Becoming a Pretzel

morning yoga

If you put yourself in a position where you have to stretch outside your comfort zone, then you are forced to expand your consciousness. ~ Les Brown

I love how parenting stretches me, literally and figuratively. Every time I think we’ve got it all figured out, something happens that throws off our delicate balance and we get to find our sea legs again. It happens often enough to make me feel like the off-kilter is the normal and the balanced is the unusual, which can be a bit unsettling at times, especially when one of your children is at his best when he can anticipate what is coming next (to put it lightly). At this point, we have many tools in our toolbox gathered over the last few years of untangling where all the challenges lie, but by far my favorite is Spirit Time.

The idea first formed when I left the corporate world to stay home with my boys three years ago (when they were 10 months and 2.75 years old) and has evolved over time as they have grown and changed (as have I!). Originally about me missing a more formal morning practice, wondering how I could incorporate meditation into a schedule that was entirely not my own, it has become an opportunity to infuse a little stillness and connection into our chaotic days. A little meditation, a little reading, a little movement — that is the goal, although depending on the day I’m happy to hit on any of those three and call it a success! While Spirit Time certainly appears to be most successful first thing in the morning, when the boys are themselves most capable of stillness, grabbing a few minutes at any time of day can have positive effects.

We had an especially fulfilling Spirit Time earlier this week and it was a great reminder of why I like to do this, why it’s an important tool in the toolbox even when (or especially when) it feels like there’s never enough time, and how the effects of one morning can last for several days.

“Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.” ~ L. Frank Baum

My summer babies are still 3 and 5, which is a good thing for me to remember when I choose what meditation to do on any given day. I’ve found that the more formal the meditation, the less likely they will have the attention for it; however, we frequently practice focusing on our breathing throughout the day — they don’t think of it as meditation, but it is building a practice all the same. That said, I still try guided meditations as it is its own practice. This week we tried a couple of meditations from YouTube. “Kids Meditation #5 – Light as a Feather – Soothing, Relaxing – Brahma Kumaris” started off lovely — I was really enjoying the process of having my body float area by area — but I noticed Spider Boy’s breathing had a catch to it. When I opened my eyes I could see he was growing increasingly anxious and tears were starting to well up in his eyes, so I stopped the meditation. It turns out that the idea of “floating” was disturbing to him — it was as if he didn’t like the idea of being untethered from the earth — so we did a little grounding exercise to help him reconnect and relax. Whew! We had a lot more success with the short film “Just Breathe,” by Julie Bayer Salzman & Josh Salzman. While not directly a meditation, it shows adults meditating and has kids talking about their emotions and then breathing. Bean got especially into it, doing a lot of deep breathing, and afterwards we got out our mind jars and enjoyed watching the glitter fall for a little while.

My YouTube playlist kept going at one point and started the beginning of a chakra meditation, which caught the boys’ attention. What was most fascinating about it was Spider Boy’s reaction to her talking about Mother Earth and Father Sun. He said that didn’t make any sense, she had it all backwards. “All planets and all moons are male, and all stars are female. Because the stars are made of gas and they are gentler. Planets are made out of rock which is harder.” (Apparently gas giants are still masculine due to their rocky core.) From there we had a great conversation about masculine and feminine, talking about the active versus receptive energy. I love getting to see things through the boys’ eyes — it opens my eyes to different ways of seeing things, and enables us to have even deeper conversations about life and the universe and the energy that connects us all.

“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” ~ Rumi

This is a household of avid readers. When there isn’t a book in hand, there are frequent requests to listen to stories, and failing that then stories are told by the boys themselves. However that content can vary from the gentle to the extreme depending on the individual and the day. Reading during Spirit Time is an opportunity to focus on spirituality and developing emotional intelligence. One example from this week was Wayne Dyer’s I Am: Why Two Little Words Mean So MuchI AM. While not what I expected, there was a great summary at the end of what I thought the whole book was about — the power of “I Am” statements and how what you say following an “I Am” influences how you feel and even how events can unfold. Dr. Dyer encourages you to “try on” a variety of “I Am” statements to see how they feel. When I tried it, I could feel my body vibrate at different levels; however, when Spider Boy tried it, it just made him uncomfortable to say things he didn’t feel so he couldn’t tell the difference. Instead, it became the basis for an ongoing conversation we’ve had all week — whenever I catch myself saying something that doesn’t feel good (“Nobody ever listens to me!”), I call myself on it and reframe (“That would have felt better if I’d said ‘Everybody makes mistakes sometimes.'”) This book also kicked off a good discussion about Source energy. Spider Boy said, “I knew it was all around me, but I’d never thought about it being inside me too!”

We also reconnected with an old favorite of ours, Seven Spirals: A Chakra Sutra for Kids by by Deena Haiber  and Aimee MacDonald, which inevitably leads to a discussion about the chakras (Bean always chooses to learn about the Throat and Third-Eye chakras because blue is his favorite color, but Spider Boy is happy to talk about all of them), and On the Day You Were Born by Debra Frasier, which emphasizes our connection to all life.

“Lionel says his parents are vets. Sometimes, my daddy’s a dog.” ~ Baron Baptiste

We’ve loved many different yoga videos over the years, but haven’t had as much success with kids’ yoga books . . . until we met Baron Baptiste’smy daddy is a pretzel My Daddy is a Pretzel: Yoga for Parents and Kids. All the kids in the class are talking about what their parents do for a living, and the child whose father is a yoga instructor connects each one to a yoga pose. Having it be a real kids’ story that the boys could relate to held their attention from the beginning, and then they wanted to do all the poses (which would have been a huge win if we hadn’t had to get ready for school!) We’ve had so much fun sampling the different poses as time has allowed, but the Pretzel is the most requested. Only time will tell if it supplants Dead Bug Pose and Downward Dog as the perennial favorites!

