, and tap into the most appropriate channels of knowing for every context we find ourselves in. Earlier this summer we talked a lot about discerning the difference between being in our head vs. heart because I am convinced that we tend to overuse our heads in situations where our hearts should be leading. This leads to a lot of overthinking, second-guessing, doubt, and confusion. Our heart knows what it knows, but our head constantly gets in the way. This month I revisited that idea, but with more complexity.
HEAD
First, I want to emphasize the fact that our intellectual faculty is not the enemy. There are times when the head should very definitely lead the way. Deciding between health insurance plans, for example, is a choice we want to be very rational about, because it is a decision that requires us to assess very tangible needs and constraints from financial and medical points of view. Reading through lists, crunching numbers, planning, and making sense of data is all stuff that our brains are equipped to do. The intellect is also great in a supporting role. Once you make a decision from a deeper place in your being (e.g., where you want to take your next vacation), you can task your head with budgeting, planning, and filling out the details.
I still maintain, however, that we tend to rely on our head too much. For some people, it’s when try try to make career decisions. For others, it might be in their romantic relationships. At first it can be challenging to catch ourselves overthinking, because we are so accustomed to being in our heads, and it gives us a (false) sense of being in control. But the more you drop into your body (in meditation, in any mindfulness practice), the more you will recognize the feeling of being in your head. Also, here’s another clue: If you are asking the question “Should I…?” a lot, you are probably too much in your head about something. When you find yourself in this position, I recommend you drop down “lower” or “deeper” into your being. Where, exactly, depends on the context (more on that below). (more…)
Last year when we worked on focusing we used the technique pioneered by Ann Weiser Cornell in her book The Power of Focusing, which was my own personal introduction to the method. It was a great introduction to noticing how the body communicates to us something we need to know about our deeper selves, and how we can tap into that and attend to it if only we took the time to pay attention, ask, and listen.
Purists might disagree, but I consider focusing a form of meditation because it is just another way of quietly coming home to ourselves. But focusing also feels different from most traditional sitting practices because it really asks us to focus on the body (rather than the breath). It also requires that we be more “active,” in that we are meant to engage with what’s bubbling to the surface, rather than simply letting those bubbles go. One Dreamer & Schemer said that the focus on the body gave her something to hook into more easily than perhaps more “abstract” meditations, and that the experience led her to gain a new appreciation for her body!
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This month, Michele Théoret provides us with guidance on how to connect with our second chakra through yoga asanas. From the grounding position of mountain pose, we can choose to move into what she designates as “moon pose/chandrasana.” (Note that this is NOT the version of moon pose where you Read more…
Last year we learned how to listen for our body’s YES and NO. This will be a review of those methods, but I will also be offering one more tool at the end, which everyone found to be quite fun to use! By memory: Think back to a time when Read more…
I admire yogi Michele Theoret for many of the same reasons I admire Noah Karrasch: both are on a mission to increase awareness around the mind body connection, so we can move through life with grace, vitality, and equanimity. I brought Theoret’s book, Empowered Body, to our last Dreamers & Schemers gathering on roots and grounding because she writes very clearly about what it means and why it is so important to be physically, mentally, and emotionally grounded: (more…)
Freeing Emotions and Energy Through Myofascial Release, by certified Rolfer and CORE practitioner Noah Karrasch, is intended for bodyworkers, but I found it to be a terrific resource for bringing awareness to different parts of my own body. Karrasch includes exercises that individuals can do themselves to increase mobility and Read more…
[This post is for my Dreamers & Schemers, who expressed an interest in learning about my question journal practice at our last meeting.]
One of the lovely outgrowths of my Akashic Records practice is my question journal. It began simply as a way to keep track of the questions I wanted to bring to my Records. I started it on my cellphone because I don’t make a habit of carrying my Akashic Records journal around with me, and I needed a handy way of jotting down questions as they occurred to me through the day. Earlier this year, however, I noticed that my question journal had taken a life of its own. It had come alive for me in the sense that I would jot down questions, and in a span of days or weeks, I would get an answer in the course of my daily life.
Two recent examples illustrate how this can happen in vastly different ways. (more…)