“Summer fading
new friends’ faces
lighten the way home.” ~ Jon J Muth

Life has been a little more intense than usual around here the last couple of weeks, and we were in desperate need of settling down. When the idea to have Spirit Time came to me Tuesday morning, I thought I was a little crazy. How could we do it and still have time to get ready for school? But the truth was, we spent 35 of our precious morning minutes on Spirit Time that day and still were able to get out the door earlier than usual, so when the opportunity arose (read: early rising) to try again a couple of days later, I jumped at the chance and was met with similar success. This morning when we stumbled out a little groggy-eyed and ready for some weekend vegging, the boys chose to wait patiently for me with a book in hand. Spider Boy read Jon J Muth’s Zen Ties to Bean, a sweet book that focused primarily on loving-kindness but also reminded me that when we at our busiest sometimes the best choice is to take a step away from the goal in order to better situate yourself for moving towards the goal. That certainly was the case for us this week on the mornings we chose to incorporate Spirit Time. I’m feeling much gratitude towards the pretzel-y nature of parenthood and the lessons I continue to learn. Namaste.

Photo: “Morning Yoga,” by ╚ DD╔.

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Monthly Insight for March 2015

monthly insight imageI have been wanting to do some sort of general reading that I could post for whomever was interested, and today seemed like the day to take it for a test run! First time through and I already have some ideas for improvement — please forgive the shaky camera work and  occasional lack of focus! — but please let me know any and all feedback you have. I would to have this be a regular thing that I do monthly, but most importantly for it to be something that is useful so please do let me know what might make it more relevant to you.

As always, I hope this resonates and I hope you find it useful, and please let me know if you have any questions, what resonates (or what doesn’t!), and especially any stories of synchronicity (my favorite!) Namaste.

Calendar Readings and the Energy of 2015

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“Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.” ~ Johnny Cash

I love January. Much like the “new school year” energy of September, the beginning of a new year has a beautiful blank slate quality to it. For many people, it only takes a couple of weeks for that feeling to wear off — hence the rapid failure of so many New Year’s resolutions — but if you can harness that energy through setting your intention and raising your awareness, it can be an incredibly powerful time.

I have three rituals I perform every January. 1) A burning bowl ritual. It’s a great way to cleanse yourself of the energy from last year as you move into the new year. This year I included my boys in the process, which was laughable as my 3-year-old discovered the joys of fire and I quickly had to move the ritual outside while they talked to me through the window. 2) Visioning. Fran Klos and I co-facilitate a workshop to kick off each year with guided meditation, visualization, journaling, and a vision board. It’s a fabulous way to connect with your big picture vision for your life and for your year, listening to your inner wisdom to tell you what’s up for you this year and set you up for whatever goal-setting rituals you like to do. And 3) Calendar readings. By far my favorite intuitive reading to do for both myself and others, I love the insights I gain about the big picture energy that this new year is presenting more universally, the personal energy that is coming up for each individual, and how those energies are weaving together.

So while January always has a blank slate quality to it, it is especially noteworthy this year as the energy coming into 2015 is emphasizing a separation from the past so that we can experience life from a fresh perspective. The past few years have been intense, often feeling like we were being forced to drink water from a fire hose. These years have changed us fairly rapidly, at the very least energetically, but for most of us tangibly in our lives as well. While societally we have spent the past few decades focusing a lot of energy on the past — psychoanalyzing ourselves and dwelling on our history, personally and globally — this focus is no longer serving us, and may potentially even be to our detriment. I’m not talking about not learning from our mistakes — quite the contrary. What I’m talking about is learning from our mistakes and then moving on. Really moving on. Rehashing what has already happened steeps us in the energy that created those mistakes and makes it difficult for us to really show up in a new way when the next similar situation arises. As Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” We need to fully separate from the old in order to truly experience the new, in part because we really aren’t the same people we used to be and we can’t really see that and experience what that means until we truly let go of what has come before and allow ourselves to use our new eyes to see.

What do I mean by our new eyes? It’s as if we are all walking around wearing scuba gear even though we can now breathe under water. This scuba diver keeps walking through my head and my readings, clumping around in his heavy gear, gear that is pretty high maintenance to boot, and it’s all completely unnecessary. The shear weight of it — can you imagine releasing all that weight, how much easier and freer you would feel in your endeavors large and small? Our awareness of this shift is at varying levels — some people are completely unaware, typically the folks who are clinging so hard to nostalgia of our past that they are fighting and resisting change in all aspects of their lives; some people are aware a shift is taking place but haven’t seen much evidence in their own lives to understand what this means for them yet, perhaps not willing to embrace change until they understand where it is leading them; some people have taken their helmets off and are wide-eyed and amazed at how easily they are able to do things they used to really struggle with; and there are even some who have taken the whole suit off and are beginning to live their lives in ways that probably seem very strange to the rest of us. The news is full of reports that point strongly towards that first category, which can make it so easy to miss the shift that is taking place everywhere else. But it is going to become harder and harder to miss, and for most of us, we are going to find that we need to actively be a part of that shift. As Anais Nin said, “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

So how can you tell if the pain you’re experiencing is bud pain or blossom pain? That question can be answered with another question — which voice are you following, the one that wants to keep you small and reminds you of your flaws and how you’re not good enough and all that, or the one that wants to push you out of your comfort zone into a place that is going to let you let your light shine in a new way? If it feels familiar (and ultimately icky), it’s bud pain. If it feels new and possibly a little scary, it’s blossom pain. That bud pain is only going to get more and more uncomfortable, and yes, it can be scary to blossom and you can end up progressing in fits and starts, but ultimately you get to emerge like a butterfly coming from its cocoon, with fresh wings that want you to fly and soar to new heights. How freeing!

Which brings us back to our blank slate. We are creating a new world, and we get to make choices about what that looks like. If we continue to operate from the level of thinking that created the world’s current problems, we will end up with more of the same. But if we can show up with the eyes of a child, looking at each situation we find ourselves in with the freshest perspective we can muster, we can open ourselves up to new ways of perceiving the world around us, and new ideas about where we want to go from here and how we want to get there. It’s funny because I think if we’d been struck with this energy a few years ago, we would have found it intense and possibly even a little overwhelming, but instead, after the bulldozer that’s been knocking us down the past few years, this feels like a breath of fresh air. For me, at least, I feel like I’ve lost a pressure on my chest I didn’t even know was there — I can breath so much easier with this energy shift, literally and figuratively. I find myself embracing Who I Am with a gusto that I didn’t even know I had, standing tall and asking for what I need, asking how I can serve, and sharing my gifts from a well far deeper than I’ve ever seen it. So yes, there’s an intensity about this year, but there’s also a strong dose of intentional choice, and so I am choosing to see this year as powerful and empowering. It’s all in your perspective after all.

Does this resonate with you? What kinds of new clarity (and challenges) do you see cropping up for you? What kinds of old patterns and baggage are cropping up for you to let go of, enabling you to be your own gardener pulling weeds? I’d love to hear how things are going for you. And if you’re interested in gaining more insight into what all of this means for you this year, I’ll be doing calendar readings through at least February 15th. And BONUS! Anyone who signs up for their calendar reading between now and then gets entered into a drawing for a free issue-specific intuitive reading to be used at any point in 2015. No matter what you choose, I look forward to hearing how 2015 is shaping up for you, and what choices you are making to help shift your energy and the energy around you towards the freedom and expansion that is becoming increasingly available to us all. Namaste.

De-funking

4417625738_564d86308a_b Ah yes, there are few things more debilitating than the slippery slope of a funk. Whatever the initial cause, be it a breakup or mild depression or gloomy weather or you’re just having a really bad day (or week, or…), once you’ve fallen down the rabbit hole, it can be ridiculously hard to crawl back out again. I cannot count the number of times I’ve been sitting with a bowl of ice cream or a glass of wine or the TV remote (or possibly all three at once) thinking (knowing) that these choices I’m making are the exact opposite of the ones I, ahem, should be making in order to turn things around, but the feeling of apathy is so strong that it’s just a passing thought. And that “should” is telling too, because that critically undermining voice in my head has free reign in those moments, telling me all the things I’m doing wrong and playing on my worst fears. Sigh.

So I think we could all make a (long) list of all the things *not* to do in these instances, those things we all too often do even though we know they’re likely to make us feel worse in the long run. And I think most of us could also make a (long) list of all the things we think we *should* be doing in these instances, those things that we probably won’t do because the stretch is too far and we’ll feel so guilty for knowing we won’t do them that the thought of them will send us running for the chocolate even faster, because hey, if you’re gonna “fail” you might as well do it with chocolate. Neither of those lists is especially useful once the funk has already gotten a hold of you. Instead, my goal here is to come up with an alternative list, a list of those things that just maybe could tip the balance just enough to end the slide and just maybe start to turn things around again. It’s about the subtle shift of vibration, reaching for a thought that feels better, as Abraham says, so you can at the very least “stop the bleeding.”

Baby steps. First and foremost, it is very important to stress (especially to myself) that this is all about BABY STEPS. The reason those “good for you” things don’t help is that they feel too distant from where you already are. If you’ve never been on a pair of skis in your life, you know to avoid the black diamond slopes–the gap between your skill level and the skill level needed to succeed there is just too great. Well, this is no different, really. You may think you have plenty of skill–and under different circumstances you most certainly do–but for now, it is in your best interests not to try to do too much too fast.

Start where you are. A corollary thought is to acknowledge that you are where you are, and to be gentle about it. I wrote a post a few years back about starting where you are as it relates to achieving your goals, but the same idea applies here. “Starting where you are is about being loving and compassionate towards yourself. You may dream of what you want your life to look like, who you want to be, and often that leads to beating yourself up, judging yourself and finding yourself lacking. This is counterproductive, placing the emphasis on what you don’t want instead of on what you do want. The first thing to do is to recognize that you are where you are, and while you are capable of realizing your dreams, you have to be gentle with yourself as you take the steps necessary to get there. I like to think of it as building your muscles. If you had a dream of running a marathon, you wouldn’t try to run 26.2 miles tomorrow. You would put a training program in motion and build your muscles and your endurance to enable success. Each step in the training program is a stretch and while you get close to your objective during training, the day of the event is the day you actually achieve your goal.” See, baby steps!

Choose a thought that feels better. All right, so now that you’re focused on starting where you are and only taking baby steps, the next goal is to choose a thought that feels better. I love that this idea seems to be such an inherent part of our collective consciousness now, but I remember when I was first introduced to the idea in Abraham-Hicks’s Ask and It is Given, I was blown away (in the best possible sense) by the simplicity and power of this practice. In a process called “Moving Up the Emotional Scale,” they lay out a scale of emotions from best-feeling (joy, knowledge, empowerment, freedom, love, appreciation) to worst-feeling (fear, grief, depression, despair, powerlessness). Yup, that funk is at the very bottom of their emotional scale. The good news? There’s 22 feelings on this list, and you don’t need to go all the way from 22 to 1 in one sitting. In fact, that’s likely to be impossible. Instead, all you have to do is reach for a better-feeling thought that is somewhere up the scale from where you. Guilt? #21. Anger? #17. Frustration? #10. Even the smallest shift can get the energy moving in an upwards direction.

Dance. Depending on your mood, this one might be out of reach, but with just the right combination of funk + beginnings of an energy shift, you might be able to turn on some body-moving music and let nature take its course. Just getting off the couch and doing a little head-banging may be all you’re capable of, but it may also be enough to raise that vibration up another notch or two.

Write. Again, this may feel like too much of a stretch, but especially if your funk originated with some worry or anger or jealousy, you might find writing to be a powerful tool to take some of those thoughts that keep swirling through your head and get rid of them on the paper so that they can start to let you go. I would definitely recommend pen and paper for this exercise–the visceral connection with the pen and watching the flow of letters on the page make a real connection between what you’re writing and letting it go. It’s flowing out of you, into the pen, and onto the paper. If it makes you feel better to think of it as writing a letter to the person that first upset you, all the better . . . so long as you don’t mail it.

Cut yourself some slack. This one can be hard to do when in the throes of a funk, but if you’ve started to feel the winds change you might be ready to cut yourself some slack. That TV show you’re watching? Not the end of the world. This is where you are right now, and you are already taking steps, however small, to shift that energy. Give yourself some credit for what you’ve been able to do–and here’s the key–without also giving yourself a hard time for what you haven’t. Rome wasn’t build in a day, and you’re not going to shift from depression to joy in a day either. So acknowledge whatever shift you *have* been able to achieve and end the internal conversation there.

Keep the energy moving. Okay, so maybe it’s the next day and you’re no longer in the depths of despair. Hallelujah! Take a moment to celebrate yourself for taking the baby steps necessary to get yourself up and out of that hole. But the mistake we all too often make is to stop there. You’re feeling so much better that the depression of yesterday seems distant and fuzzy, but it’s likely that you’re now at worry or frustration or doubt–in other words, not completely out of the woods. That slope is still a slippery one, and while you’re on much better footing today, there are more baby steps you can take to continue that upward momentum. Maybe you’ve already got a strong spiritual practice, in which case you know that it really doesn’t take much–a few minute meditation, a repetition of your mantra, singing a verse of a chant–to get you reconnected to your Source. It doesn’t take much, but it does need to be done. For more ideas about taking those baby steps a little further into the realm of connection, check out this post I wrote back in the day about Reconnecting. Chances are you got to this point via some old patterns, so maybe it’s time to start creating some new ones.

As with much of what I write, I wrote this for me far more than for anybody else. Once I find myself on that slippery slope, old patterns kick in and make it so so so easy to just keep on slip-sliding away. I’ve found myself on more than one occasion looking for that inspiration that will just keep it from getting worse–I know what’s at the bottom of the hole and I don’t want to go there–but that reach all too often feels too great. I’m bookmarking this post, adding it to my “In Case of Emergency, Break Glass” list. And I would love to hear from you too–what do you think? What here really resonates with you? And what has worked for you in the past to help shift you out of a funk? Namaste.

Photo: “rising up“, by gato-gato-gato

How did I get here?

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I have a confession to make. The truth is, I have spent far too much of my life trying to be something I’m not. Nothing reminds me of this more than watching my march-to-the-beat-of-a-different-drummer 5-year-old son enter the socialized world of school. He loves it, he’s totally happy there, he likes everybody. But kids can do things that can be hurtful sometimes, whether it’s on purpose or not, and it pains me every time he says somebody doesn’t like him for whatever reason. Yes, this is in large part because I want him to be happy, and because I love him and want everybody to be able to see just how special he is, but I know it also has a lot to do with my own childhood desire to have everybody like me, and all of the decisions I’ve made in my life because I wanted people to like me that have lead me down paths that didn’t make me happy. One of the clearest (and most relevant) examples of this is with my spirituality. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to balance out the intellectual practical side of me with a strongly intuitive and spiritual self. I’ve been attracted to many things that were (and probably still are) just plain weird to many of my friends and family members. When I was in college I would go down into Chicago to go to a Religious Science church on the occasional Sunday mornings, torn between my love of the philosophy and the inspiration I received, and my discomfort with doing something that others perceived as strange. I didn’t end up talking about it very often because when I did try to talk about spirituality or philosophy people would be like, oh, you mean religion. They could relate it back to the churches of their childhood, but they just weren’t at spiritually “seeking” parts of their lives. I felt myself fragment into the Jenn who meditated and was learning to be a healer and the Jenn who went out partying and loved Nine Inch Nails and the Jenn who managed the Subject Pool in the Psychology Department and the Jenn who religiously went to football games even during a seasons-long losing streak and the Jenn who, oh yeah, went to class from time to time and loved to program and learn how the mind works and studied the meaning behind the meaning of language. It was a rare few who knew that all of those Jenns were one and the same.

So fast forward 20 some-odd years later and as much as I have worked to reintegrate myself, I know that I still startle people from time to time, even myself. If you had told me back in the day that I would be doing tarot readings for people I most definitely would have scoffed (and that’s far from the weirdest thing that I work with these days). There were a lot of things that happened along the way to bring me to this place–I’ve been truly blessed to have encountered some incredibly powerful processes like shamanic soul retrieval and the Hoffman Process, and some phenomenal teachers that helped me reconnect to my intuition, providing tools to help quiet that always-on analytical mind and to allow my natural intuitive abilities to flourish. Probably the most influential part of that process was getting to know Caroline Reynolds. She had a special gift with chakra readings where she would read your chakras, letting you know how open (or closed off) each of your chakras was, but she would also relate the messages that came up along the way. She quickly became my mentor, and I spent a lot of time talking to her about what I wanted from life and my struggles with how to get there. At the time I thought I wanted to be a life coach, and believed that having these two aspects of myself be so strong meant that I should be a bridge between the practical and the intuitive, but it only flowed in fits and starts. I kept feeling like I was missing something, so she started to teach me to do chakra readings and to be a Spiritual Fitness advisor, but at the same time her message to me was: “You know, Jenn, you don’t need me. You are your own person with your own gifts and skills. What I see in you is that your intuitive side is actually worlds larger than your intellectual side, but it’s like a muscle that has atrophied and the more you hold on to that intellect the harder it’s going to be for you to find what’s going to make you happy. You’re a natural healer, and it doesn’t matter what work you do for a living, that healing will come through. But if you want to fully realize your potential, you’ve got to let go and really embrace that intuition. You will find your own way to do things–you don’t need to ride on someone else’s coattails, and preaching someone else’s truth just isn’t gonna cut it. You want to teach others to learn to fly? Lead by example and make your own path.” Whoa Nellie, did I ever need that!

How I have interpreted Caroline’s message over the years has shifted a bit, but my current version goes something like this: There are many things I could be doing, and many of them would leave me feeling fairly equally fulfilled since at the end of the day what I love more than anything else is helping people to grow–it’s the growth that is fulfilling, not the “how” of the help. But continuing to seek isn’t furthering me at this point. What I need to be doing is to take my own advice and share my gifts, in whatever form works for me today. Today, the intuitive tarot readings just plain work. Every now and then the question of “why” floats into my brain, but I’ve learned to just let it go and roll with it because at the end of the day, the messages just flow. Sometimes it feels like I’m in the active position, actually reading the cards, which are simply beautiful and have much to offer in and of themselves, but more often it feels like I’m in a receptive position, listening to and sharing the messages that are being offered up. I’ve done readings for a wide variety of people, from those who never would have thought to ask for a tarot reading in a million years to those who love receiving readings in all forms, and the thing I’ve found to be consistently true no matter the client is that if I can just get out of my own way long enough for my intuition to take over, the result will be powerful.

I am looking forward to seeing how the work I do evolves from here–I wouldn’t be me if I weren’t always growing and changing and pushing myself to the next level. But at the same time, I’m really enjoying getting to do the work that’s right in front of me–the insight from the readings brings a fresh perspective to my coaching toolbox and breathes new life into my work helping people to realize their vision. Every email I open from a client thanking me for the insight their work with me is giving them makes my heart sing–I literally do a happy dance each and every time! Caroline made her transition in 2010. She was incredibly dear to me, and I still miss her terribly. In some small way, I feel like doing this work honors her and the role she played in my life. I am blessed to have known her, to have called her my teacher and my friend, and to have had her push me out of my comfortable nest so I could stretch my wings and fly. Namaste.

Photo: Journey by Kasia

28 Days of Gratitude

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Have you ever had one of those months, seasons, or years where you’ve felt like you just couldn’t catch a break? Every time you dig out from the latest challenge a new one comes up? It doesn’t have to be traumatic – new opportunities coming up when you’re already feeling spread thin, a big project around the house, an event at your child’s school, etc. Just the relentless passing of time where you’re so busy you have trouble catching your breath.

This is the state I’ve been in for about 9 months (and if I’m honest, I can see a similar pattern going back 2.5 years, and a less obvious but still prevalent pattern going on for my whole adult life). Each new thing that comes up I think, man, if I can just get through this I can regroup and find some level of balance again. But the regrouping from one thing just leads to the need to regroup from another thing, every accomplishment being balanced out by another project or problem taking up the time just saved.

I’ve had so many things take my breath away over the past couple of years that I’m beginning to recognize that it is my perspective on life that is the challenge, not what life is doling out. Now to be fair, there are some genuine challenges that come from sleep deprivation that will get better over time, and when they do I will have a whole new set of resources to rely on to help me take things in stride and not view them as challenges as they come up. This is a huge deal and I do not mean to minimize that in the least. However, there’s also a way of thinking about things that has been keeping me down.

Because here’s the thing — I’ve never been happier. I have so much good in my life, so much love and so many aspects of my larger vision for my life manifesting all over the place. But I’m so depleted that I don’t have much energy left to actually appreciate any of it. There’s a show my boys like to watch called Peg + Cat — each story they uncover a “big problem” and Peg is “totally freaking out!” But then she takes a breath and counts backwards from five and starts to problem-solve. That’s where I was at the start of February when inspiration struck — I would make February my “28 Days of Gratitude” and post daily to Facebook about what I was grateful for each day.

And, of course, I am so grateful that I gave myself this gift! Some days it was easy to come up with many things that I was grateful for, and I could have gone on and on and on if I’d let myself. On my hardest day, my gratitude was about tomorrow being another day. But the overall thing I noticed was that each time I found my thoughts slipping into downward spiral thoughts like “will this ever end?” or “not another thing!” or the like, this practice encouraged me to reframe what was happening, to see the good in it, and if I couldn’t find anything truly good to at least shift gears enough to stop the downward slide. It was still an intense month, but I had a much better attitude to handle what was coming up as it was happening, as well as to reframe it in my mind when I thought about things later.

What a shift. What a relief! Gratitude is one of the simplest tools in our toolbox, and yet it is one of the most powerful ones we have. Nothing will shift your energy faster than finding even the smallest bit of gratitude inside of you. So now the trick is to keep the gratitude flowing. I’ve started making notes about what I appreciate about my husband, and I think I’ll take the time to appreciate myself next. What a gift that will be!

So what’s really bugging you these days? Is there an area of life that feels like it is really pulling you down? Or perhaps you feel like you just can’t get ahead? Whether it’s a small itch that just needs to be scratched or a larger problem that needs solving, try taking a few days, weeks, or even a month to spend some time focusing on what you’re grateful for around it. Even if the only thing that shifts is your energy, you will find that you now have the ability to problem-solve (or even to stop seeing the situation as a problem!) So simple, so powerful, so worth trying! Namaste.

Photo: Eu Sou by jeronimo sanz

Visioning

juliusturm

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. ~ Carl Jung

I am getting excited as I prepare to help facilitate a visioning workshop next weekend. I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions — they are far too easily discarded as life throws its incessant curve balls at you. Instead, I am a big believer in creating a vision for where you want to go in life, revisiting it from time to time to make sure it still resonates, but mostly just living life with that vision in mind.

In order to create a vision, you need to listen to your own inner wisdom. The first time I was introduced to the concept of visioning, I was led through a guided meditation that started by stilling the chatter of my mind so I could really connect with my divine wisdom, and then that wisdom showed me images of what me living my life fully really looked like. I have since gone through a variety of visioning exercises, but I think those two core components are always present — getting still enough to listen, and then allowing the vision to unfold, almost like it is being unveiled to you. As a result of this kind of process, you may see yourself living a life you haven’t even thought to dream of, and yet somehow it just feels right, it feels like it matches who you are and what you want in life.

So how does visioning differ from dreaming about where you want to be? The major key here that I see is that when you dream, there is a wistful feeling about it. As Carl Jung says, that dream lies outside of you, which I think makes it feel unattainable because you don’t wholly own it. When you create a vision, it resonates with you because it comes from within. It may feel like a huge stretch from where you find yourself in this moment, but you can visualize yourself living that life, perhaps because on some level you already have it.

Visioning can provide you a big picture vision for your life, but it can also be a powerful tool for the short-term. I like to do at least one visioning exercise each year — it helps me to see if my big-picture vision still resonates and helps me to visualize what steps I can take in the near future to move in the direction of my vision. One of my favorite tools in this process is the Vision Board, which is a large part of our upcoming workshop. I display my annual Vision Board prominently so that I can always look at it — sometimes it’s for inspiration, sometimes it’s a reminder, and sometimes it just feels good, like a warm and fuzzy hug to wrap myself up in. It is a snapshot of my current trajectory — a mixture of where I am today and where I see myself going from here, all the good stuff that I want to focus on and attract more of into my life. Last year’s Vision Board is covered in green — lots of plants and vegetables and trees and arbors. I didn’t know it at the time, but it turned out to be a year full of growing and gardening, with visits to farms in addition to my first vegetable garden, lots of wandering in the woods, and ultimately the purchase of a home with beautiful trees surrounding it and even a green lawn.

So how does visioning differ from goal setting? I guess my question in return would be, where are you getting those goals from? If you dream of having a large house with a sports car and a slim figure, your goals will likely be about achieving some steps in the direction of those dreams. The problem is that when the dream feels unattainable, on some level that feeling taints the associated goals as well, making it easy to throw your hands up and make excuses for why you cannot achieve your goals. So yes, visioning differs from goal setting, but once you have a vision it can be easier to set goals that come up out of that vision for your life, baby steps on the way towards living that vision. The goals become a bridge from where you are today towards where you want to be.

I remember how startled I was when that first visioning process showed me as the mother of two children. Up until that point I had been decidedly anti-children. I was so shocked that the first “goal” I had was to really look at why I thought I didn’t want children and to allow myself to consider what it would be like to be a mum, trying it on like a hat to see if it fit. That process uncovered a lot of stuff for me, old beliefs that weren’t serving me anymore that once released allowed me to be more open to many possibilities available to me that I had previously shut myself off from. Once I opened myself up to this idea of having kids, it kind of had a life of its own, it flowed without my having to do a whole lot to make it happen. To me, that’s a sign that where you are headed is in alignment with who you are. When life is constantly throwing up obstacles to your path, that’s a good time to ask yourself if it’s truly a path you need to be on.

The beauty of the vision is that it becomes your “true north” for your compass — now you have something to set your sights on, something to point yourself toward. But it isn’t a list to check off — the things you will have and/or accomplish by a certain date. Life may take you to a variety of different places along the route to your vision, but these stops along the way are really just steps that are bringing you closer to that vision whether it is obvious to you or not. Almost by accident, my vision is coming into fruition in unexpected ways. It isn’t unfolding anywhere near like I had imagined it would, perhaps mostly because originally I had no idea how on earth I was going to get from “here” to “there.” At some point along the way I realized that I’m already “there” — the details are still evolving, but the foundation has been laid and the construction is underway. It’s a work in progress, but oh my, what a journey. I find myself grateful for this path and for all the manifestations along the way, from tomatoes in the garden to my beautiful boys. Life is good. Namaste.

Photo: juliustrum – last steps to the light by Till Krech

31 Days of Calendar Readings and the Energy of 2014

heart + intuition

After an incredibly busy summer leading into an intensely chaotic fall followed by a typically jam-packed holiday season, I felt a deep need to spend my January doing a different kind of work, work that gives back to my community and not just to my wonderful family. I reached out to my Facebook community and offered to do 31 free Calendar Readings, one for each day in January. I was pleasantly surprised by the immediate response! Whether truly excited to receive a reading or curiously intrigued about what that really meant, I ended up with 23 “clients” within just a couple of days. What a gift for me!

I treat myself to a Calendar Reading each January as one of the handful of rituals I choose to start the new year. It is a reminder that this new year is a blank slate and gives me what I need to assess where I am coming from and get a vision for where I am headed. Getting to do this for others also enables me to really see the patterns that are emerging in the new year and how the energy of this new year is different from previous years.

I was relieved to be able to tell immediately that 2014 is a gentler year. The past couple of years have been intense in the way where it can be hard to keep your balance. While I certainly know people who found their sea legs relatively quickly, for the rest of us it has felt a bit like we were in a small boat on a rough sea getting tossed about. So while this year has a gentler energy, that does not mean it is any less powerful. It feels like we were drinking from the fire hose and we finally figured out how to control the nozzle — there is still a ton of momentum catapulting us forward, but we are learning how to direct the flow instead of having it barrel over us.

This year we’re being asked to stop letting our left brains run the show quite so much. The left brain is a bit of a workhorse — it serves a very important purpose, but if we see the world only through its eyes, we lose sight of the magic and mystery of life and the joy of the present moment. We are also being asked to let go of our need to be in control — when we trust that things will be okay without our micromanagement, we open ourselves up to allowing even better things to unfold in our lives, things we might not have been able to imagine all on our own.

It is a year where many of us will come into our own — when we listen to our own inner wisdom instead of the expectations and judgments of others, we step into that unique place that only we can fill and new opportunities start to open up for us. Hand-in-hand with this is the reminder that we need to be patient — new seeds are getting planted through this process and as exciting as this is, we need to trust that they are doing their jobs (growing) while we do our jobs. Just as a garden needs tending, this is not passive waiting — we still have steps to take along the way to keep things flowing, but there is no need to push or rush things along either. The seeds will bear fruit when they are ready!

And for me, it is a year where I am personally being encouraged to make sure I’m doing a little bit of everything instead of my typical “focus on one thing to the exclusion of all others” approach. So far, January has been even busier than I could have imagined, but this approach enables me to move forward on all fronts instead of just a handful, which ultimately means I get to do more of this Work that makes me feel so awake and alive. So thank you to all of you who have accepted my offer this January — it means a lot to me that I get to do this for all of you. And if you haven’t raised your hand yet and you’re interested in a reading, I still have a few spots left! Namaste.

Photo: heart + intuition canvas print by Mae Chevrette

Structuring the Unstructured

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Spider Boy is many things. Inquisitive. Observant. Independent. Imaginative. Playful. Funny. Sweet. But he is also highly-sensitive and spirited. I’m not much into labels, but I’ve found these to be helpful ones in that they’ve given us a foundation to work with to figure out how best to support him. The best description I’ve found to describe this comes from Raising Your Spirited Child: “Spirited kids are, in fact, simply ‘more’ — by temperament, they are more intense, sensitive, perceptive, persistent, and uncomfortable with change than the average child.” I laughed the first time I read that — “more” is exactly the word I would have used to describe Spider Boy — but over the years what has really come into play is that bit about being more “uncomfortable with change than the average child.”

This year being his first year of preschool, this discomfort with change became a noticeably large hurdle for us, whether it was special days at school like holidays or Crazy Hair Day, or weeks off from school for vacations, it didn’t take much change to throw him off. However, this year also made us realize just how much he thrives on routine and structure, and how much better he does when he has information about what to expect. It has been a bit of a struggle for me — I’m more of a play-it-by-ear kind of gal — but I’m learning through trial and error what works and what doesn’t. So what to do with the luxury of a long, unstructured summer? I remember them fondly from my own childhood, but the major regression after just one unstructured week for spring break made me quickly realize we needed something to help structure our 14-week-long summer.

Since spring break, we’ve experimented with the idea of a more regular routine. I realized I had it in my head that a routine was more like a high school schedule — first bell at 7:05 am, first period starts at 7:15 am, second period starts at 7:52 am, etc. That kind of thing is crazymaking for me! But the good news is that Spider Boy doesn’t need anything that explicit — he just needs to know that generally speaking, by 9 am we’re going to be ready to get out of the house and do something fun, and here are the steps we will take to get us there. We won’t be doing exactly the same thing at the same time every day, but generally we will be doing one or more of the same things in the same 1-2 hour period each day. I posted our routine up where he can see it — you can see a sample here — and he loves to ask what time it is and then run over to “the schedule,” as he calls it, to see what we’re going to do next. This has been working fairly well for us, once we worked out a few kinks, but on non-school days we have still had a little too much wiggle room for comfort. Enter my (un)structuring brainstorm.

We’re starting the summer by “celebrating” a letter each day. I am not making any other changes to our routine — we are doing essentially the same kinds of things that we would have done on non-school days previously — just adding the focus of a letter each day. So the books we read begin with that letter, the yoga poses we use in Spirit Time begin with that letter, everywhere we go when we see something that begins with that letter we call it out, etc. Once we’re done with the alphabet, we’ll move on to colors, shapes, and numbers. We’ve just finished our first week, and it was surprisingly successful, however it was also a transitional week that included a sensory camp held at Spider Boy’s school the same days he would have had preschool, so next week will be the true test.

My plan is to write up notes for what we do each week — what worked and what didn’t, along with the books/videos/excursions/etc. that I’ve found for each topic — so that if you find yourself in a similar boat with a spirited and/or highly sensitive child, you can find some inspiration here. I would love to hear what is working for you and your families this summer as well — please share your ideas in the comments!

Week One: A-B-C-D-E
Week Two: F-G-H-I-J
Week Three: K-L-M-N-O
Week Four: P-Q-R-S-T
Week Five: U-V-W-X-Y-Z

Recommended Reading

The Highly Sensitive Child: Helping Our Children Thrive When the World Overwhelms Them, by Elaine Aron
Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child Is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, and Energetic, by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka
The Strong, Sensitive Boy, by Ted Zeff

photo: bridging knowledge to health by paul bica
Want to learn more about mindful parenting? Now through June 10th there’s an AMAZING opportunity to receive 20+ resources covering topics such as gentle parenting, self-care for parents, creativity and play, children and food, spirituality, and more. If you choose to purchase the bundle through my website, I will get a portion of the proceeds. Win win!

Explore your parenting through poetry

I am so excited to host my first guest post by the talented and inspirational Lauren Wayne of Hobo Mama fame! Lauren’s Poetry of a Hobo Mama: The First Three Years is included in the Mindful Parenting e-Bundle that I’m an affiliate for. So cool!

Explore your parenting through poetry photo explore-poetry.jpg
By Lauren Wayne

What I love about poetry is how it allows us to view our lives through a different prism: one that breaks apart the pieces of our experience into rainbow colors and then focuses them with clarity that can be blinding in its insight.

When I became a parent, it was natural — even necessary — to explore my new adventures (and misadventures) through the lens of poetry.

Did we dream you into existence,
or was it more mundane?

When you open yourself up to writing poetry, you open yourself to reexamining and memorializing what was meaningful to you, even the hard moments.

Feeling you leave in a gush of pain and red,
in the blackest and loneliest part of the night …

Why were we led all that way, and never to see your face?

single paper baby shoe
Poetry gives a voice to the sublime stories you want to retell and re-envision.

You slipped out to our surprise, …
a flashing red-purple,
wriggling in the water, and finally hauled in,
turning it around
and catching us in your net

baby after home water birth
And it elevates the everyday into song.

You sleep beside us
for the waking together
sun bright
you point out
and smile.

waking up cosleeping
I’ve been writing poetry for years — handmade diaries from junior high glittering with stanzas in pink and green ink, earnest fountain-pen scrawls on random pieces of notepaper from college. But nothing has inspired me more than parenting — this wild, enlightening, exhausting, wonderful journey.

What can I learn in two years together
(almost three)?
What have you changed in me
except everything?

Even if you don’t consider yourself A Poet, even if you’ve never written (or read!) a poem in your life, I encourage you — I urge you — to pick up a pen or sit at a keyboard and give it a try. Consider an image, or a moment, and take a walk into your imagination. Describe it, feel it, relive it, and find the meaning for yourself that you can now share with others. As parents, all our writing opportunities are limited and hurried, but a poem is short — and therefore a possibility for an unexpected interlude.

One-handed now, lap filled,
breast claimed, you furtively search
for the letters, the keys,
the strain to capture your thoughts in the dark.

If you’d like some direction, I have a whole month’s worth of parenting-poetry prompts from my recent Weekly Parenting Poetry Workshop here. The workshop is over for now, but you can free verse it (so to speak). The writers who came alongside for the workshop didn’t consider themselves poets — but look what they created.

Who knew a heart could stretch farther
than even the body around it
that housed you each in succession?

Who knew love could flow out and envelop
so big a group — bigger —
and never grow anything but thicker,
like the blood joining us all together?

brothers happy together
Flex your pen, find your voice, and explore your parenting through poetry.

You can purchase Lauren Wayne’s Poetry of a Hobo Mama: The First Three Years at Amazon in hard copy or as an e-book. And for a limited time, Poetry of a Hobo Mama is available as part of the Mindful Parenting eBundle, 20+ gentle parenting resources for one incredible price of $24.95. Buy your copy today, because the bundle with Lauren’s book and many others will be available only until June 10.

Lauren WayneLauren Wayne lives and writes in the Pacific Northwestern USA, with her husband, Sam, and their two sweet boys: six-year-old Mikko and two-year-old Alrik. She has been writing and publishing poetry for twenty years, but parenting has added even more inspiration. Lauren blogs at Hobo Mama about natural and attachment parenting, and gives a behind-the-scenes look at writing at LaurenWayne.com. She co-hosts the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting and is a cofounder of Natural Parents Network, a site that brings together attachment parents interested in a natural lifestyle.
Photo credits: Author